2 20 144 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/dd9d3643c6fef8d9b42bd99891f3504d.pdf 59d1d3200dc67ec37105255ec1b23c13 PDF Text Text Richa rd and Val Rout ley 1. NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS 1 One hardl y needs initi ation into the dark myst eries of nucle ar phys ics to cont ribut e usefu lly to the deba te now wide ly ragin g over nucle ar powe r. While many impo rtant empi rical ques tions are still unres olved , these do not reall y lie at the centr e of the contr over sy. Inste ad, it is a deba te abou t value s .•. many of the ques tions which arise are socia l and ethic al ones .2 I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. A long dista nce coun try trai n has just pulle d out. The train which is crowd ed carri es both passe ngers and freig ht. At an early stop in the journ ey someone consi gns as fr e ight, to a far dista nt desti natio n, a packa ge which conta ins a highl y toxic an d explo sive gas. This is packe d in a very thin conta iner which , as t he consi gner is awar e, may well not conta in the gas for the full dista nce f or whi ch it is consi gned , and certa inly will not do so if the train shou ld s t r i ke any real troub le, for exam ple, if the train shou ld be dera iled or i nvo l ved in a colli sion , or if some passe nger sh:>u ld inter fere inad verte ntly or de liber ately with the freig ht, perha ps tryin g to stea l some of it. All o f these sorts of thing s have happe ned on some previ ous journ eys~ If the co ntain er shoul d break the resu lting disa ster would proba bly kill at least some of the peop le on the train in adjac ent carri ages , while othe rs could be maimed ~or poiso ned or soon er or later incur serio us disea ses. Most of us would round ly condemn such an actio n. What migh t the cons igner of the parc el say to try to justi fy it? He migh t say that it is not certa in that the gas will escap e, or that the world needs his prod uct and it is his duty to supp ly it, or that in any case he is not respo nsibl e for the train or the peop le on it. These sorts of ~xcu ses howe ver would norm ally be seen as ludic rous when set in this conte xt. Unfo rtuna tely, simi lar excu ses are o ;,...:'. ~ f'\ o t- s " 99• ole~~ seen when the cons igner , again a (resp onsib le) busin essm an.pu ts his wor kers' healt h or other peop les' welf are at risk. Suppo se he says that it is his own and othe rapr essin g needs which justi fy his actio n. The company he cont rols, which produ ces the mate rial as a by-p rodu ct, i s in bad finan cial stra its, and could not affor d to produ ce a bette r cont ainer even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails , he and his famil y wi ll suffe r, his empl oyees will lose their jobs and have to look for othe rs, aP.d the whole company town, throu gh loss of spend ing, will be worse off. The poor and unem ploye d of the town, whom he would other wise have been able to help , will suffe r espe ciall y. Few peop le would acce pt such groun da as justi ficat ion. �Even where there are serio us risks and costs to ones elf or some group for whom one is conce rned one is usua lly cons idere d not to be entit led to simp ly trans fer the heavy burde n of those risks and costs onto othe r uninv olved parti es, espe ciall y where they arise from one's own, or one's grou p's chose n life- style . The matte r of nucle ar waste has many mora l featu res which resem ble the train case. How fitti ng the analo gy is will becom e appa rent as the argum ent prog resse s. There is no known prove n safe way to packa ge the high ly toxic waste s gene rated by the nucle ar plan ts that will be sprea d aroun d the world as large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt goes ahead . The waste probl em will be much more serio us than that gene rated by the 50 or so react ors in use at prese nt, with each one of the 2000 or so react ors envis aged by the end of the centu ry produ cing, on avera ge, annu al waste s conta ining 1000 times the radio activ ity of the Hiros hima bomb. Much of this waste is extre mely toxic . For exam ple, a milli onth of a gramme of pluto nium is enoug h to induc e a lung canc er. A leak of even a part of the waste mate rial could invol ve much loss of life, wide sprea d disea se and gene tic dama ge, and conta mina tion of innnense areas of land. Wast es will inclu de the react ors them selve s, which will have to be aband oned after their expe cted life times of perha ps 40 year s, and whic h, some have estim ated, may requ ire U~ milli on y~ars to reach safe leve ls of radio activ ity. Nucl ear waste s must be kept suita bly isola ted from the envir onme nt for their entir e activ e lifet ime. For fissi on prod ucts the requ ired stora ge perio d avera ges a thous and years or so, and for trans uran ic elem ents, which inclu de . pluto nium, there is a half milli on to a milli on year stora ge probl em. Serio us probl ems have arise n with both shor t-term and propo sed long- term metho ds of stora ge , even with the comp arativ ely ~mal l quan tities of waste produ ced over th last twent y years . Shor t-term metho ds of stora ge requ ire conti nued human inter vent ion, while propo sed longe r term metho ds are subje ct to both human inter feren ce and risk of leaka ge throu gh non-human facto rs. No one with even a sligh t know ledge of the geolo gical and clim atic histo ry of the earth over the last milli on year s, a perio d whose fluct uatio ns in clim ate we are only just begin ning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages , could be confi dent that a rigor ous guara ntee of safe stora ge could be provi ded for the vast perio d of time invol ved. Nor does the histo ry of human affa irs over the last 3000 years give groun d for confi denc e in safe stora ge by metho ds requ iring human inter vent ion over perha ps a milli on year s. Propo sed long- term stora ge meth ods such as stora ge in gran ite form ation s or in salt mine s, are large ly spec ulati ve and relat ively unte sted, and have alrea dy prove d to invol ve diffi culti es with attem pts made to put them into prac tice. Even as regar ds expe nsive recen t prop osals for first embe dding conc entra ted wast es in glass and enca psula ting the resu lt in mult ilaye red meta l conta iner• befor e rock depo sit, aimu latio n mode l• , �J, 3. revea l that radio activ e mate rial may not remai n suita bly isola ted from human envir onm ents. - In short , the best prese nt stora ge propo sals carry very real poss ibilit ies of irrad iatin g futur e peopl e and damaging their enviro nmen t. 3 Given the heavy costs which could be invol ved for the futur e, and given the known limit s of techn ology , it is metho dolog ically unsou nd to bet, as nucle ar natio ns have, on the disco very of safe proce dures for stora ge of waste s. Any new proce dures (requ ired befor e 2000) will proba bly be but varia tions on not. only have prese nt propo sals, and subje ct to the same inade quaci_e s. For insta nce,/ none of the propo sed metho ds for safe stor age~ been prope rly teste d, but they may well prove to invol ve unfor eseen diffi culti es and risks when an attem pt is made to put them into pract ice on a comm ercial scale . Only a method that could provi de a rigor ous guara ntee of safet y over the stora ge perio d, that place d safet y beyond reaso nable doubt , would be accep table . It is diffi cult to see how -such rigor ous guara ntees could be given conce rning eithe r the geolo gical or futur e human facto rs. But even if an econo mical ly viabl e, rigor ously safe long term stora ge met~ d could be devis ed, there is the proble m of guara nteein g that it would be unive rsally and invar iably used. The assum ption that it would be (espe cially if, as appea rs likel y, such a method prove d expen sive econo mical ly and polit icall y) seems to presu ppose a level of effic iency , perfe ction , and conce rn for the futur e which has not previ ously been encou ntered in human affai rs, and has certa inly not been consp icuou s in the nucle ar indus try. The risks imposed on the futur e by proce eding with nucle ar devel opme nt are, then, signi fican t. Perha ps 40,00 0 gener ation s of futur e peopl e could be force d to bear signi fican t risks resul ting from the provi sion of the (extra vagan t) energ y use of only a small propo rtion of the peopl e of 10 gener ation s. Nor is the risk of direc t harm from the escap e or misus e of radio activ e mate rials the only burde n the nucle ar solut ion impos es on the futur e. Becau se the energ y provi ded by nucle ar fissio n is merel y a etop gap, it seems proba ble that in due cours e the same proble m, that of making a trans ition to renew able sourc es of energ y, will have to be faced again by a futur e popu lation which will proba bly, again as a resul t of our actio ns, be very much worse place d to cope with it. Their world will most likel y be a world which is serio usly deple ted of non-r enewa ble resou rces, and in which such renew able resou rces as fores ts and soils as remai n, resou rces which inevi tably form an impo rtant part of the basis of life, are run-down or destr oyed. Such point s tell again st the idea that futur e peopl e must be, if not direc t bene ficiar ies of energ y from nucle ar fissio n, at least indir ect bene ficiar ies. �( The "solu tion" then is to buy time for conte mpora ry socie ty at a price .which not only creat es serio us proble ms for futur e peopl e but which reduc es their abili ty to cope with these probl ems. Like the consi gner in the train parab le, conte mpora ry indus trial socie ty propo ses, in order to get itsel f out of a mess arisin g from its own life- style - the creat ion of econo mies depen dent on an abund ance of non-r emwa ble energ y, which is limit ed in suppl y to pass on costs and risks of serio us harm to other s who will obtai n no corre spond ing bene fits. The "solu tion" may enabl e the avoid ance of some uncom fortab le chang es in the lifeti me of those now livin g and their imme diate desce ndant s, just as the consi gner• • actio n avoid s uncom foriab le chang es for him and those in his imme diate surro undin gs, but at the expen se of passi ng heavy burde ns to other uninv olved parti es whose oppo rtunit y to lead decen t lives may be serio usly jeopa rdise d. If we apply to the nucle ar situa tion the stand ards of behav iour and moral princ iples gener ally ackno wledg ed (in princ iple, if not so often in fact) in the ·conte mpora ry world , it is not easy to avoid the concl usion that nucle ar devel opme nt invol ves injus tice with respe ct to the futur e on a grand scale . There appea r to be only two plaus ible ways of tryin g to avoid such a concl usion . First , it might be argue d that the moral princ iples and oblig ation s which we ackno wledg e for the conte mpora ry world and perha ps the imme diate futur e do not apply to those in the non-im media te futur e. Secon dly, an attem pt might be made to appea l to overr iding circu mstan ces; for to rejec t the consi gner' s actio n in the circum stanc es outlin ed is not to imply that there are no circum stanc es in which such an actio n might be justi fiabl e. As in the case of the consi gner .of the packa ge there is a need to consi der what these justif ying circum stanc es might be, and wheth er they apply in the prese nt case. We consi der these possi ble escap e route s for the propo nent of nucle ar develo pmen t in turn. l II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. ./ I I The espec ially probl emati c area is that of the dista nt (i.e. non-im media te) futur e, the futur e with which peopl e alive today will have no direc t conta ct; by comp arison , the imme diate futur e gives fewer proble ms for most ethic al theor ies. In fact the quest ion of oblig ation s to futur e peopl e prese nts tests which a number of ethic al theor ies fail to pass, and also has serio us reper cussi ons in polit ical philo sophy as regar ds the adequ acy of accep ted (demo cratic and other ) insti tutio ns which do not take due accou nt of the inter est• of futur e creat ures. \ r �Moral phil osop hers have , pred icta bly, diff ered on ques tion s of obli gati ons to dist ant futu re crea ture s. A good many of the phil osop hers who have exp lici tly cons ider ed the ques tion have come down in favo ur of the same cons ider atio n bein g give n to the righ ts and inte rest s of futu re peop le as to thos e of cont emp orary or imm edia tely futu re peop le. Othe rs fall into thre e cate gori es: thos e who ackn owle dge obli gati ons to the futu re but who do not take them seri ousl y or who assi gn them a less er weig ht, thos e who deny , or who are com mitte d by thei r gene ral mora l posi tion to deny ing, that ther e are mor al obli gati ons beyond the imm edia te futu re, and thos e who come down, with adm irab le phil osop hica l caut ion, on both side s of the issu e, but with the weig ht of the argu men t favo urin g the view unde rlyin g prev ailin g economic and poli tica l inst itut ions , that ther e are no mora l obli gati ons to the futu re beyond thos e perh aps to the next gene ratio n. Acco rdin g to the most extre me of thes e posi tion s agai nst mora l obli gati ons to the futu re, our beha viou r with resp ect to the futu re is mor ally unco nstra ined ~ ther e are no mora l rest rict ions on acti ng or fail ing to act deri ving from the effe ct of our acti ons on futu re peop le. Of thos e phil osop hers who say, or whose view s impl y that we do not have obli gati ons to the (non -imm edia te) futu re, many have base d this view on acco unts of mora l obli gati on which are buil t on rela tion s which pres uppo se some degr ee of temp oral or spa tial con tigu ity. Thus , mora l obli gati on is seen as pres uppo sing vari ous rela tion s whic h coul d not hold betw een peop le wide ly sepa rate d in time (or some time s in spac e). Let us call the posi tion that we have no obli gati ons to (dis tant ) futu re peop le the Nocon stra ints posi tion . Among sugg este d base s or grou nds of mora l obli gati on for the pos itio n, which would rule out obli gati ons to the nonimm edia te futu re, are thes e. Firs tly. ther e are thos e acco unts whic h requ ire that someone to whom a mora l obli gati on is held be able to claim his righ ts or enti tlem ent. Peop le in the dist ant futu re will not be able to claim righ ts and enti tlem ents agai nst us, and of cour se they can do noth ing to enfo rce any claim s they migh t have agai nst us. Seco ndly , ther e are thos e acco unts whic h base mora l obli gati ons on soci al or lega l conv enti on, for exam ple a conv entio n whic h would requ ire puni shm ent of offe nder s or at leas t some kind of soci al enfo rcem ent. But plai nly thes e and othe r conv entio ns will not be inva rian t over chan ge in soci ety and amendment of lega l conv enti ons; henc e they will not be inva rian t over time . Also futu re peop le have no way of enforcin & thei r inte rest s or puni shin g off~ ndin g pred eces aora . \ I i _L �The No-cons traints view is a very difficu lt one to sustain . Conside r, for example , a scienti fic group which, for no particu lar reason other than to test a particu lar piece of technolo gy, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggeri ng device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch . No present ly living person and none of their immedia te descend ants would be affected , but the populat ion of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predicta ble result of the action. The ·Ho-con straints position clearly implies that this is an accepta ble moral enterpr ise, that whateve r else we might legitim ately criticiz e in the scienti sts' experim ent (perhaps its being over-ex pensive or badly designed ) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-cons traints position also endorse s as morally accepta ble the followin g sorts of policy: I A firm discove rs it can make a handsome profit from mining, process ing and manufac turing a new type of materia l which, although it ca~ses no problem for present people or their immedia te descend ants, will over a period of hundred s of years decay into a substan ce which will cause an enormous epidemi c of cancer among the inhabita nts of the earth at that time. Accordi ng to the Ko-con straints view the firm is free to act in its own interes ts, without any conside ration for the harm it does remote future people. Such countere xamples to the NQ-con straints position , which are easily varied and multipl ied, might seem childlis hly obvious . Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosop hers endorsed this position , but it is a clear implica tion of many current ly popular views of the basis of moral obligat ion, as ~eli as of prevaili ng economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-con straints position have not conside red such example s, despite their being clearly implied by their position . We suspect that {we certain ly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such countere xamples , that without any constra ints we are free to cause pointles s harm for example , most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended . What many of those who have put forward the No-con straints posit ion~ to have had in mind (in denying moral obligat ion) is rather that future people can look after themsel ves, that we are not respons ible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally indepen dent of the present . But it is not. It is not as if, in the countere xample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influenc ing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral respons ibilitie s as they do in causally affectin g the present and immediate future, a.oat notably the obligat ion to take account in �7. 'what they do of peop le affec ted and their inter ests, to be care ful in their ac tions , to take accou nt of the genu ine prob abili ty of their actio ns causi ng harm, and to sec that they do not act so as to rob futur e peop le of the chnnc c of a good life. Furth ermo re, to say that we are not resp !~ibl e for the lives of futur e peop le does not amount to the same thing as sayin g that we are free to do as we like with respe ct to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acqu ired an oblig ation to some stran ger with whom one has neve r been invol ved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respe ct to him, for example to rob him or to serio usly harm him when this could be avoid ed. V These diffi culti es for the No-c onstr aints posi tion resu lt in part becau se of a failu re to make an impo rtant disti nctio n. Some of our oblig ation s to othe rs arise becau se we have volu ntari ly enter ed into some a greem ent with them - for exam ple, we have made a prom ise. Othe r oblig ation s, howe ver, such as our duty not to damage or harm some one, do not assume that an agree ment has been struc k betwe en us. Let us call oblig ation s of the f ormer kind acqu ired oblig ation s and those of the latte r unac quire d oblig ation s. There is a cons idera ble diffe renc e in the type of resp onsi bilit y asso ciate d with each. In the case of acqu ired oblig ation s resp onsi bilit y arise s becau se one s hould do some thing which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a prom ise. In the case of unac quire d dutie s resp onsi bilit y arise s as a resu lt of being a caus al ag ent who is aware of the conse quen ces or prob able conse quen ces of his actio n, a resp onsi bilit y that is not depen dent on one's havin g perfo rmed some act in the past (e.g. , made a prom ise). Our oblig ation s to futur e peop le clear ly are ,una cqui red. not acqu ired oblig ation s, a fact the No-c onstr aints posi tion ~ simpl y fails to take into acco unt. These oblig ation s arise as a resu lt of our abili ty to produ ce caus al effec ts of a reaso nably pred ictab le natu re, whet her on our cont emp orar ies~ on those in the dista nt futur e. Thus , to retur n to the train para ble, the cons igner cann ot argue in justi ficat ion of his actio n that he has. for exam ple, neve r assumed or acqu ired resp onsi bilit y for the passe ngers . that he does not know them and there fore has no love or symp athy for them and that they are not part of his mora l comm unity; in shor t, that he has acqu ired no oblig ation , and baa no apec ial oblig ation • to help them. All that v t ' r . �". one needs to argue conce rning the train , and in the nucle ar case, is that there are moral oblig ation s again st impos ing harm ~ ~ ~·~ which are not speci ally oblig atiq9 s to the dista nt acqui red. Nor can this claim be rebut ted by the all prete nce tha:,( tutur e i~vo1 ve heroi c self sacri fice, somet hing "abov e and beyon d" what is norm ally requi red. One is no more engag ing in heroi c self sacri fice by not forcin g futur e peopl e into an unvia ble life posit ion or by refra ining from causi ng them direc t harm than the consi gner is resor ting to heroi c self sacri fice in refra ining from shipp ing the dange rous packa ge on the train . V III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evadi ng these diffi culti es the No-c onstr aints posit ion may be quali fied rathe r than wholl y aband oned. Accor ding to the Quali fied posit ion we are not entir ely uncon strain ed wi th respe ct to the dista nt futur e. There are oblig ation s, even to dista nt futur e peopl e, but these are not so impor tant as those to the prese nt, and the inter ests of dista nt futur e peopl e canno t weigh very much in the scale again st those of the prese nt and imme diate futur e. The inter ests of futur e peopl e then, excep t in unusu al cases , count for very much less than the inter ests of prese nt peopl e. Hence such thing s aa nucle ar devel opme nt and vario us explo itativ e activ ities which bene fit prese nt peopl e shoul d proce ed, even if peopl e of the dista nt futur e are (somewhat) disad vanta ged by them. The Quali fied posit ion appea rs to be widel y held and is impli cit in preva iling economic theor ies, where the posit ion of a decre ase in weigh t of futur e costs and bene fits (and so of futur e inter ests) is obtai ned by appli catio n over time of a disco unt rate, so disco untin g costs and risks to . aM- a...-pi~ ~ \ -4 . futur e peopl e. The attem pt to apply econo mics as a moral theor y, -eeme th'-t that is becoming incre asing ly common, can lead the~ to the Quali fied posit ion. What is objec tiona ble in such an appro ach is that econo mics must opera te withi n the bounds of ackno wledg ed non-a cquir ed moral cons train ts, just as in pract ice it opera tes withi n legal const raint s. What econo mics canno t legiti mate ly do is determ ine what these const raint s are. There are, moreo ver, alter nativ e econo mic theor ies and simpl y to adopt . witho ut furth er ado, one which disco unts the futur e, givin g much less impor tance to the inter ests of futur e peopl e, is to beg all the quest ions at issue . Among the argum ents that econo mists offer for gener ally disco untin g the futur e, the most threa dbare is based on the Rosy -futur e assum ption , that futur e gener ation s will be bette r off than prese nt ones (and so bette r place d to handl e the waste probl em). Since there is moun ting evide nce that futur e gener ation s may wel l~ be bette r off th,Z prese nt ones, espec ially in thing s that matte r, no argum ent for disco untin g the inter ests of futur e gener ation s on this basis can carry much weigh t. For the waste proble m to be hande d dovn V I �to the futur e gener ation s, it would have to be shown, what recen t economic progr ess hardl y justi fies, that futur e gener ation s will be not just bette r off but so much bette r off that they can (easi ly)ca rry and contr ol the nucle ar freig ht. A more plaus ible argum ent for disco untin g, the Oppo rtunit y-cos t argum ent, build s direc tly on the notio n of oppo rtunit y cost. It is argue d from the fact that a dolla r gaine d now is worth much more than a dolla r receiv ed in the nonimme diate futur e (beca use the first dolla r could meanw hile be inves ted at compound inter est}, that disco untin g is requi red to obtai n equiv alent mone tary value s. This same line of reaso ning is then appli ed to the alloc ation of re sourc es. Thus, comp ensati on - which,___1s what the waste proble m is taken to come to econo mical ly - cost~ much less now than later , e.g. a few penni es set aside 1-1:>V (e.g. in a trust fund ).the futur e, if need be, will suffi ce to comp ensate event ually for any ~ctim s of remot e radio activ e waste leaka ge. Two proble ms ~ First , there are, beset this appro ach. prese ntly at least , insurm ounta ble pract ical diffi culti es about apply ing such disco untin g. We simpl y do not know how to determ ine appro priate futur e disco unt rates . A more serio us objec tion is that the argum ent depen ds on a false assum ption. It is not true that value , or damages, can alway s be conve rted into mone tary equiv alent s. There is no clear "mon etary comp ensati on" for a varie ty of damag es, inclu ding cance r, loss of life, a lost speci es. The disco untin g theme , however argue d for, is inade quate , becau se it leads back in pract ice to the No-c onstr aints posit ion. The reaso n is that disco untin g impos es an" economic horiz on" beyond which nothi ng need be consi dered , since any costs or bene fit which might arise are, when disco unted back to the prese nt, negli gible . A diffe rent argum ent fot the Quali fied posit io~. the Prob abilit ies argum ent, avoid s the objec tions from cases of certa in damage throu gh appea l to proba bility consi derat ions. The dista nt futur e, it is argue d, is much more uncer tain than the prese nt and imme diate futur e, so that prob abili ties are conse quent ly lower , perha ps even appro achin g or coinc iding with zero for any hypot hesis conce rning the dista nt futur e. Thus, the argum ent conti nues, the -inter ests of futur e peopl e must (apar t from excep tiona l cases where there is an unusu ally high degre e of certa inty} count for (very much) less than those of prese nt and neigh bouri ng peopl e where (much') highe r prob abili ties are attac hed. So in the case of confl ict betwe en the prese nt and the futur e, where it is a quest ion of weigh ing certa in bene fits to the peopl e of the prese nt and the imme diate futur e again st a much lower proba bility of indet ermin ate coats to an indet ermin ate number of V �assuming anything like similar costs and benefit s were involve d. is however badly flawed. The argumen t Firstly , probab ilities involvin g distant future situatio ns are not always less than those concern ing the immedia te '"'tt..N ~ ~ -~ -q Nat l'-.Now wJ~a..+. ~,NA. «f ~~e J~N f2.(;.~ ~L of. ~~ft.. - ~ t~( _d-'z..,ve.. , ~ 1t:e.. future in the way the argumen t suppose s.AMor eove)th e outcome s of some moral problem s often do not depend on a high level of probabi lity. . In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals , that a signific ant risk is created ; such cases do not depend critica lly on high probabi lity assignm ents. Nor, of course, can it be assumed that anything like similar ly weighte d costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especia lly if it is a question of risking poisonin g some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequ ent risk of serious harm to· thousand s of generat ions of future people, in order to obtain quite doubtfu l, or even trivial , benefit for some present peopl jin the shape of the opportu nity to continu e (unnece ssarily) shigh energy use. And even if the costs and benefit s were compara ble or evenly weighte d, such an argumen t would be defectiv e, since an analogo us argumen t would show that the consign er's action in the train parable , is accepta ble provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposin g signific ant risks on · other people) was sufficie ntly large. Such a cost-be nefit approac h to moral and decisio n problem s, with or without the probabi lity frills, is quite inadequ ate when differe nt parties are involved or when cases of conflic t of interes t involvin g moral obligat ions are at issue. permiss ible s For example , such a cost-be nefit approac h would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocen t party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficie ntly large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than morally larger benefit s to another group. compens ated for by But costs or benefit s are not legitim ately transfer red in any simple way from one group to another . The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefit s . you have to accept the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefit • then~ have to accept the coat• (or aome of theDJ at leaat)" i• another an_d_ _ __ �// very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significa nt kind arising fro~ an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties whQ are not involved in the activity and are not beneficia ries. 6 This Transfer -limiting principle is especiall y clear in cases of whiea e thalidomide rnaoufact u~ias and mark.eti.Ag eompany J:9 or.a.,.. where the significa nt costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitti qg - e. -1, J -tt.. e ~ ~ "" { party is of a noncrucia l or dispensib le nature/\ The principle is of o ~f'(.,v,._{ ,~ fundamen tal importanc e in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again ~ c. ta it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabiliti es of nuclear developm ent, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter of reactor meltdown. ln particula r, the principle invalidat es the compariso n, heavily relied on in building a case for the ~cceptab ility of the nuclear risks, \ between nuclear risks and those from such activitie s as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedl y benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelm ing extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficie aries of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily , their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficia ries at allwho may be just the opposite! More generally , the distribut ion of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-bene ficiaries, is a characte ristic of certain serious forms of po llution, and is among its morally objection able features. productio n, from nuclear or fossil pollution . i mportant necessary condition for energy options: ~ energy option risks of harm Large-sca le energy fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious Thus from the Transfer -limiting principle emerges an To be morally acceptab le should not involve the transfer of significa nt costs or ~ parties who .!!!. ~ involved, benefit correspon dingly from!!!.!, energy source. ~ do ~ ~ ~ do n_ ~ ~ ~ t::.-L-~ ~ Included in the acope of c~ @. �this cond ition , which nucl ear deve lopm ent viol ates , are futu re peop le, i.e. not mere ly peop le livin g at the pres ent time but also futu re gene ratio ns (tho se of the next town s). A furth er coro llary of the prin cipl e is the Tran smis sion Prin ciple , that we shou ld not hand the worl d we have so expl oited on to our succ esso rs in subs tant ially wors e shap e than we "rec eive d" it. For if we did then that would be a sign ifica nt tran sfer of cost s. The Tran sfer- limi ting prin cipl e can be deriv ed from cert ain ethi cal theo ries (e.g . thos e of a deon tic cast such as Kan t's and Raw ls') and from common prec epts (such as the Golden Rule ), where one serio usly cons iders putt ing ones elf in anot her's posi tion . But the prin cipl e is perh aps best defe nded , on a broa der basi s, indu ctive ly, by way of exam ples. Supp ose, to embr oider the train para ble, the company town deci des to solv e its disp osal prob lem by ship ping its noxi ous wast e to anot her town down the line , which (like futu re towns) lack s the means to ship it back or to regi ster due prot est. The inha bitan ts of this town are then force d to face the prob lem eith er of unde rtaki ng the expe nsive and diff icul t disp osal proc ess or of sustaini ng risk s to thei r own live s and heal th. Most of us would rega rd this kind of tran sfer of cost s as mora lly una~ cept able , however much the cons igne r's company town flou rish es. IV. UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSI BILITY. Many of the argu ment s desig ned to show that we cann ot be expe cted to take too much acco unt of the effe cts of our actio ns on the dist ant futu re appe al to unce rtain ty. Ther e are two main components to the Gene ral Unc ertai nty argu ment , capa ble of sepa ratio n, but freq uent ly tang led up. Both argu ment s are mist aken , the firs t, an argum ent from igno ranc e, on.! prio ri grou nds, the seco nd on a post erio ri grou nds. The Argument from igno ranc e conc erned runs as foll ows :/ In cont rast to the exac t info rmat ion we can obta in abou t the pr;s ent, the infor mati on we can obta in abou t the effe cts of our actio ns on the dist ant futu re is unre liab le, wool ly and high ly spec ulati ve. But we cann ot base asse ssme nts of how we shou ld act on info rmat ion of this kind , espe ciall y when �IE accurate informati on is obtainabl e about the present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretful ly ignore the · uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. ignorance A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear developm ent, which ignore (the extensive ) costs of 7 grounds of uncertain ty. More formally and crudely waste control on the the argument concerned is this: One only has obligatio rts to the future if these obligatio ns are based on reliable informati on. distant future. There is no reliable informati on at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligatio ns to the distant future. This argument is essential ly a variant on a sceptical argument concernin g our knowledge of the future (formally , replace 'obligati ons' by 'knowledg e' in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considera bly overestim ate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is - required as the basis for moral considera tion both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associate d with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constrain ts. We can an~ constantl y such do act on the basis ofj"unre liable" informati on, which the sceptic as regards the future convenien tly labels "uncerta inl,,'. In moral situation s in the present, assessmen ts of what to do often take account of risk and probabil ity, even quite low probabil ities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigne r's action. that there is a significa nt risk of harm . It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-bein g of the consigner ia certain and that the �...... prospects of the passenger s quite uncertain . It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constrain ts in contempo rary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarrant ed insistenc e on certainty as a ·necessary condition before moral considera tion can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical -uncertai nty argument. even if in theory we have obligatio ns to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future peopl~ into account because uncertain ty about . the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequen ces of actions on it will be. Therefore , however good our intention s to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests . Given that moral principle s are characte ristically of universal implicati onal form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x", h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the informati on about future actions whicl\. ~ t-~ ,< tt a.s c t..tu._ a.. ~~ h J• would enable us to iea ■ Jh the anteceden t of the implicati on/\ Therefore , even r.r; c if in theory moral principle s do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusio ns. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain that in every case it was impossibl e to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principle s, although applicab le in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusio ns about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practica l . moral constrain ts on action. ~ However. the argument is factually incorrect in as s uming that the future always is ao grossly uncertain or indeterm inate. Admittedl y -there is often a high degree of uncertain ty concernin g the distant future, but as a matter of (continge nt) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping •• the argument ha• to •••um•. There are aome areas where uncertain ty ia - �not so great as to exclud e const raints on action . For examp le, we may have little id ea what the fashio ns will be in a hundre d years or, to take anothe r morally -irrel evant factor , what brands of ice cream people will be eating , if any, but we do have excel lent reason to believ e, espec ially if we consid er 3000 years of histor y, that what people there are in a hundre d years are likely to have mater ial and psych ic needs not entire ly unlike our own, that they will need a health y biosph ere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiat ion; that their welfa re will not be enhanc ed by a high incide nce of cancer or geneti c defec ts, by the destru ction of resou rces, or the elimin ation from the face of the earth of that wonde rful variet y of non-human life which at presen t makes it such a rich and intere sting place. The case of nuclea r waste storag e, and of uncer tainty of the effec ts of it on future people , is onearea where uncer tainty in moral ly releva nt ~espe cts is not so great as to preclu de moral const raints on action . For this sort of reason , the Pract ical uncer tainty argum ent should be reject ed. Through the defec ts of the prec~d ing argum ents, we can see the defec ts in a number of widely employed uncer tainty argum ents used to write off proba ble harm to future people as outsid e the scope of prope r consid eratio n. Most of these popula r moves employ both of the uncer tainty argum ents as suits the case, switch ing from one to the other. For examp le, we may be told that we canno t really take accou nt of future people becaus e we canno t be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be compl etely differ ent from our own, to the point where t.hey will not suffer from our exhau stion of reso\l rces or from the things that _would affec t us. But this is to insist upon compl ete - certai nty of a sort beyond what is requir ed for the presen t and immed iate future , where there is also commonly no guaran tee that some disas ter will not overta ke those to whom we are moral ly comm itted. Again we may be told that there is no guaran tee that future people will be worthy o( any effort s on our part, becau se ,a- MOc-CJ. , Ne,,.,i ~v -fl~ ,v- they may be morons o/ foreve r plugge d into/\Emjoyment., _/-- ef othe ·, ±-ultiR ea Even if one is prepar ed to accep t the elitis t approa ch presup posed - accord ing to which only those who meet certai n prope rly civili zed or intell ectua l standa rds are l eligib le for moral consid eratio n - what we are being handed in such argum ents V �... ..,. i s again a mere outside possibility. . Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the tndeterminacy argument, the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future peopie being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future. Nor are distributional problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the - indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what can be iodependently -+- '-" thelr placement . does noL ar gued from the universalisability features of moral principles, 8 thatf disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claimsr , tllUU' ,.., ') \trt2r / below the claima of present people. That ia, we hav, "tbe ••m• ions V �/1 to future people as to the presen t; 1 thus there is the same obliga tion to take accoun t of them and their intere sts in what we do, to be carefu l in our action s, to take accoun t of the probab ility (and not just the certain ty) of our action s causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessa ry for the chance of _a good life. Uncert ainty _,, and indeter minacy do not relieve us of these obliga tions. v. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethica l problem s with nuclea r power are by no means confine d to waste storag e and future creatu res. entitle ment Just as remote ness in. time does not er~de obliga tions or to just treatm ent, neithe r does locatio n in space, or a partic ular geogra phical positio n. Hence severa l furthe r problem s arise, to which princip les and argume nts like those already arrived at in consid ering the waste problem apply. For exampl e, if one group (socia l unit, or state) decide s to dump its radioa ctive wastes in the territo ry or region of anothe r group, or not to preven t its (radioa ctive) polluti on enterin g the territo ry of anothe r group, then it impose s risks and costs on presen tly existin g people of the second group, in much the way that presen t nuclea r develop ments impose costs and risks on future people . There are differe nces howev er: spatia lly distan t people cannot be discou nted in quite the way that future people can be, though their Jiie ~~~ o·F-tu ~t..+ . intere sts and objecti ves/\Nt ?Wlc ignored or overrid den. People living in the vicini ty of a nuclea r reacto r are subjec t to specia l costs and risks. One is radioa ctive pollut ion, becaus e reacto rs routin ely dischar 1 radioa ctive materi als into the air and water near Emissio n problem . the plant : hence the Such "norma l" emissio n during plant operat ion of low level radiati on carrie s carcino genic and mutage nic costs. While there are undoub tedly costs, the number of cancer s and the precis e extent of geneti c damage induced by exposu re to such radiati on are both uncert ain. If our ethica l princi ples permit ted free transfe r of coata and riaka from one person to anothe r, the ethica l iaaue direct ly raised by nuclea r ••miaa ion•wo uld be: what extent of Q__ .......- �..... cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and unde{ what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT {morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limit ing principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses - for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion~ > And these risks are real! v In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclea · power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage/as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. ✓ And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they ar~ several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It's a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioner s ' make life comfprtable'. ~~e+,~ For such benefits to some as airconditioner~ provide,~which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the +£«-0:sc w~ \,14 e close ~ Nu<.. (e..a.,R,. pt~~ imposition of radiation ~ d i H - most of whom have no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without ~\ \ serious losses - is really quite ,'right is the Doubling argument. ~ccording I to the US Atomic Energy Commission, "ho dcployud dU.&i nr• it is pennissfble to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population ha$ received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument bei ng that the additional amount (being equivalent is also likely to have negligible consequences. to the "natural" level) The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, its; claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. ;-tTb1s ::J ,"6r argument is sound. I, ~er.c of eh@ seeps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person'• well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become norm.al for the person, the larger one will, under euch conditiona, not be. Finally, what ia or has become norcna_l_, _ _ _~ . �e.g. two murders or twenty canc ers a day in a give n city , may be far from acce ptab le. / IJ \ In fact , even the USA, which has very stri ct stan dard s by compar_ison with most othe r cou ntrie s with planned nucl ear reac tors , perm its radi atio n emis sion s very sub stan tiall y in exce ss of the stan dard s laid down; so the emis sion situ atio n is much worse than what cons ider atio n of the stan dard s would disc lose . Furt herm ore, the mon itori ng of the stan dard s "imp osed " is entr uste d to the nucl ear oper ator s them selv es, scar cely disi nter este d part ies. Thus pub lic poli cy is dete rmin ed not so as to guar ante e pub lic hea lth, but rath er to serv e as a "pub lic pac ifie r" whil e pub licly -sub sidi zed priv ate nucl ear oper atio ns proc eed rela tive ly unhampered? · While radi oact ive emis sion s are an ordi nary feat ure of reac tor ope ratio n, reac tor breakdown is, hop eful ly, not: offi cial repo rts even try to make an acci dent of mag nitud e, as a mat ter of defi niti on, an 'ext raor dina ry nucl ear occu rren ce'. But "def init ions " notw iths tand ing, such acci dent s can happ en, and almo st have on seve ral occa sion s (the most noto riou s bein g Thre e Mile Isla nd): henc e the Core-meltdown prob lem. If the cool ing and emergency core cool ing syst ems fail in American (lig ht wate r) reac tors , then the core melt s and 'con tain men t fail ure' is like ly, with the resu lt that an area of 40,0 00 squa re mile s coul d be radi oact ivel y 10 cont amin ated . In the even t of the wors t type of acci dent in a very sma ll reac tor, a steam expl osio n in the reac tor vess el, abou t 45,0 00 peop le would be kill ed inst antl y and at leas t 100, 000 would die as a resu lt of the acci den t, prop erty damages would exce ed $17 bill ion and an area the size of Penn sylv ania would be dest roye d. Modern nucl ear reac tors are abou t five time s the size of the reac tor for which thes e cons erva tive US figu res (sti ll the best avai labl e from 11 offi cial sour ces) are give n: the cons eque nces of a sim ilar acci dent with a modern reac tor would acco rdin gly be much grea ter. The cons igne r who risk s the live s and well -bei ng of pass enge rs on the trai n acts .i nadm issib ly. A government or gove rnm ent- endo rsed util ity appe ars to act in a way that doe• not diff er in mor all;y aign ifica nt resp ect• in -------~ �siti ng a nuc lear rea cto r in a commun ity, in pla ntin g such a dan gero us pac kag e on the "community trai n". More dir ect ly, the loc atio n of a nuc lear rea cto r in a community, even if it sho uld hap pen to rec eiv e a fav our able ben efit -co st ana lysi s and oth er economic app rais al, would vio late such eth ica l requ irem ents ~ as the Tra nsf er-l imi ting prin cip le. The adv oca tes of nuc lear power hav e, in eff ect , end eav oure d to avo id que stio ns of cos t-tr ans fer and equ ity, by shi ftin g the disp ute out of the extr aor din ary imp rob abil it't, , V e thic al aren a and into a tech nol ogi cal disp ute abo ut eaau~ theJ of · 0 r eac tor mal fun ctio n. They hav e argu ed, in par ticu lar, what con tras ts with the trai n par able , tha t the re is no rea l pos sib ilit y of a cata stro phi c nuc lear v acc iden t. Inde ed in the infl uen tial Rassmussen rep ort - which was ext ens ive ly used to sup por t pub lic con fide nce in US nuc lear fiss ion tech nolo gy - an even stro nge r, an inc red ibly stro ng, imp rob abil ity clai m was stat ed: nam ely, the ' like liho od of a cata stro phi c nuc lear acc iden t is so rem ote as to be (alm ost) imp ossi ble. However, the mat hem atic al models reli ed upon in this rep ort, var iou sly call ed "fa ult tree ana lysi s" and "re liab ilit y esti mat ing tech niq ues ". are unso und , bec aus e, among oth er thin gs, they exc lude as "no t cre dib le" tha t the pos sib ilit ies tha t may wel l happen in the rea l wor ld. It is not sur pris ing , the n,/ methodology and dat a of the rep ort hav e bee n sou ndly and dec isiv ely crit icis ed, or tha t off icia l sup por t for the rep ort has now been with draw n.12 Mor eov er, use of alte rna tive methods and data ind icat es tha t the re is a rea l pos sib ilit y, a non -ne glig ible pro bab ility of a · seri ous acc ide nt. In resp ons e it is con tend ed tha t, even if the re is a non -ne glig ible \ pro bab ility of a rea cto r acc ide nt. sti ll tha t is acc epta ble, bein g of no gre ater ord er than risk s of acc iden ts tha t are alre ady soc iall y acc epte d. Here we enc oun ter aga in tha t insi dio us eng inee ring app roac h to mor alit y bui lt into dec isio n models of an economic cas t, e.g . ben efit -co st bala nce she ets, risk asse ssm ent mod els, etc . Ris k asse ssm ent, a sop his tica tion of tran sac tion or trad e-o ff mod els, pur por ts to pro vide a com pari son betw een the rela tive riak a atta che d to diff ere nt opt ion s, ••I• ene rgy otp ion a, whi ch aet tlea the ir �eth ica l stat us. The foll owi ng assu mpt ions are enc oun tere d in risk asse ssm ent as app lied to ene rgy opt ion s: A · If o~io n'.J t_im pos es (co mpa rab le)B osts B on few er peo ple than op tio n~ then opt ion ,i_ pre fera ble to opt ion . ; AL is ,,_....,_,, . AH. Op tion iinv olv es a tota l net cos t in term s of cos t to peo ple (e.g . t3J dea ths, inju ries , etc .) which is less than tha t of opt ion .wh ich is •~re ady acc epte d; the refo re opt ion ~is acc ept abl ef 3 These assu mpt ions are then app lied as foll ows . \....--" Sin ce 't he number like ly to eve ntu all' i' by nuc lear power sta tion cata stro phe is less !ha n the like ly number I kill ed by cig are tte smoking, and sinc e the risk s of cig are tte smoking are acc epte d; it foll ows tha t the risk s of nuc lear power are acc epta ble. A litt le refl ect ion rev eals tha t this sor t of risk asse ssm ent argument gro ssly vio late s the Tra nsfe r~ lim itin g prin cip le. In ord er to obt ain a pro per eth ica l asse ssm ent we need be kill ed J a much full er pic ture , and we need to know at lea st thes e thin gs: / Do the cos ts and ben efit s go to the same par ties ; and is the pers on who vol unt aril y und erta kes the risk s also the pers on who prim aril y rece ives the ben efit s, as in driv ing or cig are tte smoking, or are the cos ts imposed on oth er par ties who do not ben efit ? It is only if the par ties are the same in the cas e of the opt ion s l S vC-t... compared, and the re are no ~d ist rib uti on al prob lem s, tha t a com pari son 8ft •-•h ~ would be sou ndly bas ed. Thi s is rare ly the cas e, and it is not ao in the case of risk asse ssm ents of ene rgy opt ion s. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The prob lem s alre ady disc uss ed by no means exh aus t the env iron men tal, hea lth and safe ty risk s and cos ts in, or aris ing from , the nuc lear fue l cyc le. The ful l fue l cyc le incl ude s many stag es both bef ore and afte r rea ct or ope rati on, apa rt from was te disp osa l, nam ely, min ing, mil ling , con ver sion , enri chm ent and pre par atio n, rep roc essi ng spe nt fue l, and tran spo rtat ion of materia ls. Sev eral of thes e stag es inv olv e haz ard s. Unl ike the spe cial " risk s in the nuc lear cyc le - of sab otag e of pla nts , of the ft of fiss ion abl e mat eria l, and of the furt her pro life rati on of nuc lear armaments - thes e haz ards µ �have para llels . if not exac t equi vale nts, in othe r high ly poll utin g methods of gene ratin g powe r. e.g. 'wor kers in the uran ium mini ng indu stry sust ain "the same risk" of fata l and nonf atal inju ry as work ers in the coal indu stry '.14 The prob lems are not uniq ue to nucl ear deve lopm ent. Othe r soci al and envi ronm enta l prob lems - thou gh endemic wher e dang erou s larg e-sc ale indu stry oper ates in soci etie s that are high ly ineg alita rian and inclu de sect ors that are far from afflu ent - are more intim ately linke d with the nucl ear power cycl e. Though poll utio n is a comm on and gene rally unde sirab le component of larg e-sc ale indu stria l oper ation , rad~ oact ive poll utio n .suc h as urani um mini ng for insta nce prod uces . is espe ciall y a lega cy of nucl ear deve lopm ent. and a spec ially unde sirab le one, as rect ifica tion cost s for dead radi oact ive land s and wate rway s reve al. Though sabo tage is a thre at to many larg e indu strie s, sabo tage of a nucl ear reac tor can have dire cons eque nces , of a diffe rent orde r of magn itude from most indu stria l sabo tage (where core meltdown is not a poss ibili ty). Though thef t of mate rial from more dubi ous ente rpris es such as mun ition s works can pose thre ats to popu latio ns at larg e and can assi st terro rism , no thef ts for alleg edly peac eful ente rpris es pose prob lems of the same orde r as thef t of fissi onab le mate rial. No othe r indu stry prod uces mate rials which so read ily perm it fabr icati on into such mass ive expl osiv es. No othe r indu stry is, to sum it up, so vuln erab le on so many fron ts. In part to redu ce its vuln erab ility , in part beca use of its long and cont inuin g asso ciati on with mili tary acti viti es, the nucl ear indu stry is subj ect to, and enco urag es, seve ral prac tices whic h (give n thei r scal e) run coun ter to basi c featu res of free and open soci etie s, cruc ial featu res such as pers onal libe rty, freedom of asso ciati on and of expr essio n,an d free acce ss to info rmat ion. Thes e prac tices inclu de secr ecy, rest ricti on of info rmat ion, form ation of spec ial poli ce and guar d forc es, espio nage , curt ailm ent of civi l libe rtie s. Alre ady oper ators of nucl ear inst alla tion s are give n extr aord inar y powe rs, in vett ing empl oyee s, to inve stiga te the back grou nd and acti vitie s not only of empl oyee s but also of thei r fami lies and sometimes even of thei r frien ds. The inst alla tion s them selve s become armed camps, whic h espe ciall y offe nds Brit ish sens ibili ties . The U.K. Atomic Energy (Spe cial Con stab les) Act of 1976 crea ted a spec ial armed forc e to guar nucl ear inst alla tion s aud..made it answ erab le • • • to the U.K. .. dAtom ic En• · ~ ' �These devel opme nts, and worse ones in West Germany and elsew here, presa ge along with nucle ar devel opme nt incre asing ly auth orita rian and anti- demo crati c soci eties . That nucle ar devel opme nt appe ars to force such poli tical conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it. Nucl ear devel opme nt is furth er indic ted poli tical ly by the direc t conn ectio n of nucle ar powe r with nucle ar war. It ia true that ethic al ques tions conc ernin g nucle ar war - for exam ple, whet her a nucle ar war is justi fied , or just, unde r any circu msta nces, and if so what circu msta nces - are disti ngui shab le from those conc ernin g nucle ar power. Undo ubted ly, however, the sprea d of nucle ar power is subs tanti ally incre asing the techn ical means for engag ing in nucle ar war and so, to that exte nt, the oppo rtuni ty for, and chanc es of, nuc~ ear engagement. Since nucle ar wars are neve r accou nted posi tive good s, but are at best the lesse r of majo r evils , nucle ar wars are alway s high ly ethic ally unde sirab le. The sprea d of nucle ar power acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni ty for, and chanc es of, high ly unde sirab le conse quen ces. .,.fina l:½) the lac cet, sb irlete a&In g r.huuw cbancac i'itid Opt111c I Oil I I te:::s, is Heal f unda sha~ h, ■Rd 'lber efore )wha t . leads to it;nu clea r devel opme ntA is unde sirab le. This is, in outli ne, the argum ent from nucle ar war again st large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt. 16 t5 F ·~ , ~ ATl" VII. ,\CONFLICT ARGUMENTS~ JND R5Ila ff!f~ ~1 JN C~ THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. Much as with _nucle ar war, so given the cumu lative caTe again st nucle ar deve lop~e nt, only one justi ficat ory route rema ins open , that of appe al to over ridin g circu msta nces. That appe al, to be ethic ally acce ptabl e; must go beyond mere ly economic cons idera tions . For, as obse rved, the cons igne r's actio n, in the train para ble, cann ot be juati fied by pure ly econ omis tic . argum ents, such as that his prof its would rise, the company or the town would be more prosp erous , or by appe aling to the fact that some poss ibly unco mfor table chang es would other wise be neede d. So it is also in the nucle ar ½-12., case: ./Tra nsfe r-lim iting princ iple appl ies. But suppo se now the cons igner argue s that his actio n ia justi fied becau ae unlea a it 1• taken the town will die. It ia ✓ i l �by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especia lly where the risK5 to the passengers is high, since the case still to A amo~ntsione of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan c~ses atica;(where v~fer-limitin g principle is clearly violated. Nuclear development is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to i mpose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such conflict arguments requirESthe presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only al ternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimer, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limit ing principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evid ence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, require• number• of imported acientiata and en2ineera. --------- �~cr eate s negl igibl e loca l employment, and depen ds for its feas ibili ty upon large ly non- exist ent utili ty syste ms - e.g. estab lishe d elec trici ty trans miss ion syste ms and back- up faci litie s, and suffi cien t elec trica l appli ance s to plug into the syste m. Poli tical ly it incre ases forei gn depen dence , adds to cent ralis ed entre nche d power and reduc es the chanc e for chang e in the oppr essiv e poli tical struc tures which are a large part of the probl em. The fact that nucle ar energ y is not in the inter ests of the peop le of the third world does not of cours e mean that it is not in the inter ests of, and wante d (ofte n for milit ary purpo ses) by, their ruler s, the west ernis ed and often milit ary elite s in whose inter ests the econo mies of these coun tries are usua lly organ ised. But that does not make the pove rty argum ent anyth ing othe r than what it is: a fraud . There are well- know n energ y-con servi ng alter nativ es and the prac tical optio n of deve lopin g furth er alter nativ e energ y sourc es, alter nativ es some of which offe r far bette r prosp ects for helpi ng the poor , both in the third world and in indu stria l coun tries : coal and othe r foss il fuels , geoth erma l, and a range of solar optio ns (incl udin g as well as narro wly sola r sourc es, wind , wate r and tidal powe r). Anot her majo r argum ent advan ced to show conf lict, the Ligh ts-go ingout argum ent, pppe als to a set of supp osedl y over ridin g and comp eting oblig ation s to futur e peop le. We have , it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valua ble thing s and insti tutio ns which our cultu re has devel oP,ed . Unle ss our high- techn ology , high- energ y indu stria l socie ty is conti nued and foste red, our valua ble insti tutio ns and tradi tions will fall into decay or be swep t away. The argum ent is esse ntial ly that witho ut nucle ar powe r, witho ut the conti nued level of mate rial weal th it alone is assumed to make poss ible, the light s of our civil izati on will go out. Futu re peop le will be the loser s. The argum ent does raise impo rtant ques tions abou t what is valua ble in our socie ty and what char acte risti cs are nece ssary for a good socie ty. But for the most part these large ques tions can be by-p assed . The reaso n is that the argum ent adop ts an extre mely uncr itica l attit ude to prese nt high- techn ology soci eties , appa rentl y assum ing that they are unifo rmly and uniqu ely valu able. it It assum es that techn olog ical socie ty is unmo difia ble, thaic anno t be chang ed in the direc tion of energ y cons ervat ion or alter nativ e.(pe rhap s high techn ology ) energ y sourc es witho ut colla pse. These assum ption s are all hard to acce pt. The assum ption that techn olog ical soci ety's energ y patte rns are unmo difia ble is espe ciall y so; after all, it has survi ved even ts such as world wars which requ ired majo r socia l and techn olog ical restr uctu ring and consu mptio n modi ficat ion. If west ern soci ety's demands for energ y were (con trary to the evide nce) total ly unmo difia ble witho ut colla pse, not only would it be comm itted to a progr am of incre asing destr uctio n, but much of ita cultu re would be of dubio us value to �future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction , lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporar y society. The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since hightechnology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably ,that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independen tly desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. The consumption of less energy than at present need involve no reduction of well-being: and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary . What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisatio n, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravagan za. ~ In fact there is good reason to think that, far from~hig h energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon a highly centralised , controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive e~ergy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to become authoritati an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be loat or diminished: political fr eedqp �for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and.#ener gy extravagenc e. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s, a lternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptabl e consequence s, are available. The alternative to _the high technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better,the development of alternative technologie s and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Li ghts-going -out~umen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the fttrther escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal t ~ futurity, closed. If tbea we apply, as we have argued we should, the ~ 1, t. same standards ef ■eral1t¥ to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the ;present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptab le. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds. SOCIAL OPTIONS: SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no ·doubt preferable to nuclear power. is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it VIII. the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliatio n caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would,more over, also violate the Transfer-li miting principle: for it would impose widespread costs on nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacemen t. To these main conventiona l options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and hydroelec tricity. Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy conservatio n measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravaganc e and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power. The deeper 8 choice is not however technolo~ic al, nor merel~Jindi vidua1}' 6fifrtocial, and involves the restructuri ng of production away from energy intensive uses and, v at a more basic level, a change to nonconsum eristic, less consumptive lifestyles and social arrangem~n ts} 7 Thes.e iore fundamental choices between social +"f? "'- •• t tt ti, fll ~ ~ t- e ,, ., , ~ f'I t- ~l.al t e rna t 1v e s,""convent i ona 1 technologic a~ly-orient ed discussion of energy options, ~ teod• to e&acur•. It ie not juet • utter of decidina in which way to meet the v 1 �unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologie s for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption , and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolle d energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologie s may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and ~ ,~hich are....., __, likely to result in a deteriorate d world being handed on to them. In short, even more benign technologie s may lead to violation of the Transmissio n ~equirem ent. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world's forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchippin g. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricte d exploitatio n of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's already hard-presse d natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitatio n, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywh~re in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitatio n which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent. It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rainforest types,are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future;s The addition of a major further and not readily !imitable demand pressure for energy on top of the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciatio n of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservatio n of the forests and remaining natural conununities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestati on for energy purposes, resembling the deforestati on of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertifica tion in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishm ent of natural ecosys~ems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmissio n principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear �29. produ cts or pollu ted by coal prod ucts. In abor t, as the fores t situa tion illus trate s, a mere switc h to more benig n techn olog ies - impo rtant thoug h this is - witho ut any more basic struc tural and soci al chang e1 is inade quate . The deep er socia l optio n invol ves chall engin g and ·begi nning to alter a socia l .stru cture which prom ote, consu meris m, consu mptio n far beyond genu ine needs and an economic struc ture which enco urage s incre asing use of high ly ener gy-in tensi ~e_ modes of prod uctio n. The socia l chang e optio n tends to be obscu red in most dis cussi ons of energ y optio ns and of how to meet energ y ~eed s, in part becau se it does ques tion unde rlyin g value s of curre nt socia l arran geme nts. The conv entip nal discu ssion proce eds by takin g alleg ed demand (ofte n conf lated with e ::s<.)..,..J1.~ f,. ~ants or need s) as unch allen geab le, and the issue to be one ,',If which techn ology V can be most prof itabl y employed to meet.llhetft. This effec tivel y prese nts a ( "'"tt--~ ~ cJL.t ~ J.. ....~4'-- l~..,, wL., c v .~ ~.:i.4~ - <e ---4(\ 1 >-..~ wt:S,;....,..1~ ,.s l r N Cl'-'~ r false choic e. M\-d is the reett l-~-ef -t-ald'--:rigC. needs and=' CQRt ext IJl.h-.-t'f-- '"ft~ so that d'etnamt=-n--bek-i ftt-a- &&&, i-a.J- ~ . the.--ao,Q,:l:-a-1- ·etrt:t et·ttr-e,--wMeh-p-tt&titte-ee--the-, ,:nead&---i&- •&im-i-l&r-l-y-· t aken as unch allen geab le and unch angea ble. The poin t is read ily illus trate d. I t is commonly argue d by repre senta tives of such indu strie s as trans porta tion and petro leum , as for exam ple by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that peop le want deep freez ers, air cond ition s, power gadg ets, •••• It would be auth orita rian to preve nt them from satis fyin g these want s. Such an argum ent from creat ed wants conv enien tly ignor es the socia l framew-0rk in which ~uch \ " N ~c..;'2,... f -t1,.Q. ~ft:. plA,.i--1~<' needs and wan~ arise or are produ ced. 'I:..+To pe~ n~ . th ~ dat.e i;m-~ &~ ~:::,... t >-.irl "'(At.J c" .... c..!,,..~, (IC . ~N t\ f1..,e_ ~~ ' f''-'l ~~t'. ...~ tN tu 9A-( C2..... o!&n,-J ma"n¥- sueh-warrt s· a c rhe "'fl"'~Trnrk- ieve-1-- ia.:. no,.t....,.,.•how e\t~t o., assum e .,tha.t, ...-t,h&y-. ~ c l-«:i , c...12.o ,J'!:', ~-ft. -.<./ t..-f 4'}. c.. ,._ 1.1 ..+ e. bF. ~t" 1£~ ~ :i~ ~ ~ ~:~ ~~ :;;; ;a : : h se ~ -.,~ft~ .....__ ~-~; ,.; ;~ 2 ~eval.-<a--e--~ l ~' tdal _w;g_ ;!_nf, _!!_at ~ ~hing as ·-tndi~ .tl!u arcir o-i-e ~••t~ i.nat io.n -at.._jl_ll... ~ t .. is 1Te--- ao£ ial framework as a majo r facto r in deter mini ng~c e~tai n kinds ................ .,,....,.....,.... ,•• of choic es, such as those -.. ·fo.t_ _~rav el, and k.inds ---~ f . ,...:1-nf-r·a struc ture, and to see appa rentl y indiv idua l choic es ~~:i°~') .n :,.'8uch':·;;~; ers as being chan nelle d and direc ted by a soci al fr,amework deter mine d large ly "' 1n ·· th&.-. .inter ests of corp orate ...,, and priva te prpf~-t" -~nd adva ntage . The soci al chang e optio n ia a hard optio n, inso far as it will be diffi cult to imple ment poli tical ly; but it ia ultim ately the only way of avoid ing the passi ng on of serio us costs to futur e peop le. And there are othe r sorts of reaso ns than such ethic al ones for takin g it: it is the main , indee d the only sort of optio n,ope n to those who adop t what is now calle d a deep ecolo gical persp ectiv e, as cont raste d with _a shall ow ecolo gical outlo ok which regar ds the natu ral world and its nonhuinan deniz ens as not worth while in them selve s but only of value in as much as ther answ er back to human inter ests. The .deep ecolo gical persp ectiv e is an integ ral part of the Alte rnati ve Ecol ogica l Parad igm and is incom patib le wi;~h cent ral these s of the Dominant Soci al Parad igm (whic h is esse ntial ly the ideol pgy of claa aica l and neoc lassi cal econo mics) _·-~ . ,.....,,, ,......... ,.... •, • c..-,.t. ... , �• 30. and its vari ants (rou ghly , what are calle d Stat e Soci alism , and Dem ocrat ic \/,-tu JtN,k Soci alism ).19 It is inco mpa tible with &w&h . a&Fhmptiafts as •h•• the n~tu ral l( N ~0.S k.Mlt- JL,.. a..~ °'M.A ~ " " Co.. I ~ ~ envir onme nt '" "' va'1u,e .9nly as a reso urce , ~b y And la~ hos tile /\~. .> ~ vM~ ~ .s -to ' t«. A~ ~~ o :r 9'\ d 11\.J , ~ -tt. «... o-t\...va... ~ u~ le ee11 tnlla hle :f:n ht1 11a ~a, e 1 a,ul uhAl ~ · r t h e • A.do mina tion- over wkt ,~ '-'4.. /2.42.A .... '' natu re themes ~th e Dominant Parad igm and its vari ants . The conf lict betw een Alte rnat ive and Dominant Para digm s, which is fast incr easi ng, exte nds of cour se far beyond attit udes to the natu ral worl d, sinc e core valu es of the Dominant Par,~digm such as the meri ts of unimpeded economic growth and mate rial prog ress ar ~ at stak e; the conf lict invo lves fund amen tal 1 diffe renc es over the whole fron t of econ omic al, poli tica l and soci al arra ngem ents. The conf lict unde rlies much of ;the nucl ear deba te, inso far as it is not spec ifica lly limi ted to questio1~s of tech nolo gica l fixe s, but take s up the basi c ethi cal issu es and the so ~ial ques tions to which they lead .20 The 1 ethi cal requ irem ents alrea dy de1fended and appl ied brin g us out, when follo wed throu gh, on the Alte rnat ive sid1~ of the parad igm conf lict, and acco rdin gly lead to the diff icul t soci al ch1nge optio n. The soci al chan ges that the deep alte rnat ive requ ires will be stron gly resis ted beca use they mean chan ges in curr ent soci al orga nisa tion and power stru ctur e. To the exte nt that the optio n repr esen ts some kind of thre at to part s of pres ent poli tica l and economic arran gem ents, it is not surp risin g that offi cial ener gy ppti on disc ussi on proc eeds by misr epre sent ing and ofte n obsc uring it. But diff icul t as it is to suita bly alte r "the syste m," espe ciall y one with such far-r each ing effe cts on the prev ailin g power stru ctur e, it is impe rativ e to try: we are all on the nucl ear train . w �• FOOTNOTES 1. This paper is a condens ation of an early version of our 'Nuclea r power - ethical , social, and politic al dimensi ons' (ESP for short, availab le from the authors ), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred to in the referenc e list). For help with the condens ation we are very conside rably indebted to the e~itors . In the condens ation, we simplify the structu re of the argument and suppres s underly ing politic al ~1nd ideolog ical dimensi ons (for example , the large measure of respons ibilit~r of the USA for spreadin g nuclear reactor s around the world, and thereby in enhancin g the chances of nuclear disaste rs, includin g nuclear war). We also considet ·ably reduce a heavy load of footnote s and referenc es designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. · Further , in order to contain referenc es to a modest length, referenc e to primary sources has often been replaced by referenc e through seconda ry sources . Little difficu lty should be encount ered however in tracing fuller referenc es through seconda ry sources or in filling out much importa nt backgrou nd materia l from work cited herein. For example , virtual ly all the data cited in section s I and VII is referenc ed in Routley . At worst ESP can always be consulte d. 2. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unneces sary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to conside r ethical and social dimensio ns of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. The b~~sics are presente d in many texts, e.g. Nader & Abbotts , Gyorgy. Of course ~~n order to assess fully reports as to such importa nt backgrou nd and stage~,s etting matters as the likeliho od of a core meltdown of (lightw ater)1 reactor s, much more informa tion is require d. For many assessm ent purpose s h~,wever, some knowledge of economic fallacie s and decision theory is at least as importa nt aa knowledge of nuclear technolo gy. 3. Natural ly the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arrivln g at moral assessm ents. Nuclear radiatio n, unlike most ethical theorie s. does not confine its scope to human life and welfare . But since the ham nuclear developm ent may afflict on nonhuman life, for example , can hardly improve its case, it suffice s if the case against it can be made out solely in term• of its effects on human life in the convent ional way. �.For refe ren ce to apd a brie f disc uss ion of (hu man -ori ente d) sim ulat ion models see Goodin, p.42 8. 4. The Opp ortu nity -co st . argument is also def ecti ve in oth er resp ects . It pres upp ose s not mer ely the (mi stak en) red ucti ons invo lved in the con trac tion of the eth ica l domain to the economic; it also pres upp ose s tha t the pro per methods for dec isio n which affe ct. the futu re, such as tha t of ene rgy cho ice, app ly disc oun ting . But , as Goo din arg ues , more app rop riat e dec isio n rule s do not allo w disc oun ting . 5. Thi s is one of the reas ons why exp ecte d uti lity theo ry, roug hly cos t-be nef it ana lysi s wit h pro bab ility fril ls, is inad equ ate as a dec isio n method in such con tex ts. 6. App aren t exc epti on~ to the prin cip le such as tax atio n (and red istr ibu tion of income gen era, lly) van ish when wea lth is con stru ed (as it has to be if tax atio n is to be pro per ly jus tifi ed) as at lea st par tly a soc ial ass et unf airl y mon opo lise d by a min orit y of the pop ulat ion . Examples such as tha t of mot orin g dan gero usly do not con stit ute cou nter exa mpl es to the prin cip le; for one is not mor ally ent itle d to so mot or. 7. For det ails , and as to how the off icia l ana lys~ s become argu men ts aga inst nuc lear dev elop men t whe.p some atte mpt is made to tak e the -ign ored cos ts into acc oun t, see Shr ade r-Fr ech ette , p. 55 ff. 8. See Rou tley , p. 160 . 9. For much furt her disc uss ion of the poi nts of the prec edin g two par agrap hs, see Shr ade r-F rec het te, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader & Abbott&. 10. Gyorgy. Most of the rea cto rs in the wor ld are of this typ e; 11. See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette , cha pter 4. see 12. See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette . A wor thw hile ini tia l view of the sho rtco min gs of the RassmutJsen rep ort may be reac hed by com bini ng the crit iqu e in Shr ade r-Fr ech et~e wit h tha t in Nader & Abb otts . 13. The re are var iati on$ on Ai and Aii which mul tipl y cos ts aga inst numbers such as pro bab ilit ies. In this way risk s, con stru ed as pro bab le cos ts, can be take n into acc oun t in the asse ssm ent. (Al tern ativ ely . risk .a may be aaaeaaed thro ugh •~e h fam ilia r aeth oda •• inau ran ce). �• A princ iple varyi ng Aii, and formu lated as follow s: Aii'. a is ethic ally accep table if {for some b) a inclu des no more risks than band bis socia lly accep ted, was the basic ethic al princ iple in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of . Inqui ry recen tly decid ed that nucle ar power devel opme nt in Saska tchew an is ethic ally accep table : see Cluff Lake Board of Inqui ry Final Repo rt, Department of Envir onme nt, Government of Saska tchew an, 1978, p. 305 and p. 288. In this repor t, a is nucle ar power and b is eithe r activ ities clear ly accep ted by socie ty as alter nativ e power sourc es. In other appli catio ns b has b•en taken as cigar ette smoki ng, motor ing, minin g and even the Vietnam ~ar (!). The point s made in the text do not exhau st the objec tions to princ iples Ai - Aii'. The princ iples are certa inly ethic ally subst antiv e, since an ethic al conse quenc e canno t be deduced from nonet hical prem isses, but they have an inadm issibl e conve ntion al chara cter. For look at the origi n of b b may be socia lly accep ted thoug h it is no longe r socia lly accep table , or thoug h its socia l accep tibili ty is no longe r so clear cut and it would not have been socia lly accep ted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introd uced. What is requi red in Aii', for insta nce, for the argument tQ begin to look convi ncing is that b is 'ethic ally accep table ' rath, r than 'soci ally accep ted'. But even with the amendments the princ iples are inval id, for the reaso ns given in the text, and other s. It is not disco neert ing that princ iples of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet anoth er area lost to the expe rts, ethic s to actua ries. 14. See Shrad er-Fr echet te, p. 15. 15. Goodin . p. 433. 16. The argum ent is elabo rated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philo sophi cally impor tant mate rial on alter nativ e nonco nsum eristi c $OCi al arran geme nts and lifes tyles , see work cited in V. and R. Routl ey, 'Soci al theor ies, self manag ement and envir onme ntal probl ems' in M,nni son et al, where a begin ning ia made on worki ng out ~ of alter nativ ••• thoaa of a plura listic anarchism. ••t �flA-t fn 18. l ·.:. The~ situa tion of the world 's tropi cal rainf orest s is expla ined in, for insta nce, My~ra; the reaso ns are untan gled in R. and V. Routl ey 'World rainf orest destr uctio n - the socia l cause s' (avai lable from the autho rs). 19·. For a fulle r accou nt of the Dominant Socia l Parad igm and its rival , the Alter nativ e Envir onme ntal Parad igm, see Cotgr ovean d Duff, espec ially the table on p. 341 which encap sulate s ' ' the main assum ption s of the respe ctive parad igms; compare also Catto n and Dunla p, espec ially p. 33. Contemporary varia nts on the Dominant Socia l Parad igm are consi dered in ESP • .., The shallo w/dee p contr ast as appli ed to ecolo gical posit ions, which is an impor tant component of the parad igm conf lict, was introd uced by Naess . For furth er expla natio n of the contr ast and of the large r array of ecolo gical posit ions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routl ey, 'Huma n chauv inism and ~ envir onme ntal ethic s' in Mannison '------'"'et al, and the refer ences there cited , espec ially to Rodman's work. 20. The more elabo rate afgum ent of ESP sets the nucle ar debat e in the conte xt of parad igm confl ict. But it is also argue d that, even withi n assum ptions framework of the ~,min ant Socia l Parad igm and its varia nts, Ti. Nucle ar develo pmen t is no,~ the ratio nal choic e among energ y optio ns. The main argument put up for n\Jcle ar devel opme nt withi n the framework of the dominant parad igm is an Ec~,nomic growth argum ent. It is the follow ing I' versi on of the Light s-goin g-ou~; argument (with economic growt h duly stand ing in for mate rial wealt h, and fo~r what is valua ble!) :- Nucle ar power is neces sary to susta in economic $rowt h. Economic growt h is desir able (for all the usual reaso ns, e.g. to incre ase the size of the pie, to postp one redis tribu tion probl ems, etc.) . There fore nucle ar power is desir able. The first premi ss is part of US energ y polic y (see Shrad er-Fr echet te, p.111 ), and the secon d prem iss ia suppl ied by stand ard economics textb ooks. But both premi sses are defec tive, the secon d becau se what is valua ble in economic growth can be achie ved by (not witho ut growt h but) selec tive economic growt h, which jettis ons the heavy socia l and envir onme ntal costs carri ed by unqu alifie d economic growt h. More to the point , since the secon d premi ss is an assum ption of the Dominant Parad igm, the first premi ss (or rathe r an appro priate and less vulne rable restat emen t of it) fails even by Dominant Paradigm stand ards. For of cours e nucle ar power is not neces sary given that there are other , perha ps costl ier alter nativ es. The premi ss usual ly defen doJ is some elabo ration of the prem iae: Nucle ar power is the econo mical ly beat way to auata in economic arowth. 'econ omica lly beat' �be ing fill ed out as 'mo at eff icie nt', 'che ape st', 'hav ing the most favo urab le ben efit -co st rat io', etc~ Unf oitu nate ly for the argu men t, and for nuc lear development sche mes , nuc lear power is none of thes e thin gs dec isiv ely (un less a good dea l of economic che atin g - easy to do - is don e). Tii . ' pro per Dominant Para digm acc oun ting , nuc lear cho ices sho uld gen era l ly be reje cte d, both as priv ate uti lity inve stm ents and as pub lic cho ices . On Nuc lea r dev elop men t is not eco nom ical ly via ble but has bee n kep t goin g, not by cle ar economic via bili ty, butr by mas sive sub sidi zati on of sev era l typ es (dis cus sed in Shr ade r-Fl ech ette ~, Gyorgy and Nader & Abb otts ). Even on var ian ts of ~;he Dominant Para digm , nuc lear dev elop men t is not jus tifi ed, as con side rati on of dec isio n theo ry methods wil l rev eal: Til i. rej cted , Whatever reas ona ble 4ec iaio n rule is ado pted , the nuc lear cho ice is as the argu men ts of Goodin on alte rna tive dec isio n rule s help to show. What sus tain s the nuc lear jug ger nau t is not the Dominant Para digm ~r i ts var ian ts, but con tem pora ry cor por ate cap ital ism (or its sta te ent erp rise image ) and as soc iate d thir d wor ld imp eria lism , aa the his tor ica l det ails of nuc lear <lev elopmen t both in dev elop ed cou ntri es and in less dev elop ed cou ntri es mak es pla i . (for main det ails , see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.) . And the pra ctic es of con tem pora ry corp ora te cap ital ism and ass oci ated imp eria liam are not acc epta ble by the sta nda rds of eith er of the Paradigms or the ir var ian t&: they are cer tain ly no t eth ica lly acc epta ble. �• .• . ·• REFERENCES USED Works esp eci ally use ful for fur the r inv est iga tion of the e.th ica l issu ea rais ed by nuc lea r dev elop men t are ind ica t_ed wit h an ast eri sk (*) . S. Cot gro ve and A. Duf f, "En viro nme ntal ism , mid dle -cla ss rad ica lism and po liti cs' , Soc iolo gic al Review 28( 2) (1980), 333 -51 . W.R . Cat ton , Jr. , and R. E. Dun lap, 'A new eco log ica l par adig m for pos t exu ber ant soc iolo gy' American Beh avi ora l Sci ent ist 24 (19 80) . 15- 47. For Rep ort : Ranger Uranium Env iron men tal Inq uiry Fir st Rep ort, Au stra lian Government Pub lish ing Ser vic e, Can ber ra, 1977. *R. E. Goodin, "No moral nuk es', Eth ics 90 (19 80) , 417-49. *A. Gyorgy and fri' end s, No Nukes : eve ryo ne's gui de to nuc lea r pow er, Sou th End Pre ss, Bos ton , Ma ss., 197 9. *n . Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Rou tley (ed ito rs) , Env iron men tal Phi los~ phy , RSSS, Au stra lian Nat ion al Un ive rsit y, 198 0. N. Myers, The Sin kin g Ark, Pergamon Pre ss, Oxf ord , 1979. R. Nader and J. Abb otta , The Menace of Atomic Ene rgy , Me lbou rne, 1977. Outback Pre ss, *K. S. Shr ade r-F rec het te, Nuclear Power and Pub lic Pol icy , 1980. Rei del , Dor dre cht , R. and V. Rou tley , 'Nu clea r energy and obl igat ion tJ to the fut ure ', Inq uiry 21 (19 78) , 133-79. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Richa rd and Val Rout ley 1. NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS 1 One hardl y needs initi ation into the dark myst eries of nucle ar phys ics to cont ribut e usefu lly to the deba te now wide ly ragin g over nucle ar powe r. While many impo rtant empi rical ques tions are still unres olved , these do not reall y lie at the centr e of the contr over sy. Inste ad, it is a deba te abou t value s .•. many of the ques tions which arise are socia l and ethic al ones .2 I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. A long dista nce coun try trai n has just pulle d out. The train which is crowd ed carri es both passe ngers and freig ht. At an early stop in the journ ey someone consi gns as fr e ight, to a far dista nt desti natio n, a packa ge which conta ins a highl y toxic an d explo sive gas. This is packe d in a very thin conta iner which , as t he consi gner is awar e, may well not conta in the gas for the full dista nce f or whi ch it is consi gned , and certa inly will not do so if the train shou ld s t r i ke any real troub le, for exam ple, if the train shou ld be dera iled or i nvo l ved in a colli sion , or if some passe nger sh:>u ld inter fere inad verte ntly or de liber ately with the freig ht, perha ps tryin g to stea l some of it. All o f these sorts of thing s have happe ned on some previ ous journ eys~ If the co ntain er shoul d break the resu lting disa ster would proba bly kill at least some of the peop le on the train in adjac ent carri ages , while othe rs could be maimed ~or poiso ned or soon er or later incur serio us disea ses. Most of us would round ly condemn such an actio n. What migh t the cons igner of the parc el say to try to justi fy it? He migh t say that it is not certa in that the gas will escap e, or that the world needs his prod uct and it is his duty to supp ly it, or that in any case he is not respo nsibl e for the train or the peop le on it. These sorts of ~xcu ses howe ver would norm ally be seen as ludic rous when set in this conte xt. Unfo rtuna tely, simi lar excu ses are o ;,...:'. ~ f'\ o t- s " 99• ole~~ seen when the cons igner , again a (resp onsib le) busin essm an.pu ts his wor kers' healt h or other peop les' welf are at risk. Suppo se he says that it is his own and othe rapr essin g needs which justi fy his actio n. The company he cont rols, which produ ces the mate rial as a by-p rodu ct, i s in bad finan cial stra its, and could not affor d to produ ce a bette r cont ainer even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails , he and his famil y wi ll suffe r, his empl oyees will lose their jobs and have to look for othe rs, aP.d the whole company town, throu gh loss of spend ing, will be worse off. The poor and unem ploye d of the town, whom he would other wise have been able to help , will suffe r espe ciall y. Few peop le would acce pt such groun da as justi ficat ion. Even where there are serio us risks and costs to ones elf or some group for whom one is conce rned one is usua lly cons idere d not to be entit led to simp ly trans fer the heavy burde n of those risks and costs onto othe r uninv olved parti es, espe ciall y where they arise from one's own, or one's grou p's chose n life- style . The matte r of nucle ar waste has many mora l featu res which resem ble the train case. How fitti ng the analo gy is will becom e appa rent as the argum ent prog resse s. There is no known prove n safe way to packa ge the high ly toxic waste s gene rated by the nucle ar plan ts that will be sprea d aroun d the world as large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt goes ahead . The waste probl em will be much more serio us than that gene rated by the 50 or so react ors in use at prese nt, with each one of the 2000 or so react ors envis aged by the end of the centu ry produ cing, on avera ge, annu al waste s conta ining 1000 times the radio activ ity of the Hiros hima bomb. Much of this waste is extre mely toxic . For exam ple, a milli onth of a gramme of pluto nium is enoug h to induc e a lung canc er. A leak of even a part of the waste mate rial could invol ve much loss of life, wide sprea d disea se and gene tic dama ge, and conta mina tion of innnense areas of land. Wast es will inclu de the react ors them selve s, which will have to be aband oned after their expe cted life times of perha ps 40 year s, and whic h, some have estim ated, may requ ire U~ milli on y~ars to reach safe leve ls of radio activ ity. Nucl ear waste s must be kept suita bly isola ted from the envir onme nt for their entir e activ e lifet ime. For fissi on prod ucts the requ ired stora ge perio d avera ges a thous and years or so, and for trans uran ic elem ents, which inclu de . pluto nium, there is a half milli on to a milli on year stora ge probl em. Serio us probl ems have arise n with both shor t-term and propo sed long- term metho ds of stora ge , even with the comp arativ ely ~mal l quan tities of waste produ ced over th last twent y years . Shor t-term metho ds of stora ge requ ire conti nued human inter vent ion, while propo sed longe r term metho ds are subje ct to both human inter feren ce and risk of leaka ge throu gh non-human facto rs. No one with even a sligh t know ledge of the geolo gical and clim atic histo ry of the earth over the last milli on year s, a perio d whose fluct uatio ns in clim ate we are only just begin ning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages , could be confi dent that a rigor ous guara ntee of safe stora ge could be provi ded for the vast perio d of time invol ved. Nor does the histo ry of human affa irs over the last 3000 years give groun d for confi denc e in safe stora ge by metho ds requ iring human inter vent ion over perha ps a milli on year s. Propo sed long- term stora ge meth ods such as stora ge in gran ite form ation s or in salt mine s, are large ly spec ulati ve and relat ively unte sted, and have alrea dy prove d to invol ve diffi culti es with attem pts made to put them into prac tice. Even as regar ds expe nsive recen t prop osals for first embe dding conc entra ted wast es in glass and enca psula ting the resu lt in mult ilaye red meta l conta iner• befor e rock depo sit, aimu latio n mode l• , J, 3. revea l that radio activ e mate rial may not remai n suita bly isola ted from human envir onm ents. - In short , the best prese nt stora ge propo sals carry very real poss ibilit ies of irrad iatin g futur e peopl e and damaging their enviro nmen t. 3 Given the heavy costs which could be invol ved for the futur e, and given the known limit s of techn ology , it is metho dolog ically unsou nd to bet, as nucle ar natio ns have, on the disco very of safe proce dures for stora ge of waste s. Any new proce dures (requ ired befor e 2000) will proba bly be but varia tions on not. only have prese nt propo sals, and subje ct to the same inade quaci_e s. For insta nce,/ none of the propo sed metho ds for safe stor age~ been prope rly teste d, but they may well prove to invol ve unfor eseen diffi culti es and risks when an attem pt is made to put them into pract ice on a comm ercial scale . Only a method that could provi de a rigor ous guara ntee of safet y over the stora ge perio d, that place d safet y beyond reaso nable doubt , would be accep table . It is diffi cult to see how -such rigor ous guara ntees could be given conce rning eithe r the geolo gical or futur e human facto rs. But even if an econo mical ly viabl e, rigor ously safe long term stora ge met~ d could be devis ed, there is the proble m of guara nteein g that it would be unive rsally and invar iably used. The assum ption that it would be (espe cially if, as appea rs likel y, such a method prove d expen sive econo mical ly and polit icall y) seems to presu ppose a level of effic iency , perfe ction , and conce rn for the futur e which has not previ ously been encou ntered in human affai rs, and has certa inly not been consp icuou s in the nucle ar indus try. The risks imposed on the futur e by proce eding with nucle ar devel opme nt are, then, signi fican t. Perha ps 40,00 0 gener ation s of futur e peopl e could be force d to bear signi fican t risks resul ting from the provi sion of the (extra vagan t) energ y use of only a small propo rtion of the peopl e of 10 gener ation s. Nor is the risk of direc t harm from the escap e or misus e of radio activ e mate rials the only burde n the nucle ar solut ion impos es on the futur e. Becau se the energ y provi ded by nucle ar fissio n is merel y a etop gap, it seems proba ble that in due cours e the same proble m, that of making a trans ition to renew able sourc es of energ y, will have to be faced again by a futur e popu lation which will proba bly, again as a resul t of our actio ns, be very much worse place d to cope with it. Their world will most likel y be a world which is serio usly deple ted of non-r enewa ble resou rces, and in which such renew able resou rces as fores ts and soils as remai n, resou rces which inevi tably form an impo rtant part of the basis of life, are run-down or destr oyed. Such point s tell again st the idea that futur e peopl e must be, if not direc t bene ficiar ies of energ y from nucle ar fissio n, at least indir ect bene ficiar ies. ( The "solu tion" then is to buy time for conte mpora ry socie ty at a price .which not only creat es serio us proble ms for futur e peopl e but which reduc es their abili ty to cope with these probl ems. Like the consi gner in the train parab le, conte mpora ry indus trial socie ty propo ses, in order to get itsel f out of a mess arisin g from its own life- style - the creat ion of econo mies depen dent on an abund ance of non-r emwa ble energ y, which is limit ed in suppl y to pass on costs and risks of serio us harm to other s who will obtai n no corre spond ing bene fits. The "solu tion" may enabl e the avoid ance of some uncom fortab le chang es in the lifeti me of those now livin g and their imme diate desce ndant s, just as the consi gner• • actio n avoid s uncom foriab le chang es for him and those in his imme diate surro undin gs, but at the expen se of passi ng heavy burde ns to other uninv olved parti es whose oppo rtunit y to lead decen t lives may be serio usly jeopa rdise d. If we apply to the nucle ar situa tion the stand ards of behav iour and moral princ iples gener ally ackno wledg ed (in princ iple, if not so often in fact) in the ·conte mpora ry world , it is not easy to avoid the concl usion that nucle ar devel opme nt invol ves injus tice with respe ct to the futur e on a grand scale . There appea r to be only two plaus ible ways of tryin g to avoid such a concl usion . First , it might be argue d that the moral princ iples and oblig ation s which we ackno wledg e for the conte mpora ry world and perha ps the imme diate futur e do not apply to those in the non-im media te futur e. Secon dly, an attem pt might be made to appea l to overr iding circu mstan ces; for to rejec t the consi gner' s actio n in the circum stanc es outlin ed is not to imply that there are no circum stanc es in which such an actio n might be justi fiabl e. As in the case of the consi gner .of the packa ge there is a need to consi der what these justif ying circum stanc es might be, and wheth er they apply in the prese nt case. We consi der these possi ble escap e route s for the propo nent of nucle ar develo pmen t in turn. l II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. ./ I I The espec ially probl emati c area is that of the dista nt (i.e. non-im media te) futur e, the futur e with which peopl e alive today will have no direc t conta ct; by comp arison , the imme diate futur e gives fewer proble ms for most ethic al theor ies. In fact the quest ion of oblig ation s to futur e peopl e prese nts tests which a number of ethic al theor ies fail to pass, and also has serio us reper cussi ons in polit ical philo sophy as regar ds the adequ acy of accep ted (demo cratic and other ) insti tutio ns which do not take due accou nt of the inter est• of futur e creat ures. \ r Moral phil osop hers have , pred icta bly, diff ered on ques tion s of obli gati ons to dist ant futu re crea ture s. A good many of the phil osop hers who have exp lici tly cons ider ed the ques tion have come down in favo ur of the same cons ider atio n bein g give n to the righ ts and inte rest s of futu re peop le as to thos e of cont emp orary or imm edia tely futu re peop le. Othe rs fall into thre e cate gori es: thos e who ackn owle dge obli gati ons to the futu re but who do not take them seri ousl y or who assi gn them a less er weig ht, thos e who deny , or who are com mitte d by thei r gene ral mora l posi tion to deny ing, that ther e are mor al obli gati ons beyond the imm edia te futu re, and thos e who come down, with adm irab le phil osop hica l caut ion, on both side s of the issu e, but with the weig ht of the argu men t favo urin g the view unde rlyin g prev ailin g economic and poli tica l inst itut ions , that ther e are no mora l obli gati ons to the futu re beyond thos e perh aps to the next gene ratio n. Acco rdin g to the most extre me of thes e posi tion s agai nst mora l obli gati ons to the futu re, our beha viou r with resp ect to the futu re is mor ally unco nstra ined ~ ther e are no mora l rest rict ions on acti ng or fail ing to act deri ving from the effe ct of our acti ons on futu re peop le. Of thos e phil osop hers who say, or whose view s impl y that we do not have obli gati ons to the (non -imm edia te) futu re, many have base d this view on acco unts of mora l obli gati on which are buil t on rela tion s which pres uppo se some degr ee of temp oral or spa tial con tigu ity. Thus , mora l obli gati on is seen as pres uppo sing vari ous rela tion s whic h coul d not hold betw een peop le wide ly sepa rate d in time (or some time s in spac e). Let us call the posi tion that we have no obli gati ons to (dis tant ) futu re peop le the Nocon stra ints posi tion . Among sugg este d base s or grou nds of mora l obli gati on for the pos itio n, which would rule out obli gati ons to the nonimm edia te futu re, are thes e. Firs tly. ther e are thos e acco unts whic h requ ire that someone to whom a mora l obli gati on is held be able to claim his righ ts or enti tlem ent. Peop le in the dist ant futu re will not be able to claim righ ts and enti tlem ents agai nst us, and of cour se they can do noth ing to enfo rce any claim s they migh t have agai nst us. Seco ndly , ther e are thos e acco unts whic h base mora l obli gati ons on soci al or lega l conv enti on, for exam ple a conv entio n whic h would requ ire puni shm ent of offe nder s or at leas t some kind of soci al enfo rcem ent. But plai nly thes e and othe r conv entio ns will not be inva rian t over chan ge in soci ety and amendment of lega l conv enti ons; henc e they will not be inva rian t over time . Also futu re peop le have no way of enforcin & thei r inte rest s or puni shin g off~ ndin g pred eces aora . \ I i _L The No-cons traints view is a very difficu lt one to sustain . Conside r, for example , a scienti fic group which, for no particu lar reason other than to test a particu lar piece of technolo gy, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggeri ng device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch . No present ly living person and none of their immedia te descend ants would be affected , but the populat ion of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predicta ble result of the action. The ·Ho-con straints position clearly implies that this is an accepta ble moral enterpr ise, that whateve r else we might legitim ately criticiz e in the scienti sts' experim ent (perhaps its being over-ex pensive or badly designed ) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-cons traints position also endorse s as morally accepta ble the followin g sorts of policy: I A firm discove rs it can make a handsome profit from mining, process ing and manufac turing a new type of materia l which, although it ca~ses no problem for present people or their immedia te descend ants, will over a period of hundred s of years decay into a substan ce which will cause an enormous epidemi c of cancer among the inhabita nts of the earth at that time. Accordi ng to the Ko-con straints view the firm is free to act in its own interes ts, without any conside ration for the harm it does remote future people. Such countere xamples to the NQ-con straints position , which are easily varied and multipl ied, might seem childlis hly obvious . Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosop hers endorsed this position , but it is a clear implica tion of many current ly popular views of the basis of moral obligat ion, as ~eli as of prevaili ng economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-con straints position have not conside red such example s, despite their being clearly implied by their position . We suspect that {we certain ly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such countere xamples , that without any constra ints we are free to cause pointles s harm for example , most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended . What many of those who have put forward the No-con straints posit ion~ to have had in mind (in denying moral obligat ion) is rather that future people can look after themsel ves, that we are not respons ible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally indepen dent of the present . But it is not. It is not as if, in the countere xample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influenc ing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral respons ibilitie s as they do in causally affectin g the present and immediate future, a.oat notably the obligat ion to take account in 7. 'what they do of peop le affec ted and their inter ests, to be care ful in their ac tions , to take accou nt of the genu ine prob abili ty of their actio ns causi ng harm, and to sec that they do not act so as to rob futur e peop le of the chnnc c of a good life. Furth ermo re, to say that we are not resp !~ibl e for the lives of futur e peop le does not amount to the same thing as sayin g that we are free to do as we like with respe ct to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acqu ired an oblig ation to some stran ger with whom one has neve r been invol ved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respe ct to him, for example to rob him or to serio usly harm him when this could be avoid ed. V These diffi culti es for the No-c onstr aints posi tion resu lt in part becau se of a failu re to make an impo rtant disti nctio n. Some of our oblig ation s to othe rs arise becau se we have volu ntari ly enter ed into some a greem ent with them - for exam ple, we have made a prom ise. Othe r oblig ation s, howe ver, such as our duty not to damage or harm some one, do not assume that an agree ment has been struc k betwe en us. Let us call oblig ation s of the f ormer kind acqu ired oblig ation s and those of the latte r unac quire d oblig ation s. There is a cons idera ble diffe renc e in the type of resp onsi bilit y asso ciate d with each. In the case of acqu ired oblig ation s resp onsi bilit y arise s becau se one s hould do some thing which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a prom ise. In the case of unac quire d dutie s resp onsi bilit y arise s as a resu lt of being a caus al ag ent who is aware of the conse quen ces or prob able conse quen ces of his actio n, a resp onsi bilit y that is not depen dent on one's havin g perfo rmed some act in the past (e.g. , made a prom ise). Our oblig ation s to futur e peop le clear ly are ,una cqui red. not acqu ired oblig ation s, a fact the No-c onstr aints posi tion ~ simpl y fails to take into acco unt. These oblig ation s arise as a resu lt of our abili ty to produ ce caus al effec ts of a reaso nably pred ictab le natu re, whet her on our cont emp orar ies~ on those in the dista nt futur e. Thus , to retur n to the train para ble, the cons igner cann ot argue in justi ficat ion of his actio n that he has. for exam ple, neve r assumed or acqu ired resp onsi bilit y for the passe ngers . that he does not know them and there fore has no love or symp athy for them and that they are not part of his mora l comm unity; in shor t, that he has acqu ired no oblig ation , and baa no apec ial oblig ation • to help them. All that v t ' r . ". one needs to argue conce rning the train , and in the nucle ar case, is that there are moral oblig ation s again st impos ing harm ~ ~ ~·~ which are not speci ally oblig atiq9 s to the dista nt acqui red. Nor can this claim be rebut ted by the all prete nce tha:,( tutur e i~vo1 ve heroi c self sacri fice, somet hing "abov e and beyon d" what is norm ally requi red. One is no more engag ing in heroi c self sacri fice by not forcin g futur e peopl e into an unvia ble life posit ion or by refra ining from causi ng them direc t harm than the consi gner is resor ting to heroi c self sacri fice in refra ining from shipp ing the dange rous packa ge on the train . V III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evadi ng these diffi culti es the No-c onstr aints posit ion may be quali fied rathe r than wholl y aband oned. Accor ding to the Quali fied posit ion we are not entir ely uncon strain ed wi th respe ct to the dista nt futur e. There are oblig ation s, even to dista nt futur e peopl e, but these are not so impor tant as those to the prese nt, and the inter ests of dista nt futur e peopl e canno t weigh very much in the scale again st those of the prese nt and imme diate futur e. The inter ests of futur e peopl e then, excep t in unusu al cases , count for very much less than the inter ests of prese nt peopl e. Hence such thing s aa nucle ar devel opme nt and vario us explo itativ e activ ities which bene fit prese nt peopl e shoul d proce ed, even if peopl e of the dista nt futur e are (somewhat) disad vanta ged by them. The Quali fied posit ion appea rs to be widel y held and is impli cit in preva iling economic theor ies, where the posit ion of a decre ase in weigh t of futur e costs and bene fits (and so of futur e inter ests) is obtai ned by appli catio n over time of a disco unt rate, so disco untin g costs and risks to . aM- a...-pi~ ~ \ -4 . futur e peopl e. The attem pt to apply econo mics as a moral theor y, -eeme th'-t that is becoming incre asing ly common, can lead the~ to the Quali fied posit ion. What is objec tiona ble in such an appro ach is that econo mics must opera te withi n the bounds of ackno wledg ed non-a cquir ed moral cons train ts, just as in pract ice it opera tes withi n legal const raint s. What econo mics canno t legiti mate ly do is determ ine what these const raint s are. There are, moreo ver, alter nativ e econo mic theor ies and simpl y to adopt . witho ut furth er ado, one which disco unts the futur e, givin g much less impor tance to the inter ests of futur e peopl e, is to beg all the quest ions at issue . Among the argum ents that econo mists offer for gener ally disco untin g the futur e, the most threa dbare is based on the Rosy -futur e assum ption , that futur e gener ation s will be bette r off than prese nt ones (and so bette r place d to handl e the waste probl em). Since there is moun ting evide nce that futur e gener ation s may wel l~ be bette r off th,Z prese nt ones, espec ially in thing s that matte r, no argum ent for disco untin g the inter ests of futur e gener ation s on this basis can carry much weigh t. For the waste proble m to be hande d dovn V I to the futur e gener ation s, it would have to be shown, what recen t economic progr ess hardl y justi fies, that futur e gener ation s will be not just bette r off but so much bette r off that they can (easi ly)ca rry and contr ol the nucle ar freig ht. A more plaus ible argum ent for disco untin g, the Oppo rtunit y-cos t argum ent, build s direc tly on the notio n of oppo rtunit y cost. It is argue d from the fact that a dolla r gaine d now is worth much more than a dolla r receiv ed in the nonimme diate futur e (beca use the first dolla r could meanw hile be inves ted at compound inter est}, that disco untin g is requi red to obtai n equiv alent mone tary value s. This same line of reaso ning is then appli ed to the alloc ation of re sourc es. Thus, comp ensati on - which,___1s what the waste proble m is taken to come to econo mical ly - cost~ much less now than later , e.g. a few penni es set aside 1-1:>V (e.g. in a trust fund ).the futur e, if need be, will suffi ce to comp ensate event ually for any ~ctim s of remot e radio activ e waste leaka ge. Two proble ms ~ First , there are, beset this appro ach. prese ntly at least , insurm ounta ble pract ical diffi culti es about apply ing such disco untin g. We simpl y do not know how to determ ine appro priate futur e disco unt rates . A more serio us objec tion is that the argum ent depen ds on a false assum ption. It is not true that value , or damages, can alway s be conve rted into mone tary equiv alent s. There is no clear "mon etary comp ensati on" for a varie ty of damag es, inclu ding cance r, loss of life, a lost speci es. The disco untin g theme , however argue d for, is inade quate , becau se it leads back in pract ice to the No-c onstr aints posit ion. The reaso n is that disco untin g impos es an" economic horiz on" beyond which nothi ng need be consi dered , since any costs or bene fit which might arise are, when disco unted back to the prese nt, negli gible . A diffe rent argum ent fot the Quali fied posit io~. the Prob abilit ies argum ent, avoid s the objec tions from cases of certa in damage throu gh appea l to proba bility consi derat ions. The dista nt futur e, it is argue d, is much more uncer tain than the prese nt and imme diate futur e, so that prob abili ties are conse quent ly lower , perha ps even appro achin g or coinc iding with zero for any hypot hesis conce rning the dista nt futur e. Thus, the argum ent conti nues, the -inter ests of futur e peopl e must (apar t from excep tiona l cases where there is an unusu ally high degre e of certa inty} count for (very much) less than those of prese nt and neigh bouri ng peopl e where (much') highe r prob abili ties are attac hed. So in the case of confl ict betwe en the prese nt and the futur e, where it is a quest ion of weigh ing certa in bene fits to the peopl e of the prese nt and the imme diate futur e again st a much lower proba bility of indet ermin ate coats to an indet ermin ate number of V assuming anything like similar costs and benefit s were involve d. is however badly flawed. The argumen t Firstly , probab ilities involvin g distant future situatio ns are not always less than those concern ing the immedia te '"'tt..N ~ ~ -~ -q Nat l'-.Now wJ~a..+. ~,NA. «f ~~e J~N f2.(;.~ ~L of. ~~ft.. - ~ t~( _d-'z..,ve.. , ~ 1t:e.. future in the way the argumen t suppose s.AMor eove)th e outcome s of some moral problem s often do not depend on a high level of probabi lity. . In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals , that a signific ant risk is created ; such cases do not depend critica lly on high probabi lity assignm ents. Nor, of course, can it be assumed that anything like similar ly weighte d costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especia lly if it is a question of risking poisonin g some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequ ent risk of serious harm to· thousand s of generat ions of future people, in order to obtain quite doubtfu l, or even trivial , benefit for some present peopl jin the shape of the opportu nity to continu e (unnece ssarily) shigh energy use. And even if the costs and benefit s were compara ble or evenly weighte d, such an argumen t would be defectiv e, since an analogo us argumen t would show that the consign er's action in the train parable , is accepta ble provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposin g signific ant risks on · other people) was sufficie ntly large. Such a cost-be nefit approac h to moral and decisio n problem s, with or without the probabi lity frills, is quite inadequ ate when differe nt parties are involved or when cases of conflic t of interes t involvin g moral obligat ions are at issue. permiss ible s For example , such a cost-be nefit approac h would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocen t party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficie ntly large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than morally larger benefit s to another group. compens ated for by But costs or benefit s are not legitim ately transfer red in any simple way from one group to another . The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefit s . you have to accept the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefit • then~ have to accept the coat• (or aome of theDJ at leaat)" i• another an_d_ _ __ // very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significa nt kind arising fro~ an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties whQ are not involved in the activity and are not beneficia ries. 6 This Transfer -limiting principle is especiall y clear in cases of whiea e thalidomide rnaoufact u~ias and mark.eti.Ag eompany J:9 or.a.,.. where the significa nt costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitti qg - e. -1, J -tt.. e ~ ~ "" { party is of a noncrucia l or dispensib le nature/\ The principle is of o ~f'(.,v,._{ ,~ fundamen tal importanc e in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again ~ c. ta it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabiliti es of nuclear developm ent, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter of reactor meltdown. ln particula r, the principle invalidat es the compariso n, heavily relied on in building a case for the ~cceptab ility of the nuclear risks, \ between nuclear risks and those from such activitie s as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedl y benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelm ing extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficie aries of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily , their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficia ries at allwho may be just the opposite! More generally , the distribut ion of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-bene ficiaries, is a characte ristic of certain serious forms of po llution, and is among its morally objection able features. productio n, from nuclear or fossil pollution . i mportant necessary condition for energy options: ~ energy option risks of harm Large-sca le energy fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious Thus from the Transfer -limiting principle emerges an To be morally acceptab le should not involve the transfer of significa nt costs or ~ parties who .!!!. ~ involved, benefit correspon dingly from!!!.!, energy source. ~ do ~ ~ ~ do n_ ~ ~ ~ t::.-L-~ ~ Included in the acope of c~ @. this cond ition , which nucl ear deve lopm ent viol ates , are futu re peop le, i.e. not mere ly peop le livin g at the pres ent time but also futu re gene ratio ns (tho se of the next town s). A furth er coro llary of the prin cipl e is the Tran smis sion Prin ciple , that we shou ld not hand the worl d we have so expl oited on to our succ esso rs in subs tant ially wors e shap e than we "rec eive d" it. For if we did then that would be a sign ifica nt tran sfer of cost s. The Tran sfer- limi ting prin cipl e can be deriv ed from cert ain ethi cal theo ries (e.g . thos e of a deon tic cast such as Kan t's and Raw ls') and from common prec epts (such as the Golden Rule ), where one serio usly cons iders putt ing ones elf in anot her's posi tion . But the prin cipl e is perh aps best defe nded , on a broa der basi s, indu ctive ly, by way of exam ples. Supp ose, to embr oider the train para ble, the company town deci des to solv e its disp osal prob lem by ship ping its noxi ous wast e to anot her town down the line , which (like futu re towns) lack s the means to ship it back or to regi ster due prot est. The inha bitan ts of this town are then force d to face the prob lem eith er of unde rtaki ng the expe nsive and diff icul t disp osal proc ess or of sustaini ng risk s to thei r own live s and heal th. Most of us would rega rd this kind of tran sfer of cost s as mora lly una~ cept able , however much the cons igne r's company town flou rish es. IV. UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSI BILITY. Many of the argu ment s desig ned to show that we cann ot be expe cted to take too much acco unt of the effe cts of our actio ns on the dist ant futu re appe al to unce rtain ty. Ther e are two main components to the Gene ral Unc ertai nty argu ment , capa ble of sepa ratio n, but freq uent ly tang led up. Both argu ment s are mist aken , the firs t, an argum ent from igno ranc e, on.! prio ri grou nds, the seco nd on a post erio ri grou nds. The Argument from igno ranc e conc erned runs as foll ows :/ In cont rast to the exac t info rmat ion we can obta in abou t the pr;s ent, the infor mati on we can obta in abou t the effe cts of our actio ns on the dist ant futu re is unre liab le, wool ly and high ly spec ulati ve. But we cann ot base asse ssme nts of how we shou ld act on info rmat ion of this kind , espe ciall y when IE accurate informati on is obtainabl e about the present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretful ly ignore the · uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. ignorance A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear developm ent, which ignore (the extensive ) costs of 7 grounds of uncertain ty. More formally and crudely waste control on the the argument concerned is this: One only has obligatio rts to the future if these obligatio ns are based on reliable informati on. distant future. There is no reliable informati on at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligatio ns to the distant future. This argument is essential ly a variant on a sceptical argument concernin g our knowledge of the future (formally , replace 'obligati ons' by 'knowledg e' in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considera bly overestim ate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is - required as the basis for moral considera tion both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associate d with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constrain ts. We can an~ constantl y such do act on the basis ofj"unre liable" informati on, which the sceptic as regards the future convenien tly labels "uncerta inl,,'. In moral situation s in the present, assessmen ts of what to do often take account of risk and probabil ity, even quite low probabil ities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigne r's action. that there is a significa nt risk of harm . It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-bein g of the consigner ia certain and that the ...... prospects of the passenger s quite uncertain . It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constrain ts in contempo rary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarrant ed insistenc e on certainty as a ·necessary condition before moral considera tion can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical -uncertai nty argument. even if in theory we have obligatio ns to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future peopl~ into account because uncertain ty about . the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequen ces of actions on it will be. Therefore , however good our intention s to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests . Given that moral principle s are characte ristically of universal implicati onal form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x", h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the informati on about future actions whicl\. ~ t-~ ,< tt a.s c t..tu._ a.. ~~ h J• would enable us to iea ■ Jh the anteceden t of the implicati on/\ Therefore , even r.r; c if in theory moral principle s do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusio ns. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain that in every case it was impossibl e to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principle s, although applicab le in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusio ns about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practica l . moral constrain ts on action. ~ However. the argument is factually incorrect in as s uming that the future always is ao grossly uncertain or indeterm inate. Admittedl y -there is often a high degree of uncertain ty concernin g the distant future, but as a matter of (continge nt) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping •• the argument ha• to •••um•. There are aome areas where uncertain ty ia - not so great as to exclud e const raints on action . For examp le, we may have little id ea what the fashio ns will be in a hundre d years or, to take anothe r morally -irrel evant factor , what brands of ice cream people will be eating , if any, but we do have excel lent reason to believ e, espec ially if we consid er 3000 years of histor y, that what people there are in a hundre d years are likely to have mater ial and psych ic needs not entire ly unlike our own, that they will need a health y biosph ere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiat ion; that their welfa re will not be enhanc ed by a high incide nce of cancer or geneti c defec ts, by the destru ction of resou rces, or the elimin ation from the face of the earth of that wonde rful variet y of non-human life which at presen t makes it such a rich and intere sting place. The case of nuclea r waste storag e, and of uncer tainty of the effec ts of it on future people , is onearea where uncer tainty in moral ly releva nt ~espe cts is not so great as to preclu de moral const raints on action . For this sort of reason , the Pract ical uncer tainty argum ent should be reject ed. Through the defec ts of the prec~d ing argum ents, we can see the defec ts in a number of widely employed uncer tainty argum ents used to write off proba ble harm to future people as outsid e the scope of prope r consid eratio n. Most of these popula r moves employ both of the uncer tainty argum ents as suits the case, switch ing from one to the other. For examp le, we may be told that we canno t really take accou nt of future people becaus e we canno t be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be compl etely differ ent from our own, to the point where t.hey will not suffer from our exhau stion of reso\l rces or from the things that _would affec t us. But this is to insist upon compl ete - certai nty of a sort beyond what is requir ed for the presen t and immed iate future , where there is also commonly no guaran tee that some disas ter will not overta ke those to whom we are moral ly comm itted. Again we may be told that there is no guaran tee that future people will be worthy o( any effort s on our part, becau se ,a- MOc-CJ. , Ne,,.,i ~v -fl~ ,v- they may be morons o/ foreve r plugge d into/\Emjoyment., _/-- ef othe ·, ±-ultiR ea Even if one is prepar ed to accep t the elitis t approa ch presup posed - accord ing to which only those who meet certai n prope rly civili zed or intell ectua l standa rds are l eligib le for moral consid eratio n - what we are being handed in such argum ents V ... ..,. i s again a mere outside possibility. . Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the tndeterminacy argument, the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future peopie being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future. Nor are distributional problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the - indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what can be iodependently -+- '-" thelr placement . does noL ar gued from the universalisability features of moral principles, 8 thatf disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claimsr , tllUU' ,.., ') \trt2r / below the claima of present people. That ia, we hav, "tbe ••m• ions V /1 to future people as to the presen t; 1 thus there is the same obliga tion to take accoun t of them and their intere sts in what we do, to be carefu l in our action s, to take accoun t of the probab ility (and not just the certain ty) of our action s causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessa ry for the chance of _a good life. Uncert ainty _,, and indeter minacy do not relieve us of these obliga tions. v. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethica l problem s with nuclea r power are by no means confine d to waste storag e and future creatu res. entitle ment Just as remote ness in. time does not er~de obliga tions or to just treatm ent, neithe r does locatio n in space, or a partic ular geogra phical positio n. Hence severa l furthe r problem s arise, to which princip les and argume nts like those already arrived at in consid ering the waste problem apply. For exampl e, if one group (socia l unit, or state) decide s to dump its radioa ctive wastes in the territo ry or region of anothe r group, or not to preven t its (radioa ctive) polluti on enterin g the territo ry of anothe r group, then it impose s risks and costs on presen tly existin g people of the second group, in much the way that presen t nuclea r develop ments impose costs and risks on future people . There are differe nces howev er: spatia lly distan t people cannot be discou nted in quite the way that future people can be, though their Jiie ~~~ o·F-tu ~t..+ . intere sts and objecti ves/\Nt ?Wlc ignored or overrid den. People living in the vicini ty of a nuclea r reacto r are subjec t to specia l costs and risks. One is radioa ctive pollut ion, becaus e reacto rs routin ely dischar 1 radioa ctive materi als into the air and water near Emissio n problem . the plant : hence the Such "norma l" emissio n during plant operat ion of low level radiati on carrie s carcino genic and mutage nic costs. While there are undoub tedly costs, the number of cancer s and the precis e extent of geneti c damage induced by exposu re to such radiati on are both uncert ain. If our ethica l princi ples permit ted free transfe r of coata and riaka from one person to anothe r, the ethica l iaaue direct ly raised by nuclea r ••miaa ion•wo uld be: what extent of Q__ .......- ..... cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and unde{ what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT {morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limit ing principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses - for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion~ > And these risks are real! v In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclea · power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage/as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. ✓ And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they ar~ several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It's a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioner s ' make life comfprtable'. ~~e+,~ For such benefits to some as airconditioner~ provide,~which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the +£«-0:sc w~ \,14 e close ~ Nu<.. (e..a.,R,. pt~~ imposition of radiation ~ d i H - most of whom have no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without ~\ \ serious losses - is really quite ,'right is the Doubling argument. ~ccording I to the US Atomic Energy Commission, "ho dcployud dU.&i nr• it is pennissfble to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population ha$ received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument bei ng that the additional amount (being equivalent is also likely to have negligible consequences. to the "natural" level) The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, its; claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. ;-tTb1s ::J ,"6r argument is sound. I, ~er.c of eh@ seeps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person'• well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become norm.al for the person, the larger one will, under euch conditiona, not be. Finally, what ia or has become norcna_l_, _ _ _~ . e.g. two murders or twenty canc ers a day in a give n city , may be far from acce ptab le. / IJ \ In fact , even the USA, which has very stri ct stan dard s by compar_ison with most othe r cou ntrie s with planned nucl ear reac tors , perm its radi atio n emis sion s very sub stan tiall y in exce ss of the stan dard s laid down; so the emis sion situ atio n is much worse than what cons ider atio n of the stan dard s would disc lose . Furt herm ore, the mon itori ng of the stan dard s "imp osed " is entr uste d to the nucl ear oper ator s them selv es, scar cely disi nter este d part ies. Thus pub lic poli cy is dete rmin ed not so as to guar ante e pub lic hea lth, but rath er to serv e as a "pub lic pac ifie r" whil e pub licly -sub sidi zed priv ate nucl ear oper atio ns proc eed rela tive ly unhampered? · While radi oact ive emis sion s are an ordi nary feat ure of reac tor ope ratio n, reac tor breakdown is, hop eful ly, not: offi cial repo rts even try to make an acci dent of mag nitud e, as a mat ter of defi niti on, an 'ext raor dina ry nucl ear occu rren ce'. But "def init ions " notw iths tand ing, such acci dent s can happ en, and almo st have on seve ral occa sion s (the most noto riou s bein g Thre e Mile Isla nd): henc e the Core-meltdown prob lem. If the cool ing and emergency core cool ing syst ems fail in American (lig ht wate r) reac tors , then the core melt s and 'con tain men t fail ure' is like ly, with the resu lt that an area of 40,0 00 squa re mile s coul d be radi oact ivel y 10 cont amin ated . In the even t of the wors t type of acci dent in a very sma ll reac tor, a steam expl osio n in the reac tor vess el, abou t 45,0 00 peop le would be kill ed inst antl y and at leas t 100, 000 would die as a resu lt of the acci den t, prop erty damages would exce ed $17 bill ion and an area the size of Penn sylv ania would be dest roye d. Modern nucl ear reac tors are abou t five time s the size of the reac tor for which thes e cons erva tive US figu res (sti ll the best avai labl e from 11 offi cial sour ces) are give n: the cons eque nces of a sim ilar acci dent with a modern reac tor would acco rdin gly be much grea ter. The cons igne r who risk s the live s and well -bei ng of pass enge rs on the trai n acts .i nadm issib ly. A government or gove rnm ent- endo rsed util ity appe ars to act in a way that doe• not diff er in mor all;y aign ifica nt resp ect• in -------~ siti ng a nuc lear rea cto r in a commun ity, in pla ntin g such a dan gero us pac kag e on the "community trai n". More dir ect ly, the loc atio n of a nuc lear rea cto r in a community, even if it sho uld hap pen to rec eiv e a fav our able ben efit -co st ana lysi s and oth er economic app rais al, would vio late such eth ica l requ irem ents ~ as the Tra nsf er-l imi ting prin cip le. The adv oca tes of nuc lear power hav e, in eff ect , end eav oure d to avo id que stio ns of cos t-tr ans fer and equ ity, by shi ftin g the disp ute out of the extr aor din ary imp rob abil it't, , V e thic al aren a and into a tech nol ogi cal disp ute abo ut eaau~ theJ of · 0 r eac tor mal fun ctio n. They hav e argu ed, in par ticu lar, what con tras ts with the trai n par able , tha t the re is no rea l pos sib ilit y of a cata stro phi c nuc lear v acc iden t. Inde ed in the infl uen tial Rassmussen rep ort - which was ext ens ive ly used to sup por t pub lic con fide nce in US nuc lear fiss ion tech nolo gy - an even stro nge r, an inc red ibly stro ng, imp rob abil ity clai m was stat ed: nam ely, the ' like liho od of a cata stro phi c nuc lear acc iden t is so rem ote as to be (alm ost) imp ossi ble. However, the mat hem atic al models reli ed upon in this rep ort, var iou sly call ed "fa ult tree ana lysi s" and "re liab ilit y esti mat ing tech niq ues ". are unso und , bec aus e, among oth er thin gs, they exc lude as "no t cre dib le" tha t the pos sib ilit ies tha t may wel l happen in the rea l wor ld. It is not sur pris ing , the n,/ methodology and dat a of the rep ort hav e bee n sou ndly and dec isiv ely crit icis ed, or tha t off icia l sup por t for the rep ort has now been with draw n.12 Mor eov er, use of alte rna tive methods and data ind icat es tha t the re is a rea l pos sib ilit y, a non -ne glig ible pro bab ility of a · seri ous acc ide nt. In resp ons e it is con tend ed tha t, even if the re is a non -ne glig ible \ pro bab ility of a rea cto r acc ide nt. sti ll tha t is acc epta ble, bein g of no gre ater ord er than risk s of acc iden ts tha t are alre ady soc iall y acc epte d. Here we enc oun ter aga in tha t insi dio us eng inee ring app roac h to mor alit y bui lt into dec isio n models of an economic cas t, e.g . ben efit -co st bala nce she ets, risk asse ssm ent mod els, etc . Ris k asse ssm ent, a sop his tica tion of tran sac tion or trad e-o ff mod els, pur por ts to pro vide a com pari son betw een the rela tive riak a atta che d to diff ere nt opt ion s, ••I• ene rgy otp ion a, whi ch aet tlea the ir eth ica l stat us. The foll owi ng assu mpt ions are enc oun tere d in risk asse ssm ent as app lied to ene rgy opt ion s: A · If o~io n'.J t_im pos es (co mpa rab le)B osts B on few er peo ple than op tio n~ then opt ion ,i_ pre fera ble to opt ion . ; AL is ,,_....,_,, . AH. Op tion iinv olv es a tota l net cos t in term s of cos t to peo ple (e.g . t3J dea ths, inju ries , etc .) which is less than tha t of opt ion .wh ich is •~re ady acc epte d; the refo re opt ion ~is acc ept abl ef 3 These assu mpt ions are then app lied as foll ows . \....--" Sin ce 't he number like ly to eve ntu all' i' by nuc lear power sta tion cata stro phe is less !ha n the like ly number I kill ed by cig are tte smoking, and sinc e the risk s of cig are tte smoking are acc epte d; it foll ows tha t the risk s of nuc lear power are acc epta ble. A litt le refl ect ion rev eals tha t this sor t of risk asse ssm ent argument gro ssly vio late s the Tra nsfe r~ lim itin g prin cip le. In ord er to obt ain a pro per eth ica l asse ssm ent we need be kill ed J a much full er pic ture , and we need to know at lea st thes e thin gs: / Do the cos ts and ben efit s go to the same par ties ; and is the pers on who vol unt aril y und erta kes the risk s also the pers on who prim aril y rece ives the ben efit s, as in driv ing or cig are tte smoking, or are the cos ts imposed on oth er par ties who do not ben efit ? It is only if the par ties are the same in the cas e of the opt ion s l S vC-t... compared, and the re are no ~d ist rib uti on al prob lem s, tha t a com pari son 8ft •-•h ~ would be sou ndly bas ed. Thi s is rare ly the cas e, and it is not ao in the case of risk asse ssm ents of ene rgy opt ion s. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The prob lem s alre ady disc uss ed by no means exh aus t the env iron men tal, hea lth and safe ty risk s and cos ts in, or aris ing from , the nuc lear fue l cyc le. The ful l fue l cyc le incl ude s many stag es both bef ore and afte r rea ct or ope rati on, apa rt from was te disp osa l, nam ely, min ing, mil ling , con ver sion , enri chm ent and pre par atio n, rep roc essi ng spe nt fue l, and tran spo rtat ion of materia ls. Sev eral of thes e stag es inv olv e haz ard s. Unl ike the spe cial " risk s in the nuc lear cyc le - of sab otag e of pla nts , of the ft of fiss ion abl e mat eria l, and of the furt her pro life rati on of nuc lear armaments - thes e haz ards µ have para llels . if not exac t equi vale nts, in othe r high ly poll utin g methods of gene ratin g powe r. e.g. 'wor kers in the uran ium mini ng indu stry sust ain "the same risk" of fata l and nonf atal inju ry as work ers in the coal indu stry '.14 The prob lems are not uniq ue to nucl ear deve lopm ent. Othe r soci al and envi ronm enta l prob lems - thou gh endemic wher e dang erou s larg e-sc ale indu stry oper ates in soci etie s that are high ly ineg alita rian and inclu de sect ors that are far from afflu ent - are more intim ately linke d with the nucl ear power cycl e. Though poll utio n is a comm on and gene rally unde sirab le component of larg e-sc ale indu stria l oper ation , rad~ oact ive poll utio n .suc h as urani um mini ng for insta nce prod uces . is espe ciall y a lega cy of nucl ear deve lopm ent. and a spec ially unde sirab le one, as rect ifica tion cost s for dead radi oact ive land s and wate rway s reve al. Though sabo tage is a thre at to many larg e indu strie s, sabo tage of a nucl ear reac tor can have dire cons eque nces , of a diffe rent orde r of magn itude from most indu stria l sabo tage (where core meltdown is not a poss ibili ty). Though thef t of mate rial from more dubi ous ente rpris es such as mun ition s works can pose thre ats to popu latio ns at larg e and can assi st terro rism , no thef ts for alleg edly peac eful ente rpris es pose prob lems of the same orde r as thef t of fissi onab le mate rial. No othe r indu stry prod uces mate rials which so read ily perm it fabr icati on into such mass ive expl osiv es. No othe r indu stry is, to sum it up, so vuln erab le on so many fron ts. In part to redu ce its vuln erab ility , in part beca use of its long and cont inuin g asso ciati on with mili tary acti viti es, the nucl ear indu stry is subj ect to, and enco urag es, seve ral prac tices whic h (give n thei r scal e) run coun ter to basi c featu res of free and open soci etie s, cruc ial featu res such as pers onal libe rty, freedom of asso ciati on and of expr essio n,an d free acce ss to info rmat ion. Thes e prac tices inclu de secr ecy, rest ricti on of info rmat ion, form ation of spec ial poli ce and guar d forc es, espio nage , curt ailm ent of civi l libe rtie s. Alre ady oper ators of nucl ear inst alla tion s are give n extr aord inar y powe rs, in vett ing empl oyee s, to inve stiga te the back grou nd and acti vitie s not only of empl oyee s but also of thei r fami lies and sometimes even of thei r frien ds. The inst alla tion s them selve s become armed camps, whic h espe ciall y offe nds Brit ish sens ibili ties . The U.K. Atomic Energy (Spe cial Con stab les) Act of 1976 crea ted a spec ial armed forc e to guar nucl ear inst alla tion s aud..made it answ erab le • • • to the U.K. .. dAtom ic En• · ~ ' These devel opme nts, and worse ones in West Germany and elsew here, presa ge along with nucle ar devel opme nt incre asing ly auth orita rian and anti- demo crati c soci eties . That nucle ar devel opme nt appe ars to force such poli tical conse quen ces tells heav ily again st it. Nucl ear devel opme nt is furth er indic ted poli tical ly by the direc t conn ectio n of nucle ar powe r with nucle ar war. It ia true that ethic al ques tions conc ernin g nucle ar war - for exam ple, whet her a nucle ar war is justi fied , or just, unde r any circu msta nces, and if so what circu msta nces - are disti ngui shab le from those conc ernin g nucle ar power. Undo ubted ly, however, the sprea d of nucle ar power is subs tanti ally incre asing the techn ical means for engag ing in nucle ar war and so, to that exte nt, the oppo rtuni ty for, and chanc es of, nuc~ ear engagement. Since nucle ar wars are neve r accou nted posi tive good s, but are at best the lesse r of majo r evils , nucle ar wars are alway s high ly ethic ally unde sirab le. The sprea d of nucle ar power acco rding ly expan ds the oppo rtuni ty for, and chanc es of, high ly unde sirab le conse quen ces. .,.fina l:½) the lac cet, sb irlete a&In g r.huuw cbancac i'itid Opt111c I Oil I I te:::s, is Heal f unda sha~ h, ■Rd 'lber efore )wha t . leads to it;nu clea r devel opme ntA is unde sirab le. This is, in outli ne, the argum ent from nucle ar war again st large -scal e nucle ar devel opme nt. 16 t5 F ·~ , ~ ATl" VII. ,\CONFLICT ARGUMENTS~ JND R5Ila ff!f~ ~1 JN C~ THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. Much as with _nucle ar war, so given the cumu lative caTe again st nucle ar deve lop~e nt, only one justi ficat ory route rema ins open , that of appe al to over ridin g circu msta nces. That appe al, to be ethic ally acce ptabl e; must go beyond mere ly economic cons idera tions . For, as obse rved, the cons igne r's actio n, in the train para ble, cann ot be juati fied by pure ly econ omis tic . argum ents, such as that his prof its would rise, the company or the town would be more prosp erous , or by appe aling to the fact that some poss ibly unco mfor table chang es would other wise be neede d. So it is also in the nucle ar ½-12., case: ./Tra nsfe r-lim iting princ iple appl ies. But suppo se now the cons igner argue s that his actio n ia justi fied becau ae unlea a it 1• taken the town will die. It ia ✓ i l by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especia lly where the risK5 to the passengers is high, since the case still to A amo~ntsione of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan c~ses atica;(where v~fer-limitin g principle is clearly violated. Nuclear development is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to i mpose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such conflict arguments requirESthe presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only al ternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimer, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limit ing principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evid ence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, require• number• of imported acientiata and en2ineera. --------- ~cr eate s negl igibl e loca l employment, and depen ds for its feas ibili ty upon large ly non- exist ent utili ty syste ms - e.g. estab lishe d elec trici ty trans miss ion syste ms and back- up faci litie s, and suffi cien t elec trica l appli ance s to plug into the syste m. Poli tical ly it incre ases forei gn depen dence , adds to cent ralis ed entre nche d power and reduc es the chanc e for chang e in the oppr essiv e poli tical struc tures which are a large part of the probl em. The fact that nucle ar energ y is not in the inter ests of the peop le of the third world does not of cours e mean that it is not in the inter ests of, and wante d (ofte n for milit ary purpo ses) by, their ruler s, the west ernis ed and often milit ary elite s in whose inter ests the econo mies of these coun tries are usua lly organ ised. But that does not make the pove rty argum ent anyth ing othe r than what it is: a fraud . There are well- know n energ y-con servi ng alter nativ es and the prac tical optio n of deve lopin g furth er alter nativ e energ y sourc es, alter nativ es some of which offe r far bette r prosp ects for helpi ng the poor , both in the third world and in indu stria l coun tries : coal and othe r foss il fuels , geoth erma l, and a range of solar optio ns (incl udin g as well as narro wly sola r sourc es, wind , wate r and tidal powe r). Anot her majo r argum ent advan ced to show conf lict, the Ligh ts-go ingout argum ent, pppe als to a set of supp osedl y over ridin g and comp eting oblig ation s to futur e peop le. We have , it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valua ble thing s and insti tutio ns which our cultu re has devel oP,ed . Unle ss our high- techn ology , high- energ y indu stria l socie ty is conti nued and foste red, our valua ble insti tutio ns and tradi tions will fall into decay or be swep t away. The argum ent is esse ntial ly that witho ut nucle ar powe r, witho ut the conti nued level of mate rial weal th it alone is assumed to make poss ible, the light s of our civil izati on will go out. Futu re peop le will be the loser s. The argum ent does raise impo rtant ques tions abou t what is valua ble in our socie ty and what char acte risti cs are nece ssary for a good socie ty. But for the most part these large ques tions can be by-p assed . The reaso n is that the argum ent adop ts an extre mely uncr itica l attit ude to prese nt high- techn ology soci eties , appa rentl y assum ing that they are unifo rmly and uniqu ely valu able. it It assum es that techn olog ical socie ty is unmo difia ble, thaic anno t be chang ed in the direc tion of energ y cons ervat ion or alter nativ e.(pe rhap s high techn ology ) energ y sourc es witho ut colla pse. These assum ption s are all hard to acce pt. The assum ption that techn olog ical soci ety's energ y patte rns are unmo difia ble is espe ciall y so; after all, it has survi ved even ts such as world wars which requ ired majo r socia l and techn olog ical restr uctu ring and consu mptio n modi ficat ion. If west ern soci ety's demands for energ y were (con trary to the evide nce) total ly unmo difia ble witho ut colla pse, not only would it be comm itted to a progr am of incre asing destr uctio n, but much of ita cultu re would be of dubio us value to future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction , lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporar y society. The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since hightechnology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably ,that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independen tly desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-goin g-out argument are wrong. The consumption of less energy than at present need involve no reduction of well-being: and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary . What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisatio n, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravagan za. ~ In fact there is good reason to think that, far from~hig h energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon a highly centralised , controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-i ntensive e~ergy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchmen t of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucrati c, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people's lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to become authoritati an and increasingl y anti-democ ratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism , alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritaria nism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportuniti es for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be loat or diminished: political fr eedqp for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and.#ener gy extravagenc e. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternative s, a lternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptabl e consequence s, are available. The alternative to _the high technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better,the development of alternative technologie s and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Li ghts-going -out~umen t, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the fttrther escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal t ~ futurity, closed. If tbea we apply, as we have argued we should, the ~ 1, t. same standards ef ■eral1t¥ to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the ;present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptab le. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptabl e on several grounds. SOCIAL OPTIONS: SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no ·doubt preferable to nuclear power. is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it VIII. the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliatio n caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would,more over, also violate the Transfer-li miting principle: for it would impose widespread costs on nonbenefic iaries for some concentrate d benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacemen t. To these main conventiona l options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologie s, such as those of solar energy and hydroelec tricity. Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy conservatio n measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravaganc e and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power. The deeper 8 choice is not however technolo~ic al, nor merel~Jindi vidua1}' 6fifrtocial, and involves the restructuri ng of production away from energy intensive uses and, v at a more basic level, a change to nonconsum eristic, less consumptive lifestyles and social arrangem~n ts} 7 Thes.e iore fundamental choices between social +"f? "'- •• t tt ti, fll ~ ~ t- e ,, ., , ~ f'I t- ~l.al t e rna t 1v e s,""convent i ona 1 technologic a~ly-orient ed discussion of energy options, ~ teod• to e&acur•. It ie not juet • utter of decidina in which way to meet the v 1 unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologie s for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption , and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolle d energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologie s may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and ~ ,~hich are....., __, likely to result in a deteriorate d world being handed on to them. In short, even more benign technologie s may lead to violation of the Transmissio n ~equirem ent. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world's forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchippin g. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricte d exploitatio n of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world's already hard-presse d natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitatio n, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywh~re in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitatio n which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent. It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rainforest types,are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future;s The addition of a major further and not readily !imitable demand pressure for energy on top of the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciatio n of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservatio n of the forests and remaining natural conununities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestati on for energy purposes, resembling the deforestati on of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertifica tion in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishm ent of natural ecosys~ems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmissio n principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear 29. produ cts or pollu ted by coal prod ucts. In abor t, as the fores t situa tion illus trate s, a mere switc h to more benig n techn olog ies - impo rtant thoug h this is - witho ut any more basic struc tural and soci al chang e1 is inade quate . The deep er socia l optio n invol ves chall engin g and ·begi nning to alter a socia l .stru cture which prom ote, consu meris m, consu mptio n far beyond genu ine needs and an economic struc ture which enco urage s incre asing use of high ly ener gy-in tensi ~e_ modes of prod uctio n. The socia l chang e optio n tends to be obscu red in most dis cussi ons of energ y optio ns and of how to meet energ y ~eed s, in part becau se it does ques tion unde rlyin g value s of curre nt socia l arran geme nts. The conv entip nal discu ssion proce eds by takin g alleg ed demand (ofte n conf lated with e ::s<.)..,..J1.~ f,. ~ants or need s) as unch allen geab le, and the issue to be one ,',If which techn ology V can be most prof itabl y employed to meet.llhetft. This effec tivel y prese nts a ( "'"tt--~ ~ cJL.t ~ J.. ....~4'-- l~..,, wL., c v .~ ~.:i.4~ - <e ---4(\ 1 >-..~ wt:S,;....,..1~ ,.s l r N Cl'-'~ r false choic e. M\-d is the reett l-~-ef -t-ald'--:rigC. needs and=' CQRt ext IJl.h-.-t'f-- '"ft~ so that d'etnamt=-n--bek-i ftt-a- &&&, i-a.J- ~ . the.--ao,Q,:l:-a-1- ·etrt:t et·ttr-e,--wMeh-p-tt&titte-ee--the-, ,:nead&---i&- •&im-i-l&r-l-y-· t aken as unch allen geab le and unch angea ble. The poin t is read ily illus trate d. I t is commonly argue d by repre senta tives of such indu strie s as trans porta tion and petro leum , as for exam ple by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that peop le want deep freez ers, air cond ition s, power gadg ets, •••• It would be auth orita rian to preve nt them from satis fyin g these want s. Such an argum ent from creat ed wants conv enien tly ignor es the socia l framew-0rk in which ~uch \ " N ~c..;'2,... f -t1,.Q. ~ft:. plA,.i--1~<' needs and wan~ arise or are produ ced. 'I:..+To pe~ n~ . th ~ dat.e i;m-~ &~ ~:::,... t >-.irl "'(At.J c" .... c..!,,..~, (IC . ~N t\ f1..,e_ ~~ ' f''-'l ~~t'. ...~ tN tu 9A-( C2..... o!&n,-J ma"n¥- sueh-warrt s· a c rhe "'fl"'~Trnrk- ieve-1-- ia.:. no,.t....,.,.•how e\t~t o., assum e .,tha.t, ...-t,h&y-. ~ c l-«:i , c...12.o ,J'!:', ~-ft. -.<./ t..-f 4'}. c.. ,._ 1.1 ..+ e. bF. ~t" 1£~ ~ :i~ ~ ~ ~:~ ~~ :;;; ;a : : h se ~ -.,~ft~ .....__ ~-~; ,.; ;~ 2 ~eval.-<a--e--~ l ~' tdal _w;g_ ;!_nf, _!!_at ~ ~hing as ·-tndi~ .tl!u arcir o-i-e ~••t~ i.nat io.n -at.._jl_ll... ~ t .. is 1Te--- ao£ ial framework as a majo r facto r in deter mini ng~c e~tai n kinds ................ .,,....,.....,.... ,•• of choic es, such as those -.. ·fo.t_ _~rav el, and k.inds ---~ f . ,...:1-nf-r·a struc ture, and to see appa rentl y indiv idua l choic es ~~:i°~') .n :,.'8uch':·;;~; ers as being chan nelle d and direc ted by a soci al fr,amework deter mine d large ly "' 1n ·· th&.-. .inter ests of corp orate ...,, and priva te prpf~-t" -~nd adva ntage . The soci al chang e optio n ia a hard optio n, inso far as it will be diffi cult to imple ment poli tical ly; but it ia ultim ately the only way of avoid ing the passi ng on of serio us costs to futur e peop le. And there are othe r sorts of reaso ns than such ethic al ones for takin g it: it is the main , indee d the only sort of optio n,ope n to those who adop t what is now calle d a deep ecolo gical persp ectiv e, as cont raste d with _a shall ow ecolo gical outlo ok which regar ds the natu ral world and its nonhuinan deniz ens as not worth while in them selve s but only of value in as much as ther answ er back to human inter ests. The .deep ecolo gical persp ectiv e is an integ ral part of the Alte rnati ve Ecol ogica l Parad igm and is incom patib le wi;~h cent ral these s of the Dominant Soci al Parad igm (whic h is esse ntial ly the ideol pgy of claa aica l and neoc lassi cal econo mics) _·-~ . ,.....,,, ,......... ,.... •, • c..-,.t. ... , • 30. and its vari ants (rou ghly , what are calle d Stat e Soci alism , and Dem ocrat ic \/,-tu JtN,k Soci alism ).19 It is inco mpa tible with &w&h . a&Fhmptiafts as •h•• the n~tu ral l( N ~0.S k.Mlt- JL,.. a..~ °'M.A ~ " " Co.. I ~ ~ envir onme nt '" "' va'1u,e .9nly as a reso urce , ~b y And la~ hos tile /\~. .> ~ vM~ ~ .s -to ' t«. A~ ~~ o :r 9'\ d 11\.J , ~ -tt. «... o-t\...va... ~ u~ le ee11 tnlla hle :f:n ht1 11a ~a, e 1 a,ul uhAl ~ · r t h e • A.do mina tion- over wkt ,~ '-'4.. /2.42.A .... '' natu re themes ~th e Dominant Parad igm and its vari ants . The conf lict betw een Alte rnat ive and Dominant Para digm s, which is fast incr easi ng, exte nds of cour se far beyond attit udes to the natu ral worl d, sinc e core valu es of the Dominant Par,~digm such as the meri ts of unimpeded economic growth and mate rial prog ress ar ~ at stak e; the conf lict invo lves fund amen tal 1 diffe renc es over the whole fron t of econ omic al, poli tica l and soci al arra ngem ents. The conf lict unde rlies much of ;the nucl ear deba te, inso far as it is not spec ifica lly limi ted to questio1~s of tech nolo gica l fixe s, but take s up the basi c ethi cal issu es and the so ~ial ques tions to which they lead .20 The 1 ethi cal requ irem ents alrea dy de1fended and appl ied brin g us out, when follo wed throu gh, on the Alte rnat ive sid1~ of the parad igm conf lict, and acco rdin gly lead to the diff icul t soci al ch1nge optio n. The soci al chan ges that the deep alte rnat ive requ ires will be stron gly resis ted beca use they mean chan ges in curr ent soci al orga nisa tion and power stru ctur e. To the exte nt that the optio n repr esen ts some kind of thre at to part s of pres ent poli tica l and economic arran gem ents, it is not surp risin g that offi cial ener gy ppti on disc ussi on proc eeds by misr epre sent ing and ofte n obsc uring it. But diff icul t as it is to suita bly alte r "the syste m," espe ciall y one with such far-r each ing effe cts on the prev ailin g power stru ctur e, it is impe rativ e to try: we are all on the nucl ear train . w • FOOTNOTES 1. This paper is a condens ation of an early version of our 'Nuclea r power - ethical , social, and politic al dimensi ons' (ESP for short, availab le from the authors ), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred to in the referenc e list). For help with the condens ation we are very conside rably indebted to the e~itors . In the condens ation, we simplify the structu re of the argument and suppres s underly ing politic al ~1nd ideolog ical dimensi ons (for example , the large measure of respons ibilit~r of the USA for spreadin g nuclear reactor s around the world, and thereby in enhancin g the chances of nuclear disaste rs, includin g nuclear war). We also considet ·ably reduce a heavy load of footnote s and referenc es designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. · Further , in order to contain referenc es to a modest length, referenc e to primary sources has often been replaced by referenc e through seconda ry sources . Little difficu lty should be encount ered however in tracing fuller referenc es through seconda ry sources or in filling out much importa nt backgrou nd materia l from work cited herein. For example , virtual ly all the data cited in section s I and VII is referenc ed in Routley . At worst ESP can always be consulte d. 2. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unneces sary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to conside r ethical and social dimensio ns of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. The b~~sics are presente d in many texts, e.g. Nader & Abbotts , Gyorgy. Of course ~~n order to assess fully reports as to such importa nt backgrou nd and stage~,s etting matters as the likeliho od of a core meltdown of (lightw ater)1 reactor s, much more informa tion is require d. For many assessm ent purpose s h~,wever, some knowledge of economic fallacie s and decision theory is at least as importa nt aa knowledge of nuclear technolo gy. 3. Natural ly the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arrivln g at moral assessm ents. Nuclear radiatio n, unlike most ethical theorie s. does not confine its scope to human life and welfare . But since the ham nuclear developm ent may afflict on nonhuman life, for example , can hardly improve its case, it suffice s if the case against it can be made out solely in term• of its effects on human life in the convent ional way. .For refe ren ce to apd a brie f disc uss ion of (hu man -ori ente d) sim ulat ion models see Goodin, p.42 8. 4. The Opp ortu nity -co st . argument is also def ecti ve in oth er resp ects . It pres upp ose s not mer ely the (mi stak en) red ucti ons invo lved in the con trac tion of the eth ica l domain to the economic; it also pres upp ose s tha t the pro per methods for dec isio n which affe ct. the futu re, such as tha t of ene rgy cho ice, app ly disc oun ting . But , as Goo din arg ues , more app rop riat e dec isio n rule s do not allo w disc oun ting . 5. Thi s is one of the reas ons why exp ecte d uti lity theo ry, roug hly cos t-be nef it ana lysi s wit h pro bab ility fril ls, is inad equ ate as a dec isio n method in such con tex ts. 6. App aren t exc epti on~ to the prin cip le such as tax atio n (and red istr ibu tion of income gen era, lly) van ish when wea lth is con stru ed (as it has to be if tax atio n is to be pro per ly jus tifi ed) as at lea st par tly a soc ial ass et unf airl y mon opo lise d by a min orit y of the pop ulat ion . Examples such as tha t of mot orin g dan gero usly do not con stit ute cou nter exa mpl es to the prin cip le; for one is not mor ally ent itle d to so mot or. 7. For det ails , and as to how the off icia l ana lys~ s become argu men ts aga inst nuc lear dev elop men t whe.p some atte mpt is made to tak e the -ign ored cos ts into acc oun t, see Shr ade r-Fr ech ette , p. 55 ff. 8. See Rou tley , p. 160 . 9. For much furt her disc uss ion of the poi nts of the prec edin g two par agrap hs, see Shr ade r-F rec het te, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader & Abbott&. 10. Gyorgy. Most of the rea cto rs in the wor ld are of this typ e; 11. See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette , cha pter 4. see 12. See Shr ade r-Fr ech ette . A wor thw hile ini tia l view of the sho rtco min gs of the RassmutJsen rep ort may be reac hed by com bini ng the crit iqu e in Shr ade r-Fr ech et~e wit h tha t in Nader & Abb otts . 13. The re are var iati on$ on Ai and Aii which mul tipl y cos ts aga inst numbers such as pro bab ilit ies. In this way risk s, con stru ed as pro bab le cos ts, can be take n into acc oun t in the asse ssm ent. (Al tern ativ ely . risk .a may be aaaeaaed thro ugh •~e h fam ilia r aeth oda •• inau ran ce). • A princ iple varyi ng Aii, and formu lated as follow s: Aii'. a is ethic ally accep table if {for some b) a inclu des no more risks than band bis socia lly accep ted, was the basic ethic al princ iple in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of . Inqui ry recen tly decid ed that nucle ar power devel opme nt in Saska tchew an is ethic ally accep table : see Cluff Lake Board of Inqui ry Final Repo rt, Department of Envir onme nt, Government of Saska tchew an, 1978, p. 305 and p. 288. In this repor t, a is nucle ar power and b is eithe r activ ities clear ly accep ted by socie ty as alter nativ e power sourc es. In other appli catio ns b has b•en taken as cigar ette smoki ng, motor ing, minin g and even the Vietnam ~ar (!). The point s made in the text do not exhau st the objec tions to princ iples Ai - Aii'. The princ iples are certa inly ethic ally subst antiv e, since an ethic al conse quenc e canno t be deduced from nonet hical prem isses, but they have an inadm issibl e conve ntion al chara cter. For look at the origi n of b b may be socia lly accep ted thoug h it is no longe r socia lly accep table , or thoug h its socia l accep tibili ty is no longe r so clear cut and it would not have been socia lly accep ted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introd uced. What is requi red in Aii', for insta nce, for the argument tQ begin to look convi ncing is that b is 'ethic ally accep table ' rath, r than 'soci ally accep ted'. But even with the amendments the princ iples are inval id, for the reaso ns given in the text, and other s. It is not disco neert ing that princ iples of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet anoth er area lost to the expe rts, ethic s to actua ries. 14. See Shrad er-Fr echet te, p. 15. 15. Goodin . p. 433. 16. The argum ent is elabo rated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philo sophi cally impor tant mate rial on alter nativ e nonco nsum eristi c $OCi al arran geme nts and lifes tyles , see work cited in V. and R. Routl ey, 'Soci al theor ies, self manag ement and envir onme ntal probl ems' in M,nni son et al, where a begin ning ia made on worki ng out ~ of alter nativ ••• thoaa of a plura listic anarchism. ••t flA-t fn 18. l ·.:. The~ situa tion of the world 's tropi cal rainf orest s is expla ined in, for insta nce, My~ra; the reaso ns are untan gled in R. and V. Routl ey 'World rainf orest destr uctio n - the socia l cause s' (avai lable from the autho rs). 19·. For a fulle r accou nt of the Dominant Socia l Parad igm and its rival , the Alter nativ e Envir onme ntal Parad igm, see Cotgr ovean d Duff, espec ially the table on p. 341 which encap sulate s ' ' the main assum ption s of the respe ctive parad igms; compare also Catto n and Dunla p, espec ially p. 33. Contemporary varia nts on the Dominant Socia l Parad igm are consi dered in ESP • .., The shallo w/dee p contr ast as appli ed to ecolo gical posit ions, which is an impor tant component of the parad igm conf lict, was introd uced by Naess . For furth er expla natio n of the contr ast and of the large r array of ecolo gical posit ions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routl ey, 'Huma n chauv inism and ~ envir onme ntal ethic s' in Mannison '------'"'et al, and the refer ences there cited , espec ially to Rodman's work. 20. The more elabo rate afgum ent of ESP sets the nucle ar debat e in the conte xt of parad igm confl ict. But it is also argue d that, even withi n assum ptions framework of the ~,min ant Socia l Parad igm and its varia nts, Ti. Nucle ar develo pmen t is no,~ the ratio nal choic e among energ y optio ns. The main argument put up for n\Jcle ar devel opme nt withi n the framework of the dominant parad igm is an Ec~,nomic growth argum ent. It is the follow ing I' versi on of the Light s-goin g-ou~; argument (with economic growt h duly stand ing in for mate rial wealt h, and fo~r what is valua ble!) :- Nucle ar power is neces sary to susta in economic $rowt h. Economic growt h is desir able (for all the usual reaso ns, e.g. to incre ase the size of the pie, to postp one redis tribu tion probl ems, etc.) . There fore nucle ar power is desir able. The first premi ss is part of US energ y polic y (see Shrad er-Fr echet te, p.111 ), and the secon d prem iss ia suppl ied by stand ard economics textb ooks. But both premi sses are defec tive, the secon d becau se what is valua ble in economic growth can be achie ved by (not witho ut growt h but) selec tive economic growt h, which jettis ons the heavy socia l and envir onme ntal costs carri ed by unqu alifie d economic growt h. More to the point , since the secon d premi ss is an assum ption of the Dominant Parad igm, the first premi ss (or rathe r an appro priate and less vulne rable restat emen t of it) fails even by Dominant Paradigm stand ards. For of cours e nucle ar power is not neces sary given that there are other , perha ps costl ier alter nativ es. The premi ss usual ly defen doJ is some elabo ration of the prem iae: Nucle ar power is the econo mical ly beat way to auata in economic arowth. 'econ omica lly beat' be ing fill ed out as 'mo at eff icie nt', 'che ape st', 'hav ing the most favo urab le ben efit -co st rat io', etc~ Unf oitu nate ly for the argu men t, and for nuc lear development sche mes , nuc lear power is none of thes e thin gs dec isiv ely (un less a good dea l of economic che atin g - easy to do - is don e). Tii . ' pro per Dominant Para digm acc oun ting , nuc lear cho ices sho uld gen era l ly be reje cte d, both as priv ate uti lity inve stm ents and as pub lic cho ices . On Nuc lea r dev elop men t is not eco nom ical ly via ble but has bee n kep t goin g, not by cle ar economic via bili ty, butr by mas sive sub sidi zati on of sev era l typ es (dis cus sed in Shr ade r-Fl ech ette ~, Gyorgy and Nader & Abb otts ). Even on var ian ts of ~;he Dominant Para digm , nuc lear dev elop men t is not jus tifi ed, as con side rati on of dec isio n theo ry methods wil l rev eal: Til i. rej cted , Whatever reas ona ble 4ec iaio n rule is ado pted , the nuc lear cho ice is as the argu men ts of Goodin on alte rna tive dec isio n rule s help to show. What sus tain s the nuc lear jug ger nau t is not the Dominant Para digm ~r i ts var ian ts, but con tem pora ry cor por ate cap ital ism (or its sta te ent erp rise image ) and as soc iate d thir d wor ld imp eria lism , aa the his tor ica l det ails of nuc lear <lev elopmen t both in dev elop ed cou ntri es and in less dev elop ed cou ntri es mak es pla i . (for main det ails , see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.) . And the pra ctic es of con tem pora ry corp ora te cap ital ism and ass oci ated imp eria liam are not acc epta ble by the sta nda rds of eith er of the Paradigms or the ir var ian t&: they are cer tain ly no t eth ica lly acc epta ble. • .• . ·• REFERENCES USED Works esp eci ally use ful for fur the r inv est iga tion of the e.th ica l issu ea rais ed by nuc lea r dev elop men t are ind ica t_ed wit h an ast eri sk (*) . S. Cot gro ve and A. Duf f, "En viro nme ntal ism , mid dle -cla ss rad ica lism and po liti cs' , Soc iolo gic al Review 28( 2) (1980), 333 -51 . W.R . Cat ton , Jr. , and R. E. Dun lap, 'A new eco log ica l par adig m for pos t exu ber ant soc iolo gy' American Beh avi ora l Sci ent ist 24 (19 80) . 15- 47. For Rep ort : Ranger Uranium Env iron men tal Inq uiry Fir st Rep ort, Au stra lian Government Pub lish ing Ser vic e, Can ber ra, 1977. *R. E. Goodin, "No moral nuk es', Eth ics 90 (19 80) , 417-49. *A. Gyorgy and fri' end s, No Nukes : eve ryo ne's gui de to nuc lea r pow er, Sou th End Pre ss, Bos ton , Ma ss., 197 9. *n . Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Rou tley (ed ito rs) , Env iron men tal Phi los~ phy , RSSS, Au stra lian Nat ion al Un ive rsit y, 198 0. N. Myers, The Sin kin g Ark, Pergamon Pre ss, Oxf ord , 1979. R. Nader and J. Abb otta , The Menace of Atomic Ene rgy , Me lbou rne, 1977. Outback Pre ss, *K. S. Shr ade r-F rec het te, Nuclear Power and Pub lic Pol icy , 1980. Rei del , Dor dre cht , R. and V. Rou tley , 'Nu clea r energy and obl igat ion tJ to the fut ure ', Inq uiry 21 (19 78) , 133-79.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 74, Item 2049: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions Subject The topic of the resource Typescript (photocopy) of draft, with handwritten emendations and annotations, undated. Handwritten above title: Almost final version. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 74, Item 2049 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [36] leaves. 45.78 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a4e917c">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:a4e917c</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Filing Cabinet 5 > Top Box 74: Unlisted and Untitled https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/403a5bad32513aec7b1fe527b51f07f8.pdf 282dfe629ac7145e12fea896a7354838 PDF Text Text I NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL, I. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS COMPETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE. One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values ... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the 2 lines of competing paradigms. According to the entrenched paradigm discerned, to others. that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm), economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise. In particular, there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of scientists in particular. ... there is an emphasis on quantification. The rival world view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm (the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists m ways summarised in the following table Dominant Social Paradigm CORE VALUES Material (economic growth, progress and development) Natural environment valued as resource Alternative Environmental Paradigm Domination over nature Non-material (self-realisation) Natural environment intrinsically valued Harmony with nature * ECONOMY Market forces Risk and reward Rewards for achievement Differentials Individual self-help Public interest Safety Incomes related to need Egalitarian Collective/social provision POLITY Authoritative structures (experts influential) Hierarchical Law and order Action through official institutions Participative structures (citizen/ worker involvement) Non-hierarchical Liberation Direct action SOCIETY Centralised Large-scale Associational Ordered Decentralised Small-scale Communal Flexible NATURE Ample reserves Nature hostile/neutral Environment controllable Earth’s resources limited Nature benign Nature delicately balanced KNOWLEDGE Confidence in science and technology Rationality of means (only) Limits to science Rationality of ends State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced system by a command system)^ But since there is virtually no debate confines of state socialism, that minor variant on the Old Paradigm from the Old Paradigm really only by central planning (a market over a nuclear future within the need not be delineated here. �No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple (and subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements: really and instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the Old Paradigm). Nonetheless it is empirically investigable, and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed. Large- scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world, runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm. Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm. For under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other instrumental details: whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as) irrational. Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents of the Old Paradigm. Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed to fails. But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise pronomic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future (a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured. main parts?:- There are two It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project selection). It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice, �3 the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate capitalism. It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong, as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best utilitarian means to predetermined ends.) For another leading characteristic of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues - whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical O or legal or mathematical details. The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear development poses. There are many interrelated problems, and the argument is further structured in terms of these. For in the advancement and promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never before assembled: establishment, on a massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and intervention. with problems. It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes. II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE. A long distance country train has just pulled out. crowded carries both passengers and freight. The train which is At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packaged in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the �4 full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. All of these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it. These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen when the consigner, again a "responsible” businessman, puts his workers’ health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he ways that it is his own and others’ pressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s, chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble the train case. progresses. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as 9 large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with �5. each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years.10 Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter­ vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environment.In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and 11a damaging their environment. Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance, none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may �6. well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. provide a rigorous guarantee of Only a method that could safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. 12 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons- grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it. The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000, which gets around the waste storage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem) is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways, an article of faith. It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always immediately economically feasible). The assumption has played an important part in development plans and practice. It has not only encouraged an unwarranted 13 technological optimism (not to say hubris ), that there are no limits to what humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably controlled. It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters. There are severe limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the 14 form of limitation theorems ); and in addition there are human limitations which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed below). The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would provide unlimited energy (a ’clean unlimited supply of power’). shattered. and nuclear That dream soon The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power, fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power. �7. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy source for only perhaps 150 years. It will do nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an with it. over-populated world not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents’ dreams of global industrialisation are realised, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it. It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life, 15a are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries. It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power. The 'Solution” then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes �8. in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. I Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it will be argued - clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of those comparatively few who benefit from them. If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to the future.^3 There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances, for to teject the consigner’s action in the circum­ stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less clearcut. It is the same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn, beginning with the question of our obligations to the future. Resolution of this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop­ ment. It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII). Ill OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. �9. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:- Firstly there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to enforce any claims they might have for their rights against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any contemporary institutions would do it for them. �10. Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficulties about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who may well be committed to a life-style for which one has little or no sympathy. On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them. What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can 16 fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy). Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future. The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not however sustainable. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of �11. the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a result of the action. direct and predictable The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. the following sort The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable of policy:- A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that - we would certainly hope that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counter­ example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many Of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance of a good life. �12. Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him. These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the (sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or Assiiipp.fl. Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditiohs to be satisfied. They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist. While it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility for the lives of people involved. There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just �13. to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous package on the train. The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which has to be assumed or required. The conflation is encouraged by reductionist positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly endeavour to collapse all obligations. Hence the equation, and some main roots of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future. The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter­ examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example the position that our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;^ there are in practice no obligations to the distant future. A main argument in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding generation. account. There are at least three objections to this chain First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation. Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility. Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence matters. �14. Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written off as "never-never land" examples since many cases of environmental exploitation might be seen as of just this type. e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overuse. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in the way the chain picture suggests. IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONOMISTIC UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. objectionable in such an approach is that What is economics should operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are. There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue. �15. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle 18 the waste problem. Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument. For it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial) developments as nuclear power. sacrifice argument. That is, it depends on the already scotched In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden. A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of opportunity costs. It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation of resources. Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later. Thus a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes, what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed: it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately 19 monetarily, but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It is also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices, �16. are bound to apply discounting. This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that, on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.). 20 As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same result as the unconstrained position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no 21 more than about 15 years, and application of such rates would simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people. Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral constraints. Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, �17. such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results. For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party to another . Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a person’s extent of use. The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian’s (happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties, and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. �18. Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we cannot be expected to distant future. take serious account of the effects of our actions on the There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:- In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, fuzzy and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain­ able about the present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the distant future. Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present Associated with this is the attempt to suggest and with respect to the future. a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis of such ’’unreliable” information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty”; for sceptic­ proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. risk of harm in this sort of case. It is enough that there is a significant It does not matter if the decreased well­ being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour of the so-called ’’speculative" and "unreliable”. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why v �19. should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? Why should we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard. But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples’ interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification. The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument, that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for choosing between them. this way:- The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every (action) x”, then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the "It is wrong to do x" type. Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded. If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. on action. Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the �20. argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point, which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in Again there is considerable some cases is the creation of a significant risk. uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties £1 at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where spatially remote people are involved. In particular there is not gross indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this type to make moral constraints applicable. In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the �21. things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines. prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - Even if one is according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn’t looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases before such actions could �22. be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility, real or not - it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves. The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then, and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities. The strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy, for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by �23. ignoring such factors. Nor are distributional problems as large and representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue, e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type. In particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The crucial question which emerges is then: are there any features of future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or reduce their claims to such below those of present people? principle None. The answer is : in Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example. But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present: in other words, a theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white­ skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical course of action given only present information) . In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage. To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral 24 consideration; inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this �23a. universalizab ili ty, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. Uncertainty If in a closely comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of �23a. universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. Uncertainty If in a closely comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of �24. harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people. Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices for future waste disposal are immoral. Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion) against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures. Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position. First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in another state’s or region’s yard or waters? When that region receives no due compensation (whatever that would amount to, in such a case), and the people do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and the arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can discount people of two centuries hence. (But what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can be discounted over time . ) Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of those in the neighbourhood of reactors, and, differently, as regards the distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant, 25 �25. and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor. An immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit tradeoffs" of nuclear technology. That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other large- scale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided. The "normal" emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved. Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately) permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an 26 acceptable level of risk/safety for the public. The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic damage. An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner working in summer. Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way 27 compensate for the agony of cancer. The point is that the costs to one party are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being imposed. People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a �26. particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly, for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent majority). Whatever charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits involved. There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One cheaper trick, deployed by the US 28 Atomic Energy Commission, is to suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population has received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely to have negligible consequences. The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course, so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill- effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’public pacifier’ while 29 private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered. �27. While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’. But such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).~ If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) 30a reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which 31 these conservative US government figures are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still. The consigner in risking the lives, well-being and property of the passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly. Does a government-sponsored private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the community train. The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the £1 consigners’ action is, as we would ordinarily sible. suppose, inadmissible and irrespon­ The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary, while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm) . It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the 32 influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. The main argument for this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than mathematical models. As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual, a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear �28. catastrophe. In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different. But we do not live in such a world. According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions and is methodologically sound. This is very far from being the case. The under­ lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as "not credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world. It is the In fact the methodology and data of the report 33 has been soundly and decisively criticized. And it has been shown that there eliminations that are otherworldly. is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident. It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status. The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied to energy options: (i) if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option b; (ii) option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted; 34 therefore option a is acceptable. For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as transaction models. It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant aspects of the context. In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or �29. primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit? It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a 35 comparison on such a basis would be valid. This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason? A risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the 36 nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high. The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other 37 parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g. it can be substituted for or done without. Thus, for instance, one is not usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting oneself. Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of. Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery service, on the train, to the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else leaving the village and their livelihoods. transfer of costs as morally unacceptable. Most of us would see this kind of �30. From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users. The distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable moral features. It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the tramsmission principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. (The corollary can be independeritly argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories). VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle — of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. "workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’the same risk’ of n 38 , , fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry . Furthermore, the various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location, for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at any rate, chosen (as is occupational relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation: with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium miner’s choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific Islander’s "fact" of location cannot be. The social issue of arrangements that contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations. �31. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio­ active lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (consider again the effects of core meltdown). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.39 In West Germany the ’politics of nuclear repression is even more evident and more advanced: Behind what must be one of the most impregnable fortifications this side of the East-West German border, work has just begun on building West Germany’s latest nuclear power station. Much �31.1 of the perimeter of the 75-acre site, at Brokdorf in the marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a concrete wall 10 feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire. The rest, regarded as ’strategically observable’, is girdled by a ditch 10 feet wide and filled with water. Approach roads to the site are patrolled by dozens of policemen and the compound itself is guarded by 600 men from a private security organization and by 30 dogs. Such developments presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic societies. That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences tells heavily against it. �32. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunately true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. Since nuclear wars are never accountable positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also undesirable. The details and considerations that fill out this argument, from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear power plant, secondly : political, that nuclear engagements once instituted likely to escalate and that those who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with nuclear engagement (up to "strategic nuclear strikes" at least), and thirdly : ethical, that wars invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations. The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself undesirable. The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is a case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular of the gross uncertainties involved in nuclear development. In cases of this type the appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst consequences (this is a pretty uncontroversial part of the maximin rule which enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences). The nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable alternative. �33. VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to important overriding circumstances. That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go far beyond merely economic considerations. For, as already observed, the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear development — e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice versa. What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear) alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances. Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option �34. to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of false dichotomies. A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through 40 encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political 41 structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes. It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor. �35. The poverty argument is then a fraud. help the poor. Nuclear energy will not be used to Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor. It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development. And there are various alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power), 42 each possibly in combination with conservation measures; Despite the availability of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and affluence of certain select groups). Such an assumption really underlies part of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickledown argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting). runs:- For the argument Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing) affluence. Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor. Therefore nuclear First, the argument does not on its own show development benefits the poor. anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy’ is substituted for ’nuclear’. It has also to be shown, what the next major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy alternatives in increasing affluence. The second assumption, that affluence inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita) coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and developed, and through economic models which reveal how "affluence” can increase without redistribution occurring. Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. 4; �36. The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society. But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller examination, can be avoided. The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish - are essential to maintain this whole. These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all it has survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at �37. present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of 44 consumption which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy. What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza. In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more than they do at present. Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear ... 45 situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance. But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The lights- going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false dichotomy. �38. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the If then we apply - as we have argued we should - appeal to futurity, closed. the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other arguments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on - for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the present and immediate future. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. A corollary is that only political arrangements that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future. VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS. The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example, such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of marketcentred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic theory). To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice. Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy. Such investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic ends. Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission research and development, in marked contrast to other newer rival sources of power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs. The reasons can be divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given (out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, publicly economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social control. �39. The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is valuable!):- Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social unrest, etc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. part of US energy policy, economics textbooks. The first premiss is and the second premiss is supplied by standard But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth, which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified 47 economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss : Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, benefit-cost ratio’, etc. ’having most favourable Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can decisively, unless Much data, beginning with be assembled to show as much. Yet the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true premisses if the argument is to be decisive. The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental) analyses, and private (utility) assessments. Virtually all available data concerns the USA; in Europe, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly^ controlled” nuclear power are generally not divulged. Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants. Komanoff has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity) 49 will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985. And capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants. rather decisively Another main factor is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators. Coney showed that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more �40. expensive than estimated.50 The discrepancy between actual and estimated capacity is especially important because a plant with an actual capacity factor of 55% produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed at the manufacturers ’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%. The low reliability of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the superior reliability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nuclear power. These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective, before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken into account. The main subsidies are through research and development, by way of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson Act5'1'), in enrichment, and in waste management. It has been estimated that charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more). When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public costs involved in producing nuclear power. For example, the analyses ignore waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently what the costs involved are. But even using actual waste handling costs (while wastes await storage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuclear. When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in favour of alternatives to nuclear and against nuclear power. In short, even on proper Old Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be rejected. Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public subsidization, of several types. In USA, to take a main example where information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, under Price-Anderson Act the which sharply limits both private and public liability, i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all radioactive wastes. While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as social welfare. Duly admitting social welfare and some equity principles �41. in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leads version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm. to the modern The main changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism). Now it has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example, as well as those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance brown-outs and the like. use, avoidance of shortages, rationing, Since alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve the same ends given power was supplied with suitable extravagance, the argument has again to show that the choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite respects, in serving the public interest. Such an argument is a matter for decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives also fall as special cases. Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice between alternatives; it is presented as the theory which ’deals with the 53 problem of choosing one course of action among several possible courses’. Thus the choice of alternative modes of energy production, the energy choice problem, becomes an exercise in decision theory; and the nuclear choice is often'justified” in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory. But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put to work in such practical cases as energy choice, it is very considerably contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported, and what one is confronted with is a depauperate theory drastically pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic theory. The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the expected utility model. The general model for best choice among alternatives specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may include ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given conditions. Expected utility models demote value to utility, assuming thereby measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless). Thus, in �42. particular, ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage sustained. Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical) economic assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to monetary terms : everything worth accounting has a price), and as to the legitimacy of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties. The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty. It is not a case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable), because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them. Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core meltdown 54 of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development : widespread radio­ active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain. The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy choice, maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended. In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected. Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same rejections for options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of the nuclear option can be effected. All rational roads lead, not to Rome, but to rejection of the nuclear option. A further convergence can be effected also, because the best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as coal and a hydroelectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). conditions complex decision rules (such as the Arrow-Horowicz rule) which take account of both best possible and worst possible outcomes under reduce to the maximin rule. Under these each option Whichever energy option is selected under the maximin rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options where worst outcomes are substantially better than that of the nuclear option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear dream, is realised). Further application of the rejection rule will reject the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects on the earth’s climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels. �43. Although the rejection rule coupled with position several rivals to maximin proposed, maximin enjoys a privileged for decision under uncertainty have been of which has associated rejection rules. each rules, such as the risk- added Some of these reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8), the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of which ’assesses risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly and rather than offering a dubious, rational decision procedure appears to afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo. What will be argued, or rather what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear option. For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility (not an entirely unquestionable rule rule ’of strictly limited applicability’) excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have an air of irreversibility ... ’’One cannot the way one can abandon alternatives rule * simply abandon a coal-fired plant’” (p.506). a nuclear reactor The compare-the- in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit assessments, which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear option when costing is done properly. The maximise-sustainable—benefits rule, which ’directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable Other lesser rules Goodin discusses, sources’, ruling out the nuclear option. which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet further from the Old Paradigm framework, vulnerable, also yield harm-avoidance and protecting-the- the same nuclear-excluding results. Harm-avoidance, in particular, points ’decisively in favour of ’’alternative" and "renewable" energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’ The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted (p.442). the result is the same, a standards. nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with probabilities duly multiplied in, and the conclusion is as before from cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice. The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear juggernaut: nor does its Modification. The real reasons for the continuing development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case, sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical economic �theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social theory. democratic There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal, and certainly profitable one: corporations so committed are understandably keen to realise returns on capital already invested. There are also typical self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on. There are just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds. Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes. Within contemporary corporate capitalism, these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs. It is then, contemporary corporate capitalism, along with its state enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut. To be sure, corporate capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice. But, unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked on such a future. The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis. split into two main cases, the national This diagnosis can be development of nuclear power in the US, and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been largely responsible. the Eastern bloc is which had in 1977 only nuclear plants. By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in small and is largely confined to the Soviet Union about one-sixth the wattage output of US Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually no public participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else­ where to any great extent. American technology has. �45. The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of These companies were great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US. encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants, for several state controlled or influenced reasons:- Firstly, owing to governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly, the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation, and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development. In particular, state limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear investment. In the 70s, though the state subsidization continued, the private picture changed : ’high costs of construction combined with low capacity factors and poor reliability have wiped out the cost advantage that nuclear power’ had enjoyed in the US. Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies, Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear 55 technology. These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology, research, enriched uranium and financial capital. ’The US offered a Estate subsidized J nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the British could not compete’. In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies with relevant governments) substantial interests in European held (usually along and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained largely American. Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam. The US proceeded, Spain, in this way, to ship nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world. It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations, but most of whose * budget activities’. and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear �46. A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world markets for reactors. Less developed countries offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with easy public financing, where health and safety regulations are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer easy sales. [For] ... the US has considerable leverage with many of these countries. We know from painful experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support. Many of those same regimes are n°w^ pursuing the nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework of the Old Paradigm and its social Modification, but that the practices (of corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much that is ethically unacceptable, whether percepts;for principles such as by older, modified, or alternative those assembled under fairness and self-determination are grossly violated. IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS ; SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES . The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production i 58 and replacement. To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in Northern Europe, hydroelectricity. The deeper choice, which even softer paths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures. These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to be obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet �given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived of as inevitable and unchangeable. (Hence there are solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear ways.) Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options. But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even the more benign technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to them. Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and contemplated by many other energy organisations). While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple expedient of waving around the label ’renewable resources’. Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense 59 of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced. It certainly has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types) which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy, on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, �48. resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems. Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products. In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change is inadequate. Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved. It is not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the to succeed in halting the Vietnam war. way pressure appeared While without doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring nuclear development. The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. This means, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services. A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non- genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.) Consumption frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas. The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the move away from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism and materialist values. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or 61 needs ) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can �48. resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems. Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products. In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change is inadequate. Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved. It is not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the to succeed in halting the Vietnam war. way pressure appeared While without doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring nuclear development. The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. This means, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services. A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non- genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.) Consumption frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas. The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the move away from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism and materialist values. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or 61 needs ) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can �49. be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. It is commonly argued by representatives The point is readily illustrated. of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option 62 open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective , a perspective integral with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant paradigm. The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires, hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment. The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they and power structure. mean changes in current social organisation To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train. �FOOTNOTES 1. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 2. As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1. As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references given therein. 3. Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339. 4. The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34. 5. See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8. 6. For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff. 7. Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another. One can argue both from one’s own position against the other, and in the other’s own terms against the other. 8. As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only what, suits them. 9. This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite details up to 1977 see Routley (a). The same conclusion has been reached in some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g., �2 10. For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff. 11. See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428. 11a. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional (Old Paradigm) way. 12. On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry, see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy. On the more general problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7. 13. Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man replacing God. First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited power. Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the position of unlimitedness. More recently nuclear power is seen as providing man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology, [ability to manage technology represents the past] 14. On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80. All these theorems mimic paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes” on one side and voting "paradoxes" on the other. Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81. It follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is necessarily unknowable. Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture. According the Dominant Western Worldview, the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton and Dunlap, p. 34). 15. See Lovins and Price. 15a. The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future, namely . A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities open to future generations. . ’What justice requires ... is that the overall range of opportunities open to successor generations should not be narrowed’ (Barry, p.243). Therefore, a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice. �3 16. For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers ’ positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a). 17. Passmore, p. 91. Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to all appearances, inconsistent. It is considered in detail in Routley (a), as also is Rawls’ position. 18. For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting, and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see Goodin, pp. 429-30. 19. The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform. 20. Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than satisfactory fashion. What he claims is that we cannot list all the possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures. But outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p). For example, outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines as "plant breakdown through human error". Furthermore the different more appropriate rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of "possible" outcomes. are really two points. Goodin’s point can be alternatively stated however. There The first trouble is that such ragbag alternatives cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is at that point that applications of the models breaks down. The breakdown is just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making under risk. Secondly, many influential applications of decision theory methods, the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible alternatives from their modellings. 21. Discount, or bank, rates in the economists’ sense are usually set to follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p.351. 22. A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate, A real possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. 23. Thus the rates have little moral relevance. The contrast is with mere logical possibility. �4 24. Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau to Rawls (p.293). How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories. 25. The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the Poverty argument. 26. SF, p. 27. Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat critical of the carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that ’whoever affirms ov' denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree, symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and cultural norms’ 27. (p. 28). The example parallels the sorts of counterexamples often advanced to utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible lynching of pleasure given to the large lynching party. of an innocent person because For the more general case against utilitarianism, see ... 28. US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16. 29. As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail. As she remarks, ... since standards need not be met, so long as the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them, current policy allows government regulators to trade human health and welfare for the [apparent] good intentions of the promotors of technology. [Such] good intentions have never been known to be sufficient for the morality of an act (p. 39). The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very demanding, and the alliance of regulators with those they are supposed to be regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just of (nuclear) pollution control. 30. �r 31. The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report: possibilities and consequences of major ’Theoretical accidents in large nuclear plants’, USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957. This report was requested in the first place because the Commission on Atomic Energy wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the private insurance companies” so that they would provide coverage for the nuclear industry. Since even the conservative statistics of the report were alarming it was suppressed and its data were not made public until almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9). 32. Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of Accident Risks in US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1975. This report, the only allegedly complete study, concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the public. Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive analysis of nuclear power approved by the1 US Government. 32a. Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy. 33. 34. Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected. 35. There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against numbers such as probabilities. In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through such familiar methods as insurance.) A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows: (ii3) a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted, was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development �in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final Report, Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly p. 288. accepted by society as alternative power sources. In other applications b has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!) The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles (i) - (ii ). * The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii’), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted’. But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text. It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries. 36. A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc. Really they try to treat as an uncon­ strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley ’An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’. 37. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 38. SF, p. 15, where references are also cited. 39. Goodin, p. 433. 40. On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jots and Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7, and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner, fx------ On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well p. 23. A. Roberts, ’The politics of nuclear power’, Arena No. 41 (1976) 22-47, On the employment issues, see too Daly, in Commoner and others, p. 149. �7 A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality3 Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of what the poor need. 41. For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful3 Blond and Briggs, London, 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see Fox Report, p.48, and also Commoner, and Commoner and others. For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see the paper of Waiko and other papers in TTze Melanesian Environment (edited J.H. Winslow), Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977. 42. A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken3 Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs3 October 1976); see a|so Nader & Abbotts, p.233 ff., Lovins and Price, Commoner, and Schumacher, op.czt. 43. An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7, with respect to the question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others. 44. See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commoner. 45. Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A comment on the individual3 the State and Nuclear Power3 Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976. 46. ’US energy policy, for example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, has been that nuclear power is necessary to provide "an economical and reliable basis" needed "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p.lll, and references there cited). �47. There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the literature. For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see Routley (b), and also Berkley and Seckier. To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion of some discussions of nuclear power, c.f. Elster, is to leave out alternatives; the contraction crucial of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty case for unalleged growth. 48. In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain, in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial interests in main nuclear involved companies. Even as regards nuclear plant operation in the US, it is difficult to obtain comprehensive data. Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the sample of plants chosen and the assumptions made concerning the measurement of plant performance (Gyorgy, p. 173). 49. See Kalmanoff, p. 50. See Comey. 51. Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act. 52. Full ref to SF onargument from ignorance etc. On decision theory see also, 53. These e.g. Elster, p. 377. 54. A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision theory and risk analysis can be universally applied. The theme is upset as soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. In any case, even within these confines there is no consensus at all on, and few (and widely diverging) figures for; the probability of a reactor core meltdown, and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation. Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that ’such uncertainties plague energy theories’ as to ’render expected utility calculations impossible’. 55. For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff., from which presentation of the international story is adapted. �7 56. Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308. points, see Chomsky For elaboration of some of the important and Hermann. Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old 57. Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many can people respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism. Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and 58. limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those. Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and power industries. 59. Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than they already are often enough. It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument in L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for portable fuels’, and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance. 60. For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy, and also Woodmansee. 61. The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b), and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), Baran and Sweezy. 62. The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised by Naess. For its environmental importance see Routley (c) (where further references are cited). �S ta te s o c ia lis m , a s p r a c tis e d in m ost o f th e ’’E a s te rn b lo c ” , d if f e r s a s to econom ic o r g a n is a tio n , th e m a rk e t in p a r t i c u l a r b e in g re p la c e d sy stem by a command s y s te m ) B ut s in c e th e r e i s v i r t u a l l y no d e b a te c o n fin e s o f s t a t e s o c ia lis m , th a t m in o r v a r ia n t on th e Old P arad ig m . by from th e O ld P arad ig m r e a l l y o n ly c e n tr a l p la n n in g (a m a rk e t o v e r a n u c le a r f u tu r e w ith in th e n eed n o t b e d e lin e a te d h e re . JU rt X O 3 Pi X X rt r1 X 3 X rt 03 CL. 03 CD 0 X l-h CD y CD O y cd 03 X rt X O rt pi & Pi rt X O y X y 0 X O (TO *<! CD X-Z" rt (0 X O y 1-+1 03 3 0 CD X Pi CD P y 03 0 CD /—s O Pi y y x CL 0 y l-h X CL CD 3 CD CD X n q CT4 Pi X Pi y 0 CD y. 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C CD OQ y > O < CD h- O Hx) Pi rt X Pi y rt X y rh X y CD y rt X Pi * 1Z X CD y rt 03 z—s CD 03 rt y y 0 rt y y CD 03 CD y X rt Pi rt X > x 0 y rt Q X rt X N 03 rt y y CD rt cd y y y rt (D x-' 02 *H y < O 1—4 <2 CD 3 3 O y PX CD y x o X x X x 0 O y y 0 <2 Hcn X) M era pi I—4 H« y CD CD CL. y CD 0 H« y rt CD y CD 02 rt X y D4 H4 H« CD S X pi 02 y pi pr FT y CD Cl. pi rt 03 y Cl. rh rh O O y y y 2 0 C CD pi Pl 03 C3 y y4 CL. X CD <2 2 B CD y rt cn pi l-h CD 3 rt (D ft fl> *<! rt P3 03 h- y <2 H- y CD Pl CD y t— 4 02 pl rt 0 CD CD y. H« Pl rt I—4 O CD 0 H4 t-4 CD X X l-h rh CD y Cl. CD y y pi rt x X Pl 03 X CD 03 X t-h 1 y4 CD X y CL. X <2 X X o o 2! 0 s X- pi rt y y pi x OQ y 0 3 rt y4 0 y 0 3 X CD cd /—x CD 22 Pi rt y y pi X y rt y * H y 03 X (D Pl X ^~x cn CD X t-h 1 y CD pi X Hcn pi rt X O y pi X pi rt CD y 3 3 O y 1 CD X O X) 3 CD y rt x—✓ CL. CD pi X 03 y 0 y ora CD y 03 CD 0 03 y 03 y o pi CD y CL. <3 pi X y CD 0. CD y < X y 0 y 3 CD y rt pi rt CD y X Pi X 2: 2 <2 fa H4 % y CD H- O y rt y. y4 y 0 y y pi rt 3 CD y y y rt CD 0 y «<; y 3 Pi y CD y rt pi y CD y 0 rt X O y pi 0 3 X y O cn < > X (=1 M 0 n 3 X Pl y pi CL. X ora Pi y pi CL. X OQ 3 XI Cn 0 0 X Pl X y rt pi 0 0 3 X y > rt Pl X 1CD y 1X 1y 10 m 1□ Pi 1 1X •<3 CD y rj CD 1rt 1X �REFERENCES USED Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (* ). t I /S. Congrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review 28(2) (1980), 333-51. A. R. Cotton, Jr. , and R. E. Dunlj/p, ’A new ecological paradigm for post­ f / exuberant sociology’ American Behavioural Scientist 24 (1980). 15-47. v/r Report : Vr Ranger Uranium En/ynmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. E. Goodin, ’No moral ni^k^S ’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. Gyorgy and friends, No /Juk^ : everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979 / R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Melbourne, 1977. / / D. * Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. ! N. Myers, The Sinking Ark, x. & Outback Press, / K. * Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reid^l, Dordrecht, 1980 (referred to as SF). R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document I NUCLEAR POWER - ETHICAL, I. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS COMPETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE. One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values ... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the 2 lines of competing paradigms. According to the entrenched paradigm discerned, to others. that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm), economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise. In particular, there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of scientists in particular. ... there is an emphasis on quantification. The rival world view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm (the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists m ways summarised in the following table Dominant Social Paradigm CORE VALUES Material (economic growth, progress and development) Natural environment valued as resource Alternative Environmental Paradigm Domination over nature Non-material (self-realisation) Natural environment intrinsically valued Harmony with nature * ECONOMY Market forces Risk and reward Rewards for achievement Differentials Individual self-help Public interest Safety Incomes related to need Egalitarian Collective/social provision POLITY Authoritative structures (experts influential) Hierarchical Law and order Action through official institutions Participative structures (citizen/ worker involvement) Non-hierarchical Liberation Direct action SOCIETY Centralised Large-scale Associational Ordered Decentralised Small-scale Communal Flexible NATURE Ample reserves Nature hostile/neutral Environment controllable Earth’s resources limited Nature benign Nature delicately balanced KNOWLEDGE Confidence in science and technology Rationality of means (only) Limits to science Rationality of ends State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced system by a command system)^ But since there is virtually no debate confines of state socialism, that minor variant on the Old Paradigm from the Old Paradigm really only by central planning (a market over a nuclear future within the need not be delineated here. No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple (and subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements: really and instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the Old Paradigm). Nonetheless it is empirically investigable, and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed. Large- scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world, runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm. Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm. For under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other instrumental details: whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as) irrational. Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents of the Old Paradigm. Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed to fails. But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise pronomic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future (a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured. main parts?:- There are two It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project selection). It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice, 3 the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate capitalism. It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy options within a predetermined framework of values. (In this corner belong, as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best utilitarian means to predetermined ends.) For another leading characteristic of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues - whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical O or legal or mathematical details. The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear development poses. There are many interrelated problems, and the argument is further structured in terms of these. For in the advancement and promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never before assembled: establishment, on a massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and intervention. with problems. It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes. II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE. A long distance country train has just pulled out. crowded carries both passengers and freight. The train which is At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packaged in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the 4 full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. All of these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it. These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen when the consigner, again a "responsible” businessman, puts his workers’ health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he ways that it is his own and others’ pressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s, chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble the train case. progresses. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as 9 large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with 5. each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years.10 Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter­ vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environment.In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and 11a damaging their environment. Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance, none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may 6. well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. provide a rigorous guarantee of Only a method that could safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. 12 Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons- grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it. The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000, which gets around the waste storage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem) is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways, an article of faith. It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always immediately economically feasible). The assumption has played an important part in development plans and practice. It has not only encouraged an unwarranted 13 technological optimism (not to say hubris ), that there are no limits to what humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably controlled. It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters. There are severe limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the 14 form of limitation theorems ); and in addition there are human limitations which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed below). The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would provide unlimited energy (a ’clean unlimited supply of power’). shattered. and nuclear That dream soon The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power, fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power. 7. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy source for only perhaps 150 years. It will do nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an with it. over-populated world not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents’ dreams of global industrialisation are realised, more and more of the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it. It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life, 15a are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries. It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power. The 'Solution” then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes 8. in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. I Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it will be argued - clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of those comparatively few who benefit from them. If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to the future.^3 There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances, for to teject the consigner’s action in the circum­ stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less clearcut. It is the same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn, beginning with the question of our obligations to the future. Resolution of this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop­ ment. It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII). Ill OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. 9. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:- Firstly there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to enforce any claims they might have for their rights against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any contemporary institutions would do it for them. 10. Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficulties about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who may well be committed to a life-style for which one has little or no sympathy. On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them. What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can 16 fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy). Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future. The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not however sustainable. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of 11. the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a result of the action. direct and predictable The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. the following sort The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable of policy:- A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that - we would certainly hope that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in mind in denying moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counter­ example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many Of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance of a good life. 12. Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him. These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the (sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. have loves, sympathy, be contracted. In the second case responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or Assiiipp.fl. Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditiohs to be satisfied. They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist. While it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility for the lives of people involved. There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just 13. to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous package on the train. The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which has to be assumed or required. The conflation is encouraged by reductionist positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly endeavour to collapse all obligations. Hence the equation, and some main roots of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future. The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter­ examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example the position that our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;^ there are in practice no obligations to the distant future. A main argument in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding generation. account. There are at least three objections to this chain First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation. Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility. Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence matters. 14. Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written off as "never-never land" examples since many cases of environmental exploitation might be seen as of just this type. e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overuse. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in the way the chain picture suggests. IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECONOMISTIC UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. objectionable in such an approach is that What is economics should operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are. There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue. 15. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle 18 the waste problem. Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument. For it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial) developments as nuclear power. sacrifice argument. That is, it depends on the already scotched In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden. A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of opportunity costs. It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation of resources. Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later. Thus a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes, what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed: it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately 19 monetarily, but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It is also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices, 16. are bound to apply discounting. This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that, on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.). 20 As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same result as the unconstrained position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no 21 more than about 15 years, and application of such rates would simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people. Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral constraints. Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and benefits , it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, 17. such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results. For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party to another . Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a person’s extent of use. The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian’s (happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties, and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. 18. Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we cannot be expected to distant future. take serious account of the effects of our actions on the There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:- In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, fuzzy and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain­ able about the present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the distant future. Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present Associated with this is the attempt to suggest and with respect to the future. a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis of such ’’unreliable” information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty”; for sceptic­ proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. risk of harm in this sort of case. It is enough that there is a significant It does not matter if the decreased well­ being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour of the so-called ’’speculative" and "unreliable”. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why v 19. should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? Why should we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard. But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples’ interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification. The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument, that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for choosing between them. this way:- The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every (action) x”, then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the "It is wrong to do x" type. Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded. If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. on action. Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the 20. argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point, which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in Again there is considerable some cases is the creation of a significant risk. uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties £1 at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where spatially remote people are involved. In particular there is not gross indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this type to make moral constraints applicable. In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the 21. things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons or forever plugged into enjoyment or other machines. prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - Even if one is according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn’t looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of sceptical character are not real possibilities. Another argument which may consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases before such actions could 22. be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility, real or not - it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves. The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then, and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe that they are any more than that, that is they are not live possibilities. The strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future is so great as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy, for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by 23. ignoring such factors. Nor are distributional problems as large and representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue, e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type. In particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The crucial question which emerges is then: are there any features of future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or reduce their claims to such below those of present people? principle None. The answer is : in Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example. But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present: in other words, a theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white­ skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable or practical course of action given only present information) . In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage. To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral 24 consideration; inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this 23a. universalizab ili ty, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. Uncertainty If in a closely comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of 23a. universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. Uncertainty If in a closely comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of 24. harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people. Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices for future waste disposal are immoral. Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion) against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures. Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position. First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of distributive justice not only across time, across generations, but also across space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in another state’s or region’s yard or waters? When that region receives no due compensation (whatever that would amount to, in such a case), and the people do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and the arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can discount people of two centuries hence. (But what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can be discounted over time . ) Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of those in the neighbourhood of reactors, and, differently, as regards the distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant, 25 25. and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor. An immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit tradeoffs" of nuclear technology. That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other large- scale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided. The "normal" emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved. Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately) permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an 26 acceptable level of risk/safety for the public. The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic damage. An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner working in summer. Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way 27 compensate for the agony of cancer. The point is that the costs to one party are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being imposed. People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a 26. particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly, for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent majority). Whatever charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits involved. There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One cheaper trick, deployed by the US 28 Atomic Energy Commission, is to suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population has received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely to have negligible consequences. The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course, so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill- effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’public pacifier’ while 29 private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered. 27. While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’. But such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island).~ If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) 30a reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which 31 these conservative US government figures are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still. The consigner in risking the lives, well-being and property of the passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly. Does a government-sponsored private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the community train. The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the £1 consigners’ action is, as we would ordinarily sible. suppose, inadmissible and irrespon­ The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary, while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out of the ethical arena and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm) . It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the 32 influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. The main argument for this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than mathematical models. As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual, a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear 28. catastrophe. In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different. But we do not live in such a world. According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions and is methodologically sound. This is very far from being the case. The under­ lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as "not credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world. It is the In fact the methodology and data of the report 33 has been soundly and decisively criticized. And it has been shown that there eliminations that are otherworldly. is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident. It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status. The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied to energy options: (i) if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option b; (ii) option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted; 34 therefore option a is acceptable. For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as transaction models. It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant aspects of the context. In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or 29. primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit? It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a 35 comparison on such a basis would be valid. This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason? A risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the 36 nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high. The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other 37 parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g. it can be substituted for or done without. Thus, for instance, one is not usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting oneself. Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of. Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery service, on the train, to the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else leaving the village and their livelihoods. transfer of costs as morally unacceptable. Most of us would see this kind of 30. From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users. The distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable moral features. It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the tramsmission principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. (The corollary can be independeritly argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories). VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle — of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. "workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’the same risk’ of n 38 , , fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry . Furthermore, the various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectors of uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location, for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at any rate, chosen (as is occupational relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation: with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium miner’s choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific Islander’s "fact" of location cannot be. The social issue of arrangements that contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations. 31. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio­ active lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (consider again the effects of core meltdown). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.39 In West Germany the ’politics of nuclear repression is even more evident and more advanced: Behind what must be one of the most impregnable fortifications this side of the East-West German border, work has just begun on building West Germany’s latest nuclear power station. Much 31.1 of the perimeter of the 75-acre site, at Brokdorf in the marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a concrete wall 10 feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire. The rest, regarded as ’strategically observable’, is girdled by a ditch 10 feet wide and filled with water. Approach roads to the site are patrolled by dozens of policemen and the compound itself is guarded by 600 men from a private security organization and by 30 dogs. Such developments presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic societies. That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences tells heavily against it. 32. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunately true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. Since nuclear wars are never accountable positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also undesirable. The details and considerations that fill out this argument, from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to a nuclear power plant, secondly : political, that nuclear engagements once instituted likely to escalate and that those who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with nuclear engagement (up to "strategic nuclear strikes" at least), and thirdly : ethical, that wars invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations. The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and are designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself undesirable. The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is a case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular of the gross uncertainties involved in nuclear development. In cases of this type the appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst consequences (this is a pretty uncontroversial part of the maximin rule which enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences). The nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable alternative. 33. VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to important overriding circumstances. That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go far beyond merely economic considerations. For, as already observed, the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear development — e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice versa. What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear) alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances. Some of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option 34. to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments as well. In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of false dichotomies. A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through 40 encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political 41 structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes. It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor. 35. The poverty argument is then a fraud. help the poor. Nuclear energy will not be used to Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor. It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development. And there are various alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power), 42 each possibly in combination with conservation measures; Despite the availability of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and affluence of certain select groups). Such an assumption really underlies part of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickledown argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting). runs:- For the argument Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing) affluence. Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor. Therefore nuclear First, the argument does not on its own show development benefits the poor. anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy’ is substituted for ’nuclear’. It has also to be shown, what the next major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy alternatives in increasing affluence. The second assumption, that affluence inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita) coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and developed, and through economic models which reveal how "affluence” can increase without redistribution occurring. Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. 4; 36. The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society. But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller examination, can be avoided. The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish - are essential to maintain this whole. These assumptions are hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all it has survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at 37. present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of 44 consumption which is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy. What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza. In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more than they do at present. Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear ... 45 situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance. But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The lights- going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false dichotomy. 38. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the If then we apply - as we have argued we should - appeal to futurity, closed. the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other arguments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on - for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the present and immediate future. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. A corollary is that only political arrangements that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future. VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS. The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example, such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of marketcentred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic theory). To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice. Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy. Such investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic ends. Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission research and development, in marked contrast to other newer rival sources of power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs. The reasons can be divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given (out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm percepts, publicly economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social control. 39. The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is valuable!):- Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social unrest, etc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. part of US energy policy, economics textbooks. The first premiss is and the second premiss is supplied by standard But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth, which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified 47 economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss : Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, benefit-cost ratio’, etc. ’having most favourable Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can decisively, unless Much data, beginning with be assembled to show as much. Yet the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true premisses if the argument is to be decisive. The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental) analyses, and private (utility) assessments. Virtually all available data concerns the USA; in Europe, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly^ controlled” nuclear power are generally not divulged. Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants. Komanoff has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity) 49 will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985. And capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants. rather decisively Another main factor is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators. Coney showed that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative costs of nuclear and coal power, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more 40. expensive than estimated.50 The discrepancy between actual and estimated capacity is especially important because a plant with an actual capacity factor of 55% produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed at the manufacturers ’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%. The low reliability of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the superior reliability of smaller coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nuclear power. These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective, before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken into account. The main subsidies are through research and development, by way of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson Act5'1'), in enrichment, and in waste management. It has been estimated that charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more). When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public costs involved in producing nuclear power. For example, the analyses ignore waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently what the costs involved are. But even using actual waste handling costs (while wastes await storage) is enough to show that coal power is preferable to nuclear. When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in favour of alternatives to nuclear and against nuclear power. In short, even on proper Old Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be rejected. Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public subsidization, of several types. In USA, to take a main example where information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, under Price-Anderson Act the which sharply limits both private and public liability, i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all radioactive wastes. While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as social welfare. Duly admitting social welfare and some equity principles 41. in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leads version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm. to the modern The main changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) as emphasis of economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism). Now it has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends, for example, as well as those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance brown-outs and the like. use, avoidance of shortages, rationing, Since alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve the same ends given power was supplied with suitable extravagance, the argument has again to show that the choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite respects, in serving the public interest. Such an argument is a matter for decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives also fall as special cases. Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice between alternatives; it is presented as the theory which ’deals with the 53 problem of choosing one course of action among several possible courses’. Thus the choice of alternative modes of energy production, the energy choice problem, becomes an exercise in decision theory; and the nuclear choice is often'justified” in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory. But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put to work in such practical cases as energy choice, it is very considerably contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported, and what one is confronted with is a depauperate theory drastically pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic theory. The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the expected utility model. The general model for best choice among alternatives specifies maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may include ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given conditions. Expected utility models demote value to utility, assuming thereby measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless). Thus, in 42. particular, ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage sustained. Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical) economic assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to monetary terms : everything worth accounting has a price), and as to the legitimacy of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties. The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty. It is not a case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable), because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them. Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear war and core meltdown 54 of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development : widespread radio­ active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain. The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy choice, maximin, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended. In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected. Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same rejections for options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of the nuclear option can be effected. All rational roads lead, not to Rome, but to rejection of the nuclear option. A further convergence can be effected also, because the best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as coal and a hydroelectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). conditions complex decision rules (such as the Arrow-Horowicz rule) which take account of both best possible and worst possible outcomes under reduce to the maximin rule. Under these each option Whichever energy option is selected under the maximin rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since there are options where worst outcomes are substantially better than that of the nuclear option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear dream, is realised). Further application of the rejection rule will reject the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects on the earth’s climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels. 43. Although the rejection rule coupled with position several rivals to maximin proposed, maximin enjoys a privileged for decision under uncertainty have been of which has associated rejection rules. each rules, such as the risk- added Some of these reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8), the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of which ’assesses risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly and rather than offering a dubious, rational decision procedure appears to afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo. What will be argued, or rather what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rival rules is applicable, and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear option. For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility (not an entirely unquestionable rule rule ’of strictly limited applicability’) excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have an air of irreversibility ... ’’One cannot the way one can abandon alternatives rule * simply abandon a coal-fired plant’” (p.506). a nuclear reactor The compare-the- in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit assessments, which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear option when costing is done properly. The maximise-sustainable—benefits rule, which ’directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable Other lesser rules Goodin discusses, sources’, ruling out the nuclear option. which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet further from the Old Paradigm framework, vulnerable, also yield harm-avoidance and protecting-the- the same nuclear-excluding results. Harm-avoidance, in particular, points ’decisively in favour of ’’alternative" and "renewable" energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’ The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted (p.442). the result is the same, a standards. nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with probabilities duly multiplied in, and the conclusion is as before from cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice. The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear juggernaut: nor does its Modification. The real reasons for the continuing development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case, sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical economic theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social theory. democratic There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal, and certainly profitable one: corporations so committed are understandably keen to realise returns on capital already invested. There are also typical self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on. There are just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds. Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes. Within contemporary corporate capitalism, these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs. It is then, contemporary corporate capitalism, along with its state enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut. To be sure, corporate capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice. But, unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked on such a future. The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced threshold to a nuclear future confirms this diagnosis. split into two main cases, the national This diagnosis can be development of nuclear power in the US, and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been largely responsible. the Eastern bloc is which had in 1977 only nuclear plants. By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in small and is largely confined to the Soviet Union about one-sixth the wattage output of US Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually no public participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else­ where to any great extent. American technology has. 45. The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of These companies were great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US. encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants, for several state controlled or influenced reasons:- Firstly, owing to governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly, the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation, and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development. In particular, state limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear investment. In the 70s, though the state subsidization continued, the private picture changed : ’high costs of construction combined with low capacity factors and poor reliability have wiped out the cost advantage that nuclear power’ had enjoyed in the US. Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies, Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear 55 technology. These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology, research, enriched uranium and financial capital. ’The US offered a Estate subsidized J nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the British could not compete’. In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies with relevant governments) substantial interests in European held (usually along and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained largely American. Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam. The US proceeded, Spain, in this way, to ship nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world. It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations, but most of whose * budget activities’. and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear 46. A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world markets for reactors. Less developed countries offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with easy public financing, where health and safety regulations are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer easy sales. [For] ... the US has considerable leverage with many of these countries. We know from painful experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support. Many of those same regimes are n°w^ pursuing the nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework of the Old Paradigm and its social Modification, but that the practices (of corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much that is ethically unacceptable, whether percepts;for principles such as by older, modified, or alternative those assembled under fairness and self-determination are grossly violated. IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS ; SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES . The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production i 58 and replacement. To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in Northern Europe, hydroelectricity. The deeper choice, which even softer paths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures. These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to be obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived of as inevitable and unchangeable. (Hence there are solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear ways.) Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options. But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even the more benign technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to them. Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and contemplated by many other energy organisations). While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple expedient of waving around the label ’renewable resources’. Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense 59 of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced. It certainly has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types) which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy, on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, 48. resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems. Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products. In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change is inadequate. Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved. It is not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the to succeed in halting the Vietnam war. way pressure appeared While without doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring nuclear development. The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. This means, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services. A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non- genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.) Consumption frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas. The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the move away from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism and materialist values. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or 61 needs ) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can 48. resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems. Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products. In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change is inadequate. Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved. It is not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the to succeed in halting the Vietnam war. way pressure appeared While without doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsoring nuclear development. The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. This means, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services. A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non- genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.) Consumption frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas. The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the move away from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism and materialist values. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or 61 needs ) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can 49. be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. It is commonly argued by representatives The point is readily illustrated. of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option 62 open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective , a perspective integral with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant paradigm. The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires, hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment. The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they and power structure. mean changes in current social organisation To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train. FOOTNOTES 1. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 2. As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1. As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references given therein. 3. Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339. 4. The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34. 5. See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8. 6. For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1., Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff. 7. Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another. One can argue both from one’s own position against the other, and in the other’s own terms against the other. 8. As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only what, suits them. 9. This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite details up to 1977 see Routley (a). The same conclusion has been reached in some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g., 2 10. For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff. 11. See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 428. 11a. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional (Old Paradigm) way. 12. On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry, see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy. On the more general problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7. 13. Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man replacing God. First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited power. Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the position of unlimitedness. More recently nuclear power is seen as providing man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology, [ability to manage technology represents the past] 14. On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80. All these theorems mimic paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes” on one side and voting "paradoxes" on the other. Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81. It follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is necessarily unknowable. Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture. According the Dominant Western Worldview, the history of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton and Dunlap, p. 34). 15. See Lovins and Price. 15a. The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future, namely . A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities open to future generations. . ’What justice requires ... is that the overall range of opportunities open to successor generations should not be narrowed’ (Barry, p.243). Therefore, a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice. 3 16. For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers ’ positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a). 17. Passmore, p. 91. Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to all appearances, inconsistent. It is considered in detail in Routley (a), as also is Rawls’ position. 18. For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting, and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see Goodin, pp. 429-30. 19. The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform. 20. Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than satisfactory fashion. What he claims is that we cannot list all the possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures. But outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p). For example, outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines as "plant breakdown through human error". Furthermore the different more appropriate rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of "possible" outcomes. are really two points. Goodin’s point can be alternatively stated however. There The first trouble is that such ragbag alternatives cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is at that point that applications of the models breaks down. The breakdown is just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making under risk. Secondly, many influential applications of decision theory methods, the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible alternatives from their modellings. 21. Discount, or bank, rates in the economists’ sense are usually set to follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, Economics, 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p.351. 22. A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate, A real possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. 23. Thus the rates have little moral relevance. The contrast is with mere logical possibility. 4 24. Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and Rousseau to Rawls (p.293). How the principle is argued for will depend heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories. 25. The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the Poverty argument. 26. SF, p. 27. Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat critical of the carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that ’whoever affirms ov' denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree, symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and cultural norms’ 27. (p. 28). The example parallels the sorts of counterexamples often advanced to utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible lynching of pleasure given to the large lynching party. of an innocent person because For the more general case against utilitarianism, see ... 28. US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16. 29. As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail. As she remarks, ... since standards need not be met, so long as the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them, current policy allows government regulators to trade human health and welfare for the [apparent] good intentions of the promotors of technology. [Such] good intentions have never been known to be sufficient for the morality of an act (p. 39). The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very demanding, and the alliance of regulators with those they are supposed to be regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just of (nuclear) pollution control. 30. r 31. The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report: possibilities and consequences of major ’Theoretical accidents in large nuclear plants’, USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957. This report was requested in the first place because the Commission on Atomic Energy wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the private insurance companies” so that they would provide coverage for the nuclear industry. Since even the conservative statistics of the report were alarming it was suppressed and its data were not made public until almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9). 32. Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of Accident Risks in US Commercial Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1975. This report, the only allegedly complete study, concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the public. Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive analysis of nuclear power approved by the1 US Government. 32a. Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy. 33. 34. Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected. 35. There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against numbers such as probabilities. In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through such familiar methods as insurance.) A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows: (ii3) a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted, was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final Report, Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly p. 288. accepted by society as alternative power sources. In other applications b has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!) The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles (i) - (ii ). * The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii’), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted’. But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text. It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries. 36. A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc. Really they try to treat as an uncon­ strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley ’An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’. 37. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 38. SF, p. 15, where references are also cited. 39. Goodin, p. 433. 40. On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jots and Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7, and also the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner, fx------ On the absorption of available capital by the nuclear industry, see as well p. 23. A. Roberts, ’The politics of nuclear power’, Arena No. 41 (1976) 22-47, On the employment issues, see too Daly, in Commoner and others, p. 149. 7 A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illich, Energy and Equality3 Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of what the poor need. 41. For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful3 Blond and Briggs, London, 1973. As to the capital and other requirements, see Fox Report, p.48, and also Commoner, and Commoner and others. For an illuminating look at the sort of development high-energy technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see the paper of Waiko and other papers in TTze Melanesian Environment (edited J.H. Winslow), Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1977. 42. A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken3 Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs3 October 1976); see a|so Nader & Abbotts, p.233 ff., Lovins and Price, Commoner, and Schumacher, op.czt. 43. An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7, with respect to the question of saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics - that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed be fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others. 44. See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commoner. 45. Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A comment on the individual3 the State and Nuclear Power3 Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976. 46. ’US energy policy, for example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, has been that nuclear power is necessary to provide "an economical and reliable basis" needed "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p.lll, and references there cited). 47. There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the literature. For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see Routley (b), and also Berkley and Seckier. To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion of some discussions of nuclear power, c.f. Elster, is to leave out alternatives; the contraction crucial of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty case for unalleged growth. 48. In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain, in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial interests in main nuclear involved companies. Even as regards nuclear plant operation in the US, it is difficult to obtain comprehensive data. Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the sample of plants chosen and the assumptions made concerning the measurement of plant performance (Gyorgy, p. 173). 49. See Kalmanoff, p. 50. See Comey. 51. Ref. to what it has to say about Price Anderson Act. 52. Full ref to SF onargument from ignorance etc. On decision theory see also, 53. These e.g. Elster, p. 377. 54. A recent theme in much economic literature is that Bayesian decision theory and risk analysis can be universally applied. The theme is upset as soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. In any case, even within these confines there is no consensus at all on, and few (and widely diverging) figures for; the probability of a reactor core meltdown, and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation. Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that ’such uncertainties plague energy theories’ as to ’render expected utility calculations impossible’. 55. For details see Gyorgy, p. 398 ff., from which presentation of the international story is adapted. 7 56. Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308. points, see Chomsky For elaboration of some of the important and Hermann. Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old 57. Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many can people respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism. Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and 58. limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those. Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and power industries. 59. Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than they already are often enough. It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument in L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for portable fuels’, and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance. 60. For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy, and also Woodmansee. 61. The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b), and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), Baran and Sweezy. 62. The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised by Naess. For its environmental importance see Routley (c) (where further references are cited). S ta te s o c ia lis m , a s p r a c tis e d in m ost o f th e ’’E a s te rn b lo c ” , d if f e r s a s to econom ic o r g a n is a tio n , th e m a rk e t in p a r t i c u l a r b e in g re p la c e d sy stem by a command s y s te m ) B ut s in c e th e r e i s v i r t u a l l y no d e b a te c o n fin e s o f s t a t e s o c ia lis m , th a t m in o r v a r ia n t on th e Old P arad ig m . by from th e O ld P arad ig m r e a l l y o n ly c e n tr a l p la n n in g (a m a rk e t o v e r a n u c le a r f u tu r e w ith in th e n eed n o t b e d e lin e a te d h e re . JU rt X O 3 Pi X X rt r1 X 3 X rt 03 CL. 03 CD 0 X l-h CD y CD O y cd 03 X rt X O rt pi & Pi rt X O y X y 0 X O (TO *<! CD X-Z" rt (0 X O y 1-+1 03 3 0 CD X Pi CD P y 03 0 CD /—s O Pi y y x CL 0 y l-h X CL CD 3 CD CD X n q CT4 Pi X Pi y 0 CD y. CD x X CD CD y X OQ pi y rt CD X Cl. cr4 Iz5 pi rt y y CD 22 pi rt y y CD 0 y 03 rt rt X CD X4 O CD y rt y y cd O c X rt X y Pi pl X X X CD cd CL. rt CD H« H4 * H 3 02 0 y y 0 CD 03 y CD 03 tn pi y rt * y 03 CD y <j CD 03 cd Pi rt x y X y CD CD y 3 X y <3 X i-J O y M 23 > 03 O O X P5 rt X O y Pi * 1- CD rj CD CL x pi CD C~3 n 0 3 3 y * CT y H4 pi CD H4 H4 CD X H- n 3 pi H4 i— 4 1 02 0 Pl H4 CD CD 0 CD y rt y pi H4 H« 02 CD y. C/2 O OQ rt CD rj 1 Pi 03 X O X Pl 03 X CD CD Ch Cl. 03 y y rj O > X r1 H0CD y Pi rt X CD y pi y 0 y4 H« CD Pi X tzl O y 1 y4 * H CD pi h- y CD 0 pi rt y y CD HO y4 Hy CD Pl Hy CD CD rt u X y 03 rt X rt y rt X O y 03 0 rti t-h X O X Pl X x rt 3 X O pi y y y. rt * 0 y H y 0 cl. C CD OQ y > O < CD h- O Hx) Pi rt X Pi y rt X y rh X y CD y rt X Pi * 1Z X CD y rt 03 z—s CD 03 rt y y 0 rt y y CD 03 CD y X rt Pi rt X > x 0 y rt Q X rt X N 03 rt y y CD rt cd y y y rt (D x-' 02 *H y < O 1—4 <2 CD 3 3 O y PX CD y x o X x X x 0 O y y 0 <2 Hcn X) M era pi I—4 H« y CD CD CL. y CD 0 H« y rt CD y CD 02 rt X y D4 H4 H« CD S X pi 02 y pi pr FT y CD Cl. pi rt 03 y Cl. rh rh O O y y y 2 0 C CD pi Pl 03 C3 y y4 CL. X CD <2 2 B CD y rt cn pi l-h CD 3 rt (D ft fl> *<! rt P3 03 h- y <2 H- y CD Pl CD y t— 4 02 pl rt 0 CD CD y. H« Pl rt I—4 O CD 0 H4 t-4 CD X X l-h rh CD y Cl. CD y y pi rt x X Pl 03 X CD 03 X t-h 1 y4 CD X y CL. X <2 X X o o 2! 0 s X- pi rt y y pi x OQ y 0 3 rt y4 0 y 0 3 X CD cd /—x CD 22 Pi rt y y pi X y rt y * H y 03 X (D Pl X ^~x cn CD X t-h 1 y CD pi X Hcn pi rt X O y pi X pi rt CD y 3 3 O y 1 CD X O X) 3 CD y rt x—✓ CL. CD pi X 03 y 0 y ora CD y 03 CD 0 03 y 03 y o pi CD y CL. <3 pi X y CD 0. CD y < X y 0 y 3 CD y rt pi rt CD y X Pi X 2: 2 <2 fa H4 % y CD H- O y rt y. y4 y 0 y y pi rt 3 CD y y y rt CD 0 y «<; y 3 Pi y CD y rt pi y CD y 0 rt X O y pi 0 3 X y O cn < > X (=1 M 0 n 3 X Pl y pi CL. X ora Pi y pi CL. X OQ 3 XI Cn 0 0 X Pl X y rt pi 0 0 3 X y > rt Pl X 1CD y 1X 1y 10 m 1□ Pi 1 1X •<3 CD y rj CD 1rt 1X REFERENCES USED Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (* ). t I /S. Congrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review 28(2) (1980), 333-51. A. R. Cotton, Jr. , and R. E. Dunlj/p, ’A new ecological paradigm for post­ f / exuberant sociology’ American Behavioural Scientist 24 (1980). 15-47. v/r Report : Vr Ranger Uranium En/ynmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. E. Goodin, ’No moral ni^k^S ’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. Gyorgy and friends, No /Juk^ : everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979 / R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Melbourne, 1977. / / D. * Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. ! N. Myers, The Sinking Ark, x. & Outback Press, / K. * Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reid^l, Dordrecht, 1980 (referred to as SF). R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 97, Item 1: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions Subject The topic of the resource Typescript of draft, corrections with whiteout and handwritten emendations, undated. First page includes correct typescript cut-out pasted on page. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield. Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Val+Plumwood&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Plumwood</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 97, Item 1 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. 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Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:5f472ad">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:5f472ad</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant n/a not listed in manuscript finding aid Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/d6dee996e4a826a5364ced17efb8e381.pdf 2a7c91dab4b339049ea5f589ef30ee7e PDF Text Text SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS PETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE. One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values ... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do A, to others. They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the 'ij^nes of competing paradigms." According to the entrenched paradigm discerned, that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm), economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise. In particular, there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of scientists in particular. ... there is an emphasis on quantification. The rival world view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm (the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists, 4 in ways summarised in the following table �Dominant Social Paradigm^ Alternative Env'i ronmen tal Paradigm CORE VALUES Material (economic growth, progress and development) Natural environment valued as resource Domination over nature Non-material (self­ realisation) Natural environment intrinsically valued Harmony with nature * ECONOMY Market forces Risk and reward Towards for achievement Differentials Individual self-help Public interest Safety Incomes related to need Egalitarian Collective/social provision I POLITY Authoritative structures (experts influential) Hierarchical ----.Law and order ^Action through official institutions) ——Centralized ---------Large-scale Associational Ordered Participative structures (citizen/worker involvement) ^■Non-hierarchical Liberation Direct action /Decentralised" * Small-scale Communal Flexible NATURE Ample reserves Nature hostile/neutral Environment controllable Earth’s resources limited Nature benign Nature delicately balanced KNOWLEDGE Confidence in science and technology Rationality of means (only) Limits to science Rationality of ends * ^tate socialism, as practiced in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs from the Old Paradigm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system). But since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of state socialism,that minor variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated here. �No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple ^and subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements’^: and really ^instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the Old Paradigm). Nonetheless it is empirically investigable, and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed. Large- scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world, runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm. Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm. For under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other ^instrumental details^: whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as) irrational. Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents of the Old Paradigm. Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed to fails. But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future (a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured. There are two main parts'^?:- It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project selection). It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice, �3 the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate capitalism. It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy roptions within a predetermined framework of values. ^In this corner belong, as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best utilitarian means to predetermined ends.) For another leading characteristic of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical g or legal or mathematical details. The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear development poses. There are many interrelated problems, and the argument is further structured in terms of these. For in the advancement and promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never ^before assembled^: establishment, on a. massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and intervention. with problems. It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes. II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE. A long distance country train has just pulled out. crowded carries both passengers and freight. The train which is At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packaged in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the �4 full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. All of these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it. These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen when the consigner, again a "responsible” businessman, puts his workers' health or other peoples' welfare at risk. Suppose he ways that it is his own and others1pressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one's own, or one's group's, chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble the train case. /progresses. How fitting the a^gwaent is will become apparent as the argument There is no known proven safe way tjfi package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as 9 large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with �5. each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years.10 Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter­ vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environment. In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and 1 la damaging their environment. Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance, none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may �6. well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. provide a rigorous guarantee of Only a method that could safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons- grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it. (L The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000, / e. 'which gets around the wast^ storage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem) is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways, / /'n /an article of faith. It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always immediately economically feasible). The assumption has played an important part in development plans and practice. It has not only encouraged an unwarranted 13 technological optimism (not to say hubris ), that there are no limits to what humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably controlled. It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters. There are severe limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the 14 form of limitation theorems ); and in addition there are human limitations which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed below). The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would provide unlimited energy (a ’clean unlimited supply of power’). shattered. and nuclear That dream soon The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power, fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power. �7. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy source for only perhaps 150 years. It will do nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an with it. over-populated world not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global industrialisation are realised, more and more ^pf the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it. It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life, 15a are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the idea that future people muelF be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries. It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power. The 'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes �8. in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. I Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it will be argued - clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of those comparatively few who benefit from them. If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum­ stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less clearcut. It is the same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn, beginning with the question of our obligations to the future. Resolution of this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop­ ment. It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII). Ill OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due. account of the interests of future creatures. �Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:- Firstly there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to enforce any claims they might have for their rights Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any contemporary institutions would do it for them. �10. Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficulties about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who may well be committed to a life-style for which one. has little or no sympathy. On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them. What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).^ Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future. The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not however sustainable. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of �11. the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a result of the action. direct and predictable The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sort^ of policy:- A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that - we would certainly hope that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in /mind^denying moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally But it is not. It is not as if, in the counter- example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many ^Jf the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance of a good life. �12. Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him. These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the (sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. In the second case responsibility arises I have loves, sympathy, be contracted. as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist. While it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility for the lives of people involved. There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just �13. to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous package on the train. The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which has to be assumed or required. The conflation is encouraged by reductionist positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly endeavour to collapse all obligations. Hence the equation, and some main roots * of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future. The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter­ examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example the position that our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;17 there are in practice no obligations to the distant future. A main argument in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding generation. account. There are at least three objections to this chain First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation. Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility. Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence matters. �14. Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases of environmental exploitation might be. seen as of just this type. e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overuse. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in the way the chain picture suggests. IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECQNQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. objectionable in such an approach is that What is economics should operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are. There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue. �15. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle 18 the waste problem. Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument. For it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial) developments as nuclear power. sacrifice argument. That is, it depends on the already scotched In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden. A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of opportunity costs. It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation of resources. Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later. Thus a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes, what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed: it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately 19 monetarily, but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It is also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices, �16. are bound to apply discounting. This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that, on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined x 20 and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.). As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same result as the unconstrained position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no 21 more than about 15 years, and application of such rates would simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people. Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral constraints. Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or unevenly weighted, �17. such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results. For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party to another . Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a person’s extent of use. The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian’s (happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties, and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the wa/ the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created^ such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. �18. Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we cannot be expected to taj^ke serious account of the effects of our actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:- In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, fuzzy and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain­ able about the present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the distant future. Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present Associated with this is the attempt to suggest and with respect to the future. a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis of such ’’unreliable" information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic­ proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the,, present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. risk of harm in this sort of case. It is enough that there is a significant It does not matter if the decreased well­ being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable". But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why �19. should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? Why should we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard. But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification. The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument, that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for choosing between them. this way:- The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every (action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the "It is wrong to do x" type. Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded. If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. on action. Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the �20. argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point, which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in Again there is considerable some cases is the creation of a significant risk. uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where spatially remote people are involved. In particular there is not gross indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this type to make moral constraints applicable. In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the �21. things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be r I morons o^ forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. /prepared to accent the elitist approach presupposed p Even if one is according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn’t looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. p The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of /sceptical character are not ^feal possibilities. Another argument which may consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases before such actions could �22. be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility, 22 real or not - it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves. The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then, and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe The 'that they are any more than that^ that is they are not live possibilities. strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future yis so great as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy, for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by �23. ignoring such factors. Nor are distributional problems as large and representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve^ or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue, n e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type. In particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The crucial question which emerges is then?: are there any features of future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or reduce their claims to such below those of present people? principle None. The answer is?: in Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example. But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present?: in other words, a theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white­ skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable ol * present information). practical course of action given only In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage. To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral 7/ consideration; inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this �23a. universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. Uncertainty If in a closely comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of �harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people. Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices for future waste disposal are immoral. Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion) against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures. Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just treatment, neither does location in spa^e, or a particular geographical position. First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of distributive justice not only across time,1 across generations, but also across space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in I another state’s or region’s (or waters^ yar<^ When that region receives no due compensation (whatever that would amount to , in such a case), and the people do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and the arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can discount people of two centuries hence. (But what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can (be discounted over time)L Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of f kood' those in the neighbouij/ of reactors, and, differently, as regards the distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant, �25. and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor. An immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology. That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided. The "normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation (A 'carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved. Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately) permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an 26 acceptable level of risk/safety for the public. The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic damage. An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner working in summer. Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way 27 compensate for the agony of cancer. The point is that the costs to one party are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being imposed. People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a �26. particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly, for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent majority). Whatever i-ktr charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits involved. There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One cheaper trick, deployed by the US 28 Atomic Energy Commission,” is to suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent to the ’’natural” level) is also likely to have negligible consequences. The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course, so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill- effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’’imposed” is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’public pacifier' while 29 private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered. �27. While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence . * But such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island). 30 If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) 30a reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident ini a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000l people would be killed instantly •and at least 100,000 would die as a result of: the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the sizei of Pennsylvania would be destroyed, Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which 31 -k the consequences ofr a these conservative US government figures are given : similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still. V The consigner in risking the li^es, well-being and property of the / passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly. Does a government-sponsored private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the community train, The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily •suppose, inadmissible and irrespon- The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary, & (while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out if the ethical arena / and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm). sible. 0 It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that Indeed in the there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. 32 influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly CO jstrong, imp?yjbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible. The main argument for this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than mathematical models. As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual, a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear �28. catastrophe. In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different. But we do not live in such a world. According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions and is methodologically sound. This is very far from being the case. The under­ lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as "not credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world. It is the In fact the methodology and data of the report 33 has been soundly and decisively criticized. And it has been shown that there eliminations that are otherworldly. is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident. It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status. The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied to energy options: (i) if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option b; rV\ (ii) option a involves a total net cost in ter^s of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted; 34 therefore option a is acceptable. For example, the number lively to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than k the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are < 'accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.^ little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as transaction models. It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant aspects of the context. In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or �29. primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit? It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a 35 comparison on such a basis would be valid. This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason? A risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the or nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high. The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs” is one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other 37 parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g. it can be substituted for or done without. Thus, for instance, one is not usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting oneself. Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which J !is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of. Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery service, on the train, to the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else leaving the village and their livelihoods. transfer of costs as morally unacceptable. Most of us would see this kind of �30. From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users. The distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable moral features. It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the tramsmission principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. (The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories). VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the ^environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from the * fuel cycle. nuclear The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of , 5 materials. Several of these stageyf involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’the same risk’ of 38 ffatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry^. Furthermore, the Various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectoj^ of uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at any rate, chosen (as is occupational relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation: with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium miner’s choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific Islander’s ’’fact" of location cannot be. The social issue of arrangements that contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations. �Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors /that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio­ active lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (consider again the effects of core meltdown), Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such /massive explosives/ No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. / / 5 In part to reduce it/ vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it ^nswerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.^9 developments the Uni-ted Kingdom; and worse i-R Weot Germany presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic societies. That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences tells heavily against it. /•fS j2a?c bEHmR - - *. i » /> . . Bvhi nd what mirt bv one of the most impregnable fortifications this side of the East-West German border, work has just begun on building West Gerpianv’s latest nuclear power station.- Much of the perimeter of the 75-acre site, at Brokdorf m the marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a concrete wall io feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire. I he rest, regarded as ‘strategic ally observable.' is girdled by a ditch io feet wide and fill ed with water. Approach roads to the site arc patrolled by dozens of policemen and the compound itself is guarded by 6oo men from a private security organization and b\ jg dogs. '* -4? �32. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunately true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. Since nuclear wars are never accountable positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also undesirable. The details and considerations that fill out this argument, from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to, a nuclear power plant, secondly' political, A that nuclear engagements once instituted likely to escalate and that those A who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with A nuclear engagement (up to "strategic nuclear strikes” at least), and thirdly ** , $ A /ethical, that warj( invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive 5 damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations. The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and yare designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself y undesirable. The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is O . 27 ya case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular /f the gross uncertainties involved in nuclear development. In cases of this type the appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst 5 / consequence^ (this is a pretty un con troversial part of the maxim'nw rule which enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences). The nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable alternative. �33. /VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS^ AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR I DEVELOPMENT♦ As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to important overriding circumstances. That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go far beyond merely economic considerations. For, as already observed, the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice versa. What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear) alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances. Some, of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on / /competing^to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future o I significant risk ^f serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option �34. I to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living i/' some other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of as well. false dichotomies. A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through 40 encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political 41 structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes. It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor. �35. The poverty argument is then a fraud. help the poor. Nuclear energy will not be used to Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor. It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development. And there are various alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power), 42 each possibly in combination with conservation measures; Despite the availability of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and affluence of certain select groups). Such an assumption really underlies part of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickle- down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting). runs:- For the argument Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing) affluence. Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor. Therefore nuclear First, the argument does not on its own show development benefits the poor. anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy’ is substituted for ’nuclear’. It has also to be shown, what the next major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy alternatives in increasing affluence. The second assumption, that affluence inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita) coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and developed, and through economic models which reveal how "affluence" can increase without redistribution occurring. Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. 4 �36. The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society. But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller examination, can be avoided. The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish - are essential to maintain this whole. These assumptions are hard to accept. Xz The assumption that technological ^soc^ety's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all it has survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at �37. present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of /assumption which 44 is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, 6©' What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza. In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more than they do at present. Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other thingsJof its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear ' 45 situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance. But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The lights- going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false dichotomy. �38. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the If then we apply - as we have argued we should - appeal to futurity, closed. the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other arguments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the present and immediate future. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. A corollary is that only political arrangements that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future. VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS. The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example, such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market- centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic theory). To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice. Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy. Such investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic ends. Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission ^research and development, in marke^T contrast to other newer rival sources of power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs. The reasons can be 'divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given ^(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm p^gcepts, publicly economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social control. �39. The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is valuable!):- Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is 46 part of US energy policy, and the second premiss is supplied by standard unrest, etc.). economics textbooks. But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth, which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified 47 economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss : Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, 'economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable benefit-cost ratio', etc. Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear ^development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. decisively, unless Much data, beginning with /the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can\be assembled to show as much. Yet the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true premissiFve** /f the argument is to be decisive. The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental) analyses, and private (utility) assessments. Virtually all available data /concerns the USA; in Euro^ _e, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly/controlled” nuclear power are generally not divulged. / A Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants. Ka-emanoff has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity) 49 will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985. And I capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell^ rather decisively against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants. Another main factor is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators. Coney showed that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative fcosts of nuclear and coal/, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more �40. expensive than estimated.The discrepancy between actual and estimated ‘ capacity is especially important because a plant with an actual1/factor of 55% produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%. y The low reliability / of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic /reliability of y /grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nucleai/'. / These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective, before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken into account. The main subsidies are through research and development, by way of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson /kct^S, in enrichment, and in waste management, It has been estimated that charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more). When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public costs involved in producing nuclear power, For example, the analyses ignore waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently what the costs involved are. o 4 But even using actual waste handling costs (while /wastes await storage) is enough to show that coa ljjis preferable to nuclear. When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in ✓ y / ^ / favo ur of alternatives to nuclear and against nucleaj/. In short,, even on p/per 'r Q1& Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be j ze- Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been /kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public subsidization, of several types. In USA, to take a main example where information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through s heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, ■through the ^Price-Anderson Act/ which sharply limits both private and public liability, i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all radioactive wastes. While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as /social welfare. Duly admitting social welfare and some principles �41. 6t / /in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leads/the modern //version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm. The main /changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) a^emphasis of economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism). Now it has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power ll« is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends , for example, As (j&lj 45 • from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap e, ./electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance /use, avoidance of shortages, rationing, C2 -outs and the like. Since /alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve ends given power was /supplied with suitable extravagance, the d^eement has again to show that the choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite respects, in serving the public interest. Such an argument is a matter for decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives also fall as special cases. Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice between alternatives; it is presented as the theory which ’deals with the 53 problem of choosing one course of action among several possible courses’. Thus the choice of alternati’ve modes of energy production, the energy choice ^problem, becomes an exercise -arrrd decision theory; and the nuclear choice is of ten ’5 us tified" in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory. But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put to work in such practical cases as energy choice, it is very considerably contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported, and what one is confronted with is theory drastically /pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic theory. The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the 5 expected utility model. The general model for best choice among alternatives /specified maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may include ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given /conditions. models demote value to utility, assuming thereby measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless). Thus, in �particular, ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage sustained. Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical) economic assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to monetary terms : everything w^Lth account^n^/has a price), and as to the legitimacy of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties. The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty. It is not a case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable), because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them, Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear 1war and core meltdown 54 [of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development/ widespread radio active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain. The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy /choice, maximum, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended. In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected. f Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same for options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of the nuclear option can be effected. All rational roads lead, not to Rome, but to rejection of the nuclear option. t z A further convergence can be effected also, L'tbecause ci LiO Lthe best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as Ci .r D l/ j, [coal and^hydroO Celectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). Under these conditions complex decision rules (^such as the Arrow-H^^wicz rule) which take £ /account of both best possible and /reduce to the maxim^in rule. possible outcomes under wfk *ch option^ Whichever energy option is selected under the /maximwffi rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since/(eere options where worst outcomes are than that of the nuclear option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear dream, is realised). Further application of the rejection rule will reject the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects on the earth's climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels. �HHHB 43. Although the rejection rule coupled with enjoys a privileged several rivals to maximise for decision under uncertainty have been of which has associated rejection rules. proposed, rules, such as the risk- AdkW Some of these reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8), the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of which ’ risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly decision procedure appears to and rather than offering a dubious, afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo. What will be argued, or rather what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rules is applicable. and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear option. For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility rule (not an entirely unquestionable rule/ ’of strictly limited applicability’) excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have a nuclear reactor ran air of irreversibility ... "One cannot pimply a coal-fired plant'” (p.506). The compare-the /alternatives rule, in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit assessments, which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear option when costing is done properly. The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule, which 'directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable sources', ruling out the nuclear option. Other lesser rules Goodin discusses, which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet ^further from the Old Paradigm ie framework ^arm-avoidance and protecting-the- vulnerable^also yieldj/ the same nuclear-excluding results. Harm-avoidance, in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable" energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’ The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted (p.442). the result is the same, a^ nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm standards. Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with probabilities duly multiplied in, and the is as before from cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice. The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear juggernaut: nor does its Modification. The real reasons for the continuing development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case, sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical, economic �/theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social 1 theory. There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal, and certainly profitable one: corporations so committed are understandably keen to realise returns on capital already invested. There are also typical self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on. There are just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds. Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes. Within contemporary corporate capitalism, these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs. It is then, contemporary corporate capitals^m, along with its state enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut. To be sure, corporate capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice. But, unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked on such a future. The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced threshold to a nuclear future, confirms this diagnosis. This diagnosis can be /split into two main cases, the national development of nuclear power in the /US^ and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been largely responsible. By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in /the Eastern bloc is which had in 1977 only nuclear plants. II and is largely confined to the Soviet Union oneCj-5^ -** the wattage output of U/ Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually no public participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else­ where to any great extent. American technology has. �45. The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US. These companies were encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants, for several state controlled or influenced reasons:- Firstly, owing to governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly, the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation, and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development. In particular, state limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear 4 /investment. In the 70s, though the state subsidization picture changed : continued, the private ’high costs of construction combined with low capacity //factors and poor reliability have wiped out the advantage that nuclear/ had enjoyed in the US. Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies, Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear technology. " These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology, /research, enriched uranium and financial capital. (The US offered a jstate /subsidized) nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the ' British could not compete’. In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies /held dcadSjig with relevant governments) substantial interests in European and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained largely American. Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for X example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, / Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, , /Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam. The US proceeded?in their way, to ship nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world. It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations, but most of whose * budget activities’. and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear �A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world Less developed countries markets for reactors. 2 offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with easy public financing, where health and safety regulations are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer / easy sales. fForJ ... the US has considerable leverage with many of these countries. We know from painful experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet . would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support. ' Many of those are now^ y?ocrinithe nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. ' J It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework of the Old Paradigm and social Modification, but that the practices (of corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much that is ethically unacceptable, by o^rfer, modified, or alternative percepts;^ for principles such as assembled. viyxAi/r and self-determination are grossly violated. IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it ii carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production 1 58 and replacement. To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in Northern Europe, hydroelectricity. The deeper choice, which even softer paths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures. These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to be obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet �47. given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these I alleged needs conceived of ps inevitable and unchangeable. (Hence there are solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear ways.) Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options. But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even the more benign technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to them. Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and contemplated by many other energy organisations). While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple expedient of waving around the label ’renewable resources’. Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense 59 of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced. It certainly has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types) which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy, on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, �48. resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems. Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products. In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change is inadequate. Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved. It is not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the to succeed in halting the Vietnam war. way pressure appeared While without doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsorinanuclear , . , 60 development. The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. This means, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services. A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non- genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.) Consumption frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas. The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the move away from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism and materialist values. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can �49. be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. I /'of The point is readily illustrated. such industries as f transportation It is commonly argued by representatives and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective0 , a perspective integral with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant paradigm. The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires, hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment. The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they and power structure. mean changes in current social organisation To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train. �FOOTNOTES 1. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 2. As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1. As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references given therein. 3. Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339. 4. The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34. 5. See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8. 6. For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1 Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff. 7. Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another. One can argue both from one’s own position against the other, and in the other’s own terms against the other. 8. As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only what, suits them. 9. This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite details up to 1977 see Routley (a). The same conclusion has been reached in some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g., �2 10. z For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff. 11a. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional (Old Paradigm) way. 11. See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 42^? 12. On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry, see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy. On the more general problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7. Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man 13. replacing God. First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the power. position of unlimitedness. More recently nuclear power is seen as providing man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology, [ability to manage technology r&a/esents the past] On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80. All these theorems mimic paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes" on the other. Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81. It follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is necessarily unknowable. Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture. According the Dominant Western Worldview, / the his histo^ of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton and Dunlap, p. 34). 15. See Lovins and Price. /15a. The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future, namely . A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities open to future generations. . ’What justice requires ... is that the overall range of opportunities open to successor generations should not be narrowed' T- re (Barry, p.243). re~ a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice. �3 16. For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers' positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a). 17. Passmore, p. 91. Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to all appearances, inconsistent. It is considered in detail in Routley (a), as also is Rawls’ position. 18. For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting, and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see Goodin, pp. 429-30. 19. The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform. 20. Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than What he claims is that we cannot list all the satisfactory fashion. possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures. But outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p). For example, outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines as "plant breakdown through human error”. Furthermore the different I mote rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of ' "possible" outcomes. Goodin's point can be alternatively stated however. are really two points. The first trouble is that such There alternative^ cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is at that point that applications of the models breaks down. The breakdown is just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making under risk. Secondly, many influential Applications of decision theory methods, I the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible X /alternatives from their 21. Discount, or bank, rates in the economists’ sense are usually set to follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, TfoCTZCWWS., 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p.351. 22. Thus the rates have little moral relevance. A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere logical possibility. �4 24. Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and •-jtA? >v / Rousseau to Rawls (p. 293). How the principle is will depend ' heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories. 25. The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the Poverty argument. 26. SF, p. 27. Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat crritical of the /carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that^whoever affirm^ denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree, /symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and culture / * (p. 28). 27. The example parallels the sorts of utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible »unterexamples often advanced to I of an innocent person because of pleasure given to the large lynching party. For the more general case against utilitarianism, see ... 28. US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing Office, Washington, 29. , December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16. As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail. As she remarks, ... since standards need not be met, so long as the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them, current policy allows government regulators to trade .■ human health and welfare for the [apparent] good. E^j/ch] / intentions of the promotors of technology. / good intentions have never been known to be sufficient for the morality of an act (p. 39). The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very X /demanding, and the alliance of regulators with they are supposed to be regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just of (nuclear) pollution control. 30. �The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report: 31. possibilities and consequences of major ’Theoretical accidents in large nuclear plants’, USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957. This report was requested in the first place because the ^n Atomic Energy wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the private insurance companies" so that they would provide coverage for the nuclear industry. Since even the conservative statistics of the report were alarming it was suppressed and its data were not made public until almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9). Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of 32. Accident Risks in US Commercial. Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1975. This report, the only allegedly complete study, concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the public. Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government. 32a. Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy. 33. 34. Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected. 35. There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against numbers such as probabilities. In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through such familiar methods as msuranc^Ly A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows: a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted, was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development �in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final- Report , Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources, In other applications b has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!) points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles (i) - (ii’). The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially ^accepted if as much as is nc^ known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'. But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text. It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries. 36. A main part of the troub|le/with the models is that they are narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc. Really they try to treat as an uncon- strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’. 37. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 38. SF, p. 15, where references are also cited. 39. Goodin, p. 433. 40. On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7, the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner-, well the absorption off available capital by the nuclear industry, see as e-'/ On the mployment issues, see too idd, p. 149. A Z|. K-ola&Az, -fl '(La. j>o/'-bics d �A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illicit, Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of what the poor need. For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Blond, and Briggs, London, 19 73. o As_to the capital and <o other requirements, see/£2J, p. 48, and also For an illuminating look at the sort o technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited J.H. Winslow), ^usp/alian National University Press, Canberra, 1977. 42. A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 19 76); see alsod^tT'J,p. 233«r-ff^ and Schumacher, op. cit. 43. An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7, with respect to the question saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned fl by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others. cK See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commor^. Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A comment on the individual^ the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976. 46. ’US energy policy, fo^ example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic / Energy Act, has been that/nuclear power is necessary to provide "an economical /and reliable basis" r^te'ded "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p.lll, and references there cited). �7 47. There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the literature. n X For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see - ■ — '■ Routley (b) , and alsoj'Berkley and Seckier. To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion lZ-lof soiief discussions of nuciear power, c,f/ Elster, is to leave out crucial X /alternatives; the of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty case for unalleged growth. 48. In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain, in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial interests in main nuclear involved companies. Even as regards nuclear plant operation in the US, / I it is difficult to obtain comprehensive Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the samp 1p of plants chosen and the assumptions made concerning the measurement of plant performance (Gyorgy, p. 173). 49. See Kalmanoff, p. 50. See Comey. 51. Ref. to what it has to say about Price 52. Full ref to ^F from ignorance etc. 53. These e.g. Elster, p. 377. On decision theory see also, I f54. A recent theme iyymuch economic literature is that theory and risk analysis can be universally applied. The theme is upset as soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. y £ /within these confines there is no decision In any case, even at all on, and few (and ^widely diverging) figures for> the probability of a reactor core meltdown, and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation, Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that ’such uncertainties plague energy theories’ utility calculations impossible”. as to ’ 55. For details see Gyorgy, P. 398 ff., from which presentation of the international story is adapted. �Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308. 56. For elaboration of some of the important points, see Chesrmsky and Hermann. Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old 57. Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many J people respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism. Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and 58. ^v\ limited use of unacceptable long ter^ commodities such as coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those. Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and power industries. Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that 59. forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than they already are often enough. It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument in L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for portable fuels’ 9 60. and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance. For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy, and also . The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b), and and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), 61. V Gyorgy-.' 62. by The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised For its environmental importance see Routley (c) (where further references are cited). �/references. primary General the For t the reader ca ext that over er...ref^ences wilt—unS'"by consulting the latter ■ S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review 2$ (2) (1980), 333-51. R.E. Goodin, ’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979. R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1977. R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)). Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980 (referred to as SF). W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47. United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report to the President, Washington. (Dept, of Energy) 1979. (Ref. No. El. 28. TID- 29442) (cited as US(a)). L, A.B. Covins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975. R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyje, , 23 (1980), 145-66. R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in honour of Paul Weing^T^^ (ed. E. 'tforsc^er) , Salzberg, 1980. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, D^ckwairth, London, 1974. Passmore, �2. R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)). J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., J) 3fid ^/s^ckler o i/i_ t~ot^/c\ l * _ J. Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information 18 (3) (1979) 371-400. £, £ J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971. / Barry, ’Circumstances of Justice and future generations' in Obligations to Future Generations (ed. ^ .1. * Si^rrj^and B. Barry), Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 19 78. /f £< c Zy c>~f . - ) yT —f. f / 1 /f4. c~~tt\A c j < / /7Z , (X KT , // / /{. fi)o^S $ ; } //67- Zy? z77G_ /6 6z7 3)?r * 6 /V4 ■ C rr * /f / <^ch_^ /_ z?73. . \Jol.jJZ �o 0 Hh Z CL 3 TO o p. 3 3 Z 3 o z co rt O rt TO B z f Z CL TO 3 3 O Hi 3 3 3 3 PO □ 3 Z Prt pj £rt O Z O 00 *< *3 3 3 O '•s rt Z CL 'C 3 3 "o' 3 3 co o 3 3 fb 3 i-h O >< P- O rt (0 z 3 3 rt PO 0 (b z o w O a P M § o B rt rt 3 3 O' 3 Z 3 3 3 3 CL CL 3 Z Z 3 3 rt 3 Z L<J z 3 rt 3 3 3 prt 3 CL B Z Z z w 3 3 rt 3 a rt 3 S' 3 TO O' 3 3 3 3 P- TO 00 O 5 C 3 3 3 TO O' Z Z 3 3 3 rt rt O Z Z 3 3 * < rt •3 Z 3 Z 3 3 3 O 3 rt * 3 3 3 O CD to 3 3 rt rt 3 Z < O Z 3 O 3 CO M z > 3 3 > H g s M Z P1 3 X PO' Z 3 >3 g 3 3 Z n o P' P> 1 tn 3 3 * p 3 O > f rf CO 3 CL CD rf 3 O 00 3 O 3 3 P- 1 CL 3 3 rt O Z 3 O Z 3 3 3 * p 3 3 rt 3 3 * P PTO 3 CL 3 3 O 3 3 rt rf 3 Z Z TO 3 CL n O Z w A t< O <Z> * H O s cn rt H» rt C rt B co * H H« CD F—* n Hl Hl H« :r o > z o 5 1 S' P3 3 3 3 3 S' P3 3 P- Z 3 rf 3 H O S' PO 3 Z t-1 a o 3 Ft s: H« O 3 3 3 CL rt P" O H 3 O CL c 3 0Q 3 P3 <S n O rt C O 3 Z 3 3 Z 3 3 rt P. 3 Pz 3 rt * P < 3 rt P3 * p 3 3 C rt> p * 3 Z z—\ 3 M X) 3 3 rt co 3 3 tn C CD rt 3 c n rt > C rt * 3 O 3 Prt 3 rt Z < 3 f Z A A Z o z 3 «! 3 3 CL CO Z 2 z 3 O < Pco p> o 3 TO O 3 P3 Z 3 o p> P1 3 3 rt P< 3 M 00 3 Z p. rt 3 3 Z 3 3 3 3 3 CL rt O 3 3 Z 3 rt 3 CL H 3 3 O 3 3 TO rt 3 tn p rti 3 rt 3 rt 3 3 3 TO rt P‘ Z 3 O' z p3 H- 3 CD 3 z Z 3 3 3 3 CL rh 3 3 rt rt> 0 Z H- O 3 3 CD 3 $ O Si 3 CD H1 3 CD 3 3 CD 3 3 Z t-h S' CL 1 PS' 3 < 3 Z 3 B >3 3 Hi Hi fl) H fl) * 3 H pf o CL Z < PCL X- W n o z o J3j z 3 rt C 3 3 Z C 3 S P3 rt 3 P3 CD Pn 3 3 CD CD rt p. o 9 fl) CD rt) H Hi 1 z-s 1 3 jb rt rt) K * H CD z O 3 5 rt g CL 3 < 3 Z O Z 3 Z TO 3 O 3 00 3 3 CO 3 O CD C CD 3 3 3 3 3 CL 5 2 z-s 3 O O 3 ? 3 rt 3 3 Z (u Z B 3 3 P3 O rt 00 < 3 3 O Z « C rt 3 S' CL • 3 3 < P3 O 2 3 rt C 3 3 pi < 3 Z c 3 P- 3 0 rt CL < S' P3 O 3 3 g rt 3 3 3 rt 3 o 5 B SS 3 3 3 3 3 3 rt 3 O < 3 3 3 3 rt Z O 3 p- o B e W cz> n o Z w <3 > r c z 3 3 3 CL Z 00 B Z 3 3 3 CL P00 B cn o o p3 Z rt 3 3 5 z O O B Alternative Environmental �Dominant Social Paradigm Alternative Environmental Paradigm Domination over nature Non-material (self-realisation) Natural environment intrinsically valued Harmony with nature * ECONOMY Market forces Risk and reward Rewards for achievement Differentials Individual self-help Public interest Safety Incomes related to need Egalitarian Collective/social provision POLITY Authoritative structures (experts influential) Hierarchical Law and order Action through official institutions Participative structures (citizen/ worker involvement) Non-hierar chical Liberation Direct action SOCIETY Centralised Large-scale Associational Ordered Decentralised Small-scale Communal Flexible NATURE Ample reserves Nature hostile/neutral Environment controllable Earth’s resources limited Nature benign Nature delicately balanced KNOWLEDGE Confidence in science and technology Rationality of means (only) Limits to science Rationality of ends CORE VALUES Material (economic growth, progress and development) Natural environment valued as resource State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced system by a command system).$ But since there is virtually no debate confines of state socialism, that minor variant on the Old Paradigm from the Old Paradigm really only by central planning (a market over a nuclear future within the need not be delineated here. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document SOCIAL AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS PETING PARADIGMS AND THE NUCLEAR DEBATE. One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values ... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. Sociological investigations have confirmed that the nuclear debate is primarily one over what is worth having or pursuing and over what we are entitled to do A, to others. They have also confirmed that the debate is polarised along the 'ij^nes of competing paradigms." According to the entrenched paradigm discerned, that constellation of values, attitudes and beliefs often called the Dominant Social Paradigm (hereafter the Old Paradigm), economic criteria become the benchmark by which a wide range of individual and social action is judged ahd evaluated. And belief in the market and market mechanisms is quite central. Clustering around this core belief is the conviction that enterprise flourishes best in a system of risks and rewards, that differentials are necessary ..., and in the necessity for some form of division of labour, and a hierarchy of skills and expertise. In particular, there is a belief in the competence of experts in general and of scientists in particular. ... there is an emphasis on quantification. The rival world view, sometimes called the Alternative Environmental Paradigm (the New Paradigm) differs on almost every point, and, according to sociologists, 4 in ways summarised in the following table Dominant Social Paradigm^ Alternative Env'i ronmen tal Paradigm CORE VALUES Material (economic growth, progress and development) Natural environment valued as resource Domination over nature Non-material (self­ realisation) Natural environment intrinsically valued Harmony with nature * ECONOMY Market forces Risk and reward Towards for achievement Differentials Individual self-help Public interest Safety Incomes related to need Egalitarian Collective/social provision I POLITY Authoritative structures (experts influential) Hierarchical ----.Law and order ^Action through official institutions) ——Centralized ---------Large-scale Associational Ordered Participative structures (citizen/worker involvement) ^■Non-hierarchical Liberation Direct action /Decentralised" * Small-scale Communal Flexible NATURE Ample reserves Nature hostile/neutral Environment controllable Earth’s resources limited Nature benign Nature delicately balanced KNOWLEDGE Confidence in science and technology Rationality of means (only) Limits to science Rationality of ends * ^tate socialism, as practiced in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs from the Old Paradigm really only as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced by central planning (a market system by a command system). But since there is virtually no debate over a nuclear future within the confines of state socialism,that minor variant on the Old Paradigm need not be delineated here. No doubt the competing paradigm picture is a trifle simple ^and subsequently it is important to disentangle a Modified Old Paradigm, which softens the old economic assumptions with social welfare requirements’^: and really ^instead of a New Paradigm there are rather counterparadigms, a cluster of not very well worked out positions that diverge from the cluster marked out as the Old Paradigm). Nonetheless it is empirically investigable, and, most important, it enables the nuclear debate to be focussed. Large- scale nuclear development, of the sort now occurring in much of the world, runs counter to leading tenets (such as societal features) of the New Paradigm. Indeed to introduce ethical and social dimensions into the assessment of nuclear power, instead of or in addition to merely economic factors such as cost and efficiency, is already to move somewhat beyond the received paradigm. For under the Old Paradigm, strictly construed, the nuclear debate is confined to the terms of the narrow utilitarianism upon which contemporary economic practice is premissed, the issues to questions of economic means (to assumed economistic ends) along with technological, social engineering and other ^instrumental details^: whatever falls outside these terms is (dismissed as) irrational. Furthermore, nuclear development receives its support from adherents of the Old Paradigm. Virtually all the arguments in favour of it are set within the assumption framework of the Old Paradigm, and without these assumptions the case for the nuclear future the world is presently committed to fails. But in fact the argument for a nuclear future from the Old Paradigm is itself broken-backed and ultimately fails, unless the free enterprise economic assumptions are replaced by the ethically unacceptable assumptions of advanced (corporate) capitalism. The two paradigm picture also enables our case against a nuclear future (a case written from outside the Old Paradigm) to be structured. There are two main parts'^?:- It is argued, firstly, from without the Old Paradigm, that nuclear development is ethically unjustifiable; but that, secondly, even from within the framework of the ethically dubious Old Paradigm, such development is unacceptable, since significant features of nuclear development conflict with indispensible features of the Paradigm (e.g. costs of project development and state subsidization with market independence and criteria for project selection). It has appeared acceptable from within the dominant paradigm only because ideals do not square with practice, only because the assumptions of the Old Paradigm are but very rarely applied in contemporary political practice, 3 the place of pure (or mixed) capitalism having been usurped by corporate capitalism. It is because the nuclear debate can be carried on within the framework of the Old Paradigm that the debate - although it is a debate about values, because of the conflicting values of the competing paradigms - is not just a debate about values; it is also a debate within a paradigm as to means to already assumed (economistic) ends, and of rational choice as to energy roptions within a predetermined framework of values. ^In this corner belong, as explained in section VIII, most decision theory arguments, arguments often considered as encompassing all the nuclear debate is ethically about, best utilitarian means to predetermined ends.) For another leading characteristic of the nuclear debate is the attempt, under the dominant paradigm to remove it from the ethical and social sphere, and to divert it into specialist issues whether over minutiae and contingencies of present technology or over medical g or legal or mathematical details. The double approach can be applied as regards each of the main problems nuclear development poses. There are many interrelated problems, and the argument is further structured in terms of these. For in the advancement and promotion of nuclear power we encounter a remarkable combination of factors, never ^before assembled^: establishment, on a. massive scale, of an industry which involves at each stage of its processing serious risks and at some stages of production possible catastrophe, which delivers as a by-product radioactive wastes which require up to a million years’ storage but for which no sound and economic storage methods are known, which grew up as part of the war industry and which is easily subverted to deliver nuclear weapons, which requires for its operation considerable secrecy, limitations on the flow of information and restrictions on civil liberties, which depends for its economics, and in order to generate expected profits, on substantial state subsidization, support, and intervention. with problems. It is, in short, a very high techological development, beset A first important problem, which serves also to exemplify ethical issues and principles involved in other nuclear power questions, is the unresolved matter of disposal of nuclear wastes. II. THE NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PROBLEM, AND THE TRAIN PARABLE. A long distance country train has just pulled out. crowded carries both passengers and freight. The train which is At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packaged in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may not contain the gas for the 4 full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example if there is a breakdown and the interior of the train becomes very hot, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interefere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. All of these sorts of contingencies have occurred on some previous journeys. If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. consigner of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape and that it is mere speculation to suppose it will, that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, and that in any case he is not responsible for the train or the people on it. These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. What is worth remarking is that similar excuses are not always so seen when the consigner, again a "responsible” businessman, puts his workers' health or other peoples' welfare at risk. Suppose he ways that it is his own and others1pressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending and the cancellation of the Multiplier Effect, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such a story, even if correct, as justification. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one's own, or one's group's, chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste disposal has many moral features which resemble the train case. /progresses. How fitting the a^gwaent is will become apparent as the argument There is no known proven safe way tjfi package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as 9 large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with 5. each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years.10 Short-term methods of storage require continued human inter­ vention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environment. In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and 1 la damaging their environment. Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance, none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, and they may 6. well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. provide a rigorous guarantee of Only a method that could safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. Again, unless we assume continuous and faultless guarding of long term storage sites through perhaps a million years of possible future human activity, weapons- grade radioactive material will be accessible, over much of the million year storage period, to any party who is in a position to retrieve it. (L The assumption that a way will nonetheless be found, before 2000, / e. 'which gets around the wast^ storage problem (no longer a nere disposal problem) is accordingly not rationally based, but is rather like many assumptions of ways, / /'n /an article of faith. It is an assumption supplied by the Old Paradigm, a no limitations assumption, that there are really no (development) problems that cannot be solved technologically (if not in a fashion that is always immediately economically feasible). The assumption has played an important part in development plans and practice. It has not only encouraged an unwarranted 13 technological optimism (not to say hubris ), that there are no limits to what humans can accomplish, especially through science; it has led to the embarcation on projects before crucial problems have been satisfactorily solved or a solution is even in sight, and it has led to the idea that technology can always be suitably controlled. It has also led, not surprisingly, to disasters. There are severe limits on what technology can achieve (some of which are becoming known in the 14 form of limitation theorems ); and in addition there are human limitations which modern technological developments often fail to take due account of (risk analysis of the likelihood of reactor accidents is a relevant example, discussed below). The original nuclear technology dream was that nuclear fission would provide unlimited energy (a ’clean unlimited supply of power’). shattered. and nuclear That dream soon The nuclear industry apparently remains a net consumer of power, fission will be but a quite short-term supplier of power. 7. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. Nuclear fission creates wastes which may remain toxic for a million years, but even with the (suspect) breeder reactor it could be an energy source for only perhaps 150 years. It will do nothing for the energy problems of the people of the distant future whose lives could be seriously affected by the wastes. Thus perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced to bear significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope For they may well have to face the change to renewable resources in an with it. over-populated world not only burdened with the legacy of our nuclear wastes, but also in a world in which, if the nuclear proponents' dreams of global industrialisation are realised, more and more ^pf the global population will have become dependent on high energy consumption and associated technology and heavy resource use and will have lost or reduced its ability to survive without it. It will, moreover, probably be a world which is largely depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which will have to form a very important part of the basis of life, 15a are in a run-down condition. Such points tell against the idea that future people muelF be, if not direct beneficiaries of nuclear fission energy, at least indirect beneficiaries. It is for such reasons that the train parable cannot be turned around to work in favour of nuclear power, with for example, the nuclear train bringing relief as well as wastes to a remote town powered (only) by nuclear power. The 'Solution" then is to buy time for contemporary industrial society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with those problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its chosen life style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-renewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes 8. in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties, whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. I Industrial society has - under each paradigm, so it will be argued - clear alternatives to this action, which is taken essentially to avoid changing corporately-controlled patterns of consumption and protect the interest of those comparatively few who benefit from them. If we apply to the nuclear situation, so perceived, the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle if perhaps often not in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves gross injustice with respect to the future.There appear to be only two plausible moves that might enable the avoidance of such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and the immediate future do not apply because the recipients of the nuclear parcel are in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances, for to reject the consigner’s action in the circum­ stances outlined is not of course to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable, or at least where the matter is less clearcut. It is the same with the nuclear case. Just as in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn, beginning with the question of our obligations to the future. Resolution of this question casts light on other ethical questions concerning nuclear develop­ ment. It is only when these have been considered that the matter of whether there are overriding circumstances is taken up again (in section VII). Ill OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact: by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due. account of the interests of future creatures. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on the issue. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same considerations being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Other philosophers have tended to fall into three categories - those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny or who are committed by their general moral position to denying that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond perhaps those to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained, there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving from the effect of our actions on future people. Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, who have opted for the unconstrained position, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus moral obligation is seen as grounded on or as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). For example, obligation is seen as grounded in relations which are proximate or of short duration and also non-transitive. Among such suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation, or requirements on moral obligation, which would rule out obligations to the nonimmediate future are these:- Firstly there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements as against us, and of course they can do nothing effective to enforce any claims they might have for their rights Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not hold invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions and so will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offenders, and there could be no guarantee that any contemporary institutions would do it for them. 10. Both the view that moral obligation requires the context of a moral community and the view that it is contractually based appear to rule out the distant future as a field of moral obligation as they not only require a commonality or some sort of common basis which cannot be guaranteed in the case of the distant future, but also a possibility of interchange or reciprocity of action which cannot apply to the future. Where the basis of moral obligation is seen as mutual exchange the interests of future people must be set aside because they cannot change the past and cannot be parties to any mutual contract. The exclusion of moral obligations to the distant future also follows from those views which attempt to ground moral obligations in non-transitive relations of short duration such as sympathy and love. As well there are difficulties about love and sympathy for (non-existent) people in the far distant future about whose personal qualities and characteristics one must know very little and who may well be committed to a life-style for which one. has little or no sympathy. On the current showing in the case of nuclear energy it would be easy to conclude that contemporary society lacks both love and sympathy for future people; and it would appear to follow from this that contemporary people had no obligations concerning future people and could damage them as it suited them. What all these views have in common is a picture of obligation as something acquired, either individually or institutionally, something which is conditional on doing something or failing to do something (e.g. participating in the moral community, contracting), or having some characteristic one can fail to have (e.g. love, sympathy, empathy).^ Because obligation therefore becomes conditional, features usually (and correctly) thought to characterise obligation such as universality of application and necessitation (i.e. the binding features) are lost, especially where there is a choice whether or not to do the thing required to acquire the obligation, and so as to whether to acquire it. The criteria for acquisition suggested are such as to exclude people in the distant future. The view that there are no moral constraints with respect to future people, that one is free to act however one likes with respect to them, is not however sustainable. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of 11. the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a result of the action. direct and predictable The unconstrained position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment, perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed, we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The unconstrained position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sort^ of policy:- A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the unconstrained view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the unconstrained view, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childishly obvious. Yet the unconstrained position concerning the future from which they follow is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the unconstrained position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that - we would certainly hope that - when it is brought out that the unconstrained position admits such counterexamples, that being free to act implies among other things being free to inflict pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for the unconstrained position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the unconstrained position seem to have had in /mind^denying moral obligation is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally But it is not. It is not as if, in the counter- example cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many ^Jf the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, namely the obligation to take account in what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance of a good life. 12. Furthermore, to say that we are not responsible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them, that there are no moral constraints on our action involving them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved, that one has no responsibility for his life, does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to pursue some course of action of advantage to oneself which could seriously harm him. These difficulties for the unconstrained position arise in part from the (sometimes deliberate) failure to make an important distinction between acquired or assumed obligation toward somebody, for which some act of acquisition or assumption is required as a qualifying condition, and moral constraints, which require, for example, that one should not act so as to damage or harm someone, and for which no act of acquisition is required. There is a considerable difference in the level and kind of responsibility involved. In the first case one must do something or be something which one can fail to do or be, e.g. In the second case responsibility arises I have loves, sympathy, be contracted. as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, and thus does not have to be especially acquired or assumed. Thus there is no problem about how the latter class, moral constraints, can apply to the distant future in cases where it may be difficult or impossible for acquisition or assumption conditions to be satisfied. They apply as a result of the ability to produce causal effects on the distant future of a reasonably predictable nature. Thus also moral constraints can apply to what does not (yet) exist, just as actions can cause results that do not (yet) exist. While it may perhaps be the case that there would need to be an acquired or assumed obligation in order for it to be claimed that contemporary people must make special sacrifices for future people of an heroic kind, or even to help them especially, only moral constraints are needed in order for us to be constrained from harming them. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community, in short that he has no special obligations to help them. All that one needs to argue concerning the train, and the nuclear case, is that there are moral constraints against harming, not that there are specially acquired obligations to take responsibility for the lives of people involved. There has been an attempt to represent all obligations to the distant future in terms of heroic self-sacrifice, something which cannot of course be morally required. But in view of the distinctions between constraints and acquired obligation and between obligation and supererogation this is just 13. to misrepresent the position of these obligations. For example, one is no more engaging in heroic self-sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing then direct harm than the consigner resorting to heroic self-sacrifice in refraining from placing his dangerous package on the train. The conflation of moral restraints with acquired obligation, and the attempt therewith to view all constraints as acquired and to write off nonacquired constraints, is facilitated through the use of the term ’moral obligation’ both to signify any type of deontic constraints and also to indicate rather something which has to be assumed or required. The conflation is encouraged by reductionist positions which, in attempting to account for obligation in general, mistakenly endeavour to collapse all obligations. Hence the equation, and some main roots * of the unconstrained position, of the erroneous belief that there are no moral constraints concerning the distant future. The unconstrained view tends to give way, under the weight of counter­ examples, to more qualified, and sometimes ambivalent, positions, for example the position that our obligations are to immediate posterity, we ought to try to improve the world so that we shall be able to hand it over to our immediate successors in a better condition, and that is all;17 there are in practice no obligations to the distant future. A main argument in favour of the latter theme is that such obligations would in practice be otiose. Everything that needs to be accounted for can be encompassed through the chain picture of obligation as linking successive generations, under which each generation has obligations, based on loves or sympathy, only to the succeeding generation. account. There are at least three objections to this chain First, it is inadequate to treat constraints concerning the future as if they applied only between generations, as if there were no question of constraints on individuals as opposed to whole generations, since individuals can create causal effects, e.g. harm, on the future in a way which may create individual responsibility, and which often cannot be sheeted home to an entire generation. Nuclear power and its wastes, for example, are strictly the responsibility of small groups of power-holders, not a generational responsibility. Secondly, such chains, since non-transitive, cannot yield direct obligations to the distant future. But for this very reason the chain picture cannot be adequate, as examples again show. For the picture is unable to explain several of the cases that have to be dealt with, e.g. the examples already discussed which show that we can have a direct effect on the distant future without affecting the next generation, who may not even be able to influence matters. 14. Thirdly, improvements for immediate successors may be achieved at the expense of disadvantages to people of the more distant future. Improving the world for immediate successors is quite compatible with, and may even in some circumstances be most easily achieved by, ruining it for less immediate successors. Such cases can hardly be written off as ’’never-never land" examples since many cases of environmental exploitation might be. seen as of just this type. e.g. not just the nuclear case but also the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the long-term depletion of renewable resources such as soils and forests through overuse. If then such obvious injustices to future people arising from the favouring or exclusive concern with immediate successors are to be avoided, obligations to the future will have to be seen as in some way fairly distributed over time, and not merely as accruing to particular generations in the way the chain picture suggests. IV. ATTEMPTS TO QUALIFY OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE : ECQNQMISTIC UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS. While there are grave difficulties for the unconstrained position, qualification leads to a more defensible position. According to the main qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained with respect to the distant future, there are obligations, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the qualified position. objectionable in such an approach is that What is economics should operate within the bounds of moral (deontic) constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints, not determine what those constraints are. There are moreover alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future is to beg many questions at issue. 15. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the assumption that future generations will be better off than present ones, and so better placed to handle 18 the waste problem. Since there is mounting evidence that future generations may well not be better off than present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. Nor is that all that is wrong with the argument. For it depends at base on the assumption that poorer contemporaries would be making sacrifices to richer successors in foregoing such (allegedly beneficial) developments as nuclear power. sacrifice argument. That is, it depends on the already scotched In any case, for the waste disposal problem to be legitimately bequeathed to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be, not just better off, but so much better off and more capable that they can duly absorb the nuclear waste burden. A more plausible argument for discounting is directly in terms of opportunity costs. It is argued, from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non-immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values, and so for efficient allocation of resources. Similarly it is argued, by virtue again of equalization of monetary value, that compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later. Thus a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) now or in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. There are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting, e.g. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. A more serious objection is that applied generally, the argument presupposes, what is false, that compensation, like value, can always be converted into monetary equivalents, that people (including those outside market frameworks) can be monetarily compensated for a variety of damages, including cancer and loss of life. There is no compensating a dead man, or for a lost species. In fact the argument presupposes a double reduction neither part of which can succeed: it is not just that value cannot in general be represented at all adequately 19 monetarily, but (as against utilitarianism, for example) that constraints and obligations can not be somehow reduced to matters of value. It is also presupposed that all decision methods, suitable for requisite nuclear choices, 16. are bound to apply discounting. This is far from so : indeed Goodin argues that, on the contrary, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting, and discounting only works in practice with expected utility rules (such as underlie cost-benefit and benefit-risk analyses), which are, he contends strictly inapplicable for nuclear choices (since not all outcomes can be duly determined x 20 and assigned probabilities, in the way that application of the rules requires.). As the preceding arguments reveal, the discounting move often has the same result as the unconstrained position. If, for instance, we consider the cancer example and reduce costs to payable compensation, it is evident that over a sufficiently long period of time discounting at current prices would lead to the conclusion that there are no recoverable damages and so, in economic terms, no constraints. In short, even certain damage to future people could be written off. One way to achieve the bias against future people is by the application of discount rates which are set in accord with the current economic horizons of no 21 more than about 15 years, and application of such rates would simply beg the question against the interests and rights of future people. Where there is certain future damage of a morally forbidden type, for example, the whole method of discounting is simply inapplicable, and its use would violate moral constraints. Another argument for the qualified position, which avoids the objections from cases of certain damage, comes from probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. But then if we take account of probabilities in the obvious way, by simply multiplying them against costs and benefits, it is evident that the interests of future people, except in cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty, must count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. But of course it cannot be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain doubtful benefits for some present people, in the shape of the opportunity to maintain corporation profitability or to continue unnecessarily high energy use. And even if the costs and benefits were comparable or unevenly weighted, 17. such an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action is acceptable provided the benefit, e.g. the profit he stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people, was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit or risk-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or without the probability frills, is quite inadequate where different parties are concerned or to deal with cases of conflict of interest or moral problems where deontic constraints are involved, and commonly yields counterintuitive results. For example, it would follow on such principles that it is permissible for a firm to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided the firm stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it. But the costs and benefits involved are not transferable in any simple or general way from one party to another . Transfers of this kind, of costs and benefits involving different parties, commonly raise moral issues - e.g. is x entitled to benefit himself by imposing costs on y - which are not susceptible to a simple cost-benefit approach of the sort adopted in promotion of nuclear energy, where costs to future people are sometimes dismissed with the soothing remark that any development involves costs as well as benefits. The limitations of transfer point is enough to invalidate the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risk, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiaries of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may be non-beneficiaries and who may be spatially or temporally removed, and these risks will not be in any direct way related to a person’s extent of use. The transfer objection is essentially the same as that to the utilitarian’s (happiness) sums as a way of solving moral conflict between different parties, and the introduction of probability considerations - as in utilitarian decision methods such as expected utility rules - does not change the principles involved but merely complicates the analysis. One might further object to the probability argument that probabilities involving distant future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the wa/ the argument supposes, and that the outcomes of some moral problems do not depend on a high level of probability anyway. In some sorts of cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created^ such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. 18. Uncertainty arguments in various forms are the most common and important ones used by philosophers, economists and others to argue for the position that we cannot be expected to taj^ke serious account of the effects of our actions on the distant future. There are two strands to the uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first on a priori grounds, the second on a posteriori grounds. The first argument is a generalised uncertainty argument which runs as follows:- In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, fuzzy and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtain­ able about the present which would indicate different action. Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of our actions on the distant future. More formally and crudely: One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information at present as regards the distant future. Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This first argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument in epistemology concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration with respect to the present Associated with this is the attempt to suggest and with respect to the future. a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly do act on the basis of such ’’unreliable" information, as the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty"; for sceptic­ proof certainty is rarely, or never, available with respect to much of the,, present and immediate future. In moral situations in the present, action often takes account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train example. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. risk of harm in this sort of case. It is enough that there is a significant It does not matter if the decreased well­ being of the consigner is certain and that the prospects of the passengers quite uncertain, the resolution of the problem is nevertheless clearly in favour of the so-called "speculative" and "unreliable". But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why 19. should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? Why should we require for the future, epistemic standards which the more familiar sphere of moral action concerning the present and adjacent future does not need to meet? The insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to an eipstemic double standard. But such an epistemic double standard, proposed in explaining the difference between the present and the future and to justify ignoring future peoples' interests, in fact cannot itself provide an explanation of the differences, since it already presupposes different standards of certainty appropriate to each class, which difference is in turn in need of justification. The second uncertainty argument is a practical uncertainty argument, that whatever our theoretical obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we canmot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be and therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Uncertainty is gross where certain incompatible hypotheses are as good as one another and there is no rational ground for choosing between them. this way:- The second uncertainty argument can be put alternatively If moral principles are. like other principles, implicational in form, that is of such forms as "if x has character h then x is wrong, for every (action) x", then what the argument claims is that we cannot ever obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. So even if moral principles theoretically apply to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions or directions concerning contemporary action action of the "It is wrong to do x" type. Many of the assumptions of the second argument can be conceded. If the distant future really is so grossly uncertain that in every case it is impossible to determine in any way that is better than chance what the effects of present action will be, and whether any given action will help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although they may apply theoretically to the future, will in practice not be applicable to obtain any clear conclusions about how to act. on action. Hence the distant future will impose no practical moral constraints However the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the 20. argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is not so great as to exclude constraints on action, especially when account is taken of the point, which was noticed in connection with the first argument, that complete certainty is commonly not required for moral constraints and that all that may be needed in Again there is considerable some cases is the creation of a significant risk. uncertainty about many factors which are not highly, or at all, morally relevant, but this does not extend to many factors which are of much greater importance to moral issues. For example, we may not have any idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years in names or footwear, or what flavours of ice cream people will be eating if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. For this sort of reason, the second uncertainty argument should be rejected. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action, where we can ascertain if not absolute certainties at least probabilities of the same sort of order as are considered sufficient for the application of moral principles in parallel contemporary cases, especially where spatially remote people are involved. In particular there is not gross indeterminacy or uncertainty; it is simply not true that incompatible hypotheses about what may happen are as good as each other. It is plain that nuclear waste storage does impose significant risks of harm on future people, and, as is evident from the train example, the significant risk of harm is enough in cases of this type to make moral constraints applicable. In terms of the defects of the preceding uncertainty arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable or possible harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other in a way that is again reminiscent of sceptical moves. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the 21. things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those we are morally committed to. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be r I morons o^ forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. /prepared to accent the elitist approach presupposed p Even if one is according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments as a serious defeating consideration is again a mere outside possibility - like the sceptic who says that solid-looking desk in front of us is perhaps only a facade, not because he has any particular reason for doing so, but because he hasn’t looked around the back, drilled holes in it, etc. etc. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility, as opposed to a logical possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. p The possibilities just considered in these uncertainty arguments of /sceptical character are not ^feal possibilities. Another argument which may consider a real possibility, but still does not succeed in showing that it is acceptable to proceed with an action which would appear to be harmful to future people, is often introduced in the nuclear waste case. This is the argument that future people may discover a rigorously safe and permanent storage method for nuclear wastes before they are damaged by escaped waste material. Let us grant for the sake of the argument that this is a real possibility (though physical arguments may show that it is not). This still does not affect the fact that there is a significant risk of serious damage and that the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action of this type as morally impermissible. In just the same way, future people may discover a cure for cancer: that this appears to be a live possibility, and not merely a logical possibility, does not make the action of the firm earlier discussed, of producing a substance likely to cause cancer in future people, morally admissible. The fact that there was a real possibility of future people avoiding the harm would show that actions of these sorts were admissible only if what was required for inadmissibility was certainty of harm or a very high probability of it. In such cases before such actions could 22. be considered admissible what would be required is far more than a possibility, 22 real or not - it is at least the availability of an applicable, safe, and rigorously tested, not merely speculative, technique for achieving it, something that future people could reasonably be expected to apply to protect themselves. The strategy of these and other uncertainty arguments is fairly clear then, and may be brought out by looking yet again at the train example where the consigner says that he cannot be expected to take account of the effect of his actions on the passengers because they may find an effective way to deal with his parcel or some lucky or unlucky accident may occur, e.g. the train may break down and they may all change to a different transport leaving the parcel behind, or the train may crash killing all the passengers before the container gets a chance to leak. These are all possibilities of course, but there is no positive reason to believe The 'that they are any more than that^ that is they are not live possibilities. strategy is to stress such remote possibilities in order to create the false impression that there is gross uncertainty about the future, that the real possibility that the container will break should be treated in the same way as these mere logical possibilities, that uncertainty about the future yis so great as to preclude the consigner’s taking account of the passengers’ welfare and the real possibility of harm from his parcel and thereby to excuse his action. A related strategy is to stress a real possibility, such as finding a cure for cancer, and thereby imply that this removes the case for applying moral constraints. This move implicitly makes the assumptions of the first argument, that certainty of harm, or at least a very high probability of harm is required before an action can be judged morally inadmissible, and the point of stressing the real possibility of avoidance of damage is to show that this allegedly required high degree of certainty or probability cannot be attained. That is, the strategy draws attention to some real uncertainty implying that this is sufficient to defeat the application of moral constraints. But, as we have seen, this is often not so. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. In particular it is argued that the indeterminacy, for example, with respect to the number and exact character of people at future times, would at least prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future, any more than the problems raised by the need to take account in decision-making of factors difficult to quantify are resolved by 23. ignoring such factors. Nor are distributional problems as large and representative of a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be conceded that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve^ or indeed irresoluble - a realistic ethical theory will not deliver a decision procedure - but there will equally be other conflict cases where the level of indeterminacy does not hinder resolution of the issue, n e.g. the train example which is a conflict case of a type. In particular, there will be many cases which are not solved by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The crucial question which emerges is then?: are there any features of future people which would disqualify them from full moral consideration or reduce their claims to such below those of present people? principle None. The answer is?: in Prima facie, moral principles are universalisable, and lawlike, in that they apply independently of position in space or in time, for example. But universalisability of principles is an outcome of those ethical theories which are capable of dealing satisfactorily with the present?: in other words, a theory that did not allow properly for the future would be found to have defects as regards the present, to deal unjustly or unfairly with some present people, e.g. those remotely located, those outside some select subgroup, such as (white­ skinned) humans, etc. The only candidates for characteristics that would fairly rule out future people are the logical features we have been looking at, such as uncertainty and indeterminacy; but, as we have argued, it would be far too sweeping to see these features as affecting the moral claims of future people in a general way. These special features only affect certain sorts of cases (e.g. the determination of best probable ol * present information). practical course of action given only In particular, they do not affect cases of the sort being considered, nuclear development, where highly determinate or certain information about the numbers and characteristics of the class likely to be harmed is not required, nor is certainty of damage. To establish obligations to the future a full universalizability principle is not required : it is enough that the temporal position of a person cannot affect his entitlement to just and fair treatment, to full moral 7/ consideration; inversely, that it is without basis to discriminate morally against a person in virtue of his temporal position. As a result of this 23a. universalizability, there are the same general obligations to future people as to the present; and thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. Uncertainty If in a closely comparable case concerning the present the creation of a significant risk is enough to rule out an action as immoral, and there are no independent grounds for requiring greater certainty of harm in the future case under consideration, then futurity alone will not provide adequate grounds for proceeding with the action, thus discriminating against future people. Accordingly we cannot escape, through appeal to futurity, the conclusion already tentatively reached, that proposals for nuclear development in the present and likely future state of technology and practices for future waste disposal are immoral. Before we consider (in section VII) the remaining escape route from this conclusion, through appeal to overriding circumstances, it is important to pick up the further case (which heavily reinforces the tentative conclusion) against nuclear development, since much of it relies on ethical principles similar to those that underlie obligations to the future, and since it too is commonly met by similar appeal to extenuating circumstances. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION: REACTOR EMISSIONS, AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to future creatures. Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or entitlements to just treatment, neither does location in spa^e, or a particular geographical position. First of all, the problem of nuclear waste disposal raises serious questions of distributive justice not only across time,1 across generations, but also across space. Is one state or region entitled to dump its radioactive pollution in I another state’s or region’s (or waters^ yar<^ When that region receives no due compensation (whatever that would amount to , in such a case), and the people do not agree (though the leaders imposed upon them might)? The answer, and the arguments underpinning the answer, are both like those already given in arguing to the tentative conclusion concerning the injustice of imposing radioactive wastes upon future people. But the cases are not exactly the same: USA and Japan cannot endeavour to discount peoples of the Pacific in whose regions they propose to drop some of their radioactive pollution in quite the same way they can discount people of two centuries hence. (But what this consideration really reveals is yet another flaw in the idea that entitlement to just treatment can (be discounted over time)L Ethical issues of distributive justice, as to equity, concern not only the spatio-temporal location of nuclear waste, but also arise elsewhere in the assessment of nuclear development; in particular, as regards the treatment of f kood' those in the neighbouij/ of reactors, and, differently, as regards the distribution of (alleged) benefits and costs from nuclear power across nations. People living or working in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks: firstly, radioactive pollution, due to the fact that reactors discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near the plant, 25. and secondly catastrophic accidents, such as (steam) explosion of a reactor. An immediate question is whether such costs and risks can be imposed, with any ethical legitimacy, on these people, who frequently have little or no say in their imposition, and who have mostly not been informed of any choices regarding the "risk/benefit tradeoffs” of nuclear technology. That they are so imposed, without local participation, indeed often without local input or awareness as with local opposition, reveals one part of the antidemocratic face of nuclear development, a part that nuclear development shares however with other largescale polluting industry, where local participation and questions, fundamental to a genuine democracy of regional determination and popular sovereignty, are commonly ignored or avoided. The "normal” emission, during plant operation, of low level radiation (A 'carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, there remains, however, substantial disagreement over the likely number of cancers and precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation, over the local health costs involved. Under the Old Paradigm, which (illegitimately) permits free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised is said to be: what extent of cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Under the Old Paradigm the issue is then translated into decision-theoretic questions, such as to ’how to employ risk/benefit analysis as a prelude to government regulation’ and ’how to determine what is an 26 acceptable level of risk/safety for the public. The Old Paradigm attitude, reflected in the public policy of some countries that have such policies, is that the economic benefits conferred by allowing radiation emissions outweigh the costs of an increase in cancer and genetic damage. An example will reveal that such evaluations, which rely for what appeal they have on a dubious utilitarianism, will not pass muster. It is a pity about Aunt Ethyl getting cancer, but it’s nice to have this air conditioner working in summer. Such frequently trivial and rather inessential benefits, which may be obtained alternatively, e.g. by modification of houses, in no way 27 compensate for the agony of cancer. The point is that the costs to one party are not justified, especially when such benefits to other parties can be alternatively obtained without such awful costs, and morally indefensible, being imposed. People, minorities, whose position is particularly compromised are those who live within 50 miles of a nuclear plant. (Children, for example, are in a 26. particularly vulnerable position, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults). In USA, such people bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. A non-negligible percentage (in excess of 3% of those exposed for 30 years) of people in the area will die, allegedly for the sake of the majority who are benefitted by nuclear power production (allegedly, for the real reasons for nuclear development do not concern this silent majority). Whatever i-ktr charm the argument from overriding benefits had, even under the Old Paradigm, vanishes once it is seen that there are alternative, and in several respects less expensive, ways of delivering the real benefits involved. There are several other tricks used in showing that the imposition of radiation on minorities, most of whom have little or no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses, is quite (morally) acceptable. One cheaper trick, deployed by the US 28 Atomic Energy Commission,” is to suppose that it is permissible to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent to the ’’natural” level) is also likely to have negligible consequences. The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, of course, so it is then claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill- effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is worse than mere consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’’imposed” is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’public pacifier' while 29 private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered. 27. While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, breakdown is, hopefully, not: an accident of magnitude is accounted, by official definition, an 'extraordinary nuclear occurrence . * But such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island). 30 If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) 30a reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident ini a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000l people would be killed instantly •and at least 100,000 would die as a result of: the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the sizei of Pennsylvania would be destroyed, Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which 31 -k the consequences ofr a these conservative US government figures are given : similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater still. V The consigner in risking the li^es, well-being and property of the / passengers on the train has acted inadmissibly. Does a government-sponsored private utility act in a way that is anything other than much less responsible in siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the community train, The answer will be No, if the analogy holds good and the consigners' action is, as we would ordinarily •suppose, inadmissible and irrespon- The proponents of nuclear power have in effect argued to the contrary, & (while at the same time endeavouring to shift the dispute out if the ethical arena / and into a technological dispute as to means (in accordance with the Old Paradigm). sible. 0 It has been contended, firstly, what contrasts with the train example, that Indeed in the there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. 32 influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly CO jstrong, imp?yjbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be Almost) impossible. The main argument for this claim derives from the assumptions and estimates of the report itself. These assumptions like the claim are undercut by nuclear incidents that came very close to accidents, incidents which reflect what happens in a reactor rather better than mathematical models. As with the storage of nuclear wastes, so with the operation of nuclear reactors, it is important to look at what happens in the actual world of technological limitatioms and human error, of waste leakage and reactor incidents and quite possibly accidents, not in an ideal world far removed from the actual, a technological dream world where there is no real possibility of a nuclear 28. catastrophe. In such an ideal nuclear world, where waste disposal were fool-proof and reactors were accident-proof, things would no doubt be morally different. But we do not live in such a world. According to the Rasmussen report its calculation of extremely low accident probabilities is based upon reasonable mathematical and technological assumptions and is methodologically sound. This is very far from being the case. The under­ lying mathematical methods, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because they exclude as "not credible" possibilities or as "not significant" branches that are real possibilities, which may well be realised in the real world. It is the In fact the methodology and data of the report 33 has been soundly and decisively criticized. And it has been shown that there eliminations that are otherworldly. is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability, of a serious accident. It is contended, secondly, that even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still it is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy options, which settles their ethical status. The following lines of argument are encountered in a risk assessment as applied to energy options: (i) if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option b; rV\ (ii) option a involves a total net cost in ter^s of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already accepted; 34 therefore option a is acceptable. For example, the number lively to be killed by nuclear power stations is less than k the likely number killed by cigarette smoking or in road accidents, which are < 'accepted: so nuclear power stations are acceptable.^ little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves the same kind of fallacy as transaction models. It is far too simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant aspects of the context. In order to obtain an ethical assessment we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at least these things:- do the costs and benefits go to the same parties; and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who receives the benefits or 29. primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit? It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, that a 35 comparison on such a basis would be valid. This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. Secondly, does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice, knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking? Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed: is it for a serious or a relatively trivial reason? A risk that is ethically acceptable for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptable for a trivial reason. Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often employed in trying to justify nuclear power. The second argument (ii) involves the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that of forgetting that the health risks in the or nuclear sense are cumulative, and already high if not, some say, too high. The maxim "If you want the benefits you have to accept the costs” is one thing and the maxim "If I want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle, already argued for by way of examples and already invoked, that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising fron an activity which benefits oneself onto other 37 parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This transfer principle is especially clear in cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature, because, e.g. it can be substituted for or done without. Thus, for instance, one is not usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of benefitting oneself. Suppose, for another example, we consider a village which produces, as a result of an industrial process by which it lives , a noxious waste material which J !is expensive and difficult to dispose of and yet creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of. Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their problem on a one-way delivery service, on the train, to the next village. The inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process oor of sustaining risks to their own lives and health or else leaving the village and their livelihoods. transfer of costs as morally unacceptable. Most of us would see this kind of 30. From this arises a necessary condition for energy options: that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit correspondingly from its use. Included in the scope of this condition are not only future people and future generations (those of the next villages) but neighbours of nuclear reactors, especially, as in third world countries, neighbours who are not nuclear power users. The distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable moral features. It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we received it - the tramsmission principle. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. (The corollary can be independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories). VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the ^environmental, health and safety risks and costs in^or arising from the * fuel cycle. nuclear The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of , 5 materials. Several of these stageyf involve hazards. Unlike the special risks in the nuclear cycle - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other very polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’the same risk’ of 38 ffatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry^. Furthermore, the Various (often serious) hazards encountered in working in some sectoj^ of uranium fabrication should be differently viewed from those resulting from location for instance from already living where a reactor is built or wastes are dumped. For an occupation is, in principle at any rate, chosen (as is occupational relocation), and many types of hazards incurred in working with radioactive material are now known in advance of choice of such an occupation: with where one already lives things are very different. The uranium miner’s choice of occupation can be compared with the airline pilot’s choice, whereas the Pacific Islander’s ’’fact" of location cannot be. The social issue of arrangements that contract occupational choices and opportunities and often at least ease people into hazardous occupations such as uranium or tin or coal mining (where the risks, in contrast to airline piloting, are mostly not duly compensated), while very important, is not an issue newly produced by nuclear associated occupations. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors /that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution, such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as enormous rectification estimates for dead radio­ active lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, so that modern factory complexes are often guarded like concentration camps (but from us on the outside), sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (consider again the effects of core meltdown), Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit of fabrication into such /massive explosives/ No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. / / 5 In part to reduce it/ vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (certainly given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression, and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations and made it ^nswerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.^9 developments the Uni-ted Kingdom; and worse i-R Weot Germany presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic societies. That nuclear development appears to force such political consequences tells heavily against it. /•fS j2a?c bEHmR - - *. i » /> . . Bvhi nd what mirt bv one of the most impregnable fortifications this side of the East-West German border, work has just begun on building West Gerpianv’s latest nuclear power station.- Much of the perimeter of the 75-acre site, at Brokdorf m the marshlands of the lower Elbe, is screened by a concrete wall io feet high, surmounted by coils of barbed wire. I he rest, regarded as ‘strategic ally observable.' is girdled by a ditch io feet wide and fill ed with water. Approach roads to the site arc patrolled by dozens of policemen and the compound itself is guarded by 6oo men from a private security organization and b\ jg dogs. '* -4? 32. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is fortunately true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. Since nuclear wars are never accountable positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development, is also undesirable. The details and considerations that fill out this argument, from nuclear war against nuclear development, are many. They are firstly technical, that it is a relatively straightforward and inexpensive matter to make nuclear explosives given access to, a nuclear power plant, secondly' political, A that nuclear engagements once instituted likely to escalate and that those A who control (or differently are likely to force access to) nuclear power plants do not shrink from nuclear confrontation and are certainly prepared to toy with A nuclear engagement (up to "strategic nuclear strikes” at least), and thirdly ** , $ A /ethical, that warj( invariably have immoral consequences, such as massive 5 damage to involved parties, however high sounding their justification is. Nuclear wars are certain to be considerably worse as regards damage inflicted than any previous wars (they are likely to be much worse than all previous wars put together), because of the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons, and the extent of spread of their radioactive effects, and because of the expected rapidity and irreversibility of any such confrontations. The supporting considerations are, fourthly, drawn from decision theory, and yare designed to show that the chances of such undesirable outcomes is itself y undesirable. The core argument is in brief this (the argument will be elaborated in section VIII):- Energy choice between alternative options is O . 27 ya case of decision making under uncertainty, because in particular /f the gross uncertainties involved in nuclear development. In cases of this type the appropriate rational procedure is to compare worst consequences of each alternative, to reject those alternatives with the worst of these worst 5 / consequence^ (this is a pretty un con troversial part of the maxim'nw rule which enjoins selection of the alternative with the best worst consequences). The nuclear alternative has, in particular because of the real possibility of a nuclear war, the worst worst consequences and is accordingly a particularly undesirable alternative. 33. /VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS^ AND UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF NUCLEAR I DEVELOPMENT♦ As with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory route remains open, that of appeal to important overriding circumstances. That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go far beyond merely economic considerations. For, as already observed, the consigner’s action cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the firm or the village would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. The transfer principle on which this assessment was based, that one was not usually entitled to create a serious risk to others for these sorts of reasons, applied more generally and, in particular, applied to the nuclear case. For this reason the economistic arguments which are those most commonly advanced under the Old Paradigm to promote nuclear development - e.g. cheapness, efficiency, profitability for electricity utilities, and the need otherwise for uncomfortable changes such as restructuring of employment, investment and consumption - do not even begin to show that the nuclear alternative is an acceptable one. Even if these economistic assumptions about benefits to present people were correct - it will be contended that most of them are not - the arguments would fail because economics (like the utilitarianism from which it characteristically derives) has to operate within the framework of moral constraints, and not vice versa. What do have to be considered are however moral conflict arguments, that is arguments to the effect that, unless the prima facie unacceptable (nuclear) alternative is taken, some even more unacceptable alternative is the only possible outcome, and will ensue. For example, in the train parable, the consigner may argue that his action is justified because unless it is taken his village will starve. It is by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, as the case seems to become one of transfer of costs and risks onto others; but such a moral situation would no longer be so clearcut, and one would perhaps hesitate to condemn any action taken in such circumstances. Some, of the arguments advanced to show moral conflict are based on / /competing^to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future o I significant risk ^f serious harm. The structure of such moral conflict arguments is based crucially on the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and upon showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument - for example, if in the village case it turns out that the villagers have another option 34. I to starving or to the sending off of the parcel, namely earning a living i/' some other way - then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself, and that there are other factual defects in these arguments In short, the arguments depend essentially on the presentation of as well. false dichotomies. A first argument, the poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of industrialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. The unemployment and poverty argument does not stand up to examination either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help to increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also helps to reduce available jobs through 40 encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, but creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon, what is largely lacking, established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political 41 structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised, and wanted often for military purposes. It is not paternalistic to examine critically the demands these ruling elites may make in the name of the poor. 35. The poverty argument is then a fraud. help the poor. Nuclear energy will not be used to Both for the third world and for the industrialised countries there are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing other energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor. It can no longer be pretended that there is no alternative to nuclear development: indeed nuclear development is itself but a bridging, or stop-gap, procedure on route to solar or perhaps fusion development. And there are various alternatives: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar, wind, water, tidal and plant power), 42 each possibly in combination with conservation measures; Despite the availability of alternatives, it may still be pretended that nuclear development is necessary for affluence (what will emerge is that it is advantageous for the power and affluence of certain select groups). Such an assumption really underlies part of the poverty argument, which thus amounts to an elaboration of the trickle- down argument (much favoured within the Old Paradigm setting). runs:- For the argument Nuclear development is necessary for (continuing and increasing) affluence. Affluence inevitably trickles down to the poor. Therefore nuclear First, the argument does not on its own show development benefits the poor. anything specific about nuclear power: for it works equally well if ’energy’ is substituted for ’nuclear’. It has also to be shown, what the next major argument will try to claim, that nuclear development is unique among energy alternatives in increasing affluence. The second assumption, that affluence inevitably trickles down, has now been roundly refuted, both by recent historical data, which show increasing affluence (e.g. in terms of GNP averaged per capita) coupled with increasing poverty in several countries, both developing and developed, and through economic models which reveal how "affluence" can increase without redistribution occurring. Another major argument advanced to show moral conflict appeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. 4 36. The lights-going-out argument does raise questions as to what is valuable in our society, and of what characteristics are necessary for a good society. But for the most part these large questions, which deserve much fuller examination, can be avoided. The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical position with respect to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that it cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. It has to be accepted and assessed as a whole, and virtually unlimited supplies of energy - such as nuclear and only nuclear power is alleged to furnish - are essential to maintain this whole. These assumptions are hard to accept. Xz The assumption that technological ^soc^ety's energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so - after all it has survived events such as world wars which have required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy are totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but one might ask what use its culture could be to future people who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. There is also difficulty with the assumption of uniform valuableness; but if this is rejected the question becomes not: what is necessary to maintain existing high-technological society and its political institutions, but rather: what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in that society and the political institutions which are needed to maintain those valuable things. While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence, for instance from history, is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, as we should argue, it is not necessary to presuppose such a change, in the short term at least, in order to see that the assumptions of the lights-going-out argument are wrong. No enormous reduction of well-being is required to consume less energy than at 37. present, and certainly far less than the large increase over present levels of /assumption which 44 is assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, 6©' What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do then is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza. In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by nuclear fission means, be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon an extremely high centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more than they do at present. Such a society would, almost inevitably tend to become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other thingsJof its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear ' 45 situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom, for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and energy extravagance. But it is not the status quo, but what is valuable in our society, presumably, that we have some obligation to pass on to the future, and if possible enhance. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social, economic and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology- nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, rather, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The lights- going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails, because it also is based on a false dichotomy. 38. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to moral conflict, is, like the If then we apply - as we have argued we should - appeal to futurity, closed. the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the same way, are the escape routes to other arguments - from reactor melt-down, radiation emissions, and so on for rejecting nuclear development as morally unacceptable, for saying that it is not only a moral crime against the distant future but also a crime against the present and immediate future. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. A corollary is that only political arrangements that are morally unacceptable will support the impending nuclear future. VIII. A NUCLEAR FUTURE IS NOT A RATIONAL CHOICE, EVEN IN OLD PARADIGM TERMS. The argument thus far, to anti-nuclear conclusions, has relied upon, and defended premisses that would be rejected under the Old Paradigm; for example, such theses as that the interests and utilities of future people are not discounted (in contrast to the temporally-limited utilitarianism of market- centred economic theory), and that serious costs and risks to health and life cannot admissibly be simply transferred to uninvolved parties (in contrast to the transfer and limited compensation assumptions of mainstream economic theory). To close the case, arguments will now be outlined which are designed to show that even within the confines of the Old Paradigm, choosing the nuclear future is not a rational choice. Large-scale nuclear development is not just something that happens, it requires, on a continuing basis, an immense input of capital and energy. Such investment calls for substantial reasons; for the investment should be, on Old Paradigm assumptions, the best among feasible alternatives to given economic ends. Admittedly so much capital has already been invested in nuclear fission ^research and development, in marke^T contrast to other newer rival sources of power, that there is strong political incentive to proceed - as distinct from requisite reasons for further capital and energy inputs. The reasons can be 'divided roughly into two groups, front reasons, which are the reasons given ^(out), and which are, in accordance with Old Paradigm p^gcepts, publicly economic (in that they are approved for public consumption), and the real reasons, which involve private economic factors and matters of power and social control. 39. The main argument put up, an economic growth argument, upon which variations are played, is the following version of the lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and even for what is valuable!):- Nuclear power is necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to avoid or postpone redistribution problems, and connected social Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is 46 part of US energy policy, and the second premiss is supplied by standard unrest, etc.). economics textbooks. But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by selective economic growth, which jettisons the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified 47 economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the dominant paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) fails even on Old Paradigm standards. For of course nuclear power is not necessary given that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. The premiss usually defended is some elaboration of the premiss : Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, 'economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having most favourable benefit-cost ratio', etc. Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear ^development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things a good deal of economic cheating (easy to do) is done. decisively, unless Much data, beginning with /the cancellation of nuclear plant orders, can\be assembled to show as much. Yet the argument requires a true premiss, not an uncertain or merely possible one, if it is to succeed and detachment is to be permitted at all, and evidently true premissiFve** /f the argument is to be decisive. The data to be summarised splits into two parts, public (governmental) analyses, and private (utility) assessments. Virtually all available data /concerns the USA; in Euro^ _e, West and East, true costs of uniformly "publicly/controlled” nuclear power are generally not divulged. / A Firstly, the capital costs of nuclear plants, which have been rising much more rapidly than inflation, now exceed those of coal-fired plants. Ka-emanoff has estimated that capital costs of a nuclear generator (of optimal capacity) 49 will exceed comparable costs of a coal-fired unit by about 26% in 1985. And I capital costs are only one part of the equation that now tell^ rather decisively against private utility purchase of new nuclear plants. Another main factor is the poor performance and low reliability of nuclear generators. Coney showed that nuclear plants can only generate about half the electricity they were designed to produce, and that when Atomic Energy Commission estimates of relative fcosts of nuclear and coal/, which assumed that both operated at 80% of design capacity, were adjusted accordingly, nuclear generated power proved to be far more 40. expensive than estimated.The discrepancy between actual and estimated ‘ capacity is especially important because a plant with an actual1/factor of 55% produced electricity at a cost about 25% higher than if the plant had performed at the manufacturers’ projected capacity rate of 70-75%. y The low reliability / of nuclear plants (per kilowatt output) as compared with the coal-fired plants adds to the case, on conventional economic /reliability of y /grounds of efficiency and product production costs, against nucleai/'. / These unfavourable assessments are from a private (utility) perspective, before the very extensive public subsidization of nuclear power is duly taken into account. The main subsidies are through research and development, by way of insurance (under the important but doubtfully constitutional Price-Anderson /kct^S, in enrichment, and in waste management, It has been estimated that charging such costs to the electricity consumer would increase electricity bills for nuclear power by at least 25% (and probably much more). When official US cost/benefit analyses favouring nuclear power over coal are examined, it is found that they inadmissibly omit several of the public costs involved in producing nuclear power, For example, the analyses ignore waste costs on the quite inadmissible ground that it is not known currently what the costs involved are. o 4 But even using actual waste handling costs (while /wastes await storage) is enough to show that coa ljjis preferable to nuclear. When further public costs, such as insurance against accident and for radiation damage, are duly taken into account, the balance is swung still further in ✓ y / ^ / favo ur of alternatives to nuclear and against nucleaj/. In short,, even on p/per 'r Q1& Paradigm accounting, the nuclear alternative should be j ze- Nuclear development is not economical, it certainly seems; it has been /kept going not through its clear economic viability, but by massive public subsidization, of several types. In USA, to take a main example where information is available, nuclear development is publicly supported through s heavily subsidized or sometimes free research and development, ■through the ^Price-Anderson Act/ which sharply limits both private and public liability, i.e. which in effect provided the insurance subsidy making corporate nuclear development economically feasible, and through government agreement to handle all radioactive wastes. While the Old Paradigm strictly construed cannot support uneconomical developments, contemporary liberalisation of the Paradigm does allow for uneconomic projects, seen as operated in the public interest, in such fields as /social welfare. Duly admitting social welfare and some principles 41. 6t / /in the distribution of wealth (not necessarily of pollution) leads/the modern //version of the Old Paradigm, called the Modified Old Paradigm. The main /changes from the Old Paradigm are (as with state socialism) a^emphasis of economic factors, e.g. individual self-help is down-played, wealth is to a small extent redistributed, e.g. through taxation, market forces are regulated or displaced (not in principle eliminated, as with state socialism). Now it has been contended - outrageous though it should now seem - that nuclear power ll« is in the public interest as a means to various sought public ends , for example, As (j&lj 45 • from those already mentioned such as energy for growth and cheap e, ./electricity, and such as plentiful power for heating and cooking and appliance /use, avoidance of shortages, rationing, C2 -outs and the like. Since /alternative power sources, such as coal, could serve ends given power was /supplied with suitable extravagance, the d^eement has again to show that the choice of nuclear power over other alternatives is best in the requisite respects, in serving the public interest. Such an argument is a matter for decision theory, under which head cost-benefit analyses which rank alternatives also fall as special cases. Decision theory purports to cover theoretically the field of choice between alternatives; it is presented as the theory which ’deals with the 53 problem of choosing one course of action among several possible courses’. Thus the choice of alternati’ve modes of energy production, the energy choice ^problem, becomes an exercise -arrrd decision theory; and the nuclear choice is of ten ’5 us tified" in Old Paradigm terms through appeal to decision theory. But though decision theory is in principle comprehensive, as soon as it is put to work in such practical cases as energy choice, it is very considerably contracted in scope, several major assumptions are surreptitiously imported, and what one is confronted with is theory drastically /pruned down to conform with the narrow utilitarianism of mainstream economic theory. The extent of reduction can be glimpsed by comparing, to take one important example, a general optimisation model for decision (where uncertainty is not gross) with comparable decision theory methods, such as the 5 expected utility model. The general model for best choice among alternatives /specified maximisation of expected value subject to constraints, which may include ethical constraints excluding certain alternatives under given /conditions. models demote value to utility, assuming thereby measurability and transference properties that may not obtain, and eliminate constraints altogether (absorbing what is forbidden, for example, as having a high disutility, but one that can be compensated for nonetheless). Thus, in particular, ethical constraints against nuclear development are replaced, in Old Paradigm fashion, by allowance in principle for compensation for damage sustained. Still it is with decision making in Old Paradigm terms that we are now embroiled, so no longer at issue are the defective (neo-classical) economic assumptions made in the theory, for example as to the assessment of everything to be taken into account through utility (which comes down to monetary terms : everything w^Lth account^n^/has a price), and as to the legitimacy of transferring with limited compensation risks and costs to involved parties. The energy choice problem is, so it has commonly been argued in the assumed Old Paradigm framework, a case of decision under uncertainty. It is not a case of decision under risk (and so expected utility models are not applicable), because some possible outcomes are so uncertain that, in contrast to the case of risk, no (suitably objective) quantifiable probabilities can be assigned to them, Items that are so uncertain are taken to include nuclear 1war and core meltdown 54 [of a reactor, possible outcomes of nuclear development/ widespread radio active pollution is, by contrast, not uncertain. The correct rule for decision under uncertainty is, in the case of energy /choice, maximum, to maximize the minimum payoff, so it is sometimes contended. In fact, once again, it is unnecessary for present purposes to decide which energy option is selected, but only whether the nuclear option is rejected. f Since competing selection rules tend to deliver the same for options early rejected as the nuclear options, a convergence in the rejection of the nuclear option can be effected. All rational roads lead, not to Rome, but to rejection of the nuclear option. t z A further convergence can be effected also, L'tbecause ci LiO Lthe best possible (economic) outcomes of such leading options as Ci .r D l/ j, [coal and^hydroO Celectric mix are very roughly of the same order as the nuclear option (so Elster contends, and his argument can be elaborated). Under these conditions complex decision rules (^such as the Arrow-H^^wicz rule) which take £ /account of both best possible and /reduce to the maxim^in rule. possible outcomes under wfk *ch option^ Whichever energy option is selected under the /maximwffi rule, the nuclear option is certainly rejected since/(eere options where worst outcomes are than that of the nuclear option (just consider the scenario if the nuclear nightmare, not the nuclear dream, is realised). Further application of the rejection rule will reject the fossil fuel (predominantly coal) option, on the basis of estimated effects on the earth's climate from burning massive quantities of such fuels. HHHB 43. Although the rejection rule coupled with enjoys a privileged several rivals to maximise for decision under uncertainty have been of which has associated rejection rules. proposed, rules, such as the risk- AdkW Some of these reasoning criticised by Goodin (pp.507-8), the riskiness of a policy in terms of the increment of which ’ risk it adds to those pre-existing in the status quo, rather than in terms of the absolute value of the risk associated with the policy’ are decidedly decision procedure appears to and rather than offering a dubious, afford protection of the (nuclear) status quo. What will be argued, or rather what Goodin has in effect argued for us, is that wherever one of these rules is applicable. and not dubious, it leads to rejection of the nuclear option. For example, the keep-options-open or allow-for-reversibility rule (not an entirely unquestionable rule/ ’of strictly limited applicability’) excludes the nuclear option because ’nuclear plants and their by-products have a nuclear reactor ran air of irreversibility ... "One cannot pimply a coal-fired plant'” (p.506). The compare-the /alternatives rule, in ordinary application, leads back to the cost-benefit assessments, which, as already observed, tell decisively against a nuclear option when costing is done properly. The maximise-sustainable-benefits rule, which 'directs us to opt for the policy producing the highest level of net benefits which can be sustained indefinitely’, ’decisively favours renewable sources', ruling out the nuclear option. Other lesser rules Goodin discusses, which have not really been applied in the nuclear debate, and which lead yet ^further from the Old Paradigm ie framework ^arm-avoidance and protecting-the- vulnerable^also yieldj/ the same nuclear-excluding results. Harm-avoidance, in particular, points ’decisively in favour of "alternative" and "renewable" energy sources ... combined with strenuous efforts at energy conservation’ The upshot is evident: whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted (p.442). the result is the same, a^ nuclear choice is rejected, even by Old Paradigm standards. Nor would reversion to an expected utility analysis alter this conclusion; for such analyses are but glorified cost-benefit analyses, with probabilities duly multiplied in, and the is as before from cost-benefit considerations, against a nuclear choice. The Old Paradigm does not, it thus appears, sustain the nuclear juggernaut: nor does its Modification. The real reasons for the continuing development program and the heavy commitment to the program have to be sought elsewhere, outside the Old Paradigm, at least as preached. It is, in any case, sufficiently evident that contemporary economic behaviour does not accord with Old Paradigm percepts, practice does not accord with neo-classical, economic /theory nor, to consider the main modification, with social 1 theory. There are, firstly, reasons of previous commitment, when nuclear power, cleverly promoted at least, looked a rather cheaper and safer deal, and certainly profitable one: corporations so committed are understandably keen to realise returns on capital already invested. There are also typical self-interest reasons for commitment to the program, that advantages accrue to some, like those whose field happens to be nuclear engineering, that profits accrue to some, like giant corporations, that are influential in political affairs, and as a spin-off profits accrue to others, and so on. There are just as important, ideological reasons, such as a belief in the control of both political and physical power by technocratic-entreprenial elite, a belief in social control from above, control which nuclear power offers far more than alternatives, some of which (vaguely) threaten to alter the power base, a faith in the unlimitedness of technological enterprise, and nuclear in particular, so that any real problems that arise will be solved as development proceeds. Such beliefs are especially conspicuous in the British scene, among the governing and technocratic classes. Within contemporary corporate capitalism, these sorts of reasons for nuclear development are intimately linked, because those whose types of enterprise benefit substantially from nuclear development are commonly those who hold the requisite beliefs. It is then, contemporary corporate capitals^m, along with its state enterprise image, that fuels the nuclear juggernaut. To be sure, corporate capitalism, which is the political economy largely thrust upon us in western nations, is not necessary for a nuclear future; a totalitarian state of the type such capitalism often supports in the third world will suffice. But, unlike a hypothetical state that does conform to precepts of the Old Paradigm, it is sufficient for a nuclear future - evidently, since we are well embarked on such a future. The historical route by which the world reached its present advanced threshold to a nuclear future, confirms this diagnosis. This diagnosis can be /split into two main cases, the national development of nuclear power in the /US^ and the international spread of nuclear technology for which the US has been largely responsible. By comparison with the West, nuclear power production in /the Eastern bloc is which had in 1977 only nuclear plants. II and is largely confined to the Soviet Union oneCj-5^ -** the wattage output of U/ Nuclear development in USSR has been, of course, a state controlled and subsidized venture, in which there has been virtually no public participation or discussion; but Russian technology has not been exported else­ where to any great extent. American technology has. 45. The 60s were, because of the growth in electricity demand, a period of great expansion of the electrical utilities in the US. These companies were encouraged to build nuclear plants, rather than coal or oil burning plants, for several state controlled or influenced reasons:- Firstly, owing to governmental regulation procedures the utilities could (it then seemed) earn a higher rate of profit on a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel one. Secondly, the US government arranged to meet crucial costs and risks of nuclear operation, and in this way, and more directly through its federal agencies, actively encouraged a nuclear choice and nuclear development. In particular, state limitation of liability and shouldering of part of insurance for nuclear accidents and state arrangements to handle nuclear wastes were what made profitable private utility operation appear feasible and resulting in nuclear 4 /investment. In the 70s, though the state subsidization picture changed : continued, the private ’high costs of construction combined with low capacity //factors and poor reliability have wiped out the advantage that nuclear/ had enjoyed in the US. Much as the domestic nuclear market in the US is controlled by a few corporations, so the world market is dominated by a few countries, predominantly and first of all the US, which through its two leading nuclear companies, Westinghouse and General Electric, has been the major exporter of nuclear technology. " These companies were enabled to gain entry into European and subsequently world markets by US foreign policies, basically the "Atoms for Peace" program supplemented by bilateral agreements providing for US technology, /research, enriched uranium and financial capital. (The US offered a jstate /subsidized) nuclear package that Europe could not refuse and with which the ' British could not compete’. In the 70s the picture of US domination of Common Market nuclear technology had given way to subtler influence: American companies /held dcadSjig with relevant governments) substantial interests in European and Japanese nuclear companies and held licences on the technology which remained largely American. Meanwhile in the 60s and 70s the US entered into bilateral agreements for civilian use of atomic energy with many other countries, for X example, Argentina, Brasil, Columbia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, / Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Portugal, South Africa, , /Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, South Vietnam. The US proceeded?in their way, to ship nuclear technology and nuclear materials in great quantities round the world. It also proceeded to spread nuclear technology through the International Atomic Energy Agency, originally designed to control and safeguard nuclear operations, but most of whose * budget activities’. and activities ... have gone to promote nuclear A main reason for the promotion and sales pressure on Third World countries has been the failure of US domestic market and industrial world Less developed countries markets for reactors. 2 offer a new frontier where reactors can be built with easy public financing, where health and safety regulations are loose and enforcement rare, where public opposition is not permitted and where weak and corrupt regimes offer / easy sales. fForJ ... the US has considerable leverage with many of these countries. We know from painful experience that many of the worst dictatorships in the planet . would not be able to stand without overt and covert US support. ' Many of those are now^ y?ocrinithe nuclear path, for all the worst reasons. ' J It is evident from this sketch of the ways and means of reactor proliferation that not only have practices departed far from the framework of the Old Paradigm and social Modification, but that the practices (of corporate capitalism and associated third world imperialism) involve much that is ethically unacceptable, by o^rfer, modified, or alternative percepts;^ for principles such as assembled. viyxAi/r and self-determination are grossly violated. IX. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOWER AND DEEPER ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it ii carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. Such an option would also fail, it seems, to meet the necessary transfer condition, because it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production 1 58 and replacement. To these conventional main options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and, in Northern Europe, hydroelectricity. The deeper choice, which even softer paths tend to neglect, is not technological but social, and involves both conservation measures and the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses: at a more basic level there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures. These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to be obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet 47. given and unexamined goals (as the Old Paradigm would imply), but also a matter of examining the goals. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies or substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with soft rather than hard technologies; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is not just a question of devising less damaging ways to meet these I alleged needs conceived of ps inevitable and unchangeable. (Hence there are solar ways of producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to nuclear ways.) Naturally this is not to deny that these softer options are superior because of the ethically unacceptable features of the harder options. But it is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even the more benign technologies such as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to them. Consider, for example, the effect on the world’s forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of use for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping (as already planned by forest authorities and contemplated by many other energy organisations). While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed, even by soft technologicalists, by the simple expedient of waving around the label ’renewable resources’. Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense 59 of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent if not already well advanced. It certainly has begun in many regions, and for many forest types (such as rainforest types) which are now, and very rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure, that for energy, on top of present pressures is one which anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of contemporary forestry operations, who is also concerned with long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, 48. resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, would be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems. Some of us do not want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear products or polluted by coal products. In short, a mere switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change is inadequate. Nor is such a simple technological switch likely to be achieved. It is not as if political pressure could oblige the US government to stop its nuclear program (and that of the countries it influences, much of the world), in the to succeed in halting the Vietnam war. way pressure appeared While without doubt it would be good if this could be accomplished, it is very unlikely given the integration of political powerholders with those sponsorinanuclear , . , 60 development. The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to change a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. This means, for instance, trying to change a social structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services. A society in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work and in social relations and other activities, is virtually bound to be one which generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption. (A production system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created and non- genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.) Consumption frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas. The adjustments focussed upon are only parts of the larger set of adjustments involved in socially implementing the New Paradigm, the move away from consumerism is for example part of the more general shift from materialism and materialist values. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs ^) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can 49. be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. I /'of The point is readily illustrated. such industries as f transportation It is commonly argued by representatives and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditioners, power boats, ... It would be authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to accept a Marxist approach according to which they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option - at least it will be difficult to obtain politically - but it is the only way, so it has been argued, of avoiding passing on serious costs to the future. And there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: it is the main, indeed the only sort of option open to those who take a deeper ecological perspective0 , a perspective integral with the New Paradigm but not essential to radical departure from the dominant paradigm. The ethical transmission requirement defended accordingly requires, hardly surprisingly, social and political adjustment. The social and political changes that the deeper alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they and power structure. mean changes in current social organisation To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult though a change will be, especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, is to obtain, it is imperative to try : we are all on the nuclear train. FOOTNOTES 1. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of a (lightwater) reactor, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 2. As to the first, see references cited in Goodin, p. 417, footnote 1. As regards the second see Cotgrove and Duff, and some of the references given therein. 3. Cotgrove and Duff, p. 339. 4. The table is adapted from Cotgrove and Duff, p. 341; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34. 5. See, e.g., Gyorgy, pp. 357-8. 6. For one illustration, see the conclusions of Mr Justice Parker at the Windscale inquiry (The Windscale Inquiry Vol. 1 Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1978), discussed in both Cotgrove and Duff, p. 347 and in Goodin, p. 501 ff. 7. Much as with the argument of one theory or position against another. One can argue both from one’s own position against the other, and in the other’s own terms against the other. 8. As well as screening the debate from the public such manoeuvres favour the (pro-)nuclear establishment, since they (those of the alliance of military, large industry, and government) control much of the information and (subject to minor qualifications) can release what, and only what, suits them. 9. This is a conclusion of several governmental inquiries and is conceded by some leading proponents of nuclear development; for requisite details up to 1977 see Routley (a). The same conclusion has been reached in some, but not all, more recent official reports, see, e.g., 2 10. z For some details see Gyorgy, p. 60 ff. 11a. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non-human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional (Old Paradigm) way. 11. See the papers, and simulations, discussed in Goodin, p. 42^? 12. On the pollution and waste disposal record of the nuclear industry, see Nader and Abbotts, Lovins and Price, and Gyorgy. On the more general problem of effective pollution controls, see also, Routley (a), footnote 7. Back of thus Humanity Unlimited assumption is the idea of Man 13. replacing God. First God had unlimited power, e.g. over nature, then when during the Enlightenment Man replaced God, Man was to have unlimited Science and technology were the tools which were to put Man into the power. position of unlimitedness. More recently nuclear power is seen as providing man at least with unlimited physical power, power obtained through technology, [ability to manage technology r&a/esents the past] On such limitation theorems, which go back to Finsler and Godel on one side and to Arrow on the other, see, e.g. Routley 80. All these theorems mimic paradoxes, semantical "paradoxes" on one side and voting "paradoxes" on the other. Other different limitation results are presented in Routley 81. It follows that there are many problems that have no solution and much that is necessarily unknowable. Limitative results put a serious dent in the progress picture. According the Dominant Western Worldview, / the his histo^ of humanity is one of progress; for every problem there is a solution, and thus progress need never cease (Catton and Dunlap, p. 34). 15. See Lovins and Price. /15a. The points also suggest a variant argument against a nuclear future, namely . A nuclear future narrows the range of opportunities open to future generations. . ’What justice requires ... is that the overall range of opportunities open to successor generations should not be narrowed' T- re (Barry, p.243). re~ a nuclear future contravenes requirements of justice. 3 16. For examples, and for some details of the history of philosophers' positions on obligations to the future, see Routley (a). 17. Passmore, p. 91. Passmore’s position is ambivalent and, to all appearances, inconsistent. It is considered in detail in Routley (a), as also is Rawls’ position. 18. For related criticisms of the economists’ arguments for discounting, and for citation of the often eminent economists who sponsor them, see Goodin, pp. 429-30. 19. The reasons (not elaborated here) are that the properties are different e.g. a monetary reduction of value imposes a linear ordering on values to which value rankings, being only partial orderings, do not conform. 20. Goodin however puts his case against those rules in a less than What he claims is that we cannot list all the satisfactory fashion. possible outcomes in the way that such rules as expected utility maximization presupposes, e.g. Goodin suggests that we cannot list all the things that can go wrong with a nuclear power plant or with waste storage procedures. But outstanding alternatives can always be comprehended logically, at worst by saying "all the rest” (e.g. ~p covers everything except p). For example, outcomes Goodin says cannot be listed, can be comprehended along such lines as "plant breakdown through human error”. Furthermore the different I mote rules Goodin subsequently considers also require listing of ' "possible" outcomes. Goodin's point can be alternatively stated however. are really two points. The first trouble is that such There alternative^ cannot in general be assigned required quantitative probabilities, and it is at that point that applications of the models breaks down. The breakdown is just what separates decision making under uncertainty from decision making under risk. Secondly, many influential Applications of decision theory methods, I the Rasmussen Report is a good example, do, illegitimately, delete possible X /alternatives from their 21. Discount, or bank, rates in the economists’ sense are usually set to follow the market, cf. P.A. Samuelson, TfoCTZCWWS., 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p.351. 22. Thus the rates have little moral relevance. A real possibility is one which there is evidence for believing could eventuate. A real possibility requires producible evidence for its consideration. The contrast is with mere logical possibility. 4 24. Such a principle is explicit both in classical utilitarianism (e.g. Sidgwick p. 414), and in a range of contract and other theories from Kant and •-jtA? >v / Rousseau to Rawls (p. 293). How the principle is will depend ' heavily, however, on the underlying theory; and we do not want to make our use depend heavily on particular ethical theories. 25. The latter question is taken up in section VII; see especially, the Poverty argument. 26. SF, p. 27. Shrader-Frechette is herself somewhat crritical of the /carte blanche adoption of these methods, suggesting that^whoever affirm^ denies the desirability of ... [such] standards is, to some degree, /symbollically assenting to a number of American value patterns and culture / * (p. 28). 27. The example parallels the sorts of utilitarianism, e.g. the admissible »unterexamples often advanced to I of an innocent person because of pleasure given to the large lynching party. For the more general case against utilitarianism, see ... 28. US Atomic Energy Commission, Comparative Risk-Cost-Benefit Study of Alternative sources of Electrical Energy (WASH-1224), US Government Printing Office, Washington, 29. , December 1974, p.4-7 and p. 1-16. As SF points out, p.37-44., in some detail. As she remarks, ... since standards need not be met, so long as the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory commission] judges that the licence shows ’a reasonable effort’ at meeting them, current policy allows government regulators to trade .■ human health and welfare for the [apparent] good. E^j/ch] / intentions of the promotors of technology. / good intentions have never been known to be sufficient for the morality of an act (p. 39). The failure of state regulation, even where the standards are as mostly not very X /demanding, and the alliance of regulators with they are supposed to be regulating, are conspicuous features of modern environmental control, not just of (nuclear) pollution control. 30. The figures are those from the original Brookhaven Report: 31. possibilities and consequences of major ’Theoretical accidents in large nuclear plants’, USAEC Report WASH-740, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957. This report was requested in the first place because the ^n Atomic Energy wanted positive safety conclusions "to reassure the private insurance companies" so that they would provide coverage for the nuclear industry. Since even the conservative statistics of the report were alarming it was suppressed and its data were not made public until almost 20 years later, after a suit was brought as a result of the Freedom of Information Act (Shrader-Frechette, pp. 78-9). Atomic Energy Commission, Reactor Safety Study: An Assessment of 32. Accident Risks in US Commercial. Nuclear Power Plants, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1975. This report, the only allegedly complete study, concluded that fission reactors presented only a minimal health risk to the public. Early in 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the relevant organisation that superseded the troubled Atomic Energy Commission) withdrew its support for the report, with the result that there is now no comprehensive analysis of nuclear power approved by the US Government. 32a. Most present and planned reactors are of this type: see Gyorgy. 33. 34. Even then relevant environment factors may have been neglected. 35. There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs against numbers such as probabilities. In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through such familiar methods as msuranc^Ly A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows: a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted, was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final- Report , Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources, In other applications b has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam War (!) points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles (i) - (ii’). The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially ^accepted if as much as is nc^ known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii'), for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is then ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'. But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text. It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, namely ethics to actuaries. 36. A main part of the troub|le/with the models is that they are narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc. Really they try to treat as an uncon- strained optimisation what is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley 'An expensive repair kit for utilitarianism’. 37. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 38. SF, p. 15, where references are also cited. 39. Goodin, p. 433. 40. On all these points see R. Grossman and G. Daneker, Guide to Jobs and Energy3 Environmentalists for Full Employment, Washington DC, 1977, pp.1-7, the details supplied in substantiating the interesting case of Commoner-, well the absorption off available capital by the nuclear industry, see as e-'/ On the mployment issues, see too idd, p. 149. A Z|. K-ola&Az, -fl '(La. j>o/'-bics d A more fundamental challenge to the poverty argument appears in I. Illicit, Energy and Equality, Calden and Boyars, London 1974, where it is argued that the sort of development nuclear energy represents is exactly the opposite of what the poor need. For much more detail on the inappropriateness see E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Blond, and Briggs, London, 19 73. o As_to the capital and <o other requirements, see/£2J, p. 48, and also For an illuminating look at the sort o technology will tend to promote in the so-called underdeveloped countries see the paper of Waiko and other papers in The Melanesian Environment (edited J.H. Winslow), ^usp/alian National University Press, Canberra, 1977. 42. A useful survey is given in A. Lovins, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, Friends of the Earth Australia, 1977 (reprinted from Foreign Affairs, October 19 76); see alsod^tT'J,p. 233«r-ff^ and Schumacher, op. cit. 43. An argument like this is suggested in Passmore, Chapters 4 and 7, with respect to the question saving resources. In Passmore this argument for the overriding importance of passing on contemporary culture is underpinned fl by what appears to be a future-directed ethical version of the Hidden Hand argument of economics that, by a coincidence which if correct would indeed fortunate, the best way to take care of the future (and perhaps even the only way to do so, since do-good intervention is almost certain to go wrong) is to take proper care of the present and immediate future. The argument has all the defects of the related Chain Argument discussed above and others. cK See Nader and Abbotts, p. 66, p. 191, and also Commor^. Very persuasive arguments to this effect have been advanced by civil liberties groups and others in a number of countries: see especially M. Flood and R. Grove-White, Nuclear Prospects. A comment on the individual^ the State and Nuclear Power, Friends of the Earth, Council for the Protection of Rural England and National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 1976. 46. ’US energy policy, fo^ example, since the passage of the 1954 Atomic / Energy Act, has been that/nuclear power is necessary to provide "an economical /and reliable basis" r^te'ded "to sustain economic growth" (SF, p.lll, and references there cited). 7 47. There are now a great many criticisms of the second premiss in the literature. n X For our criticism, and a reformulation of the premiss in terms of selective economic growth (which would exclude nuclear development), see - ■ — '■ Routley (b) , and alsoj'Berkley and Seckier. To simple-mindedly contrast economic growth with no-growth, in the fashion lZ-lof soiief discussions of nuciear power, c,f/ Elster, is to leave out crucial X /alternatives; the of course much simplifies the otherwise faulty case for unalleged growth. 48. In UK and USSR nuclear development is explicitly in the public domain, in such countries as France and West Germany the government has very substantial interests in main nuclear involved companies. Even as regards nuclear plant operation in the US, / I it is difficult to obtain comprehensive Estimates of cost very dramtically according to the samp 1p of plants chosen and the assumptions made concerning the measurement of plant performance (Gyorgy, p. 173). 49. See Kalmanoff, p. 50. See Comey. 51. Ref. to what it has to say about Price 52. Full ref to ^F from ignorance etc. 53. These e.g. Elster, p. 377. On decision theory see also, I f54. A recent theme iyymuch economic literature is that theory and risk analysis can be universally applied. The theme is upset as soon as one steps outside of select Old Paradigm confines. y £ /within these confines there is no decision In any case, even at all on, and few (and ^widely diverging) figures for> the probability of a reactor core meltdown, and no reliable estimates as to the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation, Thus Goodin argues (in 78) that ’such uncertainties plague energy theories’ utility calculations impossible”. as to ’ 55. For details see Gyorgy, P. 398 ff., from which presentation of the international story is adapted. Gyorgy, p. 307, and p. 308. 56. For elaboration of some of the important points, see Chesrmsky and Hermann. Whatever one thinks of the ethical principles underlying the Old 57. Paradigm or its Modification - and they do form a coherent set that many J people respect - these are not the principles underlying contemporary corporate capitalism and associated third-world imperialism. Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary and 58. ^v\ limited use of unacceptable long ter^ commodities such as coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and the problem is really one of making those. Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes cooptive) strategies towards more satisfactory alternatives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular the removal of institutional barriers to energy conservation and alternative technology (e.g. local government regulations blocking these), and the removal of state assistance to fuel and power industries. Symptomatic of the fact that it is not treated as renewable is that 59. forest economics do not generally allow for full renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on forestry operations would be much more striking than they already are often enough. It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument in L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for portable fuels’ 9 60. and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance. For an outline and explanation of this phenomena see Gyorgy, and also . The requisite distinction is made in several places, e.g. Routley (b), and and (to take one example from the real Marxist literature), 61. V Gyorgy-.' 62. by The distinction between shallow and deep ecology was first emphasised For its environmental importance see Routley (c) (where further references are cited). /references. primary General the For t the reader ca ext that over er...ref^ences wilt—unS'"by consulting the latter ■ S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, ’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review 2$ (2) (1980), 333-51. R.E. Goodin, ’No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. A. Gyorgy and Friends, No Nukes: everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979. R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1977. R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79 (cited as Routley (a)). Fox Report: Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. K.S. Schrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980 (referred to as SF). W.R. Catton, Jr., and R.E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant sociology’, American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980) 15-47. United States Interagency Review group on Nuclear Waste Management, Report to the President, Washington. (Dept, of Energy) 1979. (Ref. No. El. 28. TID- 29442) (cited as US(a)). L, A.B. Covins and J.H. Price, Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy, Friends of the Earth International, San Francisco, 1975. R. Routley, ’On the impossibility of an orthodox social theory and of an orthodox solution to environmental problems’, Logique et Analyje, , 23 (1980), 145-66. R. Routley, ’Necessary limits for knowledge: unknowable truths’, in Essays in honour of Paul Weing^T^^ (ed. E. 'tforsc^er) , Salzberg, 1980. J. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, D^ckwairth, London, 1974. Passmore, 2. R. and V. Routley, The Fight for the Forests, Third Edition, RSSS, Australian National University, 1975 (cited as Routley (b)). J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., J) 3fid ^/s^ckler o i/i_ t~ot^/c\ l * _ J. Elster, 'Risk, uncertainty and nuclear power’, Social Science Information 18 (3) (1979) 371-400. £, £ J. Robinson, Economic Heresies, Basic Books, New York, 1971. / Barry, ’Circumstances of Justice and future generations' in Obligations to Future Generations (ed. ^ .1. * Si^rrj^and B. Barry), Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 19 78. /f £< c Zy c>~f . - ) yT —f. f / 1 /f4. c~~tt\A c j < / /7Z , (X KT , // / /{. fi)o^S $ ; } //67- Zy? z77G_ /6 6z7 3)?r * 6 /V4 ■ C rr * /f / <^ch_^ /_ z?73. . \Jol.jJZ o 0 Hh Z CL 3 TO o p. 3 3 Z 3 o z co rt O rt TO B z f Z CL TO 3 3 O Hi 3 3 3 3 PO □ 3 Z Prt pj £rt O Z O 00 *< *3 3 3 O '•s rt Z CL 'C 3 3 "o' 3 3 co o 3 3 fb 3 i-h O >< P- O rt (0 z 3 3 rt PO 0 (b z o w O a P M § o B rt rt 3 3 O' 3 Z 3 3 3 3 CL CL 3 Z Z 3 3 rt 3 Z L<J z 3 rt 3 3 3 prt 3 CL B Z Z z w 3 3 rt 3 a rt 3 S' 3 TO O' 3 3 3 3 P- TO 00 O 5 C 3 3 3 TO O' Z Z 3 3 3 rt rt O Z Z 3 3 * < rt •3 Z 3 Z 3 3 3 O 3 rt * 3 3 3 O CD to 3 3 rt rt 3 Z < O Z 3 O 3 CO M z > 3 3 > H g s M Z P1 3 X PO' Z 3 >3 g 3 3 Z n o P' P> 1 tn 3 3 * p 3 O > f rf CO 3 CL CD rf 3 O 00 3 O 3 3 P- 1 CL 3 3 rt O Z 3 O Z 3 3 3 * p 3 3 rt 3 3 * P PTO 3 CL 3 3 O 3 3 rt rf 3 Z Z TO 3 CL n O Z w A t< O <Z> * H O s cn rt H» rt C rt B co * H H« CD F—* n Hl Hl H« :r o > z o 5 1 S' P3 3 3 3 3 S' P3 3 P- Z 3 rf 3 H O S' PO 3 Z t-1 a o 3 Ft s: H« O 3 3 3 CL rt P" O H 3 O CL c 3 0Q 3 P3 <S n O rt C O 3 Z 3 3 Z 3 3 rt P. 3 Pz 3 rt * P < 3 rt P3 * p 3 3 C rt> p * 3 Z z—\ 3 M X) 3 3 rt co 3 3 tn C CD rt 3 c n rt > C rt * 3 O 3 Prt 3 rt Z < 3 f Z A A Z o z 3 «! 3 3 CL CO Z 2 z 3 O < Pco p> o 3 TO O 3 P3 Z 3 o p> P1 3 3 rt P< 3 M 00 3 Z p. rt 3 3 Z 3 3 3 3 3 CL rt O 3 3 Z 3 rt 3 CL H 3 3 O 3 3 TO rt 3 tn p rti 3 rt 3 rt 3 3 3 TO rt P‘ Z 3 O' z p3 H- 3 CD 3 z Z 3 3 3 3 CL rh 3 3 rt rt> 0 Z H- O 3 3 CD 3 $ O Si 3 CD H1 3 CD 3 3 CD 3 3 Z t-h S' CL 1 PS' 3 < 3 Z 3 B >3 3 Hi Hi fl) H fl) * 3 H pf o CL Z < PCL X- W n o z o J3j z 3 rt C 3 3 Z C 3 S P3 rt 3 P3 CD Pn 3 3 CD CD rt p. o 9 fl) CD rt) H Hi 1 z-s 1 3 jb rt rt) K * H CD z O 3 5 rt g CL 3 < 3 Z O Z 3 Z TO 3 O 3 00 3 3 CO 3 O CD C CD 3 3 3 3 3 CL 5 2 z-s 3 O O 3 ? 3 rt 3 3 Z (u Z B 3 3 P3 O rt 00 < 3 3 O Z « C rt 3 S' CL • 3 3 < P3 O 2 3 rt C 3 3 pi < 3 Z c 3 P- 3 0 rt CL < S' P3 O 3 3 g rt 3 3 3 rt 3 o 5 B SS 3 3 3 3 3 3 rt 3 O < 3 3 3 3 rt Z O 3 p- o B e W cz> n o Z w <3 > r c z 3 3 3 CL Z 00 B Z 3 3 3 CL P00 B cn o o p3 Z rt 3 3 5 z O O B Alternative Environmental Dominant Social Paradigm Alternative Environmental Paradigm Domination over nature Non-material (self-realisation) Natural environment intrinsically valued Harmony with nature * ECONOMY Market forces Risk and reward Rewards for achievement Differentials Individual self-help Public interest Safety Incomes related to need Egalitarian Collective/social provision POLITY Authoritative structures (experts influential) Hierarchical Law and order Action through official institutions Participative structures (citizen/ worker involvement) Non-hierar chical Liberation Direct action SOCIETY Centralised Large-scale Associational Ordered Decentralised Small-scale Communal Flexible NATURE Ample reserves Nature hostile/neutral Environment controllable Earth’s resources limited Nature benign Nature delicately balanced KNOWLEDGE Confidence in science and technology Rationality of means (only) Limits to science Rationality of ends CORE VALUES Material (economic growth, progress and development) Natural environment valued as resource State socialism, as practised in most of the "Eastern bloc", differs as to economic organisation, the market in particular being replaced system by a command system).$ But since there is virtually no debate confines of state socialism, that minor variant on the Old Paradigm from the Old Paradigm really only by central planning (a market over a nuclear future within the need not be delineated here.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 97, Item 2: Draft of Nuclear power - ethical, social and political dimensions Subject The topic of the resource Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations and corrections with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield. Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 97, Item 2 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [64] leaves.48.16 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:78dac39">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:78dac39</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/3d6f700c4d63dddd9b3a3db43b54391a.pdf 024f4bf0f001d601f9aa58840b75c425 PDF Text Text Richard and Vai Routley 1. NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS 1 One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely raging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. train has just pulled out. passengers and freight. The train which is A long distance country crowded carries both At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packed in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys. All If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the consigner He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not or the people on it. These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. not responsible for the train Unfortunately, similar excuses are often so seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his workers1 health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such grounds as justification. �2. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the train case. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument progresses. There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. A leak of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1-1 million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. Short-term methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models �3. reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environments.10 In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment. Given the 3 heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on r not only have present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^/none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, but they may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. to bear Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it. Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the basis of life, are run-down or destroyed. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear fission, at least indirect beneficiaries. �The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with these problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale. There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not apply to those in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable. As in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn. I II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. �5. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations to distant future creatures. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Others fall into three categories: those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond those perhaps to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained', there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving effect of our actions on future people. from the Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus, moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). Let us call the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the No­ constraints position. Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position, which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these. Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us, and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offending predecessors. �6. The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action. The no-constraints position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment (perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-constraints position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the no-constraints view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious. Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in �7. what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful, in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the. chance of a good life. Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be avoided. These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part because of a failure to make an important distinction. Some of our obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise. Other obligations, however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that an agreement has been struck between us. former kind acquired obligations Let us call obligations of the and those of the latter unacquired obligations. There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with each. In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise. In the case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in the past (e.g., made a promise). Our obligations to future people clearly are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position simply fails to take into account. These obligations arise as a result of our ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether on our contemporaries or on those in the distant future. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them. All that �8. one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially , , . , , , , , all obligat to the distant acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence th uture involve heroic self sacrifice, something "above and beyond" what is normally required. One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evading these difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly abandoned. According to the Qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained There are obligations, even to distant future with respect to the distant future. people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the Qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints. What economics cannot legitimately do is determine what these constraints are. There are, moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future, giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all the questions at issue. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed to handle the waste problem). generations may well not Since there is mounting evidence that future be better off then present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. For the waste problem to be handed down �9. to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off but so much better off that they can (easily) carry and control the nuclear freight. A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument, builds directly It is argued from the fact on the notion of opportunity cost. that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values. This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of resources. Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. beset this approach. Two problems First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. that the argument depends on a false assumption. We simply do not know A more serious objection is It is not true that value, or damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents. There is no clear "monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of life, a lost species. The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it leads back in practice to the No-constraints position. discounting imposes an " economic horizon" The reason is that beyond which nothing need be considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are, when discounted back to the present, negligible. A different argument for the Qualified position, the Probabilities argument, avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of �10. distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. Firstly, probabilities involving distant badly flawed. is however The argument future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes. problems often Moreover the outcomes of some moral do not depend on a high level of probability. In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. Nor, of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people, fin the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use. And even the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such if an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on < other people) was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or is quite inadequate when different parties without the probability frills, are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations are at issue. permissible 5 For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than morally larger benefits to another group. transferred in any compensated for by But costs or benefits are not legitimately simple way from one group to another. The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept the costs” is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and �11. very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved £ in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This Transfer-limiting principle is especially clear in cases of which a thalidomide manufacturing and marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature. The principle is of fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again : it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter of reactor meltdown. In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all— who may be just the opposite! More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features. production, from nuclear or fossil pollution. fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious Thus from the Transfer-limiting important necessary condition for energy options: an energy option Large-scale energy principle emerges an To be morally acceptable should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not benefit correspondingly from the energy source. Included in the scope of �12. this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those of the next towns). A further corollary of the principle is the Transmission Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical theories (e.g. those of a deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers putting oneself in another’s position. But the principle is perhaps best defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples. embroider the train parable, the company town decides to Suppose, to solve its disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line, which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due protest. The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus­ taining risks to their own lives and health. Most of us would regard this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company town flourishes. IV. UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY. Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to uncertainty. There are two main components to the General Uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on ai priori second on a posteriori grounds. follows:- grounds, the The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when �13. accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of different action. our actions on the distant future. ignorance A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of waste control on the 7 grounds of uncertainty. the argument concerned is this J- More formally and crudely One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information. distant future. There is no reliable information at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly such do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty". In moral situations in the present, assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. that there is a significant risk of harm It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the �14. prospects of the passengers quite uncertain. It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty argument, even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be. Therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Given that moral principles are characteristically of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x”, h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. Therefore, even if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain , that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is �15. not so great as to exclude constraints on action. For example, we may have little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action. For this sort of reason, the Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected. Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off pxQhabLe. harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those to whom we are morally committed. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments �16. is again a mere outside possibility. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure—machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument, the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims Nor are distributional of the future. problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what ca^e independentlys • argued from the universalisability features of • 1 moral principles, 8 K / thatA disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims below the claims of present people. That is, we have the same general obligations �17. to future people as to the present; thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or and future creatures. entitlement to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position. Hence several further problems arise, to which principles and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem apply. For example, if one group (social unit, or state) decides to dump its radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it imposes risks and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on future people. There are differences however : distant people spatially cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden. People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks. One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near Emission problem. the plant : hence the Such ’’normal” emission during plant operation of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain. If our ethical principles permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised by nuclear emissions would be : what extent of �18. cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion And these risks are real! In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. Thus it is not just complacent to say It s a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners make life comfortable’. For such benefits to some as airconditioners provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses — is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population has received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent is also likely to have negligible consequences. to the "natural" level) The increased amounts of radiation — with their large man-made component — are then accounted normal, and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, �19. e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Thus public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a "public pacifier" while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations a proceed relatively unhamperedi While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’. But "definitions" notwithstanding, such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island): hence the Core-meltdown problem. If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively 10 contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative US figures (still the best available from official sources7 are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater. The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the train acts inadmissibly. a government or government-endorsed utility appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in �20. siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the ’’community train”. More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements as the Transfer-limiting principle. The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured to avoid questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the extraordinary improbability ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the^ of reactor malfunction. They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. However, the mathematical models relied upon in this report, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible" possibilities that may well happen in the real world. that the It is not surprising, then,y methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised, or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn. 12 Moreover, use of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability of a serious accident. In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk­ assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their �21. ethical status. The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options: Ai. If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option Aii. b ; Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already 13 accepted; therefore option a is acceptable. These assumptions are then applied as follows. be killed Since the number likely to eventually by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted; it follows that the risks of ntaclear power are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer­ limiting principle. In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:costs and benefits go to the same parties; undertakes and is the person who voluntarily the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed not benefit? Do the on other parties who do It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, a basis would be soundly based. that a comparison on such This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. risks in the nuclear cycle Unlike the special - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards �22. have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain "the same 14 risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The problems are not unique to nuclear development. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where dangerous large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead radioactive lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core A meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations ancl made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. �23. These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic That nuclear development appears to force such political societies. consequences tells heavily against it. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. never accounted Since nuclear wars are positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is undesirable. This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against large-scale nuclear development. VII. 16 CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING QN NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory that of appeal to overriding circumstances. route remains open, That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations. For, as observed, the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. case: a Transfer-limiting principle applies. So it is also in the nuclear But suppose now the consigner argues that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die. It is �by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still amountsjjone of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases aticaJVwhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop­ ment is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus­ trialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, �25. —-creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon largely non-existent utility systems - e.g. established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised. than what it is: But that does not make the poverty argument anything other a fraud. There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor, both in the third world and in industrial countries: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar sources, wind, water and tidal power). Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-going- out argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society. the most part these large questions can be by-passed. But for The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. / it: It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. These assumptions are all hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so; after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to �26. future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. Since high- The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably,that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence There is good or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-going-out argument are wrong. present The consumption of less energy than at need involve no reduction of well-being * and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary. then What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza . In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it. which has become heavily dependent upon a A society highly centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom �27. for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal to futurity, closed. If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. VIII. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. the Transfer-limiting principle : Such an option would, moreover, also violate for it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement. To these main conventional options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and hydroelectricity. Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power. choice is not however technological, The deeper nor merely/individual/ but Social, and involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and, at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life­ styles and social arrangements^ These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the �28. unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and which are^' them. ^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the Transmission ^Requirement. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests — whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent. It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain- forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure for energy on top of the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear �29. products or polluted by coal products. illustrates, a mere switch to In short, as the forest situation more benign technologies - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate. The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. The point is readily illustrated. It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, .... authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. from created wants It would be Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to assume that they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the passing on of serious costs to future people. reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: And there are other sorts of it is the main, indeed the only sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological perspective, as contrasted with a shallow ecological outlook which regards the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests. The deep ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm (which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics) �30. and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic Socialism)^ It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants. The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is fast increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements. The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the 20 basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly lead to the difficult social change option. The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power structure. To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult as it is to suitably alter "the system,” especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, it is imperative to try: we are all on the nuclear train. �FOOTNOTES This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear 1. power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’ (ESP for short, available from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred For help with the condensation we are very to in the reference list). considerably indebted to the editors. In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including nuclear war). We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. Further, in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources. Little difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from work cited herein. For example, virtually all the data cited in sections I and VII is referenced in Routley. 2. At worst ESP can always be consulted. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 3. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm 'nuclear development may afflict on non­ human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way. �For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented) simulation models 4. respects. see Goodin, p.428. The Opportunity-cost argument is also defective in other It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the proper methods for decision which affect, the choice, apply discounting. future, such as that of energy But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting. 5. This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory, roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a decision method in such contexts. 6. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 7. For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff. 8. See Routley, p. 160. 9. For much further discussion of the points of the preceding two para­ graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader 10. & Abbotts. Most of the reactors in the world are of this type; see Gyorgy. 11. See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4. 12. See Shrader-Frechette. shortcomings A worthwhile initial view of the of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader 13. There are variations on Ai against numbers such as probabilities. and Aii & Abbotts. which multiply costs In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. risks may be assessed (Alternatively, through such familiar methods as insurance). �A principle varying Aii’. a Aii, and formulated as follows: is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted, was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, Final Report, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources. other applications b In has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war (.’ ) . The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles Ai - Aii1. The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional origin of b ; b character. For look at the may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in Aii', for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that 'ethically acceptable' rather than 'socially accepted'. b is But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text, and others. It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to actuaries. 14. See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15. 15. Goodin 16. The argument is elaborated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philosophically important material on p. 433. alternative nonconsumeristic work cited in V. and R. Routley, .social arrangements and lifestyles, see 'Social theories, self management and environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism. �18. The parlous situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V. Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’ (available from the authors). For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its 19. rival, the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see "1 the main the table on p. 341 which encapsulates J" of the respective paradigms; Cotgrove and Duff, especially assumptions compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p.33. Contemporary variants on the Dominant Social Paradigm are considered in ESP. The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess. For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley, ’Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’ in Mannison ^~^,et al, and the references there cited, especially to Rodman’s 20. work. The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the context of paradigm conflict. But it is also argued that, even within assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants, Ti. Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options. The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument. It is the following version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’ ) necessary to sustain economic growth. Nuclear power is Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone redistribution problems, etc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll), But both and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks. premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective growth, which jettisons economic the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) Paradigm standards. fails even by Dominant For of course nuclear power is not necessary that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. defended is some elaboration of the premiss : given The premiss usually Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ �being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having the most favourable benefit-cost ratio’, etc. Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively (unless a good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done). Tii. On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as public choices. Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types (discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts). Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal: Tiii. Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is rejected, as the arguments of Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show. What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain (for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.). And the practices of contemporary corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants : not ethically acceptable. they are certainly �REFERENCES USED Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (* ). S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, "Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, 28(2) (1980), 333-51. ’A new ecological paradigm for post exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980). 15-47. For Report : Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. *R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. *A. Gyorgy and friends, No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979. *D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. N. Myers, The Sinking Ark, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979. R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1977. *K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980. R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Richard and Vai Routley 1. NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS 1 One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely raging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. train has just pulled out. passengers and freight. The train which is A long distance country crowded carries both At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packed in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys. All If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the consigner He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not or the people on it. These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. not responsible for the train Unfortunately, similar excuses are often so seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his workers1 health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such grounds as justification. 2. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the train case. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument progresses. There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. A leak of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1-1 million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. Short-term methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models 3. reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environments.10 In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment. Given the 3 heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on r not only have present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^/none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, but they may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. to bear Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it. Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the basis of life, are run-down or destroyed. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear fission, at least indirect beneficiaries. The "solution" then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with these problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale. There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not apply to those in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable. As in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn. I II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. 5. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations to distant future creatures. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Others fall into three categories: those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond those perhaps to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained', there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving effect of our actions on future people. from the Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus, moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). Let us call the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the No­ constraints position. Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position, which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these. Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us, and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offending predecessors. 6. The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action. The no-constraints position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment (perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-constraints position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the no-constraints view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious. Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in 7. what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful, in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the. chance of a good life. Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be avoided. These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part because of a failure to make an important distinction. Some of our obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise. Other obligations, however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that an agreement has been struck between us. former kind acquired obligations Let us call obligations of the and those of the latter unacquired obligations. There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with each. In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise. In the case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in the past (e.g., made a promise). Our obligations to future people clearly are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position simply fails to take into account. These obligations arise as a result of our ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether on our contemporaries or on those in the distant future. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them. All that 8. one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially , , . , , , , , all obligat to the distant acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence th uture involve heroic self sacrifice, something "above and beyond" what is normally required. One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evading these difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly abandoned. According to the Qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained There are obligations, even to distant future with respect to the distant future. people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead then to the Qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints. What economics cannot legitimately do is determine what these constraints are. There are, moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future, giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all the questions at issue. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed to handle the waste problem). generations may well not Since there is mounting evidence that future be better off then present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. For the waste problem to be handed down 9. to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off but so much better off that they can (easily) carry and control the nuclear freight. A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument, builds directly It is argued from the fact on the notion of opportunity cost. that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values. This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of resources. Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. beset this approach. Two problems First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. that the argument depends on a false assumption. We simply do not know A more serious objection is It is not true that value, or damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents. There is no clear "monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of life, a lost species. The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it leads back in practice to the No-constraints position. discounting imposes an " economic horizon" The reason is that beyond which nothing need be considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are, when discounted back to the present, negligible. A different argument for the Qualified position, the Probabilities argument, avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of 10. distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. Firstly, probabilities involving distant badly flawed. is however The argument future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes. problems often Moreover the outcomes of some moral do not depend on a high level of probability. In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. Nor, of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people, fin the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use. And even the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such if an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on < other people) was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or is quite inadequate when different parties without the probability frills, are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations are at issue. permissible 5 For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than morally larger benefits to another group. transferred in any compensated for by But costs or benefits are not legitimately simple way from one group to another. The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept the costs” is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and 11. very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved £ in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This Transfer-limiting principle is especially clear in cases of which a thalidomide manufacturing and marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature. The principle is of fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again : it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter of reactor meltdown. In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all— who may be just the opposite! More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features. production, from nuclear or fossil pollution. fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious Thus from the Transfer-limiting important necessary condition for energy options: an energy option Large-scale energy principle emerges an To be morally acceptable should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not benefit correspondingly from the energy source. Included in the scope of 12. this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those of the next towns). A further corollary of the principle is the Transmission Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical theories (e.g. those of a deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers putting oneself in another’s position. But the principle is perhaps best defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples. embroider the train parable, the company town decides to Suppose, to solve its disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line, which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due protest. The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus­ taining risks to their own lives and health. Most of us would regard this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company town flourishes. IV. UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY. Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to uncertainty. There are two main components to the General Uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on ai priori second on a posteriori grounds. follows:- grounds, the The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when 13. accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of different action. our actions on the distant future. ignorance A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of waste control on the 7 grounds of uncertainty. the argument concerned is this J- More formally and crudely One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information. distant future. There is no reliable information at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations’ by ’knowledge’ in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly such do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty". In moral situations in the present, assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. that there is a significant risk of harm It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the 14. prospects of the passengers quite uncertain. It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty argument, even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be. Therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Given that moral principles are characteristically of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x”, h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. Therefore, even if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain , that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is 15. not so great as to exclude constraints on action. For example, we may have little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action. For this sort of reason, the Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected. Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off pxQhabLe. harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those to whom we are morally committed. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments 16. is again a mere outside possibility. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure—machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument, the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims Nor are distributional of the future. problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what ca^e independentlys • argued from the universalisability features of • 1 moral principles, 8 K / thatA disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims below the claims of present people. That is, we have the same general obligations 17. to future people as to the present; thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or and future creatures. entitlement to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position. Hence several further problems arise, to which principles and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem apply. For example, if one group (social unit, or state) decides to dump its radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it imposes risks and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on future people. There are differences however : distant people spatially cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden. People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks. One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge radioactive materials into the air and water near Emission problem. the plant : hence the Such ’’normal” emission during plant operation of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain. If our ethical principles permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised by nuclear emissions would be : what extent of 18. cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion And these risks are real! In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. Thus it is not just complacent to say It s a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners make life comfortable’. For such benefits to some as airconditioners provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses — is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population has received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent is also likely to have negligible consequences. to the "natural" level) The increased amounts of radiation — with their large man-made component — are then accounted normal, and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, 19. e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards "imposed" is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Thus public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a "public pacifier" while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations a proceed relatively unhamperedi While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’. But "definitions" notwithstanding, such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island): hence the Core-meltdown problem. If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively 10 contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative US figures (still the best available from official sources7 are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater. The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the train acts inadmissibly. a government or government-endorsed utility appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in 20. siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the ’’community train”. More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements as the Transfer-limiting principle. The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured to avoid questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the extraordinary improbability ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the^ of reactor malfunction. They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. However, the mathematical models relied upon in this report, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible" possibilities that may well happen in the real world. that the It is not surprising, then,y methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised, or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn. 12 Moreover, use of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability of a serious accident. In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk­ assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their 21. ethical status. The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options: Ai. If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option Aii. b ; Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already 13 accepted; therefore option a is acceptable. These assumptions are then applied as follows. be killed Since the number likely to eventually by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted; it follows that the risks of ntaclear power are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer­ limiting principle. In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:costs and benefits go to the same parties; undertakes and is the person who voluntarily the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed not benefit? Do the on other parties who do It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, a basis would be soundly based. that a comparison on such This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. risks in the nuclear cycle Unlike the special - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards 22. have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain "the same 14 risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The problems are not unique to nuclear development. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where dangerous large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead radioactive lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core A meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations ancl made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. 23. These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic That nuclear development appears to force such political societies. consequences tells heavily against it. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. never accounted Since nuclear wars are positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is undesirable. This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against large-scale nuclear development. VII. 16 CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING QN NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory that of appeal to overriding circumstances. route remains open, That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations. For, as observed, the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. case: a Transfer-limiting principle applies. So it is also in the nuclear But suppose now the consigner argues that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die. It is by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still amountsjjone of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases aticaJVwhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop­ ment is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus­ trialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, 25. —-creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon largely non-existent utility systems - e.g. established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised. than what it is: But that does not make the poverty argument anything other a fraud. There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor, both in the third world and in industrial countries: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar sources, wind, water and tidal power). Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-going- out argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society. the most part these large questions can be by-passed. But for The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. / it: It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. These assumptions are all hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so; after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to 26. future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. Since high- The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably,that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence There is good or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-going-out argument are wrong. present The consumption of less energy than at need involve no reduction of well-being * and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary. then What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza . In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it. which has become heavily dependent upon a A society highly centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom 27. for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal to futurity, closed. If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. VIII. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. the Transfer-limiting principle : Such an option would, moreover, also violate for it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement. To these main conventional options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and hydroelectricity. Such softer options - if suitably combined with energy conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power. choice is not however technological, The deeper nor merely/individual/ but Social, and involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and, at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life­ styles and social arrangements^ These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the 28. unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and which are^' them. ^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the Transmission ^Requirement. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests — whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent. It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain- forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a major further and not readily limitable demand pressure for energy on top of the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear 29. products or polluted by coal products. illustrates, a mere switch to In short, as the forest situation more benign technologies - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate. The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. The point is readily illustrated. It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, .... authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. from created wants It would be Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to assume that they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the passing on of serious costs to future people. reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: And there are other sorts of it is the main, indeed the only sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological perspective, as contrasted with a shallow ecological outlook which regards the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests. The deep ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm (which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics) 30. and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic Socialism)^ It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants. The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is fast increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements. The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the 20 basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly lead to the difficult social change option. The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power structure. To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult as it is to suitably alter "the system,” especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, it is imperative to try: we are all on the nuclear train. FOOTNOTES This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear 1. power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’ (ESP for short, available from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred For help with the condensation we are very to in the reference list). considerably indebted to the editors. In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including nuclear war). We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. Further, in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources. Little difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from work cited herein. For example, virtually all the data cited in sections I and VII is referenced in Routley. 2. At worst ESP can always be consulted. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 3. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm 'nuclear development may afflict on non­ human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way. For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented) simulation models 4. respects. see Goodin, p.428. The Opportunity-cost argument is also defective in other It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the proper methods for decision which affect, the choice, apply discounting. future, such as that of energy But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting. 5. This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory, roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a decision method in such contexts. 6. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 7. For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff. 8. See Routley, p. 160. 9. For much further discussion of the points of the preceding two para­ graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader 10. & Abbotts. Most of the reactors in the world are of this type; see Gyorgy. 11. See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4. 12. See Shrader-Frechette. shortcomings A worthwhile initial view of the of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader 13. There are variations on Ai against numbers such as probabilities. and Aii & Abbotts. which multiply costs In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. risks may be assessed (Alternatively, through such familiar methods as insurance). A principle varying Aii’. a Aii, and formulated as follows: is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted, was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, Final Report, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources. other applications b In has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war (.’ ) . The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles Ai - Aii1. The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional origin of b ; b character. For look at the may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in Aii', for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that 'ethically acceptable' rather than 'socially accepted'. b is But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text, and others. It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to actuaries. 14. See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15. 15. Goodin 16. The argument is elaborated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philosophically important material on p. 433. alternative nonconsumeristic work cited in V. and R. Routley, .social arrangements and lifestyles, see 'Social theories, self management and environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism. 18. The parlous situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V. Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’ (available from the authors). For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its 19. rival, the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see "1 the main the table on p. 341 which encapsulates J" of the respective paradigms; Cotgrove and Duff, especially assumptions compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p.33. Contemporary variants on the Dominant Social Paradigm are considered in ESP. The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess. For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley, ’Human chauvinism and environmental ethics’ in Mannison ^~^,et al, and the references there cited, especially to Rodman’s 20. work. The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the context of paradigm conflict. But it is also argued that, even within assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants, Ti. Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options. The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument. It is the following version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’ ) necessary to sustain economic growth. Nuclear power is Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone redistribution problems, etc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll), But both and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks. premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective growth, which jettisons economic the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) Paradigm standards. fails even by Dominant For of course nuclear power is not necessary that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. defended is some elaboration of the premiss : given The premiss usually Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, ’having the most favourable benefit-cost ratio’, etc. Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively (unless a good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done). Tii. On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as public choices. Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types (discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts). Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal: Tiii. Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is rejected, as the arguments of Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show. What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain (for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.). And the practices of contemporary corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants : not ethically acceptable. they are certainly REFERENCES USED Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (* ). S. Cotgrove and A. Duff, "Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, 28(2) (1980), 333-51. ’A new ecological paradigm for post exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980). 15-47. For Report : Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. *R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. *A. Gyorgy and friends, No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979. *D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. N. Myers, The Sinking Ark, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979. R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1977. *K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980. R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 97, Item 3: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions Subject The topic of the resource Typescript of draft, with handwritten emendations and corrections with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield. Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 97, Item 3 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. 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NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1 One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ragging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. train has just pulled out. passengers and freight. The train which is A long distance country crowded carries both At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packed in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys. All If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the consigner He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not or the people on it. X responsible for the train These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen /as ludicrous when set in this context. Unfortunately, similar excuses are not -aiso seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his workers’ health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such grounds as justification. �Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially wheie they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the train case. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument progresses. There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. A leak of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1% million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over I the last twenty years. Short-term methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models �3. reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human 10 environments. In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environmentP Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on not only have present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,y none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, but they may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. to bear Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it. Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the basis of life, are run-down or destroyed. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear fission, at least indirect beneficiaries. �The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with these problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale. There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not apply to those in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s action in the circumstances Outlined is not to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable. As in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn. II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. �5. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations to distant future creatures. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Others fall into three categories: those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond those perhaps to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving effect of our actions on future people. from the Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus, moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). Let us call the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the constraints position. ' -*■ ■■■--------- ----- No­ , Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position, which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these. Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us, and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offending predecessors. �The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action. The no—constraints position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment (perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-constraints position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the no-constraints view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious. Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in �7. what they do of people affected and their Interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance of a good life. Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be avoided. These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part because of a failure to make an important distinction. Some of our obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise. Other obligations, however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that an agreement has been struck between us. former kind acquired obligations Let us call obligations of the and those of the latter unacquired obligations. There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with each. In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise. In the case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in the past (e.g., made a promise). Our obligations to future people clearly are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position simply fails to take into account. These obligations arise as a result of our ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether on our contemporaries or on those in the distant future. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them. All that �8. one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially ions, to the distant acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence' .at/future involve heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond" what is normally required. One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from shipping the dangerous package on the train. III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evading these difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly abandoned. According to the Qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained There are obligations, even to distant future with respect to the distant future. people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead theft to the Qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints. What economics cannot legitimately do is determine what these constraints are. There are, moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future, giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all the questions at issue. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed to handle the waste problem). generations may well not Since there is mounting evidence that future be better off then present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. For the waste problem to be handed down �9. to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off but so much better off that they can (easily) carry and control the nuclear freight. A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument, builds directly It is argued from the fact on the notion of opportunity cost. that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non- immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values. This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of resources. Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. beset this approach. Two problems First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. that the argument depends on a false assumption. We simply do not know A more serious objection is It is not true that value, or damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents. There is no clear ’’monetary compensation” for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of life, a lost species. The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it leads back in practice to the No-constraints position. discounting imposes an ” economic horizon” The reason is that beyond which nothing need be considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are, when discounted back to the present, negligible. » A different argument for the Qualified position, the Probabilities argument, avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of �10. distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. is however The argument Firstly, probabilities involving distant badly flawed. future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes. problems often Moreover the outcomes of some moral do not depend on a high level of probability. In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. Nor, of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people, ^in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use. And even the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such if an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people) was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or is quite inadequate when different parties without the probability frills, are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations are at issue. permissible 5 For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than morally larger benefits to another group. transferred in any compensated for by But costs or benefits are not legitimately simple way from one group to another. The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and �i very different thing. I 11. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved g in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This Transfer-limiting principle is especially clear in cases of which a thalidomide manufacturing and marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature. The principle is of fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again : it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter of reactor meltdown. In particular, the principle, invalidates the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all— who may be just the opposite! , More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features. production, from nuclear or fossil pollution. fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious Thus from the Transfer-limiting important necessary condition for energy options: an energy option Large-scale energy principle emerges an To be morally acceptable should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not benefit correspondingly from the energy source. Included in the scope of �12. this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those of the next towns). A further corollary of the principle is the Transmission Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical theories (e.g. those of a deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers putting oneself in another’s position. But the principle is perhaps best defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples. embroider the train parable, the company town decides to Suppose, to solve its disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line, which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due protest. The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus­ taining risks to their own lives and health. Most of us would regard this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company town flourishes. IV. UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY. Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to uncertainty. There are two main components to the General Uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori second on a posteriori grounds. follows:- grounds, the The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when �13. accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of different action. our actions on the distant future. ignorance A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of grounds of uncertainty. More formally and crudely waste control on the the argument concerned is this- One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information. distant future. There is no reliable information at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace obligations in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available by knowledge with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. do act on the basis We can and constantly such f/"unreliable” information, which the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty". In moral situations in the present, assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In lact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. that there is a significant risk of harm It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the �14. prospects of the passengers quite uncertain. It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty argument, even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be. Therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Given that moral principles are characteristically of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x", h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. Therefore, even if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain . that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is �15. not so great as to exclude constraints on action. For example, we may have little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action. For this sort of reason, the Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected. Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those to whom we are morally committed. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration ~ what we are being handed in such arguments �16. is again a mere outside possibility. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,_ the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future. Nor are distributional problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what caiji^e independently^ argued from the universalisability features of moral principles, thata disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims below the claims of present people. That is, we have the same general obligations �17. to future people as to the present; thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or and future creatures. entitlement to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position. Hence several further problems arise, to which principles and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem apply. For example, if one group (social unit, or state) decides to dump its radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it imposes risks and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on future people. There are differences however : distant people spatially cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden. People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks. One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge radioactive materials into the air and Emission problem. water near the plant : hence the Such "normal" emission during plant operation of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain. If our ethical principles permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised by nuclear emissions would be : what extent of �18. cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion And these risks are real.’ In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. Thus it is not just complacent to say It s a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners make life comfortable’. For such benefits to some as airconditioners provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses - is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According I to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population ha^ received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent is also likely to have negligible consequences. to the "natural” level) The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being, and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, no t be. Finally, what is or has become normal, �19. e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’'imposed” is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Thus public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’’public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations q proceed relatively unhamperedT While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’. But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island): hence the Core-meltdown problem. If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively 10 contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed Instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from A . 11 official sources' are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater. The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the train acts inadmissibly. a government or government-endorsed utility appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in �20. siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the "community train". More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements as the Transfer-limiting principle. The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured to avoid questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the extraordinary improbability ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the/ of reactor malfunction. They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. However, the mathematical models relied upon in this report, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible" possibilities that may well happen in the real world. that the It is not surprising, then,^ methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised, or that official support for the report has now'been withdrawn.. 12 Moreover, use of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability of a serious accident. In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk­ assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their �1 21. ethical status. The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options: ( Ai. If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option Aii. b ; Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already /3 accepted; therefore option a is acceptable. These assumptions are then applied as follows. be killed Since the number likely to eventually by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted; it follows that the risks of nuclear power are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer­ limiting principle. In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:- costs and benefits go to the same parties; Do the and is the person who voluntarily the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in undertakes driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed not benefit? on other parties who do It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, a basis would be soundly based. that a comparison on such This is rarely 'the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. risks in the nuclear cycle Unlike the special - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards �22. have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same 14 risk” of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The A problems are not produced—by nuclear development. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where dangerous large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead radioactive lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up,,so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations ami made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. �23. These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic That nuclear development appears to force such political societies. consequences tells heavily against it. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. never accounted Since nuclear wars are positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is undesirable. This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against large-scale nuclear development. VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory that of appeal to overriding circumstances. route remains open, That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations. For, as observed, the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. case: a Transfer-limiting principle applies. So it is also in the nuclear But suppose now the consigner argues that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die. It is �by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still to amounts^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases atical^where Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop­ ment is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of Indus» trialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, �25. —.creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon largely non-existent utility systems - e.g. established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised. than what it is: But that does not make the poverty argument anything other a fraud. There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor, both in the third world and in industrial countries: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar sources, wind, water and tidal power). Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. > The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society. the most part these large questions can be by-passed. But for The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. . it It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. These assumptions are all hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so; after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to �future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since high- technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-going-out argument are wrong. present The consumption of less energy than at need involve no reduction of well-being;and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary. then What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza . In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it. which has become heavily dependent upon a A society highly centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom �27. for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal to futurity, closed. If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. VIII. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. the Transfer-limiting principle : Such an option would, moreover, also violate for it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement. To these main conventional options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and hydroelectricity. Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power, The deeper choice is not however technological, nor merely^individual^, £u£ Social , and involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and, at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life­ styles and social arrangements^6 These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the �28. unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and which are^5" them. "2?likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the Transmission ^2 2,1^g q u i rement. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline, is widely thought to be imminent. It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a ma|nr^ f ur ther and not readily limitable demand pressure for energy on top of ^the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear �29. products or polluted by coal products. illustrates, a mere switch to In short, as the forest situation more benign technologies - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate. The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. The point is readily illustrated. It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, .... authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. from created wants It would be Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to assume that they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds, of infrastructure, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the passing on of serious costs to future people. reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: And there are other sorts of it is the main, indeed the only sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological perspective, as contrasted with a shallow ecological outlook which regards the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests. The deep ecological perspective is an Integral part of the Alternative Ecological Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm (which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics) �30. and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic 18 Socialism). It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants. The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is fast increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements. The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the 19 basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly lead to the difficult social change option. The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power structure. To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult as it is to suitably alter "the system," especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, it is imperative to try: we are all on the nuclear train. �FOOTNOTES This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear 1. power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’ (ESP for short, available from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred to in the reference list). For help with the condensation we are very considerably indebted to the editors. In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including nuclear war). We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. Further, in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources. Little difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from work cited herein. For example, virtually all the data cited in sections^ and VII is referenced in Routley. At worst ESP can always be consulted. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; 2. the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such I important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a & Abbotts, Gyorgy. core meltdown of (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 3. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non­ human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way. �For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented) simulation models p.428. The Opportunity-cost 4. respects. see Goodin, argument is also defective in other It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the proper methods for decision which affect the choice, apply discounting. future, such as that of energy But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting. This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory, 5. roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a decision method in such contexts. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and 6. redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 7. For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff. 8. See Routley, p. 160. 9. For much further discussion of the points of the preceding two para- » graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader 10. & Abbotts. Most of the reactors in the world are of this type; see Gyorgy. 11. See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4. 12. See Shrader-Frechette. shortcomings A worthwhile initial view of the of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader 13. There are variations on Ai against numbers such as probabilities. and Aii & Abbotts. which multiply costs In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. risks may be assessed (Alternatively, through such familiar methods as insurance). �A principle varying . * Aii a Aii, and formulated as follows: is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted. was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, Final Report, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources. other applications b In has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war () . The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles Ai - Aii’. The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional origin of b : b character. For look at the may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in Aii’, for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'. b is But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text, and others. It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to actuaries. 14. See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15. 15. Goodin 16. The argument is elaborated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philosophically important material on p. 433. alternative nonconsumeristic .social arrangements and lifestyles, see work cited in V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism. �The parlous 18. situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V. Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’ (available from the authors). For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its 19. rival, the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see Cotgrove and Duff, especially _ the main the table on p. 341 which encapsulates of the assumptions paradigms; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34. Contemporary variants ^.n the Dominant Social Paradigm wer-e considered in ESP. -X The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess. For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley, environmental ethics' in Mannison especially to Rodman’s 20. ’Human chauvinism and et al, and the references there cited, work. The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the context of paradigm conflict. But it is also argued that, even within assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants, Ti. Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options. The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument. It is the following version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’ necessary to sustain economic growth. Nuclear power is Economic: growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone redistribution problems, etc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll), and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks. But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective growth, which jettisons economic the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an fails even by Dominant appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) Paradigm standards. For of course nuclear power is not necessary that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. defended is some elaboration of the premiss : given The premiss usually Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ �being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, benefit-cost ratio’, etc. ’having the most favourable Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively (unless a good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done). Tii- On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as public choices. Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types (discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts). Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal: Tiii. Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is rej ected f as the arguments of Goodin on ^Alternative decision rules help to show. What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain (for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.). the practices of contemporary Ayi corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants : not ethically acceptable. , they are certainly �<0 O to REFERENCES USED Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (* ). S. C^yove. and A. Duff, ’’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review 28(2) (1980), 333-51. W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980). 15-47. For Report : Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. *R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. *A. Gyorgy and friends, No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979. *D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. N. Myers, The Sinking Ark, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979. R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1977. *K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980.preferred Lo as SF)T~" R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document ' i ' Vai Routley Richa/ 1. NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1 One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ragging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones. I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. train has just pulled out. passengers and freight. The train which is A long distance country crowded carries both At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packed in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys. All If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the consigner He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not or the people on it. X responsible for the train These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen /as ludicrous when set in this context. Unfortunately, similar excuses are not -aiso seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his workers’ health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such grounds as justification. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially wheie they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the train case. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument progresses. There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. A leak of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1% million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over I the last twenty years. Short-term methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models 3. reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human 10 environments. In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environmentP Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on not only have present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,y none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, but they may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. to bear Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it. Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the basis of life, are run-down or destroyed. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear fission, at least indirect beneficiaries. The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with these problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-rerewable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution" may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner’s action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale. There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not apply to those in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner’s action in the circumstances Outlined is not to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable. As in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn. II. OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. 5. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations to distant future creatures. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Others fall into three categories: those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond those perhaps to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained; there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving effect of our actions on future people. from the Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus, moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). Let us call the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the constraints position. ' -*■ ■■■--------- ----- No­ , Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position, which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these. Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us, and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offending predecessors. The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action. The no—constraints position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment (perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-constraints position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the no-constraints view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious. Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in 7. what they do of people affected and their Interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people of the chance of a good life. Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be avoided. These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part because of a failure to make an important distinction. Some of our obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise. Other obligations, however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that an agreement has been struck between us. former kind acquired obligations Let us call obligations of the and those of the latter unacquired obligations. There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with each. In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise. In the case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or probable consequences of his action, a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in the past (e.g., made a promise). Our obligations to future people clearly are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position simply fails to take into account. These obligations arise as a result of our ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether on our contemporaries or on those in the distant future. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them. All that 8. one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially ions, to the distant acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence' .at/future involve heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond" what is normally required. One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from shipping the dangerous package on the train. III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evading these difficulties the No-constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly abandoned. According to the Qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained There are obligations, even to distant future with respect to the distant future. people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead theft to the Qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints. What economics cannot legitimately do is determine what these constraints are. There are, moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future, giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all the questions at issue. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed to handle the waste problem). generations may well not Since there is mounting evidence that future be better off then present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. For the waste problem to be handed down 9. to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off but so much better off that they can (easily) carry and control the nuclear freight. A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument, builds directly It is argued from the fact on the notion of opportunity cost. that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the non- immediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values. This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of resources. Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside (e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. beset this approach. Two problems First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. that the argument depends on a false assumption. We simply do not know A more serious objection is It is not true that value, or damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents. There is no clear ’’monetary compensation” for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of life, a lost species. The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it leads back in practice to the No-constraints position. discounting imposes an ” economic horizon” The reason is that beyond which nothing need be considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are, when discounted back to the present, negligible. » A different argument for the Qualified position, the Probabilities argument, avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of 10. distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present, assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. is however The argument Firstly, probabilities involving distant badly flawed. future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes. problems often Moreover the outcomes of some moral do not depend on a high level of probability. In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. Nor, of course, can it be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, in order to obtain quite doubtful, or even trivial, benefits for some present people, ^in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use. And even the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such if an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner's action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people) was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision, problems, with or is quite inadequate when different parties without the probability frills, are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations are at issue. permissible 5 For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than morally larger benefits to another group. transferred in any compensated for by But costs or benefits are not legitimately simple way from one group to another. The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and i very different thing. I 11. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved g in the activity and are not beneficiaries. This Transfer-limiting principle is especially clear in cases of which a thalidomide manufacturing and marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature. The principle is of fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again : it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter of reactor meltdown. In particular, the principle, invalidates the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all— who may be just the opposite! , More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features. production, from nuclear or fossil pollution. fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious Thus from the Transfer-limiting important necessary condition for energy options: an energy option Large-scale energy principle emerges an To be morally acceptable should not involve the transfer of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not benefit correspondingly from the energy source. Included in the scope of 12. this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those of the next towns). A further corollary of the principle is the Transmission Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we "received” it. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical theories (e.g. those of a deontic cast such as Kant’s and Rawls’) and from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers putting oneself in another’s position. But the principle is perhaps best defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples. embroider the train parable, the company town decides to Suppose, to solve its disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line, which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due protest. The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus­ taining risks to their own lives and health. Most of us would regard this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company town flourishes. IV. UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY. Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be expected to take too much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to uncertainty. There are two main components to the General Uncertainty argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori second on a posteriori grounds. follows:- grounds, the The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when 13. accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate Therefore we must regretfully ignore the uncertain effects of different action. our actions on the distant future. ignorance A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of grounds of uncertainty. More formally and crudely waste control on the the argument concerned is this- One only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information. distant future. There is no reliable information at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning our knowledge of the future (formally, replace obligations in the crude statement of the argument above). The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available by knowledge with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. do act on the basis We can and constantly such f/"unreliable” information, which the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty". In moral situations in the present, assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In lact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. that there is a significant risk of harm It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the 14. prospects of the passengers quite uncertain. It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty argument, even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be. Therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Given that moral principles are characteristically of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x", h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. Therefore, even if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain . that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is 15. not so great as to exclude constraints on action. For example, we may have little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another morally-irrelevant factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of cancer or genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action. For this sort of reason, the Practical uncertainty argument should be rejected. Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probable harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those to whom we are morally committed. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration ~ what we are being handed in such arguments 16. is again a mere outside possibility. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument,_ the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future. Nor are distributional problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what caiji^e independently^ argued from the universalisability features of moral principles, thata disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims below the claims of present people. That is, we have the same general obligations 17. to future people as to the present; thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or and future creatures. entitlement to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular geographical position. Hence several further problems arise, to which principles and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem apply. For example, if one group (social unit, or state) decides to dump its radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it imposes risks and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on future people. There are differences however : distant people spatially cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden. People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks. One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharge radioactive materials into the air and Emission problem. water near the plant : hence the Such "normal" emission during plant operation of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain. If our ethical principles permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised by nuclear emissions would be : what extent of 18. cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashion And these risks are real.’ In the USA, people who live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they are several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be justified by the alleged benefits for others, especially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. Thus it is not just complacent to say It s a pity about Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new airconditioners make life comfortable’. For such benefits to some as airconditioners provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice in the location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses - is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. According I to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population ha^ received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent is also likely to have negligible consequences. to the "natural” level) The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, it si claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person s well-being, and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, no t be. Finally, what is or has become normal, 19. e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’'imposed” is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Thus public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a ’’public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations q proceed relatively unhamperedT While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence’. But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island): hence the Core-meltdown problem. If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, with the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively 10 contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed Instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from A . 11 official sources' are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater. The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the train acts inadmissibly. a government or government-endorsed utility appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in 20. siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the "community train". More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost analysis and other economic appraisal, would violate such ethical requirements as the Transfer-limiting principle. The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured to avoid questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the extraordinary improbability ethical arena and into a technological dispute about about the/ of reactor malfunction. They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. However, the mathematical models relied upon in this report, variously called "fault tree analysis" and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible" possibilities that may well happen in the real world. that the It is not surprising, then,^ methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised, or that official support for the report has now'been withdrawn.. 12 Moreover, use of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability of a serious accident. In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk­ assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their 1 21. ethical status. The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options: ( Ai. If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option Aii. b ; Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is already /3 accepted; therefore option a is acceptable. These assumptions are then applied as follows. be killed Since the number likely to eventually by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted; it follows that the risks of nuclear power are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer­ limiting principle. In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:- costs and benefits go to the same parties; Do the and is the person who voluntarily the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in undertakes driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed not benefit? on other parties who do It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, a basis would be soundly based. that a comparison on such This is rarely 'the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely,mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. risks in the nuclear cycle Unlike the special - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards 22. have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same 14 risk” of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The A problems are not produced—by nuclear development. Other social and environmental problems - though endemic where dangerous large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution , such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead radioactive lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up,,so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal liberty, freedom of association and of expression,and free access to information. These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations ami made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. 23. These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic That nuclear development appears to force such political societies. consequences tells heavily against it. Nuclear development is further indicted politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. never accounted Since nuclear wars are positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what leads to it, nuclear development is undesirable. This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear war against large-scale nuclear development. VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory that of appeal to overriding circumstances. route remains open, That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations. For, as observed, the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely economistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. case: a Transfer-limiting principle applies. So it is also in the nuclear But suppose now the consigner argues that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die. It is by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still to amounts^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases atical^where Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated,. Nuclear develop­ ment is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such conflict arguments requires the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of Indus» trialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialised nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, 25. —.creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon largely non-existent utility systems - e.g. established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised. than what it is: But that does not make the poverty argument anything other a fraud. There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor, both in the third world and in industrial countries: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar sources, wind, water and tidal power). Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. > The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society. the most part these large questions can be by-passed. But for The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. . it It assumes that technological society is unmodifiable, that/cannot be changed in the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. These assumptions are all hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so; after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since high- technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably, that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-going-out argument are wrong. present The consumption of less energy than at need involve no reduction of well-being;and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed in the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary. then What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza . In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission,be positively inimical to it. which has become heavily dependent upon a A society highly centralised, controlled and garrisoned, capital- and expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would almost inevitably tend to become authoritarian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom 27. for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better,the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal to futurity, closed. If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable. In sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. VIII. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very high projected consumption figures. the Transfer-limiting principle : Such an option would, moreover, also violate for it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement. To these main conventional options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and hydroelectricity. Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objections to nuclear power, The deeper choice is not however technological, nor merely^individual^, £u£ Social , and involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and, at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life­ styles and social arrangements^6 These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the 28. unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and which are^5" them. "2?likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to In short, even more benign technologies may lead to violation of the Transmission ^2 2,1^g q u i rement. Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of "solar energy" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources". Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values. In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline, is widely thought to be imminent. It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain forest types, are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of a ma|nr^ f ur ther and not readily limitable demand pressure for energy on top of ^the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear 29. products or polluted by coal products. illustrates, a mere switch to In short, as the forest situation more benign technologies - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change, is inadequate. The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs, and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensive modes of production. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. The point is readily illustrated. It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, .... authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. from created wants It would be Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to assume that they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds, of infrastructure, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the passing on of serious costs to future people. reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: And there are other sorts of it is the main, indeed the only sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological perspective, as contrasted with a shallow ecological outlook which regards the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests. The deep ecological perspective is an Integral part of the Alternative Ecological Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm (which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics) 30. and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic 18 Socialism). It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants. The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is fast increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements. The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the 19 basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly lead to the difficult social change option. The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power structure. To the extent that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult as it is to suitably alter "the system," especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, it is imperative to try: we are all on the nuclear train. FOOTNOTES This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear 1. power - ethical, social, and political dimensions’ (ESP for short, available from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred to in the reference list). For help with the condensation we are very considerably indebted to the editors. In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including nuclear war). We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. Further, in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources. Little difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through secondary sources or in filling out much important background material from work cited herein. For example, virtually all the data cited in sections^ and VII is referenced in Routley. At worst ESP can always be consulted. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; 2. the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such I important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a & Abbotts, Gyorgy. core meltdown of (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 3. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm nuclear development may afflict on non­ human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way. For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented) simulation models p.428. The Opportunity-cost 4. respects. see Goodin, argument is also defective in other It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the proper methods for decision which affect the choice, apply discounting. future, such as that of energy But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting. This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory, 5. roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a decision method in such contexts. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and 6. redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. 7. For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff. 8. See Routley, p. 160. 9. For much further discussion of the points of the preceding two para- » graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader 10. & Abbotts. Most of the reactors in the world are of this type; see Gyorgy. 11. See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4. 12. See Shrader-Frechette. shortcomings A worthwhile initial view of the of the Rassmussen report may be reached by combining the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader 13. There are variations on Ai against numbers such as probabilities. and Aii & Abbotts. which multiply costs In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. risks may be assessed (Alternatively, through such familiar methods as insurance). A principle varying . * Aii a Aii, and formulated as follows: is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted. was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, Final Report, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources. other applications b In has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war () . The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles Ai - Aii’. The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional origin of b : b character. For look at the may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in Aii’, for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted'. b is But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text, and others. It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to actuaries. 14. See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15. 15. Goodin 16. The argument is elaborated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philosophically important material on p. 433. alternative nonconsumeristic .social arrangements and lifestyles, see work cited in V. and R. Routley, 'Social theories, self management and environmental problems’ in Mannison et al, where a beginning is made on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism. The parlous 18. situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V. Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’ (available from the authors). For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its 19. rival, the Alternative Environmental Paradigm, see Cotgrove and Duff, especially _ the main the table on p. 341 which encapsulates of the assumptions paradigms; compare also Catton and Dunlap, especially p. 34. Contemporary variants ^.n the Dominant Social Paradigm wer-e considered in ESP. -X The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess. For further explanation of the contrast and of the larger array of ecological positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley, environmental ethics' in Mannison especially to Rodman’s 20. ’Human chauvinism and et al, and the references there cited, work. The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the context of paradigm conflict. But it is also argued that, even within assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants, Ti. Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options. The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument. It is the following version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing in for material wealth, and for what is valuable.’ necessary to sustain economic growth. Nuclear power is Economic: growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone redistribution problems, etc.). Therefore nuclear power is desirable. The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll), and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks. But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective growth, which jettisons economic the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an fails even by Dominant appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) Paradigm standards. For of course nuclear power is not necessary that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. defended is some elaboration of the premiss : given The premiss usually Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, benefit-cost ratio’, etc. ’having the most favourable Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively (unless a good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done). Tii- On proper Dominant Paradigm accounting, nuclear choices should generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as public choices. Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types (discussed in Shrader-Flechette, Gyorgy and Nader & Abbotts). Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is not justified, as consideration of decision theory methods will reveal: Tiii. Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is rej ected f as the arguments of Goodin on ^Alternative decision rules help to show. What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear development both in developed countries and in less developed countries makes plain (for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.). the practices of contemporary Ayi corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants : not ethically acceptable. , they are certainly <0 O to REFERENCES USED Works especially useful for further investigation of the ethical issues raised by nuclear development are indicated with an asterisk (* ). S. C^yove. and A. Duff, ’’Environmentalism, middle-class radicalism and politics’, Sociological Review 28(2) (1980), 333-51. W. R. Catton, Jr., and R. E. Dunlap, ’A new ecological paradigm for post exuberant sociology’ American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1980). 15-47. For Report : Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry First Report, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977. *R. E. Goodin, "No moral nukes’, Ethics 90 (1980), 417-49. *A. Gyorgy and friends, No Nukes : everyone’s guide to nuclear power, South End Press, Boston, Mass., 1979. *D. Mannison, M. McRobbie and R. Routley (editors), Environmental Philosophy, RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. N. Myers, The Sinking Ark, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1979. R. Nader and J. Abbotts, The Menace of Atomic Energy, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1977. *K. S. Shrader-Frechette, Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980.preferred Lo as SF)T~" R. and V. Routley, ’Nuclear energy and obligations to the future’, Inquiry 21 (1978), 133-79.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 97, Item 4: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions Subject The topic of the resource Typescript (photocopy) of draft, with handwritten emendations and corrections with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield. Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 97, Item 4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [36] leaves. 27.13 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:623c64a">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:623c64a</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b08be37f733215f4391cf73d1099d47f.pdf c97a08e871aaec69f2c5b022a3b51edf PDF Text Text Richard and Vai Routley 1. » NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1 One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.2 I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. train has just pulled out. passengers and freight. The train which is A long distance country crowded carries both At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packed in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys. All If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the consigner He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not or the people on it. responsible for the train These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. Unfortunately, similar excuses are not also seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his workers' health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such grounds as justification. �2. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the train case. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument progresses. There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. A leak of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. Short-term methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models �3. reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environments.1^ In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real 3 possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment. Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on not only have I present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, but they may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. to bear Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it. Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the basis of life, are run-down or destroyed. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear fission, at least indirect beneficiaries. �4. The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with these problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-re newable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale. There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not apply to those in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable. As in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn. II.OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. A The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. �5. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations to distant future creatures. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Others fall into three categories: those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond those perhaps to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained', there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving effect of our actions on future people. from the Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus, moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). Let us call the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the No­ constraints position. Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position, which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these. Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us, and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offending predecessors. �6. The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action. The no-constraints position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment (perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-constraints position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:- A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the no-constraints view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious. Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in �7. what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people, of the chance of a good life. Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be avoided. These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part because of a failure to make an important distinction. Some of our obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise. Other obligations, however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that an agreement has been struck between us. former kind acquired obligations Let us call obligations of the and those of the latter unacquired obligations. There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with each. In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise. In the case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or consequences of his action, a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in the past (e.g., made a promise). Our obligations to future people clearly are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position simply fails to take into account. These obligations arise as a result of our ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether on our contemporaries or on those in the distant future. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them. All that �8. one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there z are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially o thQ distant acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence ure involve heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond” what is normally required. One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from shipping the dangerous package on the train. III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evading these difficulties the No—constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly abandoned. According to the Qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained There are obligations, even to distant future with respect to the distant future. people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead thei to the Qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints. What economics cannot legitimately do is determine what these constraints are. There are, moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future, giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all the questions at issue. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed to handle the waste problem). generations may well not Since there is mounting evidence that future be better off then present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. For the waste problem to be handed �9. to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off but so much better off that they can (easily) carry and control the nuclear freight. A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument, ^builds directly on the notion of opportunity cost. It is argued from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values. This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of resources. Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come _ to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside /(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. beset this approach. Two problems First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. that the argument depends on a false assumption. We simply do not know A more serious objection is It is not true that value, or damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents. There is no clear ’’monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of life, a lost species. The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it leads back in practice to the No-constraints position. discounting imposes an ” economic horizon" The reason is that beyond which nothing need be considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are, when discounted back to the present, negligible. A different argument for the Qualified position, the Probabilities argument, avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of �iisfcsrs”'.... . • 10. distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. is however The argument Firstly, probabilities involving distant badly flawed. future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes. problems often Moreover the outcomes of some moral do not depend on a high level of probability. In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. Nor, /of course, VitTcar) be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, i»n e>rd^f -Lt? 'fc-C I in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use. z the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such And even, if an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people) was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or is quite inadequate when different parties without the probability frills, are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations are at issue. permissible 5 For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than larger benefits to another group. transferred in any morally compensated for by But costs or benefits are not legitimately simple way from one group to another. The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and �very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.This Transfer-limiting principle is especially clear in cases of which a thalidomide manufacturing and marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature. The principle is of fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again : it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter / 9 'of reactor meltdown. In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all who may be just the opposite! More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features. / j Large-scale energy y»ss// /production, from nuclear or foe-itc fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious !pollution. Thus from the Transfer-limiting t>fe principle emerges an important necessary condition for energy options: To be morally acceptable k -era, OE£12^ should not involve the transfer of s.igif leant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not benefit correspondingly from the energy source. Included in the scope of �12. this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we ’'received” it. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical theories (e.g. those of a deontic cast such as Kant's and Ra and from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers putting oneself in another’s position. But the principle is perhaps best defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples. embroider the train parable, the company town decides to Suppose, to solve its disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line, which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due protest. The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus­ taining risks to their own lives and health. Most of us would regard this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company town flourishes. / /IV. c UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY. 7 /Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be ed to take too much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to uncertain/y. There are two main components to the argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori second on a posteriori grounds. follows:- grounds, the The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when �accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate Therefore we must regretfully ignore the different action. our actions on the distant future. ignorance uncertain effects of A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of waste control on the 7 grounds of uncertainty. the argument concerned is this: More formally and crudely (%)£/only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information. distant future. There is no reliable information at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning * our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations in the crude statement of the argument above). by ’knowledge’ The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly , such do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty". In moral situations in the present, assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. that there is a significant risk of harm It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the �14. prospects of the passengers quite uncertain. It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty argument, even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be. Therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Given that moral principles are characteristically of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x", h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. Therefore, even if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain . that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is �15. not so great as to exclude constraints on action. For example, we may have little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another morally^irrelevant^factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of ^cancer genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action. For this sort of reason, the practical uncertainty argument should be rejected. Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probably harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those to whom we are morally committed. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments �16. is again a mere outside possibility. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument, the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future. Nor are distributional problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, /there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and .anci cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what c^e^| ^^^men^does nc argued from the universalisability features of moral principles, that/ disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims below the claims of present people. That is, we have the same general obligations �to future people as to the present; thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage and future creatures. entitlement Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem ^apply. For example, if one group (social uriit^ or state) decides to dump its radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it imposes risks and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on future people. There are differences however : spatially distant people cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden. People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks. One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharj radioactive materials into the air and Emission problem. water near the plant : hence the Such ’’normal" emission during plant operation of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain. If our permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised by nuclear emissions would be : what extent of �18. cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting I principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashio, these risks are In the USA, people who live within 50 miles oMmclear real! power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they and several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be J us tit led by the alleged benefits for others, expecially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. a pity about Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It’s Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new make life comfortable’. airconditioners For such benefits to some as airconditioners provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice in the. location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses - is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. Accord to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely to have negligible consequences. The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, it is claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, �19. e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’’imposed'’ is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Thus public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered? While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence . But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island): hence the Core-meltdown problem. If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively 10 contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from official sources) are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater. The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the O ^train acts in^admissibly. A government or government-endorsed utility appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in �20. siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the ’’community train”. More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost as the Transfer-limiting principle. The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured to avoid questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the extraordinary reactor malfunction. They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. However, the mathematical models relied upon in this report, variously called "fault tree analysis” and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible" possibilities that may well happen in the real world. that the It is not surprising, then i methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised, or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn. 12 Moreover, use of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability of a serious accident. In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk­ assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their �21. ethical status. The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options: Ai. If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option Aii. b ; Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is alreay^ accepted; therefore option a is acceptable. 3 These assumptions are then applied as follows. be killed Since the number likely to eventuall by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted; it follows that the risks of huclear power are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer­ limiting principle. In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:- costs and benefits go to the same parties; Do the and is the person who voluntarily the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in undertakes driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed not benefit? on other parties who do It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, a basis would be soundly based. that a comparison on such This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely^ mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. risks in the nuclear cycle Unlike the special - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards �22. have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same u 14 risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The problems are not really produced by nuclear development. Other social and environmental problems endemic where dangerous large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the J nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution ,such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead radioactive lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations and- made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. �..iwu- 23. These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic societies. That nuclear development appears to force such political <— i ' (consequences tells heavily against it. Nuclear development is further indicated politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. \ /jL Since nuclear wars are /nevei/ accountable- positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. 0^!/\ Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what le^jtds to it, nuclear development^ is undesirable. This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear wa£ against large-scale nuclear development. VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory that of appeal to overriding circumstances. route remains open, That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations. For, as observed, the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely I ^conomistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. case: a Transfer-limiting principle applies. So it is also in the nuclear But suppose now the consigner argues that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die. It is �24. by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still /amount s^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases atical/frhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated. Nuclear develop­ ment is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such /conflict arguments require^the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus­ trialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialisec nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the. third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, �25. WT creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon largely non-existent utility systems - e.g. established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised. than what it is: But that does not make the poverty argument anything other a fraud. There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor, both in the third world and in industrial countries: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar sources, wind, water and tidal power). Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in But for our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society. the most part these large questions can be by-passed. The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. $I I it assuine</ that technological society is unmodifiable, that^cannot be changed in ' the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. These assumptions are all hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so; after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to �26. future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since high- technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource^ consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-going-out argument are wrong. The consumption of less energy than at present/ need involve no reduction of well-being; and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed trr the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary. then What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza . In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon a^ highly centralised, controlled and garrisoned md expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would/' almost inevitably tend to become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom �27. for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal to futurity, closed. If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable. Tn sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. VIII. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very Such an option would, moreover, also violate high projected consumption figures. the Transfer-limiting principle : for it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement. To these main conventional options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and hydroelectricity. Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objectives to nuclear power. choice is not however technological, The deeper nor merely^individual^ 1 bUL Social, and involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and, at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life­ styles and social arrangements’!:6 These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the �unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and ^are?which^ /them. ^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to In short, even more benign technologies may le/id to violation of the Transmission JjteQu^-remen^• Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of ’’solar energy” or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources”. Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values, In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent, It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain17 ^/forest types^ are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of y/a maj^r further and not readily limitable demand pressure for energy on top /of /the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear �29. products or polluted by coal products. illustrates, a mere switch to In short, as the forest situation more benign technologies - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change,is inadequate. The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensi modes of production. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. The point is readily illustrated. It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, .... authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. from created wants It would be Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to assume that they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the passing on of serious costs to future people. reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: And there are other sorts of it is the main, indeed the only sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological perspective, as contrasted with a shallow ecological outlook which regards the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests. The deep ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm (which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics) �30. and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic 18 Socialism). It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants. The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is fast increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements. The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the 19 basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly lead to the difficult social change option. The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power 'structure. To the extenj? that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult as it is to suitably alter "the system,” especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, it is imperative to try: we are all on the nuclear train. �FOOTNOTES This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear 1. power - ethical, social, and political dimensions * (ESP for short, available from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred to in the reference list). For help with the condensation we are very considerably indebted to the editors. In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including nuclear war). We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. Further, in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources. Little difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through secondary sources or in filling out much Important background material from work cited herein. For example, virtually all the data cited in sections, and VII is referenced in Routley. At worst ESP can always be consulted. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; 2. the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of # (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 3. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm ' ~ nuclear development may afflict on non­ human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way. �For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented) ^simulation models see Gooding, 428. The Opportunity-cost 4. respects. argument is also defective in other It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the /proper methods for decision which ^ffect the choice, apply discounting. future, such as that of energy But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting. This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory, 5. roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a decision method in such contexts. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and 6. redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. / 7. For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff. See Routley, p. 160. /\ the preceding two para£ I graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader and Abbotts. For much further discussion of the points of [10. Most of the reactors^Ln the world are of this type; see Gyorgy. 11. See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4. 12. See Shrader-Frechette. / shortcomings A worthwhile initial view of the of the Rass^ftussen report may be reached by combining ' /the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader and Abbotts. 13. There are variations on Ai against numbers such as probabilities. and Aii which multiply costs In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. risks may be assessed (Alternatively, through such familiar methods as insurance). �A principle varying Aii’. a Aii, and formulated as follows: is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted. Aii’. was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, Final Report, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources. other applications b In has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war (!). The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles Ai - Aii’. The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional origin of b ; b character. For look at the may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in Aii’, for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted’. b is But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text, and others. It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to actuaries. 14. See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15. 15. Goodin 16. The argument is elaborated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philosophically important material p. 433. 'alternative Mannlaon ~ Asocial arrangements and lifestyles, see work cited in V. and R. Routley, ’Social theories, self management and environmental problems’ in al, where a beginning is made on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism. �The parlous 18. situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V. Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’ (available from the authors). 19. > rival, For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its Paradigm, see Cot^royfe and Duff, especially the Alternative Environmental the assumptions the table on p. 341 which /of the paradigms; compare also Cotton and Dunljzfp, especially p. 34. Contemporary varients in the Dominant Social Paradigm were considered in ESP. The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which A s /is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess. // S /For further explanation of the contract and of the larger array of ecological positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley, ’ in Mannison environmental ethics ___ ’Human chauvinism and et al, and the references there cited, ^especially to R^d man’s work. 20. The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the context of paradigm conflict. But it is also argued that, even within assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants, Ti. Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options. The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument. It is the following version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing Nuclear power is in for material wealth, and for what is valuable!^ necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone redistribution problems, etc.). k Therefore nuclear power is desirable. / /The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll), and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks. But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective X //"growth, which economic the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) Paradigm standards. fails even by Dominant For of course nuclear power is not necessary that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. defended is some elaboration of the premiss : given The premiss usually Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ �being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, benefit-cost ratio’, etc. ’having the most favourable Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively (unless a good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done). Tii. On proper Dominant Paradigjfi accounting, nuclear choices should generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as public choices. Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types Gyorgy and Nader alrd Abbotts). discussed in Shrader-Frechette, ZU Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is //not justified, oi consideration of decision theory methods will reveal: Tiii. Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is rejected^Jas the arguments op Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show. |l*^ What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear X ^development both in developed countries and in less developed countries (for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.). Are the practices of contemporary corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants : not ethically acceptable. they are certainly � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Richard and Vai Routley 1. » NUCLEAR POWER - SOME ETHICAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS1 One hardly needs initiation into the dark mysteries of nuclear physics to contribute usefully to the debate now widely ranging over nuclear power. While many important empirical questions are still unresolved, these do not really lie at the centre of the controversy. Instead, it is a debate about values... many of the questions which arise are social and ethical ones.2 I. THE TRAIN PARABLE AND THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM. train has just pulled out. passengers and freight. The train which is A long distance country crowded carries both At an early stop in the journey someone consigns as freight, to a far distant destination, a package which contains a highly toxic and explosive gas. This is packed in a very thin container which, as the consigner is aware, may well not contain the gas for the full distance for which it is consigned, and certainly will not do so if the train should strike any real trouble, for example, if the train should be derailed or involved in a collision, or if some passenger should interfere inadvertently or deliberately with the freight, perhaps trying to steal some of it. of these sorts of things have happened on some previous journeys. All If the container should break the resulting disaster would probably kill at least some of the people on the train in adjacent carriages, while others could be maimed or poisoned or sooner or later incur serious diseases. Most of us would roundly condemn such an action. of the parcel say to try to justify it? What might the consigner He might say that it is not certain that the gas will escape, or that the world needs his product and it is his duty to supply it, or that in any case he is not or the people on it. responsible for the train These sorts of excuses however would normally be seen as ludicrous when set in this context. Unfortunately, similar excuses are not also seen when the consigner, again a (responsible) businessman,puts his workers' health or other peoples’ welfare at risk. Suppose he says that it is his own and others’p ressing needs which justify his action. The company he controls, which produces the material as a by-product, is in bad financial straits, and could not afford to produce a better container even if it knew how to make one. If the company fails, he and his family will suffer, his employees will lose their jobs and have to look for others, and the whole company town, through loss of spending, will be worse off. The poor and unemployed of the town, whom he would otherwise have been able to help, will suffer especially. Few people would accept such grounds as justification. 2. Even where there are serious risks and costs to oneself or some group for whom one is concerned one is usually considered not to be entitled to simply transfer the heavy burden of those risks and costs onto other uninvolved parties, especially where they arise from one’s own, or one’s group’s chosen life-style. The matter of nuclear waste has many moral features which resemble the train case. How fitting the analogy is will become apparent as the argument progresses. There is no known proven safe way to package the highly toxic wastes generated by the nuclear plants that will be spread around the world as large-scale nuclear development goes ahead. The waste problem will be much more serious than that generated by the 50 or so reactors in use at present, with each one of the 2000 or so reactors envisaged by the end of the century producing, on average, annual wastes containing 1000 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima bomb. Much of this waste is extremely toxic. For example, a millionth of a gramme of plutonium is enough to induce a lung cancer. A leak of even a part of the waste material could involve much loss of life, widespread disease and genetic damage, and contamination of immense areas of land. Wastes will include the reactors themselves, which will have to be abandoned after their expected life times of perhaps 40 years, and which, some have estimated, may require 1^ million years to reach safe levels of radioactivity. Nuclear wastes must be kept suitably isolated from the environment for their entire active lifetime. For fission products the required storage period averages a thousand years or so, and for transuranic elements, which include plutonium, there is a half million to a million year storage problem. Serious problems have arisen with both short-term and proposed long-term methods of storage, even with the comparatively small quantities of waste produced over the last twenty years. Short-term methods of storage require continued human intervention, while proposed longer term methods are subject to both human inter­ ference and risk of leakage through non-human factors. No one with even a slight knowledge of the geological and climatic history of the earth over the last million years, a period whose fluctuations in climate we are only just beginning to guage and which has seen four Ice Ages, could be confident that a rigorous guarantee of safe storage could be provided for the vast period of time involved. Nor does the history of human affairs over the last 3000 years give ground for confidence in safe storage by methods requiring human intervention over perhaps a million years. Proposed long-term storage methods such as storage in granite formations or in salt mines, are largely speculative and relatively untested, and have already proved to involve difficulties with attempts made to put them into practice. Even as regards expensive recent proposals for first embedding concentrated wastes in glass and encapsulating the result in multilayered metal containers before rock deposit, simulation models 3. reveal that radioactive material may not remain suitably isolated from human environments.1^ In short, the best present storage proposals carry very real 3 possibilities of irradiating future people and damaging their environment. Given the heavy costs which could be involved for the future, and given the known limits of technology, it is methodologically unsound to bet, as nuclear nations have, on the discovery of safe procedures for storage of wastes. Any new procedures (required before 2000) will probably be but variations on not only have I present proposals, and subject to the same inadequacies. For instance,^none of the proposed methods for safe storage has been properly tested, but they may well prove to involve unforeseen difficulties and risks when an attempt is made to put them into practice on a commercial scale. Only a method that could provide a rigorous guarantee of safety over the storage period, that placed safety beyond reasonable doubt, would be acceptable. It is difficult to see how such rigorous guarantees could be given concerning either the geological or future human factors. But even if an economically viable, rigorously safe long term storage method could be devised, there is the problem of guaranteeing that it would be universally and invariably used. The assumption that it would be (especially if, as appears likely, such a method proved expensive economically and politically) seems to presuppose a level of efficiency, perfection, and concern for the future which has not previously been encountered in human affairs, and has certainly not been conspicuous in the nuclear industry. The risks imposed on the future by proceeding with nuclear development are, then, significant. to bear Perhaps 40,000 generations of future people could be forced significant risks resulting from the provision of the (extravagant) energy use of only a small proportion of the people of 10 generations. Nor is the risk of direct harm from the escape or misuse of radioactive materials the only burden the nuclear solution imposes on the future. Because the energy provided by nuclear fission is merely a stop gap, it seems probable that in due course the same problem, that of making a transition to renewable sources of energy, will have to be faced again by a future population which will probably, again as a result of our actions, be very much worse placed to cope with it. Their world will most likely be a world which is seriously depleted of non-renewable resources, and in which such renewable resources as forests and soils as remain, resources which inevitably form an important part of the basis of life, are run-down or destroyed. Such points tell against the idea that future people must be, if not direct beneficiaries of energy from nuclear fission, at least indirect beneficiaries. 4. The "solution” then is to buy time for contemporary society at a price which not only creates serious problems for future people but which reduces their ability to cope with these problems. Like the consigner in the train parable, contemporary industrial society proposes, in order to get itself out of a mess arising from its own life-style - the creation of economies dependent on an abundance of non-re newable energy, which is limited in supply - to pass on costs and risks of serious harm to others who will obtain no corresponding benefits. The "solution” may enable the avoidance of some uncomfortable changes in the lifetime of those now living and their immediate descendants, just as the consigner's action avoids uncomfortable changes for him and those in his immediate surroundings, but at the expense of passing heavy burdens to other uninvolved parties whose opportunity to lead decent lives may be seriously jeopardised. If we apply to the nuclear situation the standards of behaviour and moral principles generally acknowledged (in principle, if not so often in fact) in the contemporary world, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion that nuclear development involves injustice with respect to the future on a grand scale. There appear to be only two plausible ways of trying to avoid such a conclusion. First, it might be argued that the moral principles and obligations which we acknowledge for the contemporary world and perhaps the immediate future do not apply to those in the non-immediate future. Secondly, an attempt might be made to appeal to overriding circumstances; for to reject the consigner's action in the circumstances outlined is not to imply that there are no circumstances in which such an action might be justifiable. As in the case of the consigner of the package there is a need to consider what these justifying circumstances might be, and whether they apply in the present case. We consider these possible escape routes for the proponent of nuclear development in turn. II.OBLIGATIONS TO THE (DISTANT) FUTURE. A The especially problematic area is that of the distant (i.e. non-immediate) future, the future with which people alive today will have no direct contact; by comparison, the immediate future gives fewer problems for most ethical theories. In fact the question of obligations to future people presents tests which a number of ethical theories fail to pass, and also has serious repercussions in political philosophy as regards the adequacy of accepted (democratic and other) institutions which do not take due account of the interests of future creatures. 5. Moral philosophers have, predictably, differed on questions of obligations to distant future creatures. A good many of the philosophers who have explicitly considered the question have come down in favour of the same consideration being given to the rights and interests of future people as to those of contemporary or immediately future people. Others fall into three categories: those who acknowledge obligations to the future but who do not take them seriously or who assign them a lesser weight, those who deny, or who are committed by their general moral position to denying, that there are moral obligations beyond the immediate future, and those who come down, with admirable philosophical caution, on both sides of the issue, but with the weight of the argument favouring the view underlying prevailing economic and political institutions, that there are no moral obligations to the future beyond those perhaps to the next generation. According to the most extreme of these positions against moral obligations to the future, our behaviour with respect to the future is morally unconstrained', there are no moral restrictions on acting or failing to act deriving effect of our actions on future people. from the Of those philosophers who say, or whose views imply that we do not have obligations to the (non-immediate) future, many have based this view on accounts of moral obligation which are built on relations which presuppose some degree of temporal or spatial contiguity. Thus, moral obligation is seen as presupposing various relations which could not hold between people widely separated in time (or sometimes in space). Let us call the position that we have no obligations to (distant) future people the No­ constraints position. Among suggested bases or grounds of moral obligation for the position, which would rule out obligations to the non-immediate future, are these. Firstly, there are those accounts which require that someone to whom a moral obligation is held be able to claim his rights or entitlement. People in the distant future will not be able to claim rights and entitlements against us, and of course they can do nothing to enforce any claims they might have against us. Secondly, there are those accounts which base moral obligations on social or legal convention, for example a convention which would require punishment of offenders or at least some kind of social enforcement. But plainly these and other conventions will not be invariant over change in society and amendment of legal conventions; hence they will not be invariant over time. Also future people have no way of enforcing their interests or punishing offending predecessors. 6. The No-constraints view is a very difficult one to sustain. Consider, for example, a scientific group which, for no particular reason other than to test a particular piece of technology, places in orbit a cobalt bomb set off by a triggering device designed to go off several hundred years from the time of its despatch. No presently living person and none of their immediate descendants would be affected, but the population of the earth in the distant future would be wiped out as a direct and predictable result of the action. The no-constraints position clearly implies that this is an acceptable moral enterprise, that whatever else we might legitimately criticize in the scientists’ experiment (perhaps its being over-expensive or badly designed) we cannot lodge a moral protest about the damage it will do to future people. The no-constraints position also endorses as morally acceptable the following sorts of policy:- A firm discovers it can make a handsome profit from mining, processing and manufacturing a new type of material which, although it causes no problem for present people or their immediate descendants, will over a period of hundreds of years decay into a substance which will cause an enormous epidemic of cancer among the inhabitants of the earth at that time. According to the no-constraints view the firm is free to act in its own interests, without any consideration for the harm it does remote future people. Such counterexamples to the No-constraints position, which are easily varied and multiplied, might seem childlishly obvious. Yet this view is far from being a straw man; not only have several philosophers endorsed this position, but it is a clear implication of many currently popular views of the basis of moral obligation, as well as of prevailing economic theory. It seems that those who opt for the No-constraints position have not considered such examples, despite their being clearly implied by their position. We suspect that (we certainly hope that) when it is brought out that their position admits such counterexamples, that without any constraints we are free to cause pointless harm for example, most of those who opted for this position would want to assert that it was not what they intended. What many of those who have put forward the No-constraints position seem to have had in mind (in denying moral obligation) is rather that future people can look after themselves, that we are not responsible for their lives. The popular view that the future can take care of itself also seems to assume a future causally independent of the present. But it is not. It is not as if, in the counterexample cases or in the nuclear case, the future is simply being left alone to take care of itself. Present people are influencing it, and in doing so thereby acquire many of the same sorts of moral responsibilities as they do in causally affecting the present and immediate future, most notably the obligation to take account in 7. what they do of people affected and their interests, to be careful in their actions, to take account of the genuine probability of their actions causing harm, and to see that they do not act so as to rob future people, of the chance of a good life. Furthermore, to say that we are not resposible for the lives of future people does not amount to the same thing as saying that we are free to do as we like with respect to them. In just the same way, the fact that one does not have or has not acquired an obligation to some stranger with whom one has never been involved does not imply that one is free to do what one likes with respect to him, for example to rob him or to seriously harm him when this could be avoided. These difficulties for the No-constraints position result in part because of a failure to make an important distinction. Some of our obligations to others arise because we have voluntarily entered into some agreement with them - for example, we have made a promise. Other obligations, however, such as our duty not to damage or harm someone, do not assume that an agreement has been struck between us. former kind acquired obligations Let us call obligations of the and those of the latter unacquired obligations. There is a considerable difference in the type of responsibility associated with each. In the case of acquired obligations responsibility arises because one should do something which one can fail to do, e.g. keep a promise. In the case of unacquired duties responsibility arises as a result of being a causal agent who is aware of the consequences or consequences of his action, a responsibility that is not dependent on one’s having performed some act in the past (e.g., made a promise). Our obligations to future people clearly are of unacquired, not acquired obligations, a fact the No-constraints position simply fails to take into account. These obligations arise as a result of our ability to produce causal effects of a reasonably predictable nature, whether on our contemporaries or on those in the distant future. Thus, to return to the train parable, the consigner cannot argue in justification of his action that he has, for example, never assumed or acquired responsibility for the passengers, that he does not know them and therefore has no love or sympathy for them and that they are not part of his moral community; in short, that he has acquired no obligation, and has no special obligations to help them. All that 8. one needs to argue concerning the train, and in the nuclear case, is that there z are moral obligations against imposing harm for instance which are not specially o thQ distant acquired. Nor can this claim be rebutted by the pretence ure involve heroic self sacrifice, something ’’above and beyond” what is normally required. One is no more engaging in heroic self sacrifice by not forcing future people into an unviable life position or by refraining from causing them direct harm than the consigner is resorting to heroic self sacrifice in refraining from shipping the dangerous package on the train. III. ATTEMPTS TO REDUCE OBLIGATIONS TO THE FUTURE. In evading these difficulties the No—constraints position may be qualified rather than wholly abandoned. According to the Qualified position we are not entirely unconstrained There are obligations, even to distant future with respect to the distant future. people, but these are not so important as those to the present, and the interests of distant future people cannot weigh very much in the scale against those of the present and immediate future. The interests of future people then, except in unusual cases, count for very much less than the interests of present people. Hence such things as nuclear development and various exploitative activities which benefit present people should proceed, even if people of the distant future are (somewhat) disadvantaged by them. The Qualified position appears to be widely held and is implicit in prevailing economic theories, where the position of a decrease in weight of future costs and benefits (and so of future interests) is obtained by application over time of a discount rate, so discounting costs and risks to future people. The attempt to apply economics as a moral theory, something that is becoming increasingly common, can lead thei to the Qualified position. What is objectionable in such an approach is that economics must operate within the bounds of acknowledged non-acquired moral constraints, just as in practice it operates within legal constraints. What economics cannot legitimately do is determine what these constraints are. There are, moreover, alternative economic theories and simply to adopt, without further ado, one which discounts the future, giving much less importance to the interests of future people, is to beg all the questions at issue. Among the arguments that economists offer for generally discounting the future, the most threadbare is based on the Rosy-future assumption, that future generations will be better off than present ones (and so better placed to handle the waste problem). generations may well not Since there is mounting evidence that future be better off then present ones, especially in things that matter, no argument for discounting the interests of future generations on this basis can carry much weight. For the waste problem to be handed 9. to the future generations, it would have to be shown, what recent economic progress hardly justifies, that future generations will be not just better off but so much better off that they can (easily) carry and control the nuclear freight. A more plausible argument for discounting, the Opportunity-cost argument, ^builds directly on the notion of opportunity cost. It is argued from the fact that a dollar gained now is worth much more than a dollar received in the nonimmediate future (because the first dollar could meanwhile be invested at compound interest), that discounting is required to obtain equivalent monetary values. This same line of reasoning is then applied to the allocation of resources. Thus, compensation - which is what the waste problem is taken to come _ to economically - costs much less now than later, e.g. a few pennies set aside /(e.g. in a trust fund) in the future, if need be, will suffice to compensate eventually for any victims of remote radioactive waste leakage. beset this approach. Two problems First, there are, presently at least, insurmountable practical difficulties about applying such discounting. how to determine appropriate future discount rates. that the argument depends on a false assumption. We simply do not know A more serious objection is It is not true that value, or damages, can always be converted into monetary equivalents. There is no clear ’’monetary compensation" for a variety of damages, including cancer, loss of life, a lost species. The discounting theme, however argued for, is inadequate, because it leads back in practice to the No-constraints position. discounting imposes an ” economic horizon" The reason is that beyond which nothing need be considered, since any costs or benefit which might arise are, when discounted back to the present, negligible. A different argument for the Qualified position, the Probabilities argument, avoids the objections from cases of certain damage through appeal to probability considerations. The distant future, it is argued, is much more uncertain than the present and immediate future, so that probabilities are consequently lower, perhaps even approaching or coinciding with zero for any hypothesis concerning the distant future. Thus, the argument continues, the interests of future people must (apart from exceptional cases where there is an unusually high degree of certainty) count for (very much) less than those of present and neighbouring people where (much) higher probabilities are attached. So in the case of conflict between the present and the future, where it is a question of weighing certain benefits to the people of the present and the immediate future against a much lower probability of indeterminate costs to an indeterminate number of iisfcsrs”'.... . • 10. distant future people, the issue would normally be decided in favour of the present assuming anything like similar costs and benefits were involved. is however The argument Firstly, probabilities involving distant badly flawed. future situations are not always less than those concerning the immediate future in the way the argument supposes. problems often Moreover the outcomes of some moral do not depend on a high level of probability. In many cases it is enough, as the train parable reveals, that a significant risk is created; such cases do not depend critically on high probability assignments. Nor, /of course, VitTcar) be assumed that anything like similarly weighted costs and benefits are involved in the nuclear case, especially if it is a question of risking poisoning some of the earth for half a million or so years, with consequent risk of serious harm to thousands of generations of future people, i»n e>rd^f -Lt? 'fc-C I in the shape of the opportunity to continue (unnecessarily) high energy use. z the costs and benefits were comparable or evenly weighted, such And even, if an argument would be defective, since an analogous argument would show that the consigner’s action in the train parable, is acceptable provided the benefit (e.g. the profit the company stood to gain from imposing significant risks on other people) was sufficiently large. Such a cost-benefit approach to moral and decision problems, with or is quite inadequate when different parties without the probability frills, are involved or when cases of conflict of interest involving moral obligations are at issue. permissible 5 For example, such a cost-benefit approach would imply that it is for a company to injure, or very likely injure, some innocent party provided only that the company stands to make a sufficiently large gain from it, that costs to some group are more than larger benefits to another group. transferred in any morally compensated for by But costs or benefits are not legitimately simple way from one group to another. The often appealed to maxim "If you (or your group) want the benefits you have to accept the costs" is one thing, but the maxim "If I (or my group) want the benefits then you have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)" is another and very different thing. It is a widely accepted moral principle that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself onto other parties who are not involved in the activity and are not beneficiaries.This Transfer-limiting principle is especially clear in cases of which a thalidomide manufacturing and marketing company is one, where the significant costs include an effect on life or health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature. The principle is of fundamental importance in the nuclear debate, and appears again and again : it applies not merely to the waste problem but as regards several other liabilities of nuclear development, e.g. the risk of nuclear war, the matter / 9 'of reactor meltdown. In particular, the principle invalidates the comparison, heavily relied on in building a case for the acceptability of the nuclear risks, between nuclear risks and those from such activities as airplane travel or cigarette smoking. In the latter case those who supposedly benefit from the activity are also, to an overwhelming extent, those who bear the serious health costs and risks involved. In contrast the users and supposed beneficiearies of nuclear energy will be risking not only, or even primarily, their own lives and health, but also that of others who may not be beneficiaries at all who may be just the opposite! More generally, the distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. on to non-beneficiaries, is a characteristic of certain serious forms of pollution, and is among its morally objectionable features. / j Large-scale energy y»ss// /production, from nuclear or foe-itc fuel sources, can cause or lead to serious !pollution. Thus from the Transfer-limiting t>fe principle emerges an important necessary condition for energy options: To be morally acceptable k -era, OE£12^ should not involve the transfer of s.igif leant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not involved, who do not use or do not benefit correspondingly from the energy source. Included in the scope of 12. this condition, which nuclear development violates , are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time but also future generations (those Principle, that we should not hand the world we have so exploited on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we ’'received” it. For if we did then that would be a significant transfer of costs. The Transfer-limiting principle can be derived from certain ethical theories (e.g. those of a deontic cast such as Kant's and Ra and from common precepts (such as the Golden Rule), where one seriously considers putting oneself in another’s position. But the principle is perhaps best defended, on a broader basis, inductively, by way of examples. embroider the train parable, the company town decides to Suppose, to solve its disposal problem by shipping its noxious waste to another town down the line, which (like future towns) lacks the means to ship it back or to register due protest. The inhabitants of this town are then forced to face the problem either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process or of sus­ taining risks to their own lives and health. Most of us would regard this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable, however much the consigner’s company town flourishes. / /IV. c UNCERTAINTY AND INDETERMINACY ARGUMENTS FOR REDUCED RESPONSIBILITY. 7 /Many of the arguments designed to show that we cannot be ed to take too much account of the effects of our actions on the distant future appeal to uncertain/y. There are two main components to the argument, capable of separation, but frequently tangled up. Both arguments are mistaken, the first, an argument from ignorance, on a priori second on a posteriori grounds. follows:- grounds, the The Argument from ignorance concerned runs as In contrast to the exact information we can obtain about the present, the information we can obtain about the effects of our actions on the distant future is unreliable, woolly and highly speculative. But we cannot base assessments of how we should act on information of this kind, especially when accurate information is obtainable about the present which would indicate Therefore we must regretfully ignore the different action. our actions on the distant future. ignorance uncertain effects of A striking example of the argument from at work is afforded by official US analyses favouring nuclear development, which ignore (the extensive) costs of waste control on the 7 grounds of uncertainty. the argument concerned is this: More formally and crudely (%)£/only has obligations to the future if these obligations are based on reliable information. distant future. There is no reliable information at present as regards the Therefore one has no obligations to the distant future. This argument is essentially a variant on a sceptical argument concerning * our knowledge of the future (formally, replace ’obligations in the crude statement of the argument above). by ’knowledge’ The main ploy is to considerably overestimate and overstate the degree of certainty available with respect to the present and immediate future, and the degree of certainty which is required as the basis for moral consideration both with respect to the present and with respect to the future. Associated with this is the attempt to suggest a sharp division as regards certainty between the present and immediate future on the one hand and the distant future on the other. We shall not find, we suggest, that there is any such sharp or simple division between the distant future and the adjacent future and the present, at least with respect to those things in the present which are normally subject to moral constraints. We can and constantly , such do act on the basis of^"unreliable" information, which the sceptic as regards the future conveniently labels "uncertainty". In moral situations in the present, assessments of what to do often take account of risk and probability, even quite low probabilities. Consider again the train parable. We do not need to know for certain that the container will break and the lethal gas escape. In fact it does not even have to be probable, in the relevant sense of more probable than not, in order for us to condemn the consigner’s action. that there is a significant risk of harm It is enough in this sort of case. It does not matter if the decreased well-being of the consigner is certain and that the 14. prospects of the passengers quite uncertain. It is wrong to ship the gas. But if we do not require certainty of action to apply moral constraints in contemporary affairs, why should we require a much higher standard of certainty in the future? The unwarranted insistence on certainty as a necessary condition before moral consideration can be given to the distant future, then, amounts to a flagrant double standard. According to the second argument, the Practical-uncertainty argument, even if in theory we have obligations to the future, we cannot in practice take the interests of future people into account because uncertainty about the distant future is so gross that we cannot determine what the likely consequences of actions on it will be. Therefore, however good our intentions to the people of the distant future are, in practice we have no choice but to ignore their interests. Given that moral principles are characteristically of universal implicational form, e.g. of forms such as "if x has character then x is wrong, for every (action) sharply thus: x", h the argument may be stated more We can never obtain the information about future actions which would enable us to detach the antecedent of the implication. Therefore, even if in theory moral principles do extend to future people, in practice they cannot be applied to obtain clear conclusions. It is true that if the distant future really were so grossly uncertain . that in every case it was impossible to determine in any way better than chance what the effects of present action would be, and whether any given action would help or hinder future people, then moral principles, although applicable in theory to the future, would not in practice yield any clear conclusions about how to act. In this event the distant future would impose no practical moral constraints on action. However, the argument is factually incorrect in assuming that the future always is so grossly uncertain or indeterminate. Admittedly there is often a high degree of uncertainty concerning the distant future, but as a matter of (contingent) fact it is not always so gross or sweeping as the argument has to assume. There are some areas where uncertainty is 15. not so great as to exclude constraints on action. For example, we may have little idea what the fashions will be in a hundred years or, to take another morally^irrelevant^factor, what brands of ice cream people will be eating, if any, but we do have excellent reason to believe, especially if we consider 3000 years of history, that what people there are in a hundred years are likely to have material and psychic needs not entirely unlike our own, that they will need a healthy biosphere for a good life; that like us they will not be immune to radiation; that their welfare will not be enhanced by a high incidence of ^cancer genetic defects, by the destruction of resources, or the elimination from the face of the earth of that wonderful variety of non-human life which at present makes it such a rich and interesting place. The case of nuclear waste storage, and of uncertainty of the effects of it on future people, is one area where uncertainty in morally relevant respects is not so great as to preclude moral constraints on action. For this sort of reason, the practical uncertainty argument should be rejected. Through the defects of the preceding arguments, we can see the defects in a number of widely employed uncertainty arguments used to write off probably harm to future people as outside the scope of proper consideration. Most of these popular moves employ both of the uncertainty arguments as suits the case, switching from one to the other. For example, we may be told that we cannot really take account of future people because we cannot be sure that they will exist or that their tastes and wants will not be completely different from our own, to the point where they will not suffer from our exhaustion of resources or from the things that would affect us. But this is to insist upon complete certainty of a sort beyond what is required for the present and immediate future, where there is also commonly no guarantee that some disaster will not overtake those to whom we are morally committed. Again we may be told that there is no guarantee that future people will be worthy of any efforts on our part, because they may be morons of forever plugged into enjoyment of other machines. Even if one is prepared to accept the elitist approach presupposed - according to which only those who meet certain properly civilized or intellectual standards are eligible for moral consideration - what we are being handed in such arguments 16. is again a mere outside possibility. Neither the contemporary nor the historical situation gives any positive reason for supposing that a lapse into universal moronity or universal-pleasure-machine escapism is a serious possibility. We can contrast with these mere logical possibilities the very real historically supportable risks of escape of nuclear waste or decline of a civilisation through destruction of its resource base. Closely related to uncertainty arguments are arguments premissed on the indeterminacy of the future. For example, according to the Indeterminacy argument, the indeterminacy of the number and exact character of people at future times will prevent the interest of future people being taken into account where there is a conflict with the present. Since their numbers are indeterminate and their interests unknown how, it is asked, can we weigh their competing claims against those of the present and immediate future, where this information is available in a more or less accurate form? The question is raised particularly by problems of sharing fixed quantities of resources among present and future people, for example oil, when the numbers of the latter are indeterminate. Such problems are indeed difficult, but they are not resolved by ignoring the claims of the future. Nor are distributional problems involving non-renewable resources as large and representative a class of moral problems concerning the future as the tendency to focus on them would suggest. It can be freely admitted, that there will be cases where the indeterminacy of aspects of the future will make conflicts very difficult to resolve or indeed irresoluble - no realistic ethical theory can give a precise answer to every ethical question. But, as the train parable again illustrates, /there are cases where such difficulties do not hinder resolution, and .anci cases of conflict which are not properly approached by weighing numbers, numbers of interests, or whatever, cases for which one needs to know only the most general probable characteristics of future people. The case of nuclear power is like that. The failure of these various arguments reveals, what c^e^| ^^^men^does nc argued from the universalisability features of moral principles, that/ disqualify future people from full moral consideration or reduce their claims below the claims of present people. That is, we have the same general obligations to future people as to the present; thus there is the same obligation to take account of them and their interests in what we do, to be careful in our actions, to take account of the probability (and not just the certainty) of our actions causing harm or damage, and to see, other things being equal, that we do not act so as to rob them of what is necessary for the chance of a good life. Uncertainty and indeterminacy do not relieve us of these obligations. V. PROBLEMS OF SAFE NUCLEAR OPERATION : REACTOR EMISSIONS AND CORE MELTDOWN. The ethical problems with nuclear power are by no means confined to waste storage and future creatures. entitlement Just as remoteness in time does not erode obligations or to just treatment, neither does location in space, or a particular and arguments like those already arrived at in considering the waste problem ^apply. For example, if one group (social uriit^ or state) decides to dump its radioactive wastes in the territory or region of another group, or not to prevent its (radioactive) pollution entering the territory of another group, then it imposes risks and costs on presently existing people of the second group, in much the way that present nuclear developments impose costs and risks on future people. There are differences however : spatially distant people cannot be discounted in quite the way that future people can be, though their interests and objectives can be ignored or overridden. People living in the vicinity of a nuclear reactor are subject to special costs and risks. One is radioactive pollution, because reactors routinely discharj radioactive materials into the air and Emission problem. water near the plant : hence the Such ’’normal" emission during plant operation of low level radiation carries carcinogenic and mutagenic costs. While there are undoubtedly costs, the number of cancers and the precise extent of genetic damage induced by exposure to such radiation are both uncertain. If our permitted free transfer of costs and risks from one person to another, the ethical issue directly raised by nuclear emissions would be : what extent of 18. cancer and genetic damage, if any, is permissibly traded for the advantages of nuclear power, and under what conditions? Since, however, risks and benefits are NOT (morally) transferable this way - recall the Transfer-limiting I principle - such a cost-benefit approach to the risks nuclear emission poses for those who live near a reactor cannot with justice be approached in this fashio, these risks are In the USA, people who live within 50 miles oMmclear real! power plant bear a risk of cancer and genetic damage of as much as 50 times that borne by the population at large. And children living in this region are even more vulnerable, since they and several times more likely to contract cancer through exposure than normal adults. The serious costs to these people cannot be J us tit led by the alleged benefits for others, expecially when these benefits could be obtained without these costs. a pity about Thus it is not just complacent to say 'It’s Aunt Ethel dying of cancer, but the new make life comfortable’. airconditioners For such benefits to some as airconditioners provide, which can be alternatively obtained, for example by modification of buildings, can in no way compensate for what others suffer. Among the other strategies used in trying to persuade us that the imposition of radiation on minorities - most of whom have no genuine voice in the. location of reactors in their environment and cannot move away without serious losses - is really quite alright is the Doubling argument. Accord to the US Atomic Energy Commission, who deployed this trick, it is permissable to double, through nuclear technology, the level of (natural) radiation that a population have received with apparently negligible consequences, the argument being that the additional amount (being equivalent to the "natural” level) is also likely to have negligible consequences. The increased amounts of radiation - with their large man-made component - are then accounted normal, and, it is claimed, what is normal is morally acceptable. in this argument is sound. None of the steps Drinking one bottle of wine a day may have no ill-effects, whereas drinking two a day certainly may affect a person’s well-being; and while the smaller intake may have become normal for the person, the larger one will, under such conditions, not be. Finally, what is or has become normal, 19. e.g. two murders or twenty cancers a day in a given city, may be far from acceptable. In fact, even the USA, which has very strict standards by comparison with most other countries with planned nuclear reactors, permits radiation emissions very substantially in excess of the standards laid down; so the emission situation is much worse than what consideration of the standards would disclose. Furthermore, the monitoring of the standards ’’imposed'’ is entrusted to the nuclear operators themselves, scarcely disinterested parties. Thus public policy is determined not so as to guarantee public health, but rather to serve as a public pacifier” while publicly-subsidized private nuclear operations proceed relatively unhampered? While radioactive emissions are an ordinary feature of reactor operation, reactor breakdown is, hopefully, not: official reports even try to make an accident of magnitude, as a matter of definition, an ’extraordinary nuclear occurrence . But "definitions” notwithstanding, such accidents can happen, and almost have on several occasions (the most notorious being Three Mile Island): hence the Core-meltdown problem. If the cooling and emergency core cooling systems fail in American (light water) reactors, then the core melts and ’containment failure’ is likely, the result that an area of 40,000 square miles could be radioactively 10 contaminated. In the event of the worst type of accident in a very small reactor, a steam explosion in the reactor vessel, about 45,000 people would be killed instantly and at least 100,000 would die as a result of the accident, property damages would exceed $17 billion and an area the size of Pennsylvania would be destroyed. Modern nuclear reactors are about five times the size of the reactor for which these conservative US (still the best available from official sources) are given : the consequences of a similar accident with a modern reactor would accordingly be much greater. The consigner who risks the lives and well-being of passengers on the O ^train acts in^admissibly. A government or government-endorsed utility appears to act in a way that does not differ in morally significant respects in 20. siting a nuclear reactor in a community, in planting such a dangerous package on the ’’community train”. More directly, the location of a nuclear reactor in a community, even if it should happen to receive a favourable benefit-cost as the Transfer-limiting principle. The advocates of nuclear power have, in effect, endeavoured to avoid questions of cost-transfer and equity, by shifting the dispute out of the extraordinary reactor malfunction. They have argued, in particular, what contrasts with the train parable, that there is no real possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Indeed in the influential Rassmussen report - which was extensively used to support public confidence in US nuclear fission technology - an even stronger, an incredibly strong, improbability claim was stated: namely, the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident is so remote as to be (almost) impossible. However, the mathematical models relied upon in this report, variously called "fault tree analysis” and "reliability estimating techniques", are unsound, because, among other things, they exclude as "not credible" possibilities that may well happen in the real world. that the It is not surprising, then i methodology and data of the report have been soundly and decisively criticised, or that official support for the report has now been withdrawn. 12 Moreover, use of alternative methods and data indicates that there is a real possibility, a non-negligible probability of a serious accident. In response it is contended that, even if there is a non-negligible probability of a reactor accident, still that is acceptable, being of no greater order than risks of accidents that are already socially accepted. Here we encounter again that insidious engineering approach to morality built into decision models of an economic cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk­ assessment models, etc. Risk assessment, a sophistication of transaction or trade-off models, purports to provide a comparison between the relative risks attached to different options, e.g. energy otpions, which settles their 21. ethical status. The following assumptions are encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options: Ai. If option a imposes (comparable) costs on fewer people than option b then option a is preferable to option Aii. b ; Option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than that of option b, which is alreay^ accepted; therefore option a is acceptable. 3 These assumptions are then applied as follows. be killed Since the number likely to eventuall by nuclear power station catastrophe is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, and since the risks of cigarette smoking are accepted; it follows that the risks of huclear power are acceptable. A little reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument grossly violates the Transfer­ limiting principle. In order to obtain a proper ethical assessment we need a much fuller picture, and we need to know at least these things:- costs and benefits go to the same parties; Do the and is the person who voluntarily the risks also the person who primarily receives the benefits, as in undertakes driving or cigarette smoking, or are the costs imposed not benefit? on other parties who do It is only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared, and there are no such distributional problems, a basis would be soundly based. that a comparison on such This is rarely the case, and it is not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options. VI. OTHER SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS AND COSTS OF NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT, ESPECIALLY NUCLEAR WAR. The problems already discussed by no means exhaust the environmental, health and safety risks and costs in, or arising from, the nuclear fuel cycle. The full fuel cycle includes many stages both before and after reactor operation, apart from waste disposal, namely^ mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and preparation, reprocessing spent fuel, and transportation of materials. Several of these stages involve hazards. risks in the nuclear cycle Unlike the special - of sabotage of plants, of theft of fissionable material, and of the further proliferation of nuclear armaments - these hazards 22. have parallels, if not exact equivalents, in other highly polluting methods of generating power, e.g. ’workers in the uranium mining industry sustain ’’the same u 14 risk" of fatal and nonfatal injury as workers in the coal industry’. The problems are not really produced by nuclear development. Other social and environmental problems endemic where dangerous large-scale industry operates in societies that are highly inegalitarian and include sectors that are far from affluent - are more intimately linked with the J nuclear power cycle. Though pollution is a common and generally undesirable component of large-scale industrial operation, radioactive pollution ,such as uranium mining for instance produces, is especially a legacy of nuclear development, and a specially undesirable one, as rectification costs for dead radioactive lands and waterways reveal. Though sabotage is a threat to many large industries, sabotage of a nuclear reactor can have dire consequences, of a different order of magnitude from most industrial sabotage (where core meltdown is not a possibility). Though theft of material from more dubious enterprises such as munitions works can pose threats to populations at large and can assist terrorism, no thefts for allegedly peaceful enterprises pose problems of the same order as theft of fissionable material. No other industry produces materials which so readily permit fabrication into such massive explosives. No other industry is, to sum it up, so vulnerable on so many fronts. In part to reduce its vulnerability, in part because of its long and continuing association with military activities, the nuclear industry is subject to, and encourages, several practices which (given their scale) run counter to basic features of free and open societies, crucial features such as personal These practices include secrecy, restriction of information, formation of special police and guard forces, espionage, curtailment of civil liberties. Already operators of nuclear installations are given extraordinary powers, in vetting employees, to investigate the background and activities not only of employees but also of their families and sometimes even of their friends. The installations themselves become armed camps, which especially offends British sensibilities. The U.K. Atomic Energy (Special Constables) Act of 1976 created a special armed force to guard nuclear installations and- made it answerable ... to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. ..iwu- 23. These developments, and worse ones in West Germany and elsewhere,presage along with nuclear development increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic societies. That nuclear development appears to force such political <— i ' (consequences tells heavily against it. Nuclear development is further indicated politically by the direct connection of nuclear power with nuclear war. It is true that ethical questions concerning nuclear war - for example, whether a nuclear war is justified, or just, under any circumstances, and if so what circumstances - are distinguishable from those concerning nuclear power. Undoubtedly, however, the spread of nuclear power is substantially increasing the technical means for engaging in nuclear war and so, to that extent, the opportunity for, and chances of, nuclear engagement. \ /jL Since nuclear wars are /nevei/ accountable- positive goods, but are at best the lesser of major evils, nuclear wars are always highly ethically undesirable. The spread of nuclear power accordingly expands the opportunity for, and chances of, highly undesirable consequences. 0^!/\ Finally the latter, so increasing these chances and opportunities, is itself undesirable, and therefore what le^jtds to it, nuclear development^ is undesirable. This is, in outline, the argument from nuclear wa£ against large-scale nuclear development. VII. CONFLICT ARGUMENTS, AND BEGINNING ON NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT. UNCOVERING THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF Much as with nuclear war, so given the cumulative case against nuclear development, only one justificatory that of appeal to overriding circumstances. route remains open, That appeal, to be ethically acceptable, must go beyond merely economic considerations. For, as observed, the consigner’s action, in the train parable, cannot be justified by purely I ^conomistic arguments, such as that his profits would rise, the company or the town would be more prosperous, or by appealing to the fact that some possibly uncomfortable changes would otherwise be needed. case: a Transfer-limiting principle applies. So it is also in the nuclear But suppose now the consigner argues that his action is justified because unless it is taken the town will die. It is 24. by no means clear that even such a justification as this would be sufficient, especially where the risk to the passengers is high, since the case still /amount s^one of transfer of costs and risks onto others. But such a conflict situation, where a given course of action, though normally undesirable, is alleged to be the lesser of two evils in a given case, is morally more problemthan cases atical/frhere Transfer-limiting principle is clearly violated. Nuclear develop­ ment is often defended in this way, through Conflict arguments, to the effect that even though nuclear development does have undesirable features, nevertheless the alternatives are worse. Some of the arguments advanced to demonstrate conflict are based on competing commitments to present people, and others on competing obligations to future people, both of which are taken to override the obligations not to impose on the future significant risk of serious harm. The success of such /conflict arguments require^the presentation of a genuine and exhaustive set of alternatives (or at least practical alternatives) and showing that the only alternatives to admittedly morally undesirable actions are even more undesirable ones. If some practical alternative which is not morally worse than the action to be justified is overlooked, suppressed, or neglected in the argument (for example, if in the train parable it turns out that the town has another option to starving or to shipping the parcel, namely earning a living in some other way), then the argument is defective and cannot readily be patched. Just such a suppression of practicable alternatives, we shall argue, has occurred in the argument designed to show that the alternatives to the nuclear option are even worse than the option itself. A first argument, the Poverty argument, is that there is an overriding obligation to the poor, both the poor of the third world and the poor of indus­ trialised countries. Failure to develop nuclear energy, it is often claimed, would amount to denying them the opportunity to reach the standard of affluence we currently enjoy and would create unemployment and poverty in the industrialisec nations. And this would be worse - a greater evil - than such things as violating the Transfer-limiting principle through nuclear development. The Poverty argument does not stand up to examination, either for the poor of the industrial countries or for those of the. third world. There is good evidence that large-scale nuclear energy will help increase unemployment and poverty in the industrial world, through the diversion of very much available capital into an industry which is not only an exceptionally poor provider of direct employment, but also tends to reduce available jobs through encouraging substitution of energy use for labour use. The argument that nuclear energy is needed for the third world is even less convincing. Nuclear energy is both politically and economically inappropriate for the third world, since it requires massive amounts of capital, requires numbers of imported scientists and engineers, 25. WT creates negligible local employment, and depends for its feasibility upon largely non-existent utility systems - e.g. established electricity transmission systems and back-up facilities, and sufficient electrical appliances to plug into the system. Politically it increases foreign dependence, adds to centralised entrenched power and reduces the chance for change in the oppressive political structures which are a large part of the problem. The fact that nuclear energy is not in the interests of the people of the third world does not of course mean that it is not in the interests of, and wanted (often for military purposes) by, their rulers, the westernised and often military elites in whose interests the economies of these countries are usually organised. than what it is: But that does not make the poverty argument anything other a fraud. There are well-known energy-conserving alternatives and the practical option of developing further alternative energy sources, alternatives some of which offer far better prospects for helping the poor, both in the third world and in industrial countries: coal and other fossil fuels, geothermal, and a range of solar options (including as well as narrowly solar sources, wind, water and tidal power). Another major argument advanced to show conflict, the Lights-goingout argument, pppeals to a set of supposedly overriding and competing obligations to future people. We have, it is said, a duty to pass on the immensely valuable things and institutions which our culture has developed. Unless our high-technology, high-energy industrial society is continued and fostered, our valuable institutions and traditions will fall into decay or be swept away. The argument is essentially that without nuclear power, without the continued level of material wealth it alone is assumed to make possible, the lights of our civilization will go out. Future people will be the losers. The argument does raise important questions about what is valuable in But for our society and what characteristics are necessary for a good society. the most part these large questions can be by-passed. The reason is that the argument adopts an extremely uncritical attitude to present high-technology societies, apparently assuming that they are uniformly and uniquely valuable. $I I it assuine</ that technological society is unmodifiable, that^cannot be changed in ' the direction of energy conservation or alternative (perhaps high technology) energy sources without collapse. These assumptions are all hard to accept. The assumption that technological society’s energy patterns are unmodifiable is especially so; after all, it has survived events such as world wars which required major social and technological restructuring and consumption modification. If western society’s demands for energy were (contrary to the evidence) totally unmodifiable without collapse, not only would it be committed to a program of increasing destruction, but much of its culture would be of dubious value to 26. future people, who would very likely, as a consequence of this destruction, lack the resource base which the argument assumes to be essential in the case of contemporary society. The uniformity assumption should certainly be challenged. Since high- technology societies appear not to be uniformly valuable, the central question is, what is necessary to maintain what is valuable in such a society? While it may be easy to argue that high energy consumption centrally controlled is necessary to maintain the political and economic status quo of such a society, it is not so easy to argue that it is essential to maintain what is valuable, and it is what is valuable, presumably that we have a duty to pass on to the future. The evidence from history is that no very high level of material affluence or energy consumption is needed to maintain what is valuable. There is good reason in fact to believe that a society with much lower energy and resource^ consumption would better foster what is valuable than our own. But even if a radical change in these directions is independently desirable, it is unnecessary to presuppose such a change in order to see that the assumptions of the Lights-going-out argument are wrong. The consumption of less energy than at present/ need involve no reduction of well-being; and certainly a large increase over present levels of consumption assumed trr the usual economic case for nuclear energy, is quite unnecessary. then What the nuclear strategy is really designed to do is not to prevent the lights going out in western civilisation, but to enable the lights to go on burning all the time - to maintain and even increase the wattage output of the Energy Extravaganza . In fact there is good reason to think that, far from the high energy consumption society fostering what is valuable, it will, especially if energy is obtained by means of nuclear fission, be positively inimical to it. A society which has become heavily dependent upon a^ highly centralised, controlled and garrisoned md expertise-intensive energy source, must be one which is highly susceptible to entrenchment of power, and one in which the forces which control this energy source, whether capitalist or bureaucratic, can exert enormous power over the political system and over people’s lives, even more then they do at present. Such a society would/' almost inevitably tend to become authoritatian and increasingly anti-democratic, as an outcome, among other things, of its response to the threat posed by dissident groups in the nuclear situation. Nuclear development may thus help in passing on to future generations some of the worst aspects of our society - the consumerism, alienation, destruction of nature, and latent authoritarianism - while many valuable aspects, such as the degree of political freedom and those opportunities for personal and collective autonomy which exist, would be lost or diminished: political freedom 27. for example, is a high price to pay for consumerism and and energy extravagence. Again, as in the case of the poverty arguments, clear alternatives, alternative social and political choices, which do not involve such unacceptable consequences, are available. The alternative to the high technology-nuclear option is not a return to the cave, the loss of all that is valuable, but either the adoption of an available alternative such as coal for power or, better, the development of alternative technologies and lifestyles which offer far greater scope for the maintenance and further development of what is valuable in our society than the highly centralised nuclear option. The Lights-going-out argument, as a moral conflict argument, accordingly fails. Thus the further escape route, the appeal to conflict, is, like the appeal to futurity, closed. If then we apply, as we have argued we should, the same standards of morality to the future as we ought to acknowledge for the present, the conclusion that large-scale nuclear development is a crime against the future is inevitable. Closed also, in the much same way, are the escape routes to other arguments (from reactor meltdown, radiation emissions, etc.) for concluding that nuclear development is unacceptable. Tn sum, nuclear development is morally unacceptable on several grounds. VIII. SOCIAL OPTIONS : SHALLOW AND DEEP ALTERNATIVES. The future energy option that is most often contrasted with nuclear power, namely coal power, while no doubt preferable to nuclear power, is hardly acceptable. For it carries with it the likelihood of serious (air) pollution, and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmospheric heating, not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip mining, all of which will result from its use in meeting very Such an option would, moreover, also violate high projected consumption figures. the Transfer-limiting principle : for it would impose widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs of production and replacement. To these main conventional options a third is often added which emphasizes softer and more benign technologies, such as those of solar energy and hydroelectricity. Such softer options — if suitably combined with energy conservation measures (for there are solar ways, as well as nuclear ways, of energy extravagance and of producing unnecessary trivia which answer to no genuine needs) - can avoid the ethical objectives to nuclear power. choice is not however technological, The deeper nor merely^individual^ 1 bUL Social, and involves the restructuring of production away from energy intensive uses and, at a more basic level, a change to nonconsumeristic, less consumptive life­ styles and social arrangements’!:6 These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, conventional technologically-oriented discussion of energy options tends to obscure. It is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet the unexamined goals nuclear development aspires to meet, but also a matter of examining the goals themselves. That is, we are not merely faced with the question of comparing different technologies for meeting some fixed or given demand or level of consumption, and of trying to see how best to meet these; we are also faced, and primarily, with the matter of examining those alleged needs and the cost of a society that creates them. It is doubtful that any technology, however benign in principle, will be likely to leave a tolerable world for the future if it is expected to meet unbounded and uncontrolled energy consumption and demands. Even more benign technologies may well be used in a way which creates costs for future people and ^are?which^ /them. ^likely to result in a deteriorated world being handed on to In short, even more benign technologies may le/id to violation of the Transmission JjteQu^-remen^• Consider, to illustrate, the effect on the world s forests, commonly counted as a solar resource, should they be extensively used for production of methanol or of electricity by woodchipping. While few would object to the use of genuine waste material for energy production, the unrestricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name of ’’solar energy” or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands could well be the final indignity for the world’s already hard-pressed natural forests. The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the forests are often dismissed by the simple expedient of waving around the label "renewable resources”. Many forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the renewal of all their values, In many regions too the rate of exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded, so that a total decline is widely thought to be imminent, It certainly has begun in many regions, and many forest types, especially rain17 ^/forest types^ are now, and rapidly, being lost for the future. The addition of y/a maj^r further and not readily limitable demand pressure for energy on top /of /the present demands is one which anyone with both a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry operations and a concern for the long-term conservation of the forests and remaining natural communities must regard with alarm. The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes, resembling the deforestation of much of Europe at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas, desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems, including enormous loss of natural species. Some of us do not want to pass on, and by the Transmission principles we are not entitled to pass on, a deforested world to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by nuclear 29. products or polluted by coal products. illustrates, a mere switch to In short, as the forest situation more benign technologies - important though this is - without any more basic structural and social change,is inadequate. The deeper social option involves challenging and beginning to alter a social structure which promotes consumerism, consumption far beyond genuine needs and an economic structure which encourages increasing use of highly energy-intensi modes of production. The social change option tends to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and of how to meet energy needs, in part because it does question underlying values of current social arrangements. The conventional discussion proceeds by taking alleged demand (often conflated with wants or needs) as unchallengeable, and the issue to be one of which technology can be most profitably employed to meet them. This effectively presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand as lacking a social context so that the social structure which produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengeable and unchangeable. The point is readily illustrated. It is commonly argued by representatives of such industries as transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air conditions, power gadgets, .... authoritarian to prevent them from satisfying these wants. from created wants It would be Such an argument conveniently ignores the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or are produced. To point to the determination of many such wants at the framework level is not however to assume that they are entirely determined at the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) and there is no such thing as individual choice or determination at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor in determining certain kinds of choices, such as those for travel, and kinds of infrastructure, and to see apparently individual choices made in such matters as being channelled and directed by a social framework determined largely in the interests of corporate and private profit and advantage. The social change option is a hard option, insofar as it will be difficult to implement politically; but it is ultimately the only way of avoiding the passing on of serious costs to future people. reasons than such ethical ones for taking it: And there are other sorts of it is the main, indeed the only sort of option,open to those who adopt what is now called a deep ecological perspective, as contrasted with a shallow ecological outlook which regards the natural world and its nonhuman denizens as not worthwhile in themselves but only of value in as much as they answer back to human interests. The deep ecological perspective is an integral part of the Alternative Ecological Paradigm and is incompatible with central theses of the Dominant Social Paradigm (which is essentially the ideology of classical and neoclassical economics) 30. and its variants (roughly, what are called State Socialism, and Democratic 18 Socialism). It is incompatible with such assumptions as that the natural environment is of value only as a resource, is by and large hostile, but is controllable in human interests,and with the further domination over nature themes of the Dominant Paradigm and its variants. The conflict between Alternative and Dominant Paradigms, which is fast increasing, extends of course far beyond attitudes to the natural world, since core values of the Dominant Paradigm such as the merits of unimpeded economic growth and material progress are at stake; the conflict involves fundamental differences over the whole front of economical, political and social arrangements. The conflict underlies much of the nuclear debate, insofar as it is not specifically limited to questions of technological fixes, but takes up the 19 basic ethical issues and the social questions to which they lead. The ethical requirements already defended and applied bring us out, when followed through, on the Alternative side of the paradigm conflict, and accordingly lead to the difficult social change option. The social changes that the deep alternative requires will be strongly resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation and power 'structure. To the extenj? that the option represents some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic arrangements, it is not surprising that official energy option discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it. But difficult as it is to suitably alter "the system,” especially one with such far-reaching effects on the prevailing power structure, it is imperative to try: we are all on the nuclear train. FOOTNOTES This paper is a condensation of an early version of our ’Nuclear 1. power - ethical, social, and political dimensions * (ESP for short, available from the authors), which in turn grew out of Routley (i.e. the work so referred to in the reference list). For help with the condensation we are very considerably indebted to the editors. In the condensation, we simplify the structure of the argument and suppress underlying political and ideological dimensions (for example, the large measure of responsibility of the USA for spreading nuclear reactors around the world, and thereby in enhancing the chances of nuclear disasters, including nuclear war). We also considerably reduce a heavy load of footnotes and references designed and needed to help make good many of our claims. Further, in order to contain references to a modest length, reference to primary sources has often been replaced by reference through secondary sources. Little difficulty should be encountered however in tracing fuller references through secondary sources or in filling out much Important background material from work cited herein. For example, virtually all the data cited in sections, and VII is referenced in Routley. At worst ESP can always be consulted. All but the last line of the quote is drawn from Goodin, p. 417; 2. the last line is from the Fox Report, p. 6. While it is unnecessary to know much about the nuclear fuel cycle in order to consider ethical and social dimensions of nuclear power, it helps to know a little. & Abbotts, Gyorgy. The basics are presented in many texts, e.g. Nader Of course in order to assess fully reports as to such important background and stage-setting matters as the likelihood of a core meltdown of # (lightwater) reactors, much more information is required. For many assessment purposes however, some knowledge of economic fallacies and decision theory is at least as important as knowledge of nuclear technology. 3. Naturally the effect on humans is not the only factor that has to be taken into account in arriving at moral assessments. Nuclear radiation, unlike most ethical theories, does not confine its scope to human life and welfare. But since the harm ' ~ nuclear development may afflict on non­ human life, for example, can hardly improve its case, it suffices if the case against it can be made out solely in terms of its effects on human life in the conventional way. For reference to and a brief discussion of (human-oriented) ^simulation models see Gooding, 428. The Opportunity-cost 4. respects. argument is also defective in other It presupposes not merely the (mistaken) reductions involved in the contraction of the ethical domain to the economic; it also presupposes that the /proper methods for decision which ^ffect the choice, apply discounting. future, such as that of energy But, as Goodin argues, more appropriate decision rules do not allow discounting. This is one of the reasons why expected utility theory, 5. roughly cost-benefit analysis with probability frills, is inadequate as a decision method in such contexts. Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and 6. redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopolised by a minority of the population. Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute counterexamples to the principle; for one is not morally entitled to so motor. / 7. For details, and as to how the official analyses become arguments against nuclear development when some attempt is made to take the ignored costs into account, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 55 ff. See Routley, p. 160. /\ the preceding two para£ I graphs, see Shrader-Frechette, p. 35 ff.; and also Nader and Abbotts. For much further discussion of the points of [10. Most of the reactors^Ln the world are of this type; see Gyorgy. 11. See Shrader-Frechette, chapter 4. 12. See Shrader-Frechette. / shortcomings A worthwhile initial view of the of the Rass^ftussen report may be reached by combining ' /the critique in Shrader-Frechette with that in Nader and Abbotts. 13. There are variations on Ai against numbers such as probabilities. and Aii which multiply costs In this way risks, construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in the assessment. risks may be assessed (Alternatively, through such familiar methods as insurance). A principle varying Aii’. a Aii, and formulated as follows: is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes no more risks than b and b is socially accepted. Aii’. was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power development see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry in Saskatchewan is ethically acceptable: Department of Environment, Government of Saskatchewan, 1978, Final Report, p. 305 and p. 288. In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power sources. other applications b In has been taken as cigarette smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war (!). The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to principles Ai - Aii’. The principles are certainly ethically substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced from nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional origin of b ; b character. For look at the may be socially accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would not have been socially accepted if as much as is now known had been known when it was introduced. What is required in Aii’, for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is that ’ethically acceptable’ rather than ’socially accepted’. b is But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the reasons given in the text, and others. It is not disconcerting that principles of this type do not work. It would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts, ethics to actuaries. 14. See Shrader-Frechette, p. 15. 15. Goodin 16. The argument is elaborated in ESP. 17. For some of the more philosophically important material p. 433. 'alternative Mannlaon ~ Asocial arrangements and lifestyles, see work cited in V. and R. Routley, ’Social theories, self management and environmental problems’ in al, where a beginning is made on working out one set of alternatives, those of a pluralistic anarchism. The parlous 18. situation of the world’s tropical rainforests is explained in, for instance, Myers; the reasons are untangled in R. and V. Routley ’World rainforest destruction - the social causes’ (available from the authors). 19. > rival, For a fuller account of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its Paradigm, see Cot^royfe and Duff, especially the Alternative Environmental the assumptions the table on p. 341 which /of the paradigms; compare also Cotton and Dunljzfp, especially p. 34. Contemporary varients in the Dominant Social Paradigm were considered in ESP. The shallow/deep contrast as applied to ecological positions, which A s /is an important component of the paradigm conflict, was introduced by Naess. // S /For further explanation of the contract and of the larger array of ecological positions into which it fits, see R. and V. Routley, ’ in Mannison environmental ethics ___ ’Human chauvinism and et al, and the references there cited, ^especially to R^d man’s work. 20. The more elaborate argument of ESP sets the nuclear debate in the context of paradigm conflict. But it is also argued that, even within assumptions framework of the Dominant Social Paradigm and its variants, Ti. Nuclear development is not the rational choice among energy options. The main argument put up for nuclear development within the framework of the dominant paradigm is an Economic growth argument. It is the following version of the Lights-going-out argument (with economic growth duly standing Nuclear power is in for material wealth, and for what is valuable!^ necessary to sustain economic growth. Economic growth is desirable (for all the usual reasons, e.g. to increase the size of the pie, to postpone redistribution problems, etc.). k Therefore nuclear power is desirable. / /The first premiss is part of US energy policy (see Shrader-Frechette, p.lll), and the second premiss is supplied by standard economics textbooks. But both premisses are defective, the second because what is valuable in economic growth can be achieved by (not without growth but) selective X //"growth, which economic the heavy social and environmental costs carried by unqualified economic growth. More to the point, since the second premiss is an assumption of the Dominant Paradigm, the first premiss (or rather an appropriate and less vulnerable restatement of it) Paradigm standards. fails even by Dominant For of course nuclear power is not necessary that there are other, perhaps costlier alternatives. defended is some elaboration of the premiss : given The premiss usually Nuclear power is the economically best way to sustain economic growth, ’economically best’ being filled out as ’most efficient’, ’cheapest’, benefit-cost ratio’, etc. ’having the most favourable Unfortunately for the argument, and for nuclear development schemes, nuclear power is none of these things decisively (unless a good deal of economic cheating - easy to do - is done). Tii. On proper Dominant Paradigjfi accounting, nuclear choices should generally be rejected, both as private utility investments and as public choices. Nuclear development is not economically viable but has been kept going, not by clear economic viability, but by massive subsidization of several types Gyorgy and Nader alrd Abbotts). discussed in Shrader-Frechette, ZU Even on variants of the Dominant Paradigm, nuclear development is //not justified, oi consideration of decision theory methods will reveal: Tiii. Whatever reasonable decision rule is adopted, the nuclear choice is rejected^Jas the arguments op Goodin on alternative decision rules help to show. |l*^ What sustains the nuclear juggernaut is not the Dominant Paradigm or its variants, but contemporary corporate capitalism (or its state enterprise image) and associated third world imperialism, as the historical details of nuclear X ^development both in developed countries and in less developed countries (for main details, see Gyorgy p. 307 ff.). Are the practices of contemporary corporate capitalism and associated imperialism are not acceptable by the standards of either of the Paradigms or their variants : not ethically acceptable. they are certainly  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 97, Item 5: Draft of Nuclear power - some ethical and social dimensions Subject The topic of the resource Typescript (photocopy) of draft, with handwritten, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1982) 'Nuclear power—some ethical and social dimensions', in Regan T and VanDeVeer D (eds) And justice for all: new introductory essays in ethics and public policy, Rowman and Littlefield. Description An account of the resource Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=val+routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Routley</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 97, Item 5 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [35] leaves. 27.24 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:1f45be4">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:1f45be4</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01-01 Box 97: Paper - Extracts - Articles and Chapters by Richard Sylvan https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/b1bb957eb0669c86c103b14fb224f5fb.pdf 21d1b8e5d70d2b597b1948aa633e80c2 PDF Text Text MORAL DILEMMAS AND THE LOGIC OF DEONTIC NOTIONS Richard Routley and Vai Plumwood^ The §1. paradoxes of deontic logic consistency and the and modal requirements. Especially since mid-century many systems of deontic logic have been advanced, which logic of such deontic attempt to explore the prohibition, and wrong. right all Almost which treat deontic notions as modal, notions as obligation, permission and modal not demand functors, All such systems are mistaken m a For deontic functors such as obligation and prohibition are but are more highly of degree greater a systems, i.e. as if strict or provable equivalents are intersubstitutable within them preserving truth. quite fundamental way. systems have been modal these intensional than propositional modal modal than discrimination and so functors, logics can provide. The damage caused by the mistaken treatment of deontic notions as modal shows up in various ways, but we shall be primarily concerned with only one of these, the consistency requirements and the exclusion thereby of moral dilemmas. which the modal damage appears is through a Another way in series of related paradoxes, such as, directly, the paradoxes of derived obligation, and, less directly, the paradoxes of the Robber and the Good Samaritan. The consistency requirements come out in two ways in mainstream deontic systems. consistency Firstly, a negation are requirement, - obligatory in the that usual no claim such is symbolism, Op that ~0~p, both it i.e. and its ~(0p & 0~p) — appears as a principle, frequently a postulate, in all mainstream absolute systems.21 Such absolute systems, which are variants on alethic modal systems, are characteristically obtained from corresponding alethic systems by replacing the modal axiom, that’ or ’it ought to be the case that’, or the functor ’□ ’, modal (such as logics system demands world is ’it is obligatory ’it ought to be seen to that', replaces ’it is necessary that', of alethic systems. We know of course that consistency requirement; some ~0~p - where ’O’, read Op D p, by the deontic axiom, Op the doxastic systems) the standard but it appears that the intended interpretation of deontic the consistency requirement. or encapsulates acceptable subsequently introduced, can be designed without For its semantical equivalent what is permitted (i.e. is that in symbols (Px)STx) which is surely true (for let world x be determined precisely by what is so permitted). Moreover, the second related way in which consistency escaped by a modal formulation of deontic (or doxastic) logics. figures cannot be so For it seems clear, �2 and is widely agreed, that 0 satisfies the following distribution principle: (1) Op&OqiffO(p&q). Since however 0 is modal, and p & ~p & q p&~p (i.e. - the sides are strictly equivalent), 0(p & ~p) iff 0(p & ~p & q) Thence, Op & 0~p implies 0(p & ~p), which implies 0(p & ~p & q), and (2), by (1) which implies Oq; (2) if there are cases of moral dilemmas where Op and also 0~p, i.e. then obligation spreads so that any claim is obligatory. This argument tells against all mainstream deontic logics; rock-bottom system, minimal deontic logic. for it holds in the This logic MDS, presented by von Wright and others (see e.g. Hilpinen 81, p.3 and p.5), adds to classical sentential logic CL (with rules of Material Detachment and Substitutivity duly extended) the one-place connective P, of permissibility, subject to just the conditions P(A v B) e (1’) PA v PB and Intersubstitutivity of provably equivalent CL (i.e. truth functional) wff Now define a connective - in fact the standard obligation Then, where A and B are any CL wff, 0(A & B) OA =£j£~P~A. negation and It then follows, given that (extensional) principles to De Morgan = ~(~P~A & ~P~B). follows), 0 moral claim is dilemmas obligatory, the consequence as above of the nothing functor ) * (2 - thus: OA & OB, upon applying of (1 ) * that P~(—A & —B) (or by variants thereupon that which form OA & 0~A, (extensional) i.e. any permissible. The that is OB, revealing variant argument applies the provable CL-equivalence A & -A = B & ~B to get 0(A & ~A) = 0(B & ~B). d OB & 0~B => OB. Then (in condensed notation) OA & 0~A => 0(A & ~A) => 0(B & ~B) That is, if there are any deontic moral dilemmas (of such forms as OA & 0~A) then everything is obligatory. other forms; But there are moral dilemmas, of this and and not everything is obligatory. incorrect. So too are all its extensions, and Therefore minimum deontic logic is thereby all mainstream systems. For 'most systems of deontic logic include the system’ of von Wright 'as a subsystem' (F & H, p.13). There is little appreciation of the involve in the ethical Hare, having set up a force of these arguments or of what they literature. But one prominent example will dilemma, and rejected one logical have to suffice. route out, proceeds to pronounce that 'it is not very helpful to try to sort out these difficulties by some relatively minor tinkering with the calculus of deontic logic. The linguistic and logical intuitions which give rise to them are all right so far as they go' (82, �3 intuitions behind the mainstream systems are not alright, but lead to The p.28). deontic collapse and to a heap of paradoxes; and a bit of '’tinkering" is enough to remove the worst difficulties.5 (2’) and The trouble lies we shall argue, just with the modal requirement (i.e. its usual extension to all wff). that not everything is obligatory, evident For while it is This leaves much to be defended. on no more than the strength of a few examples (such as that it is not obligatory that everyone visit the tallest eucalypt every day), none of the other assertions is so uncontroversial. Given that there are such moral dilemmas, as will be argued at length, and given that sentential logic CL is admissible when applied to consistent situations (which are all that are elsewhere (in arguments: required RLR in especially), modal the namely, the arguments there are a claim that has been argued above), two only and requirement, one fault the which to points at half of the distributivity principle, specifically r (O-adjunction). OA & OB -> 0(A & B) But it is bizarre to have to fail O-adjunction in order OA & 0~A =5 B has quite especially when OB to stand, 0(A & ~A) to be correctly foundation. And obligation. For, not it contemplated among in the things, is a irrelevant mates 7 desperate measure , systems since it intended role and mainstream against entirely other is conceded that its Faulting O-adjunction rejected. goes it to allow the paradox O-adjunction can be argued is without meaning for from of the semantics of 0, along these lines:- Roughly OA is true iff A holds in all acceptable situations. But if A holds in all such situations and B does also then so does A & B, validating O-adjunction. Accordingly, the trouble must be located in the modality requirements. This can be seen from another angle also. obligation, which also underlies O-adjunction, An important logical feature of is its transmissibility, that what is tightly entailed by what is obligatory is also obligatory; in symbolic form, A ■+ B -o OA -> OB But now, (0-transmission). if entailment is erroneously construed as strict implication, which is what the modal requirement would have us do, then 0(A & ~A) -> OB, since by a paradox of strict implication A & ~A B. If there are moral dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~A), as will be contended, then this result is sufficiently damaging on its own, and focusses the trouble on the modal requirement. properly maligned OA & 0~A ->0B. Otherwise apply O-adjunction, to obtain the �4 the Both and consistency requirements should modality be challenged then by anyone who claims that, for some p, both Op and 0~p (and that such judgements are not merely prima facie, vanishing upon further reflection). Many have argued that such cases do occur, indeed are central examples of value conflict, and are of fundamental importance in ethics.$ We want to go even further and claim, firstly, that such cases occur quite frequently, as cases of conflicting obligations, conflicting rights, and genuine moral dilemmas - so in particular there are many cases where both p and ~p ought to be the case - and secondly, that adequate logical treatment of such cases requires an underlying logic of a distinctively paraconsistent kind. we shall cases has, argue, with many important arguments and cases. many of logic rendered deontic Neglecting such incapable of dealing adequately The matter is particularly serious since fiercely debated moral cases are cases of moral dilemmas, lthe most e.g. limited resources, nuclear war, permissible war tactics. While our initial argument will overlap previous work,9 it goes beyond it by adding a semantical treatment and moral of explanation semantical dilemmas, and in setting adequate deontic logics within the framework of paraconsistent logic. simple The §2. resolution relevant epicycling. classical versus The relevant It has already been indicated. solution to the base problem is disarmingly simple. Abandon the modal assumption, that obligation, permissibility, and so on, are modal This blocks logical equivalents. functors allowing replacement of modal from OCA & ~A), or from OA & 0~A, to 0(B & ~B) and thence to OB. giving up intersubstitutivity are replacement coentailment, not simply just more in contexts; deontic rigorous than lax strict equivalence. intimately - the Spread with What ones. is permitting required is While A & ~A and B & ~B are strictly equivalent, they do not coentail one another. connected modal It does not involve conditions the the move law, That is as much of a fallacy as - one A that would have that a & ~A -> B, contradiction such as A & ~A entails any statement whatsoever. An alternative satisfactory distinctive implciation deontic way then logic of should explaining be in particular of relevant paraconsistent, feature of relevant logics, their and the is solution, simply and through why the a most rejection of the paradoxes of strict Spread. For, as remarked, one logical characteristic of deontic notions such as obligation is their transmissibility; i.e. where A entails B then OA is logically sufficient for OB.10 Then were entailment strict implication it would follow at once by Spread that 0(A & ~A) -> OB, whence by O-adjunction, OA & 0~A -> OB. basis of interpretations straightforwardly on RLR II). of Transmissibility may be independently argued for on the entailment (e.g. as content inclusion), and follows the semantical analysis of obligation to be advanced (cf. also �5 A good deal of effort has already been expended in trying to save mainstream deontic theory from the worst of the difficulties and consistency requirements. Most of through its modal it encounters, the repairs however attempted amount to epicycling: trying to tack theory-saving devices onto the initial theory, rather than questioning any fundamental features of it. Intractable exposed. problems is called What the with so-called minimal the standard system of deontic system already have been logic is in an even worse position than the minimal system, because it adds to the minimal system as an axiom 12 Then any standard system including a moral dilemma, 0(p^ & ~p ), is 13 o o simply inconsistent. For Op => Pp, hence Pp^ & ~Pp-j where p1 is pQ & ~pQ. ~p(p & ~p). Main marketed deontic logics are epicyclic variations on (i) standard deontic logic, being modal attempts to repair defects in earlier prototypes. They include (ii) reductions of systems of type (i) to alethic logics by introduction of a constant ’o’ read, for example, ’the world will be worse off’ or 'punishment ought to cr is the moral sanction or some bad state of affairs. follow’: is defined Then *0' EK-A^cr); i.e. A is obligatory iff the negation of A (non-fulfilment of A, it OA is said) necessitates the sanction. It is usually postulated: -0^. Such reductive frameworks, since they include minimal deontic logic, repeat its defects. (iii) relativistic systems which attempt axiomatise to circumstances, c', conditional of reads ’p is obligatory given, or permission and conditional obligation; thus ’0(p/c) * in notions underlying model being that of conditional the probability. These systems were designed chiefly to avoid the paradoxes of derived obligation to which systems of type really in (as and (i) probability (ii) theory) lead. to But the new operator, /, compensate for implicational connective in the modal framework assumed. so-called "logics of conditional e.g., van Fraassen, p.438 ’... obligation" still lack the is introduced of an adequate So, not surprisingly, these exclude moral dilemmas (thus, it would be more apt to say that we have here a logic of obligation that remains after obligational conflicts are resolved'). (iv) systems which conditional d, such include a modal conditional functor superior to the material­ as a Stalnaker-Lewis-style conditional, conditional deontic notions like those of (iii) can be defined. in terms of which But these systems, since modal, do not escape modal limitations and problems (see further RLR). (v) systems based on a logic of change or action. These systems turn out to be reducible to a combination of absolute systems with tense logics, i.e. 14 to multiply modal systems and so repeat the problems of modal systems. None of these modal types are satisfactory, none can be made so, they amount because of �6 What is at modal assumptions, like consistency requirements, that they all involve. fault is not merely types of systems of this sort, which confine the framework to a worlds possible defect enough, one thereby and but the write in conditions, consistency that is though sweeping consistency interpretation of deontic more logic, that ’principles of deontic logics are conditions of consistency for normative systems’.^ The consistency interpretation - which is deeply entrenched in much ethical theory (especially making no adequate allowance from Kant) deriving that for what is essential fundamentally mistaken, - is moral dilemmas and to morality, the familiar inconsistency of normative systems. Documenting moral dilemmas. Cases of moral dilemmas are, perhaps unfortunately, §3. both familiar and inevitable. perhaps not, and logic theory deontic (including is unfortunate It such for standard deontic approximations rough as utilitarianism) since they have ultimately to be dismissed as inadequate to account for the data. is also often extremely On the other dilemmas. awkward who those for such dilemmas hand, probity, and are a main source of moral change. A moral dilemma occurs when considerations, for instance cannot T situation in act (where such a of which shape cannot, or precisely as way afford real tests of moral worth and 16 is confronted with moral perhaps not directly inconsistent, factual the probably cannot, facts satisfy to principles, binding obtain); principles that is, one so as to or although be satisfied Then the situation T cannot but induce a moral fix. considerations. in moral (but not only when) one the in themselves enmeshed find It in the (probably) meet moral This can come about in two ways, either because of the logical limitations supposedly satisfied by T, in particular its consistency feature (that, whatever p, does not) or through certain contingent features if p holds in T then ~p of T. In what follows we shall concentrate on a major subclass of what are commonly accounted moral dilemmas, those of (paraconsistent) logical interest where what is given or derived are pairs such as OA and OB, WA and WB (i.e. A is wrong and so is B), or the like, where A and B are And incompatible. of particular logical importance are cases where deontically incompatible pairs such as Op and 0~p, Wp and W~p, or the like are guaranteed. The examples of moral dilemmas we consider provide only a small selection from the rich variety of such dilemmas, but hopefully they illustrate that variety. Several of the examples involve more than one moral principle: however some commonly- adopted moral principles generate dilemmas, of one sort or another, their own. pretty much on Consider for instance first principles of the following type: Situations involving the (indiscriminate) killing of numbers of (uninvolved) people should be avoided, should not happen, are wrong - principle at very first approximation of the form (p)(p satisfies condition C + Wp). Applying such a principle, a dilemma results �7 where and occurs a large number of people will be killed, if p obtains or if ~p obtains a large number of people will also be killed. War situations provide obvious examples, with the V(ietnam) dilemma typical. 17 For example, people have described the situation in Vietnam as follows (not that it really is this way): If the Americans withdraw from Vietnam, a large number of people If the Americans stay in (do not withdraw from) Vietnam, will be killed. number of people will withdraw from C. Hence under be killed. Vietnam', Hence, condition satisfies p where p is C 'the Americans withdraw from ~p and the principle both p and ~p are wrong, similar is the company commander's dilemma. of his troops will be killed. a large also i.e. satisfies condition 18 Wp and W~p. Rather If he invades the hamlet, a large number If he does not invade the hamlet the prisoners held Taking p as 'he invades the hamlet', p satisfies C and therein will be killed, etc. ~p satisfies C. Therefore, Wp & W~p. Both p and-not p are wrong; neither would occur The killing does not however have to be of large numbers in an acceptable situation. of people to induce moral dilemmas. variants on the commander's dilemma Favourite regularly wheeled out concern murdering a potential murderer to prevent him killing several other presented people and with the related constrained option killing of some choice situations smaller special person is where a group of people (or creatures) in order to avoid the certain killing of a larger or less favoured group 1Q of creatures. 7 The pacifist's (or differently seen, patriot's) dilemma, which Lemmon draws from on Sartre, concerns the proposition p^: Z goes to war. If Z does not go to war, he help his friends and fails to fellow countrymen when they are in desperate need. Thus ~p-j is wrong, W-p-j , on the principle that so failing to help one's friends and fellow countrymen is wrong. If Z goes to war, he will be involved in killing people he has nothing morally or otherwise against; whence Wp^, on the principle that things which involve such killing are wrong. Therefore again Wp^ and W~pp A different sort of example, again however involving the taking of life in one way or another is the abortion dilemma (as conceived by Anglicans, say). presented as a clash between conflicting rights. to life (i.e. (on that the one part of the should not foetus); have one's In one corner, there is the right in the other, the right to bodily integrity body used against one's detriment for someone else’s benefit) on the part of the mother. where a particular state of affairs is an instance of both so (~p) and will principles. Hence Wp. would deny the mother's right to bodily integrity. Whence adjoining, Wp & W~p. to one's A dilemma results performance of an abortion (p) would deny the foetal right to life. not doing This can be The But Hence W~p. �8 Not so far removed from these examples, particularly when omission is conflated with commission, are environmentally-oriented examples involving sacrifice (broadly construed), for resources. Suppose that we have a duly qualified principle to the effect that things which lead to the feeding of starving people should happen. example the is a dilemma of limited three cases:- First following Suppose also that we have limited resources, and have decided to distribute these as follows: If the coin comes down heads (p), then group A of starving people will be fed. But if the coin does not come down heads (~p) then group B of starving people will be fed. Plainly in an ideal situation both p and ~p will occur, that is the coin will come down heads and it will not come down heads, so that both groups of people will be fed. And if the moral principle cited is correctly applied then a case of Op and 0~p results. course minor Of involved leads to conclusions of the form adjustment of the principle W~p and W—p, whence Wp. For an analogous conservationist * s (or humanitarian * s) dilemma consider the case forest where it ought to happen that the is chopped down, the benefit of the for presently starving (or etc.), and it ought to happen that the forest is preserved by positive action and Op dilemma for the benefit of coming generations (or etc.). 0~p emerges the from of application distinct In this case the The principles. society dilemma, concerns the reform of primitive societies so that they primitive Consider the dilemma of a feminist environmentalist as conform to outside standards. regards Aboriginal On the women. other hand, suppression of women in Aboriginal society should be opposed; on the other hand major western interference in Aboriginal affairs should be avoided; but changing the position of women would constitute major interference. Different examples involving public institution) dilemma, which following:- On the one hand, the be restricted and the funds will principle being the concerns preposition p2: the University The Vice-Chancellor, or rather his advisor on logic, argues opposes the government. both separate principles are the Vice-Chancellor * s (or formulated Wp2, p2 is wrong, students and accordingly). On because the University’s learning in general will suffer the other hand, W~p2, ~p2 (the is wrong because #p# will strengthen the present iniquitous status quo (the principle being states that of affairs which strengthen the present status quo be philosophers, is iniquitous avoided). Therefore, conjoining Wp2 & W~p2» A signifi ant source of moral dilemmas, long observed by afforded by a relatively unrestricted institution of promising, and more generally by parallel institutional arrangements for entering perhaps worth distinguishing two classes of cases. situations, Z is under an obligation into (moral) Firstly, contracts. It is in purely contractual p, because of a contract or promise, and also �9 under an obligation q, because of a (likely different) contract, where q entails or In the second sort of case, Z has promised to do ~p, and hence commits one to ~p. But p also satisfies conditions C, 0~p. it emerges, and Z adheres to the principle (q)(Cq ->0q), whence Op. As an example of the second type consider Lemmon’s simple and dated example, adapted from Plato: A friend leaves me with his gun saying he will be back for it in the evening, and I promise to return it when he calls. He arrives in a distraught condition, demands his gun, and announces he is going to shoot his wife because she has been unfaithful. I ought to return the gun, since I promised to do so - a case of obligation. And yet I ought not to do so, since to do so would be to be indirectly responsible for a murder, and my moral principles are such that I regard this as wrong. I am in an extremely straightforward moral dilemma, evidently resolved by not returning the gun (62, p.148). According to Lemmon the outcome is both Op, where p is ’I return the gun’, and also The 0~p. namely, for first an inference concerning promise-keeping; every q, that q is a genuine promise entails Oq (for genuine promises follows engender obligations), from and p is a immediate genuine promise. inference of the following sort: for every q, The second follows that q really contributes to a murder implies Wq, and that p really contributes to a murder; and moreover, -> 0~q. using an for every q, Wq Even if this last principle is repudiated a dilemma remains: for both Op and Wp, i.e. I ought to return the gun and it is wrong that I return the gun. that the initial principle sustains the conclusion 0~q as well. (It may be In any case, it is not difficult to amend Lemmon’s example so that it does, or more important, so as to render the ensuing dilemma more convincing.) Other dilemmas recur in variant form with contracts and promises. For instance, limited resources dilemmas reappear as follows: we promise all our surplus to a group of poor only to have even poorer people turn up. where one's deception, employment calls or participation in for activities Similarly work and role dilemmas, which are the production of nuclear morally repugnant (such as or chemical weapons), may arise either contractually, e.g. one signed up for the position, or from duty, e.g. to provide for one's family. Some of the moral dilemmas we have made look more determinate than perhaps they should, or than they would be if the circumstances were filled out, or got filled out slightly differently. Then we should find that some of the dilemmas take the form of Lemmon's more complex class, namely those where rather than OA and 0~A, what one has is Prob OA and Prob 0~A, where Prob is the probability functor ’it is probable that'. Lemmon describes this class of "fully dilemmatic situations" in these terms: ’there �10 is some, but not conclusive, evidence that one ought to do something, and there is some, but not conclusive, evidence that one ought not to do that thing’ (pp.152-3). sort of dilemma is again drawn from Sartre: in A real-life working example of this brief, Sartre’s pupil is under some (sort of) obligation to stay with his mother, but he also probably under is an obligation, felt only ambiguously, to join the Free French in England (for a fuller description see Lemmon, pp.153-4). Lemmon suggests that this class of dilemmas is, and perhaps should stay beyond deontic formalisation: however the dilemmas are now within the scope of formalisation of a sort by multiple functor intensional logics of a type not different represent such principles as ’’ought implies can”.22 those already from needed to Though we have presented a wide variety of dilemmas, some of them in some detail - to the dispel that dilemmas common prejudice are a rare phenomena that can be safely set aside or that need not be taken seriously in an ethical theory - we have by no means exhausted the range and wealth of such dilemmas. the extent of analogues practical of these Nor have we indicated the dilemmas; fact is that similar dilemmas are frequent in economics, over budgeting, devaluation (we ought to devalue because ... and we ought not to devalue because ...), and so on. Nor have we brought out the political significance of the dilemmas; but the fact also is that some of the deeper problems in moral and political theory revolve around dilemmas. Familiar examples are issues of (permitting permissiveness interests possibly harming or licence individuals to pursue offending others) and freedom (restricting freedom as regards actions which infringe others * freedom), of paternalism and state authority versus civil liberties, and of democracy as against minority interests. A assortment varied accounts of the where sources of examples is source of moral dilemmas, for moral claims conflict, contractual obligations. Lemmon also in particular and promises, is attracted principles as those morally simplistic that they generally arise greatest (p.150). But he fact that one and the same conflicting directives requiring type, since principle may conflict with or duties, may conflict with one another principle can deliver such removing by an account of this latter underestimates the extent of conflict, and neglects the contract or in e.g. duty with principles, principles with while realising that it will not always suffice, principle important (e.g. double maximization happiness of the greatest number). As well a sufficient variety of tough examples helps remove the illusion that moral dilemmas can one and all be escaped. Admittedly, fortunately, there are ways around some of the dilemmas we have outlined, especially those we have borrowed. with perhaps further around the dilemmas), artifice in setting up the cases (to exclude But lateral moves some of the dilemmas stand: from them (as is further argued in �11 residue ’To insist that there is in every case a solution without is no escape. § 6) there false is the to moral facts’ p.132), Marcus (Barcan a theme she well illustrates with the abortion dilemma. §4. deontic Paraconsistent logic cannot be modal makes it modal treatment the relevant development. logic: An adequate deontic have to be paraconsistent. but will For a modal treatment to accommodate moral dilemmas - which are hard data impossible it makes as dilemmas treat dilemmas impossible to (§3)• A without proper catastrophic collapse (as shown in §1). The of principles standard deontic logic are, however, as added to readily various paraconsistent logics as they are to modal or classical logic - at least this (e.g. OP), in (da Costa negation-weakened namely logic and now distinguished style) logic paraconsistent and For Jaskowski-style discussive logics there are some difficulties; relevant logics. in styles of paraconsistent two of the main for is true particular, the given of rejection can principles, adjunction such logics satisfactorily include O-adjunction, OA & OB -> 0(A & B), which reflects adjunction in for the possible-worlds sentential framework It would seem not; acceptable worlds? logic offers no way of handling of Jaskowski-style the form 0(C & ~C) that result by O-adjunction. properly accommodate dilemmas, for dilemmas concerning obligation, where such as moral clearly principles difficulties; For these require impossible worlds Generally, Jaskowski-style logics are in deep trouble trying to where C & ~C holds. adjunctive full-strength moral dilemmas of logics Negation—weakened hold. they cannot deliver expected deontic also are interconnections, e.g. in the deontic ’’square of opposition”, presented shortly, which depends crucially on normal principles. negation In difficulties. Relevant brief, deontic the reasons types of paraconsistent logics logics can both avoid choosing relevant logics over for (the substantial sets these of other main reasons for which are given in OP) are accentuated still farther as soon as applications, such as to deontic logic, are Accordingly we will assume a relevant logical base, and a relevant semantical made. in what follows. framework, Even so, much of what we say and do can be adapted to other logical bases, e.g. negation-weakened or positive-plus bases. Often a combined syntactical-semantical is approach more fruitful and illuminating than either a syntactical-axiomatic or a semantical approach carried out separately. Each enriches and controls the other.23 Such is the case with relevant logical theory, logic. Even analogue of and so it is with relevant deontic logic, which builds on relevant so, a standard syntactical deontic standard superstructure, relevant logic. beginning logic we normally added can is easier. simply add For an to obtain exact a analogue relevant of the to classical logic, to (what supersedes CL) �12 For minimal relevant deontic logic, MD, the one-place functor 0 - of obligation, as usual read (e.g. ’It ought suitable some to be extending system that’ - is added (the case) B system basic the to some relevant logic of RLR conforms to the usual formation rule: where A is a wff so is OA. however are options at Functor, F read ’It is forbidden that’, is defined thus: ’It is permissible that’, is defined : PA =Df~FA. FA =Df 0~A (cf. OED); and P, read There this stage (as at e.g. stages), can morality, be argued, from directions several other F could oh introduced independently. But this leads to complications that are unnecessary. It 0 The other familiar functors of deontic logic, F and P, are defined in the usual way. ’It is wrong that’ or, less satisfactorily, Functor I). (e.g. from the rationality be of from the meaning or semantics of obligation, from the idea of commitment), that 0 satisfies at least the following requirements:[RM] A -> B -> OA -> OB, i.e. where A + B is a theorem so is OA -> OB. That is to say, where A entails B is provable so is OA entails OB, obligation transmits over provable entailment. Hence the claim that this principle (R7 of RLR II) is a transmission principle. [K] OA & OB regards the i.e. -> 0(A & B), conjunction; or, a conjunction of obligations entails obligation as to adjunction (principle G of RLR II). These two important it put 25 principles, entailment and adjunction, make 0 a a little differently 0 is closed which ensure that 0 is closed under under provable systemic functor (in the sense of RLR II), and ensure that it has a relational (i.e. first order) semantical analysis. The postulates which correspondingly minimally characterise deontic functions F and P now follow by relevant logic upon applying the definitions. They are as follows:For wrongness: A For permissibility : With the A + B -*> functor further B —f> FByFA Q, FA & FB P(A v BH, PAv PA + PB defined F(A v B) QA =Df ~0A, a reduced pb deontic square of opposition follows: 0Ax ...............FA PA^ .............. .QA The opposites are dotted peripheral opposed, as modally, relations of the modal in the way the solid lines show. But the square are bound to be the lost given the �13 the modal (on fact of deontic dilemmas square Prior 62 p.220). see is worth It observing, however, that the peripheral relations can be reinstated through adoption of the so-called consistency scheme OA -> ~FA, i.e. OA + ~0~A; [D] and that the relevant deontic logic that results still excludes the rubbish brought in along deontic standard necessary truths, Nordamericano of that course not (though paradoxes, essentially because paradoxical etc.), deontic obligatoriness the of spread principles are not whereas triviality), incorporate dilemmas. the as degenerate dilemma-permitting The problem with deontic logics which include [D] also cannot they well as logic, Antipodean form we are advocating. is deontic In short, relevant theory can deliver a clean-cut, clean-living, dilemma- available. free (e.g. logic include relevant moral dilemmas systems without without can [D] inconsistency consistently These various logical claims, as to the modal rubbish that is not brought along, can all be made good by application of the semantical theory. The semantics shows what does not hold, as well as further explaining why the principles that hold do. Semantics for MD result upon adding to modellings for relevant logic a two-place relation S, on worlds, which is subject to the following condition W. b and Sbc then Sac, Where a i.e. where world a precedes b (indeed canonically a is contained in b) and world c is accepted vis-a-vis b then c is accepted vis-a-vis a. Given that a is a subworld of b this is evident enough. Distinctive features of the underlying semantical modellings for relevant logic - consisting of structures of the form <T, K, 0, R, *, be sufficiently and, well-known any in are case, explained v> - should elsewhere. These structures differ from the best of those for modal logics, the nonnormal structures <T, K, N, R, v> for the Lewis systems S2 and S3, in the following ways:- The class K of worlds, to which the factual (base) world T belongs, is expanded to include a much more comprehensive class of inconsistent and incomplete worlds; the class N of normal worlds K is in adjusted theorems hold; relation R, to a three-place the class to v(p, sentential a) relation = parameter 1) regular worlds, i.e. worlds; on then and wff. I(A, b) = 1, where all on is subject to a constraint where I is the so that Specifically, where a < b and p holds in a p holds in b, p. Conditions v for every world a and b modelling structures are hereditariness condition extends to all wff; i.e. in symbols, where a 1 then those used in modelling implication, is relaxed from a two-place inclusion of worlds is duly reflected. (written 0 of in K and every such that this b & I(A, a) = interpretation function which extends v to all Inclusion, <, can be added as an extra component of the model structures, but in fact it can be defined thus: a < b =Df (Px 0)Rxab. Finally relevant modellings �14 add to modal modellings a new function, *, in terms of which negation is evaluated, 27 which facilitates the inclusion of inconsistent and incomplete worlds. same role and interpretation as in standard relation S has the The semantical It is employed in the semantical evaluation of obligation functor 0, deontic theory. which is given by the following rule: I(0a, a) = 1 iff, for every world b such that Sab, I(A, b) = 1, i.e. OA holds at world a iff, for each world b accepted vis-avis a, A holds at b.28 The rule is a world relativisation of the idea that what is obligatory is what holds in all accepted worlds. (morally) It is thus an evident adaption of Leibnitzian prescriptions, given the linkages between obligation or moral binding and moral "musts” or imperatives, on the one side, and morally possible and or acceptable accepted worlds, the on other. The for motivation unrelativised connections can be forged at base world T; for there A is (morally) required, I(0A, T) = 1, iff for every b for which Mb I(A, b) = 1 (where Mb =Df STb), i.e. That is, what is required is iff A holds in every (morally) accepted world. what holds in all accepted or received worlds. Other construals of the semantical apparatus are of course open. tempting ideal, temptation (a succumbed to initially) regard the accepted worlds as and Sab as ’b is ideal as seen from c’. to read Mb as 'b is ideal’ i.e. to It is a little But that is like requiring supererogation in cases where the meeting of commitments or obligations is enough: the worlds do not need to be that good but simply to pass, to meet required standards. is worlds. acceptable through A perhaps easier construal than by way of accepted worlds construal That is alright provided the term ’’acceptable” is deployed, as it often is, nonevaluatively : for it is important in the semantical assessment to prescriptions for be able to make an evaluative step—down, to give meaning evaluative expressions nonevaluative terms. in Naturally this does not imply that evaluative notions are naturalistically eliminated, any more than familiar terms, extensional reductions, semantical extensional analysis of intensional implies that intensionality is removed: both are merely pushed down into the not-further-explained apparatus of worlds. Obligation is construed by way of what goes on in acceptable or accepted worlds, not what happens in permissible or permitted directly with the construal of permissibility. one another, but in worlds, because this latter Given modal muddles the two reduce to the more subtle relevant setting star shift is involved in the transfer from accepted to permitted worlds. The (derived) semantical rule for P is this: KPA, a) = ties 1 iff for some b such that Uab I(A, b) = 1, where Uab . b * Sa �15 at base Thus, A is permissible, world T, i.e. I(PA, = 1) iff A holds at some 1, permitted world b; what is permissible is worldwise what is somewhere permitted. modal equation of relations U and S further axioms, deontic the (where namely if Sab (in effect, condition then Sa ) b * (Pb)Sab The corresponds to e.g. guaranteed, is modally by ~0(P & ~p)) by the scheme OA ^PA. Now modal-strength deontic logics typically do include an axiom scheme of the form [D’J OA -> ~PA, i.e. from (alethic) is obligatory is not that permissible, under modal is, Indeed this used to be considered what distinguished deontic ~0~A. assumptions, OA logics what modal on logics the one side, which include a stronger principle analogous to OA -*■ A, and epistemic logics on the other, which were weaker in that [D’J failed. However [D’J, like [D], is deontically incorrect because it rules out consistent inclusion of moral dilemmas; or, to turn matters around, cases where OA & 0~A, [D’]» which or OA & FA, hold counterexample [D]. may seem a little more plausible transform of it on usual deontic definitions. than Similarly these cases refute [D], but is a definitional For what is obligatory is not ipso facto permissible where the obligatory item is also wrong, as in dilemmatic cases. To distance relevant deontic logic from modal analogues, while at the same time demonstrating that relevant theory can encompass moral dilemmas unproblematically , we next assume that some moral dilemmas hold, that is that for some p, both Op and Fp. Since however propositional quantifiers much complicate the semantical apparatus we shall introduce constants into the syntax, and let p^ be the first constant for which a dilemma ensues. That is, a new axiom, extending the logic, is [DD] 0p1 & Fpp i.e. p1 is dilemmatic.3° The modelling condition for [DD], is wd. For each a in 0, for some world x, Sax and v(ppx) = 1= v(ppX ). * This condition, which does not involve T, does not impose nonclassical conditions on normal worlds. Accordingly [DD] is only a weakly paraconsistent requirement; it does not imply that inconsistency protrudes into the factual or regular worlds. Indeed one advantage of the semantics is that it enable proof that dilemmatic judgements can be included without inconsistency. By contrast, modal theories cannot include even one half of [DD] do) without automatically excluding dilemmatic judgements. consideration has a thesis 0p2 for some (either will Suppose the logic under Then for every x in 0 there is some y such that Sxy with p2 set to hold at y. But modally this is enough to guarantee that [D] holds materially, More explicitly, so ~(0A & 0~A) generally, suppose otherwise that in i.e. there can be no such dilemmas. some model the material form of [D] �failed; I(OA, then = T) 1 = I(A~O, T), which impossibility at y since I(A, y) = 1 i I(A, y). syntactical problems earlier in 1). even for Although [DD] implies Op^, very weak obligatory is conjured from the fact some for STy yields y This is a semantical analogue of the deontic logics (considered type of modal it does not say, nor does it follow, that OT for any Such modal stupidity as that every necessary and every tautology T (e.g. C v ~C). truth is since automatically removed that relevant in the relevant wash. can be This theory removes such paradoxes as p1 from which 0(A v ~A) would follow modally by 0—distribution (i.e. A v ~A, Again the [RM]). semantics can be applied to establish the point in proper detail. primitive principles of minimal relevant logic are open to challenge, Both the and [K] * Jennings has been disputed by Schotch (in Jennings and 81). The main Schotch- arguments against [K] — which induces what they call ’paradoxes of complete * aggregation essentially turn — automatically avoided on modal deontic by relevant and assumptions, Their theory. accordingly are (p.152, also main point p.154) is that [K] obliterates the distinction between [D] (i.e. Op ~0~p) and [Con] ~0 , i.e. in effect ~0(r & ~r). Their argument depends on construing implication in [D] as material-implication and on strict replacement. ~0~p iff ~(0p & 0~p), i.e. iff ~0(p & ~p) using [K] Then Op and its provable converse, i.e. iff ~0(r & ~r) using p & ~p - . r & ~r and strict According to the relevant approach the trouble is not with [K] but with replacement. the modal assumptions, which are independently objectionable (see 1). Their further argument begins from the premiss that ’we should certainly want to include among our deontic principles the law of moral consistency [Con] across cuts all different things. moral theories’ (pp.153-6). The ... because that principle premiss appears to conflate What cuts across all moral theories is the theme that some things, such as a sufficiently evil state of affairs, are not obligatory, whence ~0s. does cut across all theories is the assumption that there are no moral dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~A), which is what [Con], with not just that there What are theories like properly defined, would imply. those of Lemmon and Sartre It is which include contradictory obligations; it is also that some theorists would want to insist that there is something logically wrong with principles like [Con], e.g. that it doesn’t make sense to talk of the nonobligatoriness of absurdity. Schotch and Jennings do contend that we should allow for moral conflict of the form OA & OB where A and B are inconsistent. their assumptions there [K] stops rejection of are moral dilemmas that yielding Since then B -> ~A, of the 0(A & -A). it follows that on form OA & 0~A. Yet as they Certainly only themselves have reported, the consensus view is that there are (in the end) no dilemmas of the form �OA & O~A: insofar, all theories’, ’cuts across then, rejection of dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~[~]A) so, near enough, does rejection of those of the form OA & 0~A. What certainly does not emerge is that there can [K]. The be no deontic logic which takes as a primitive law the principle be can that best if done, subscribe to [K], we is to formalise ethical theories - namely those which do not allow moral certain particular conflicts (p. 156). logics provide decisive counterexamples to this contention. Relevant deontic They can take [K] as primitive: they allow for moral conflict; but they do so by allowing, like Lemmon, for moral inconsistency.31 disconcerting More from flowing the than fundamental difficulties deriving principles, transmission [K] from are allegedly those difficulties include which well-advertised paradoxes of deontic logic. § 5. Resultant on impact other relevant paraconsistent shift. and puzzles of paradoxes deontic theory of the Often cleaning up one logical puzzle in due technical detail has a beneficial effect on surrounding puzzles and on associated problems in the area. Light is cast on, and So it turns out also in the case of moral dilemmas. Among them sometimes solutions are delivered for, a number of other linked problems. are the following puzzles generated by theorems of (relevant) deontic logic. are, the ’’paradoxes of commitment”. Where material implciation => is in first place, defined as usual, e.g. T1. There ~A v ~B, it is a theorem that A ° B 0(B => A), whence if OA then 0(B 25 A), OA sometimes read: A if is then obligatory anything one commits to A, or: ’Doing anything commits us to doing what is obligatory’; T2. FA OCA => B), if 0~A then 0(A = B), sometimes read: if A is forbidden then doing A commits one to doing anything at all, or: ’Doing what is not permitted commits us to doing anything whatever’ readings are proceed from Prior from there interpretation of paradoxes symbols, the The claims read off are paradoxical. 62, p.224). to little justification - reading ’0(A commits one to doing B’. the in and (the quoted in logic this case B)’ as depends, always, depends crucially on - But to on the what has as a commitment relation, e.g. as ’doing A Such a reading which presupposes that material implication is a satisfactory conditional can in no way be sustained (see RLR), and that is the end of the problem. that A then paradoxical guises; and it If, ought to for example, T1 be features disappear. these commitment the case is simply read: if it ought to be the case that either not B or A, then the alleged However puzzles have a tendency to reappear in new puzzles are no exception. Even with conditional �18 terms of obligation applied to a properly defined in obligation conditional, the puzzles in reemerge new forms, example, for genuine (relevant) in is what called ’’Ross’s paradox”, and in related transmission problems. It has been claimed that the principle, OA -> 0(A v B), yielding if OA then 0(A v B) T3. is which T1, to equivalent is Ross paradox principle), - paradoxical to do either A or B, it may be More generally, given OA, obligatory to read a letter but not to read or burn it. there is an obligation example, for because, where the content of B may be totally do to established. (The comment goes beyond what T3 supplies, but that is not material). the in circumstance which obligation the to is set inappropriate A or A similar objection is made to the analogous permissibility principle PA ■> P(A v B), T4. Ross’s paradox, on the alleged grounds that there are examples where A is permissible but A For example, be. not the following it is permissible that to post a takes based on some one application of T4 is said to the paradoxical: letter false proposition the distance implies that it is permissible to post a The assumption that there is some sort of paradox here is letter or kill one’s aunt. however B may the towards that the permissibility of of permissibility killing the consequent one’s The aunt. proposition itself seems to be based on an application, never articulated and quite inadmissible, of Disjunctive Syllogism, distribution, P(~A &. A For PB. (A v b) ■+ B, and what results from P- it may certainly be permissible not to post However it is assuming more than standard deontic logics will grant to the letter. go on ) ~A & to the permissibility of not posting the letter and letter or killing disjunction. one’s aunt, especially given the also either derivation of posting the latter the Still going on remains tempting (and would presumably be warranted by a Lukasiewicz deontic logic analogous to his 4-valued modal logic). But so going on is to no avail in a duly relevant setting, where Disjunctive Syllogism fails: there is no admissible route here to the permissibility of killing aunt, one’s however desirable the act might otherwise be. main The transmission conditional obligation, strict implication, as problems in found also modally derived. an adequate deontic logic are, like those of They come from reliance on material or representation of implication. The worst manifestation of this is that already discussed, deontic trivialisation leading from Op^ and 0~p.| to OB, for any B, in virtue of the provability of p^ & ~p^ => B. But there are variety of lesser manifestations of the same underlying problem, of which the following example (adapted from recent discussion) is just one sort: p4. We have an obligation to feed the starving poor D. There exist starving poor. Therefore, since starving poor, it ought to be by O-transmission, the case it ought that we meet our obligation to feed the to be that there exist starving poor, a �19 that is far from obviously true. deontic logic, for the simple reason presupposition relation, conclusion of transmission problems of modal the that the cannot p4 Such analyses do not entailment. an to rather or implication, (material-) upgraded be plague relevant The many systems all enamate from excessive O-distribution on basis of implications will not them, support in the as following transmission principles typical of orthodox deontic logics, all of which should be rejected: OCA D B) D. OA 3 OB A D B -> OA 3 OB A => B =>. OA => OB. With their rejection a thorny tangle of modally-derived paradoxes is also rejected. There appears however to be an immense temptation to try to impose excessively strong transmission principles; and the same phenomenon to be seen at work in modal contexts can also be observed when a proper entailment is introduced.3^ This occurs, particular, in attempts in to ’’normalise” [RM], to strengthen it a from rule connection to an entailment, for instance, to (the characteristic S3 form) [OT] A + B +. OA + OB; it occurs with analogous changes thereon, and e.g. A-> B. PA PB and A FB + FA, as well with as imported forms of these principles, e.g. OA & (A and (A -> B) & FB As an example of the FA. B B) OB type of puzzles that [OT] produces consider p5. Grannie killed the vicar. Grannie repented for having killed the vicar The problem with putative entailments such as p5 is that, while we are ordinarily (with the context duly flashed out) inclined to agree that Grannie ought to repent, we don’t want to agree to have killed the vicar. that Grannie ought The problem turns essentially however on the availability of [OT] in place of [RM], for p5 is not a provable entailment of the underlying logical theory (and there is little case for it one), trying to make sc [RM] does not apply to p5, in contrast with awkwardness [OT] appears to require, of having somehow entailment, is thereby straightforwardly avoided.33 Most the of paradoxes falling paradoxes and Robber paradoxes can be paradoxes and usual forms of these resolution. one’s According helping a man under such to deny descriptions as similarly resolved or avoided. variations upon [OT]. The is that p5 Good Samaritan an The original them certainly succumb to such to the Robber’s paradox if robbing a man is forbidden then The Good Samaritan whom one has robbed is also forbidden. paradox is a further turn on this paradox: not only the robber’s helping a man he has robbed is wrong, so is someone else’s, a good Samaritan’s, helping the robbed man (see Prior 58). - be It is undoubtedly paradoxical that it should - especially as a matter of logic wrong to help a man who has been robbed: but do any fundamental deontic �20 principles commit us to such a thing, for appropriate substitutions on variables? No, These puzzles all take the following form: B, which describes something they do not. admittedly wrong, gets in or implied as part of the description of something larger, A, arising as a result of the situation in B; however A is not wrong but perhaps even Nothing required. theory; and in none of shows this the however that A B literature can examples in the the provable in is it There be. logical is another important feature, commonly neglected however, which is that A does not assert B. If it did, then A, since amounting to A & B, would appear to be wrong also, as B is. This points to a difficulty also for the usual assumption that A entails B; for then A (certainly modally) coentails A & B, whence the wrongness of A coincides with that of A & B, the wrongness of which would seem to be guaranteed by B. If however A only involves B in a weaker sense, [OT] is exonerated.3^ The paradoxes can be pushed another way, to contest this data, and bear against systems as minimal as MD. For MD yields theorems like the following: T5. FB T6. 0( F(A & B), whence if FB then F(A & B). OB, whence if 0(A & B) then OB. &B) theses, Such minimal it is now suggested, are paradoxical in the same way as the Robber. This is not so: only gross confusion of decidedly distinct syntactical forms - a practice formalisation can unfortunately encourage - could support such a suggestion. If it is wrong to rob a man then it is wrong to rob him and help him;35 but it is not thereby wrong to help him, indeed to help him who has been robbed. But the relative and the tense shift are both important; and the whole relative clause in no way reduces to a conjunction conjoining robbing the man. The positivistic objection that the paradoxes of deontic logic show that there is really no ’’logic of norms” has come even from a modern founder of deontic logic, von Wright. This he now contends that There is no such thing as an "entailment” between a norm Op and a norm 0(p q) - and Ross’s paradox makes us aware of the absurdity of talking as though it existed. ... Ross was right when he offered his paradox as a proof that, properly understood, there could not be such a thing as a logic of norms (82, p.15, rearranged, emphasis suggested in text). And he ’essentially (p.14). (also also But mistakenly) of variations given that one regards and the von Wright contains such normative tautologies Op are inevitable. Thus while ’’paradoxes’* the same, viz. wants also the of deontic so-called to supply logic as Ross’s Paradox’ a deontic logic, which 0(p q), some subtle and dubious distinctions Op & ~0(p q) is normatively inconsistent, inconsistent; while Op can be thus said to ’’normatively entail” 0(p q) it is not it does not; and while Op comes rational commitment to Op, it does not carry logical commitment to �it. the Unlike said are connections associated to and entailment (p.15). no paradoxes induce other But normative these relations, what is said go to for normative entailment can be said as well as regards entailment, that one (e.g. a law giver) is Op adopts who rationally to 0(p q) going on to endorse the entailment of 0(p q) by Op. for a oitrary addition away there is no puzzle in associations are cleared once mistaken modal q. Indeed committed The ’’paradoxes” of deontic logic are not a reflection of the illusory notion of a logic of norms but rather a product of a modal logic of norm. However von Wright has other significant reasons for insisting that (in a sense) ’norms have no logic or that normative discourse is ’’alogical”’ from noncognitivism, that symbolising norms, formulas’, ’prescriptive standard a on One derives (p.4). interpretation deontic ’do not express true and false propositions. It makes no sense to speak of relations of contradiction or entailment between formulas when thus interpreted ’ hold nontruthvalued regards as semantical This is not so: (p.4). theory relevant as such discourse, for sketched logical relations such as inconsistency logic deontic carries no commitment to the position that normative discourse is truthvalued. 0 interpreted In imperatives. fact ineradicable The values 1 and by way of holding are not intended to be tied to truth and falsity, except at the factual world T (see RLR1); and that exception is readily removed. judgements, instead normative received, logic the both (the point requirements e.g. Otherwise the etc.). adjustments the and of the form Fp, semantical can be said to be in theory its ’’semantical” is developed, For force (or is as before. With such minor theory conform to noncognitivist to meet von Wright’s argument, in Morscher, pp.97-8). Von Wright’s other reason for coming out against a logic of norms is but grist It is that ’there cannot be a logic of norms because a for the paraconsistent nill. could enjoin contradictory legislator (at ’’relative least serves" Morscher, ...) dilemmas. it but p.98). to the is normal not states of affairs. This might be irrational purpose which the institution of giving orders logically excluded, it is not alogical’ (cited in That is, a legislator can set up (usually unintentionally) deontic This is certainly not triviality, by modal-strength indictment, not of deontic deontic logic, It impossible. but logics. of a is simply excluded, Once again the on criticism certain modally-dominated pain of is an approach to it.36 §6. Upsetting the moral consensus: unrealisable obligations, and inevitable wrongs. The theme that there are moral dilemmas, like those cited, which stand, which do not dissolve upon rational reflection, philosophers, 3? and apparently runs agains the consensus among moral certainly upsets dominant positions in ethical theory, notably �22 broadly Kantian positions (built into much contemporary British moral philosophy) and utilitarian positions (which pervade Anglo-American and theory value thinking, especially outside narrowly philosophical circles). Kantian positions suppose that morality is above all a rational procedure of a certain sort (which we tentatively grant), and that rationality requires consistency. Or put differently, but for instance, must be consistent. Thus what is obligatory, equivalent given modal assumptions, ought implies can, OA -> OA, for every A and some Wherever an agent appears to be in a moral dilemma suitable possibility functor 0. this is a matter of appearance only, a moral illusion which will (and must) vanish on further rational reflection.^ This Kantian assumption should be rejected: moral dilemmas are part of the data and no illusion, and no amount of reflection need budge them. By insistence upon consistency requirements, and through failure, consequently, to recognise intractable moral dilemmas, deontological theories have been forced to jump through a variety of different hoops and to weaken considerably their positions. In particular, temporary and moral firm principles are almost invariably weakened to something much more provisional. is experience While important, some revisability of principles in the light of such wholesale weakening of principles is decidedly There is a point then in trying to undesirable, on both logical and moral grounds. expose some of the tangled assumptions on which the weakening is based, and to loosen their grip. The assumptions involved on a Kantian approach include these: H1. Moral principles - in those concerning justice, particular more fairness and the basic principles of obligation, such as like - are to be explained at bottom as principles of rationality, or rational behaviour for persons. H2. Rationality is a matter of consistency; certainly it implies it. H3. Consistency reduces to, or can be accounted for, through possibility. Put together these assumptions yield the theme H4. What is obligatory must be possible - ought-implies-can , for short. So if that gives, so do some of the assumptions. but on moral dilemmas, It does give, not just because of So also then independent grounds. should the assumptions give; and they fail not just on the grounds that they lead to themes like H4. The deeper trouble is that they are based on a super-modal view of things which combines modal assumptions with rational strong The assumptions. combination is important, for once the modal assumptions are rejected, it becomes fairly transparent that the rationality assumptions, whatever their merit, cannot such things as moral framework or system or course of action. rational case, systems: removing much more modal is required assumptions - a than rationality main present uniquely determine Rather there are rival for uniqueness. exercise - In any destroys such �rationality route to ought-implies-can. Finally consistency is neither necessary nor That it is not sufficient is indicated by a variety of sufficient for rationality. consistent worlds which do not conform to minimal rationality requirements. is converse relevant refuted which conform inconsistent worlds by meet rationality requirements (see further RLR and OP). H3 fails, paradoxes induces ~0A -> ~(A ° B), generally is not just that the Modality removed. of paradoxes with entailment, e.g. anything all. from isolated transmitted to are inconsistent is arguments Not only H2 (as a necessary assumptions parallelling proposition impossible inconsistency It modal when consistency of an fails, also is not 40 this indiscriminate way. However to rationality to sufficient reason and the like), and by dialethic theories which standards (e.g. condition) The more impossibility in collapse; ought-implies-can at there are distinct from those supplied by moral dilemmas. counterexamples to the theme, The counterexamples concern obligations (or oughts) which are impossible, in some sense, to realise, counterexamples Op & ~0p) But wrongdoings. most the of possibility Derivatively then (substituting ~p for unrealisable obligations. that wrongs are inescapable, there are many determinates of possibility examples than concern also mere involve, in their logical possibility necessitated (and necessity), and less anemic notions of correspondingly broader notions of original (and p in setting, necessity than a narrow logical necessity). perhaps strained, adaption, and, in any case, they serve to undermine the point and Nonetheless they sometimes admit of, force of the ought-implies-can dictum (which is to link obligation to freedom to do otherwise), and These examples all arise nature, circumstances, its effective use against moral dilemmas. seriously weaken thereby because agents are constrained in one way or another - by fate, the Gods, their past actions - but are not thereby released from their obligations or exonerated from wrong-doing. Consider first very down-to-earth types of counterexample to ought-implies-can, before turning to more high-flown but not altogether dissimilar examples from our barbaric past. ’Suppose that I say "I ought to go and see him, but I can’t because I don’t know where he is”. There need be nothing inconsistent in such a remark; and, yet there would be if "ought” always implied ’’can'” (Hare 63, p.52). same with situation ”’I where ought I've to return driven the this car I’ve car so far borrowed, away that returning it in time to keep a promise’ (Thomason, p.175). but I It is much the can’t”, there is said no chance in a of my Likewise the claim of the person who cannot swim that she ought to rescue the child caught in the current but can't. One traditionally important class of counterexamples derives from the Catholic doctrine of perplexity secundum quid.^ Donegan, in defending what he calls 'the 24 �Hebrew-Christian tradition’, contends that once one has sinned one May be faced with situations from which one cannot escape without further wrong-doing (77, p.152). That ♦ is, one may be so placed (through one’s own fault) that one ought not to perform any of the available actions though one cannot do otherwise. So it is necessary that one act in a way that is forbidden. Protestant thinkers, particular Luther, appear to have considered the human race involved in one grand secundum quid on account of original sin. ’God punished justly sinners who not could otherwise do Luther believed that than sin’ that God and ’provided men with a law they were unable to keep and then righteously damned them for failing to keep it’. 242 The Calvinists also were committed - but through their doctrine of predestination predestined to sin, unpalatable conclusion - to rather they cannot but by suggesting Because conclusions. similar humans are However Calvin attempted to escape this sin. that in some suitable sense are not sinners compelled, that it is somehow possible for them to do otherwise than they do. J Given however the theme of predestination this attempt to escape looks unconvincing. Any stronger determinism that does not also obliterate morality is in a similar Creatures will have obligations which they cannot fulfil because they predicament. are determined and will to do otherwise, sometimes be bound to do wrong. Plainly where this becomes a general and automatic matter, a serious erosion of moral notions such as responsibility, normally linked to obligation, is bound to set in. However isolated cases analogous to those of determinism can occur without such erosion of moral notions (as indeed with moral dilemmas themselves). rigidifying personality and ossifying character are of this gets older Cases of A person as she sort. may build up a personality so rigid that she cannot escape from it. At some point it becomes impossible (at least psychologically) for her to act other than she does, yet on some occasions she ought not to act in the way she does. outcome resembles that with original sin though the route taken Yet even if we grant that the person ought not to have got still we are entitled to our moral judgements; modern morality * The is very different. into such a position, as Pigden puts it, ’an enlightened can allow such violations of ought-implies-can. Classical Greek morality certainly seems to have allowed for such violations. In Homeric ethics a man could be blamed for failings he could not avoid, unavoidable wrong-doing. and so for Subsequently it was taken for granted that impossible moral requirements could be placed upon a hero, yet he could be blamed for failing to meet them. Thus the situation of Agamemnon and of Oedipus, both despite their struggles, despite their awareness of their predicaments and their anguish, were bound, indeed, fated, to act wrongly, and were duly blamed for their wrong-doing. 25 �There have been various attempts to salvage the ought-implies-can theme, through a residual Kantianism. presupposes-can Thus Hare proposes, but does not really work out, an ought- a with theme weaker relation presupposition logical replacing implication (53, p.54); and both Barcan Marcus and Morscher suggest a model theoretic connection: essentially that for OA to hold true A must be satisfiable in some world, and so, modally, A is consistent. But within a relevant setting, the satisfiability is hardly a requirement and does not ensure consistency. constraint, Once again, consistency is only obtained at the cost of other more important connections, such as Nor does Hare’s comparison with presupposition (on p.54) succeed. O-adjunction. the analogy such situations the worked implies-can. as practical question those and dilemmas moral But (pace Hare, p.55) as to what to do not would counterexamples affording If arise in ought- to the question most certainly does arise in many cases. §7. Resolving proceed, in moral any dilemmas, dilemma so far situation be. as can easily are Recipes for what provided, enough decidedly poor recipes have been much canvassed in the literature. how to to, indeed several Among these are deontic ranking recipes, which would have us impose some type of priority ordering on deontic principles, so that consistency is maintained and in every situation there is a dominant rule; defeasibility recipes, which would have us weaken all deontic rules to merely prima facie or other-things-being—equal principles and operate, when things look would going like have wrong, utilitarian by and assessment; pure-chance recipes, which situationally but arbitrarily by such methods as us determine outcomes coin toss. Such recipes fail to meet important conditions of adequacy upon any account of the way resolution is effected, if and when it can be, namely: A1. The account should sufficiently resemble what rational choosers do when they find themselves in a moral dilemma. Many human choosers have moral principles, have not rigorously ordered in such which, as against ranking recipes, a way as to exclude dilemma they situations, and which, as against thorough-going defeasibility recipes, they are not prepared to give Thus, in addition, away or modify when they encounter snags. A2. The principles induce which moral dilemmas are not generally abandoned or qualified, but very often stand. Naturally sometimes moral dilemmas, especially development and revision of principles. if they recur, do lead to moral But the logic of dilemma situations does not force changes or adjustment and none may be made; and typically none will be made, where dilemmas are resolved, resolve dilemmas which they may not be. The assumption that we must is probably a hangover from consistency assumptions, that deontic inconsistency must be removed - whereas all we have to do is act, or do nothing, in 26 �the face of them. Part of what is wrong with the idea of a predetermined ordering of principles, the conflict, and also the they remove is that as with utilitarianism procedures, felt tension, and often anguish, that goes with it. Even if the appeal to priority succeed in some cases, it does not in fact work, and 45 general. For with Lemmon’s complex dilemmas where ordering of principles does not could succeed, in uncertainties enter be can there preassigned no solution moral to the in dilemma virtue of higher-order principles or a given ordering of one’s duties and obligations and the like, because part of the very dilemma is just one’s uncertainty as to one’s actual situation (p.153). In any event dilemmas do not go away as they should if the conflicting obligations were merely prima facie. Very often someone in a moral dilemma is in a fix and feels it^^; and doesn’t say ”My God there isn’t a problem, I must simply look up the book principles are ranked and what’s to be done’, to see how these not having been so prepared. in which we, as it were, merely .... dilemmas in which we morally prepared, have to look up the solution in our private ethical code, are rare ... and in case any of little practical Of interest. are those importance greater dilemmas in this class where some decision of a moral character is required Our predicament is here so described that, whatever we do, even if we do ... nothing at that might mean), we are doing all (whatever something which we ought not to do, and so can be called upon to justify either our activity or our inactivity (Lemmon, p.151). The usual deontological positions, which deontic weaken principles to provisional or prima facie principles to avoid problems with dilemmas, also play into utilitarian hands. reflecting things that of in often is which only are to act overriding requirement character utilitarians want For the for such to represent most a way disguised (a sc part as to of obligation statements concerning distributed, e.g. are the taken coherent way as derivative; net utilities position from would their own the deontic make this Deontic principles such as reduce somehow distributed type of action which tends to maximize utility. accounts typically rule out moral dilemmas: both apart or to tend complex to be an action is obligatory when it maximizes (expected) utility and it is of a recognised cannot they ar . - principles as deontic maximize utility, maximisation principle so only for the most part also). those all maximise utility, and indeed 27 Such reductive for example, an action and its opposite if an action increases utility then its �opposite characteristically diminishes it. if all moral injunctions More generally, answer back ultimately to just one standard, maximum utility, then there can be no real conflict (but etc.). for these It is apparent conflict through failure to calculate correctly, sorts of reasons that the considerable data now accumulated regarding moral try to explain away, to utilitarians deny that there can be So they are in the awkward position of having to dispute, dilemmas. genuine moral and only dilemmas. But how, when stuck in moral dilemmas, do we proceed to reach a decision? For a 47 decision is called for: those in dilemma situations still often have to act. The intuitive procedure in such dilemma situations is not difficult to grasp. terminology is regularly employed, and is instructive. to those the in - dilemmas weighed assessed, are The same Alternatives - outcomes open up, the balance. put in The familiar scales picture, with the scale sensitive to evaluative weights, is helpful - except it that can suggest, weighed against another, whereas there may be as with of justice where one thing is two competing principles or just that there are several. scales the options, In the light of such a weighing up of alternatives, those in dilemmas then determine what they should do, what is best, or satisfactory, ’If ... we are to act here in good faith,we shall recognise in the circumstances . that the dilemma is what it is and make the best decision we can * There is an attempt to then intuitive apply (Lemmon 62, p.151). methods, decision consist which in assessing and weighing the alternative outcomes open, and maximizing or satisizing on these This outcomes. already very looks consequentialist decision theory, which is what, a like preanalytic account of in a qualified way, we shall reach It is in a qualified way for several reasons; not only may no best (or even towards. sufficiently good) outcome be determinable - there is nothing approaching a decision procedure here - but the further decision theory methods apply within moral dilemmas, so they supply, at best, a second best resolution, a first best result requiring removal of moral dilemma constraints and so being ruled out. Those in dilemma unworkable (and situations usually do not resort to anything as mostly arbitrary and often ineffective) utilitarian as complex and assessment procedures. Nor do they surrender to pure chance procedures. A3. The account should not give way to irrationalism, but should adhere to rational decision procedures, which are not necessarily, however, effective. This requirement rules out pure chance methods, which are only appropriate where it is a matter of indifference which way the decision, if any, Even where some resort to methods can give a worse outcome than might be obtained. tie-breaking devices is appropriate, that may dilemma, but rather to some component of the not be situation. Otherwise such goes. to the final Envisage, outcome of a for instance, a decision-tree for an issue where a tie-breaking device such as a coin toss is applied to a high branch and that proves sufficient for rational decision methods to resolve 28 �Then it would be irrational to try to resolve the whole issue the issue concerned. by coin toss. Nonetheless A4. The account should be appropriately situational. That is, the account should be applicable to each situation on its own merits, taking It should not simply be a rule­ detailed account of the features of that situation. for in dilemma cases the rules have ceased to yield a resolution and based account, into a are locked be will fix position. situational, it will not that of situational be involve resort to pure—chance methods. by situation, situational most part, by example) or example by virtue of A3 and A4, though the account Thus, procedures ethics where such ethics Nor is a situational ethics (ethics situation For the of a broader type being recommended. into operation where a moral only go dilemma is reached; in general, deontic rule-based procedures apply. The broad outlines of a satisfactory account are beginning to emerge. Before we consider apply rational decision methods to each given dilemma situation. is how this to be so as account, to be said about the needs For to meet apparent objections. insensitive those accomplished more to in switches language, both FA and A, some options, and yet that, also F~A, that it ought also be that so B, very idea of it should be that B, where B entails We do not however go on to one of A and -A, so that not both A and ~A are ruled out. claim the is both A and ~A are ruled out as moral that situations, in certain in For are we not only claiming that decision-theoretic resolution of moral dilemmas. for structure of the things, there is, to among other contradiction a It should that not both A and ~A ruled are out morally.49 What is being claimed that B, or an adequate thing, is the best thing to do in the constrained circumstances, that B should be done in that sense, net that B is lifted to status obligation enough in the circumstances, by looking at you does not the can B is In brief, <»B, "second-best obligation"). determined (though imply OB. acceptable worlds worlds where B holds which fail to be acceptable. say, if you like, that it is a the best that can be done or good is not going to be When <£>B holds where B When holds, because there are holds is not going to be settled in general by falling back on deontic rules, because in the interesting cases the rules are jammed. But such deontic rules dees not being beyond imply being beyond rational procedures, indeed procedures that may be represented by way of rules (though not controlled by deontic rules). The rational procedures in question are essentially those of decision theory. What is required is a decision as to what can be done in the circumstances; and this can be determined by relevant alternatives. be of something weighing up the expected outcomes and selecting among The selectiin may be of the best in the circumstance; satisfactory in the circumstances. The approach adopted pluralistic, allowing for both maximizing and satisizing procedures. 29 the it may can be Maximizers will �of course argue that it would be irrational to select anything but the best among the alternatives (given that it was conceded to be the best); But satisizers will resist arguments.what such elaborates is what upon we a under do decision done normally this:- Set out the relevant alternatives, action courses of alternative. to us open Select a best, i.e. way - is - merely which in outline the results that the different list to. analysis intuitive more i.e. lead will a in theory Determine the of each likely value with maximum likely value, an alternative or a The basic procedure is childishly simple, but filling sufficiently good alternative. out the details may be extremely difficult or even impossible in a satisfactory way. The in problems, normally order increasing alternatives open, establishing their probability, rankings to them. things these cases, favourable more delineating the assigning values or desirability techniques from decision theory however for doing all There are in are: difficulty, of and in less circumstances favourable guestimates can be made or resort had to fuzzy methods. To descend to concrete applications (where procedures may be clearer than at the theoretical level), consider again the Platonic dilemma discussed by Lemmon, where I ought to return my friend’s gun and also ought not to do so. The alternatives are to return the gun and have the wife shot, or to return the gun avoiding a shooting but thereby breaking an undertaking. the alternative first wife It is certain, in the circumstances, that under the will be shot, highly a undesirable outweighing the lesser undesirability of the second alternative. the value of second Since the expected first, exceeds that of the alternative considerably much outcome, the best thing in the circumstances is to return the gun. However undertaking goes Lemmon to seriously the return ’to gun suggesting that one sacrifices one’s astray in utilitarian considerations’ No doubt (p.152). utilitarian considerations would bring out (could be massaged to bring out, rather) a But the fact is that no consideration (or interpersonal comparisons) similar result. of the utilities pleasures and pains contemplated. ’’critical involves an (whoever Lemmon utilitarian ones. the everybody of (involved they confuses are), the in is made, consequentialist universe, or or even needs whatever), to considerations with be their remotely much narrower Similarly the recipe Hare suggests for resolving moral dilemmas at level”, namely illegitimate resort to assimilation act-utilitarianism of (see, consequentialist e.g. 82, considerations p.43), under utilitarianisms. In certain respects Lemmon’s Platonic dilemma is not a good example of a moral dilemma; tougher in particular, dilemmas, the it is too easily resolved, and so characteristic features of pain, emerge, moral dilemmas can anguish, indecision, get omitted. As thus begins to be divided roughly into two types, easy and hard. 30 Easy �dilemmas are those that are comparatively easy to find a way through eventually, and But hard ones are those that leave people caught in the dilemma so are resolvable. at least uncomfortable irresolvable. they whatever to choose and do, are so in a good sense Though a way-through or a way-out may be charted by decision methods, it is a way that leaves those involved morally uneasy, dissatisfied, or worse. For at the far hard end of the spectrum lie those dilemmas of tragic dimensions. Although consequential decision rationally within moral dilemma theory provides a for model how proceed to situations, by no means everyone confronted with a moral dilemma will apply such procedures in an intuitive way, even though many will. For one thing, there is plenty of scope for bad faith, irrationality and and more generally, for non-rational procedures; and severe moral dilemmas often enough induce non-rational and even paralytic or self-destructive modes in those who are caught in them. another, For there are indirect ways of obtaining the effects of decision theory, analogue decision theory so to say. Counselling, whether through a friend or a professional counsellor, is an important analogue: there the discussive mode helps to bring out eludicating of and assemble alternatives, undesirability of each. the and elements the of the advantages decision and approach, the desirability and theory drawbacks, Alternatively, or as well, these elements may be bought out by reflecting on a range of similar situations and experience there using these cases as some sort of precedent, in particular, for determining value rankings of alternatives open. Moral dilemmas have corollaries for moral ways of doing things. is that perfectibility of the moral scheme of things is impossible. One corollary Any sufficiently rich set of rules risks inconsistency, and will be inconsistent if completed. dilemmas are thus inevitable be; in the larger scheme of things. Moral This is as it should for it is in this way especially that moral development occurs and moral stature is obtained. 31 �^A much earlier version of this paper was presented by the second author at the Australian National University in 1975. Subsequently much of the paper was lost; what survived is largely incorporated in the first three sections, especially §3. However the new version takes over the leading ideas of the initial version. The authors are much indebted for comments and criticism to C. Pigden, R. Goodin and G. Priest. was ^This even true Maliy’s of pioneering system of 1926 which permitted replacement of logical equivalents within the scope of obligation function 0 (see F & Von Wright’s seminal work H p.3). (in 51), which set the pattern for mainstream deontic logic, was explicitly based on the modal comparison of deontic functors with modal functors, and built modal that break the modal systems, exceptional assumptions in at the bottom of the theory. The connection, are deontic systems based on relevant logics on such systems see RLR, chapter 8. ^These paradoxes are explained, obligation, paradoxes of derived and their see modal bases exposed, On the for some of the p.224; and Prior 62, further in §5. considerable literature on paradoxes like those of the Robber and Good Samaritan, see anthologies and the Hilpinen A detailed uniform treatment of especially Vermazen. all these and other deontic paradoxes in the framework of relevant logic is given in RLR II. 4In its equivalent form, Op => ~Fp, i.e. what is obligatory is not forbidden, it is the dubbed ’’Bentham’s Law” by von Wright 81, p.2. 5In a way, furthermore, avoids that the , problems Hare’s and complexities attempt to transfer a levels-resolution to deontic paradoxes would lead to if worked out paradoxes. the compare properly: any In counterintuitively, case, that problems of semantical if we were even ’ought’ is ambiguous levels say, to as to Hare as levels, avoid to some semantical proposes, but tinkering would still be required to fix up a deontic calculus at each level. Moreover, there are good grounds for doubting that the so far ill-characterised and artificial distinction of levels that Hare wants to impose can be satisfactorily made out. For one thing, critical hardly the holds up; level for separation intuitive of the paradoxes intuitive are from the typical of rational or act utilitarian assessments at the upper level, and we can be rational and critical, and ask for why- explanations, at both levels. ^There are various different form, OA, OB -> ^It is this principle can take, e.g. also a rule 0(A & B), and a rather useless material form, OA & OB =>. 0(A & B). tried criticised below. forms however by Schotch and Jennings, p.152; their argument is It is also suggested by Barcan Marcus, p.134., and toyed with by 32 �Williams o In particular Lemmon, taking off from Sartre, has argued this in two important papers, neglected in mere recent philosophical literature on moral dilemmas and moral conflict. earlier Recent British work, in literature that it could logical further the next note). on conflict of values has particular, profitably have taken into ignored account (see Such an uninformed approach is however not uncharacteristic of British philosophy. ^Especially Lemmon’s work 62 and 65. But although Lemmon suggests (in 62, e.g. p.150) that there are no logical problems in accommodating moral dilemmas, including those of the form 0(A & ~A), none of the systems of deontic logic he presents (e.g. in 65), not even the very weak systems, can do so without trivialising. The reasons for collapse are the modal ones already explained. Apart from the work of Lemmon and a few who follow him, work which at least suggests the need for a bridge even if it does not offer so much as good working plans for one, the literature on moral dilemmas tends to bifurcate - into purely philosophical material which does not address the logical issues, and largely logical material which characteristically avoids the crucial moral issue of dilemmas, which the logics espoused cannot handle (and maybe because of that: otherwise the logical literature On the regrettable lack of interaction between deontic logicians disputes the data). and ethicists, the latter being the worse offenders, see also Thomason’s notes. 10 In fact the latter implication of O-transmission could be much weakened for the purpose of the arguments, e.g. the form A B - > OA D OB would serve to make the point. 11 Gumanski 80 affords a good example of the complication resulting, complication readily removed by relevant logic relocation. 12 The argument thoroughtly for this fallacious. ’principle of deontic contingency’ Either an in F & H, p.13, is illegitimate quantificational conversion (from some to all) or a modal confusion (from p & ~p to q & ~q) is used to get from P(p & ~p) for some p - which is all the denial of deontic contingency gives - to Pq, that is, to ’everything is permitted’. 1^For see axiom, (D1) Op =>~0~p, of the standard systems as formulated in F & H, p.13, and use the interdefinability of P and 0, e.g. PB 4 1 ~0~B. There would be little point in presenting features of the epicycling systems of types (iii)-(v) in any detail since all will be quickly dismissed. In any event, details can be found in the Hilpinen surveys 33 (71 and 81), texts which are ir fact �restricted to epicycling positions within the dominant modal paradigm for deontic Even Schotch and Jennings, who do question some minimal principles, remain logics. staunchly the within modal sphere, their as possible worlds and semantics their substitutivity principles reveal. 15 F & H, p.8, in support p.16. This consistency interpretation appears to have extensive Scandinavia. Of course if consistency were meant in a different sense (that of regularity), it would be different. But it is not: see the development in F & H, p.l6ff. 16 Cf. Lemmon: philosophers that ’It ... does the not to seem adoption of have been new morality a associated with the confrontation of a moral dilemma. much by observed an agent ethical by is frequently Indeed, it is hard to see what else would be likely to bring about a change of moral outlook other than having to make a difficult moral decision’ (62, p155). not settled without so to speak Similarly Barcan Marcus (p.12): ’although idealistically, a source of moral motion. dilemmas are is, Moral inconsistency residue, the recognition of their reality has a dynamic force. 17 In 1975 when the paper was first drafted and presented this example was still topical. However at most times in modern human history there are many candidates to substitute for variable V. 18 In the narrow scheme of standard deontic logic, these would be recast in terms of the forbidden functor F, defined as 0~. However in relevant logic settings, it is a further question, not settled by the framework whether W reduces to 0~. * ^Williams 20 are Jim-Pedro example (in 81) is of this type. As there are other war dilemmas, and especially nuclear war dilemmas, so there other violence. pacifist dilemmas, e.g. the problem of violence to prevent greater On nuclear war dilemmas, and on the main pacifist dilemma, see the War and Peace series. 21 For many of the contractual arrangements, isomorphism, known moral dilemmas we consider, especially those there are analogous legal dilemmas. preserving very many important logical generated by For there is a wellfeatures between moral obligations and rights and wrongs and corresponding legal obligations and rights and wrongs. The complexity of legal frameworks, the relatively independent design of using �parts and divine numerous lack of design control legal of likelihood the dilemmas and sources decidedly complexity to high. analogous An is dilemmas moral for consistency, or checks argument considered in render the fjrom the McConnell, p.275ff. pp Lemmon’s final treatment, but (fifth) type of ’’moral dilemma” does so far resist more formal is that the mainly because class concerned description and lacks even clear working examples. so far These are, defies adequate roughly, situations ‘in which an agent has to make a decision of a recognisably moral character though he is completely unprepared ... by his present moral outlook’ and has somehow to fashion a new moral outlook. is There so far of here nothing especial paraconsistent concern. By no means all the types of situations falling under Lemmon’s ’classification of moral dilemmas’ (62, classifying types of first class and p.156) are dilemmas. situation’, ‘moral the classification starts out is nothing dilemmatic about there and which Lemmon about the second, little Indeed the ‘does not wish to call ... moral dilemmas, because [as with the first] in all the cases our moral situation is perfectly clear’ (p.143). The main types of moral dilemmas Lemmon discerns, the third and fourth classes, are precisely those treated in the text. The concurrence even of several different, 23()f course the control is limited. perhaps apparently independent, logical approaches is no sure guide to correctness of an explication or has to answer back satisfactorily to The matter still account. preanalytic principles. 22* In dilemmas, the initial version of this paper three into types (0, 0~; complication was based on a mistake, collapse. are F, a rather F~; and artificial classification of 0,F) was proposed. But this that equation of 0~A and FA would lead to modal And, apparently a more natural and simpler theory does emerge if 0~ and F equated. Naturally definitional than coentailment. More highly equation intensional in this context does not differences between the imply more notions, which there are, remain unaffected. What holds for F does not automatically transfer independently. ^The labels and Jennings. [RM] and [K], convenient to P. Perhaps P should be treated in what follows, are taken from Schotch Note that although symbolically virtually the same as the originals, they symbolize different determinate principles. ^See as well as RLR I, Routley 72, Routley and Meyer 73 and OP. 35 �the 2?Under four-valued American plan for relevant logic * can be semantics, avoided. But here the superior two-valued Australian plan is followed. 2&Though here we simply take the rule over from standard deontic semantics, it can be argued in several ways, explained (though usually for the analogous necessity functor) as in RLR. class of such A, b One way is this:- in situation a, where OA holds, consider the i.e. {C: I(OC, a) = 1}. This gives an initially acceptable set up with respect to a; and indeed would yield the sought rule (with S improved to a but for 1-1 relation) fail, conditions the fact that bo may not be a world because required closure conspicuously We primeness. can however extend though not ba, uniquely, so that world requirements are met. The picture looks like this: S is the composition of the function (from a to b ) and the extension (to the b-’s). The b.’s are the accepted worlds vis-a-vis a. ^The point and role of evaluative step-down is explained in Routley 83. 3°The strategy resembles that earlier in Routley and Meyer 75 in Plainly there is room for other postulates, formulating explicitly dialethic logic. e.g. exploited In virtue of the model theorem Ot, where 0p2 where p2 is not dilemmatic, etc. t is any tautology, such a postulate is guaranteed in standard deontic logic, but it is rightly left as an option in relevant deontic logic, and also in Barcan Marcus. third 31A type of argument for rejecting [KJ is implicit in Schotch and and also in Barcan Marcus, namely that without [K] both moral conflict and Jennings, the Kantian ought-implies-can principle can be retained. That supposes of course that the Kantian principle is a desirable one, worth going considerably out of one’s logical way disaster to retain. [KJ But the is not from the combination of Kantian only in principle involved theory with moral dilemmas: reaching other equally solid and respectable principles than [KJ could be considered for rejection. ^2At this logic and point we do detour analyses of moral beyond our dilemmas, to look critique of modalisation of deontic at some separate puzzles in deontic logic - which have also been used against the idea of a formal treatment of ethics. And the approach we take to these further 36 puzzles - by limiting transmission �in the fashion of weaker, and deeper logics - is largely independent of principles, the reaminder IN short, we could have taken a different approach to paper. of the these transmission puzzles, without varying the rest of the paper. 33 Of course it can be argued that one is storing up problems for (much) later on when the logical theory repenting have fuller a better developed, is much more fully developed, and predicates like those of logical role. so also will be presumably when But the logical theory is the distinctions between types of predicates and those sustaining transmission. 34 It is common practice indict deontic logic by so stating the deontic ’'paradox" that they smuggle in much more than a satisfactory entailment relation could warrant and more even than a modal relation would grant. paradoxes will be presented as arguments Here is an example. These [deontic] against Consider the Good Samaritan paradoxes formulated the "standard" as follows: deontic logics. 1) A is obligated to help an injured criminal 2) If A is obligated to do B then A is obligated to do whatever B entails. (This is a principle of the standard deontic logics.) 3) There could not be an injured criminal if someone did not commit a crime. So 4) A is obligated to bring it about that someone commit a crime. (From 1- 3 by the standard deontic logics.) The So 5) logics are standard deontic (For flawed. 4) is outrageous, though its premisses are not.) Entailment principles do not justify the importing of 'bringing about' in clause 4). 35 And wrong to rob him and not rob him, and so on. Conjunction is not here connexive with one conjunct undercutting another - though connexive deontic logic is what some seem to be seeking. ^Accordingly Morscher's retreat to "rational norms" and "rational legislating" is But unnecessary. presupposed again that a deontic Morscher the grasps key point, that von Wright has logic must contain certain consistency-type principles, and that 'this presupposition need not be fulfilled' (p.98). 37 Schotch and Jennings, community of moral philosophers' philosophy, analysis. where claim 'widespread support for (a) among the (a) is the theme 'that cases of real moral Most likely this claim, like most such sociological claims conflict cannot occur'. in (pp.152-3) is merely impressionistic, and not based on any sort of survey or But we expect further investigation would tend to confirm it. no J Thus, to take just one example: there appears to be a conflict 'One may be in a situation of course in which of principles each of which appears categorically 37 �binding - but natural reflection will ultimately show that one or other must prevail’ Benn (p.5). But examples abound. The reason reflection removes inconsistency is that obligations do not collide. We have it from Kant himself Because however duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the objective practical necessity of certian actions, ... it follows that a conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntor). (Metaphysis of Morals, cited in Barcan Marcus, p.323.) But does it world the (merely) practical follow not of without action However necessity. sweeping a but the worlds concering consistency assumption picked out by function not of objective these worlds are, moral dilemmas certainly appear to show, sometimes inconcistent. There are depending what is the explanation can go, various different ways and contractual arrangements a route like that of Hobbes through Rawls will be followed. Given less, taken e.g. granted. for only grounded example, For or preferences given choice individual behaviour, interests a semantical route might be And so on. tried. 110 The inadequacy of modal accounts of inconsistency is explained in detail in RLR, chapter 5. ji -1 These examples and most of those that follow were suggested by C. Pigden, who also supplied the references. HO The first quote is from Kenny, p.75, the second from Skinner, p.7, both of which furnish additional details. 4^Cf. Kenny, p.78. 24/4 According to MacIntyre 66. The situation of Agamemnon and Oedipus are remarked upon in Williams 81, p.80. There there are is not a substantial and cannot literature be general arguing, not entirely universally applicable principles in all circumstances of their application. conclusively, rules for that ranking of Thus, for example, Ross, p.41, also discussed in Barcan Marcus, p.124, Barcan Marcus, p.135, Hare 82, pp.32-4. It seems that such a result would be proved, as regards effective rules, by methods of reversion theory. 38 �^The relevant; points Hare makes concerning anguish remorse and (82, pp.29-30) are they apply also against his own proposal to treat all principles as prima facie. But points concerning anguish and guilt are not decisive; account of how these attitudes arise can be given from for one thing, an modal a angle (cf. the discussion in Barcan Marcus, p.127). ^By no means all dilemmas require resolution, e.g. those of no practical import such as purely theoretical dilemmas of freedom, etc. liberty, These can, in principle, just stand. 48 As Lemmon explains (in 62), really following Sartre, there is considerable scope for bad faith and opting out of our responsibilities here, e.g. pretending that no decision is called for, or that another has preempted the decision, or that the decision is otherwise determined or out of our own control. 49No doubt we could tough it out dialectically, but the basis for doing so is Any lacking. adherence contradictions to calles for especially rigorous justification 500n satisizing decision theory, and the dialectic between maximizers and satisizers, see MS. Fuzzy decision theory is however only in the initial stages of development at present. 5^This is just one of several reasons why Hare’s grand synthesis (in 82) of Kant and the utilitarians, initially appealing in its two level tidiness and simplicity, goes down the philosophical drain. A main reason is that the synthesis is built upon, and incorporates, consistency and modal assumptions, and so is inadequate moral data to be accounted for theoretically (see further War and Peace II). to the �REFERENCES R. Barcan Marcus, 121-136. Journal of Philospohy 77 (1980) ’Moral dilemmas and consistency , * S. I. Benn, ’Public and private morality: clean living and dirty hands’ in Public and Private in Social Life (ed. S.I. Benn and G.F. Gaus), Croom Helm, London & Canberra, 1983, 155-182. A. Donegan, The Theory of Morality, Chigago University Press, Chicago, 1977. D. Follesdal and R. Hilpinen, ’Deontic pp.1-35; referred to as F & H. B. 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Meyer, ’Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency of the world’, Studies in Soviet Thought 16 (1976) 1-25. R. Routley and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, Part I (1982) and Part II (1984); referred to as RLR I and RLR II respectively. A. Ryan, The Idea of Freedom, Oxford, 1970. P. Schotch and pp.149-62. R.E. Jennings, ’Non-Kripkean deontic logic’, in Hilpinen 81, �40 Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern University Press, Cambridge, 1978. Political Thought, Volume 11, Cambridge R. M. Thomason, ’Deontic logic as founded on tense logic’, in Hilpinen 81, pp.165-175. B. Vermazen, 'The (1977) 1-71. logic of practical 'ought’-sentences’, Philosophical Studies 32 B. Williams, Moral Luck, Cambridge United Press, 1981. B. Williams, 'Conflict of values' in Williams 81, pp.71-82; also in Ryan 79. G.H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1951. G.H. von Wright, ’On the logic of norms/ and actions’, M. Hilpinen 81, pp.3-35. G.H. ven Wright, ’Norms, truth and logic’ in Martino 82, pp.3-20. �TYRANT MOPE ON NOPAL DILEMMAS 1. ethics. 2. Revolutionising Possible heading, why the failure to comprehend moral dilemmas. All these Reading force^'^^e off in other directions. Undoubtedly a great deal of ethics has been messed up by a failure to understand moral dilemmas. ' ... The failure is often reported; for instance human since justifiable claims ... and are rights claims, they be outweighed by other As in all conflicts of moral principles, human rights reasons must be weighed other moral can against one another by an as yet poorly understood and ill-defined process' (Rajfles, p.42). The failure shows up on the apparent clash between doing ethics by way of principles and doing ethics consistency reasons, principles. vor principles break down, through examples. or dilemmatic And examples. examples it is thought for air^. thought to refute A proper approach to dilemmas removes the tension between examples and principles and allows a synthesis to be achieved. 3. Moral rectitude. Now is notion this to be unpacked0 mhere are competing explanations, e.g. 1) in terms of obligation and deontics; 2) by way of consequentialist rectitude decisive. assessment. Pettit to make moral mhen it requires assessment thus 3) Method 1) unless dilemma; otherwise method 2\ rectitude so it is absolute in terms of O. 4. wants This is impossible. Mcjlly's system has no moral dilemmas, since ~fu For it proves trivial deontically. But he also wants to run 0~u^ - at least intentionally. Aquinas denies certain moral dilemmas, e.g. Np & F~p, in the doctrine concerning perplexus simpliciter F & N p.12. 5. Investigate further the connection of permitted and accepted worlds, and commission? This 'possibly permitted' does not involve discussed in NNL. the fallacy of reducing permission * 'permissible to It does tie with the suggested connection of commission and omission through the * function. ��2 6. Is problem of the individual in society, of a person in politics, an organisation or a company of this type i.e. dilemma of freedom? Of. a dilemma that can just stand, like the theoretical also Machiavellian a problem: person in public must (morally?) act evilly sometimes. 7. of PUBLIC distinction The moralities. VS MORALITIES PRIVATE implies that there are two The BASE ARGUMENT against is this: But there are not two. if we acknowledge this conception of morality as requiring some action as the thing to do, how, logically speaking, could there be two moralities0 the thing to do when they conflict? overriding reason for action?^ How could morality then What is provide an Similarly &n utilitarianism single maximisation recipe and results. (/? DOEBN'01 REQUIRE KANTIANISM.) However A can to be subject conflicting public and private claims. Seen this way ^public vs private just generates.heap of further moral dilemmas, and the 2 moralities ^is just shoddy attempt to escape these dilemmas, expedient (i.e. would become n shoves morality out as in the Hinduism resolution dilemmas. of often in a way that’s politically of the way for expediency'1. The 2 moralities * int if pursued this distinction-making attempt at / Something special about public/private case0 Or differently, why are arguments from expedience so much more acceptable in public sphere0 Be^n gives r interest some reasons, but these oughtn't to justify a difference. | public interest DIRTY HANDS PROBLEM (PARADOX) is like GOOD SAM? behalf of the statecommitting murder. Sometimes it is right get one's hands dirty. E.g. Doing such and such on OR just a straight dilemma? to try to succeed, and then it must also be right to But one's hands get dirty from doing what it is wrong to do. And how can it be wrong to do what is right? Or how can we get our hands dirty by doing what we ought to do9 Z M. Walzer, Philosophy and Public Affairs, moral 2, 10°^, dilemma. 164. Op Walzer sees this as a tragic dilemma: p-> q Oq, but 0~q. Example: but really a torturing captured terrorist to extract information to save innocent lives. The problems start from questions of relations between two different moralities. �Conclusion: 8. Conflict conscience 'that, the public to at its most liberal, loyalty, overriding moral liberalism in end. to a On between will stand the individual, tried committed concern for its collective interest, the one hand the individual as a relate this ambiguous model of the a individual and as an autonomous, citadel, on the other, the overriding perverse, wilful obstacles in the way of the general will. to with no gainsaying, and the claims of possessed of liberties that only he himself can waive, by consent; State, equipped society, not T have only to liberal conceptions of what belongs to the private and what to the public, but also to the tension between a morality of principles and one of valued outcomes, which, in my view, is very closely connected with the ambiguity of the model . * ("Renn? 9. Argument for weak paraconsistent position. Morality is a guide to action. Action is consistent. So have to r?l consistencize. ^Inconclusive"1. Like law one consistencizes (e.g. for action^ alright. But that confirms that it is inconsistent in the first place. 10. The difference. fought distinction is, it It hands the opposition its case. is objected, a Simply not so. distinction without a �The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. • • • • • Letter, unidentified author to Richard, 27 Jul 1984 re Moral dilemmas. (2 pages (1 leaf)) Reference card and handwritten paper, ? Alchourron and Bulygin (1 reference card + 5 leaves) Letter, Charles to Richard, undated re New Studies in Deontic Logic and Castañeda's proposed deontic logic. (2 pages) Cuttings from unidentified publication, The paradoxes of deontic by Hector-Neri Castañeda (page 46-47), and Some main problems of deontic by Jaakko Hintikka 9page 94-96. (2 leaves) Letter, unidentified author to Richard, with annotations by Sylvan?, undated, re Moral dilemmas. (7 leaves) �Ml Although the sorts of examples we have described seem familiar enough, it might well be disputed that they are correctly described as cases of Op and 0~p, or in the alternative representation as cases of Fp & F~p. The main ground for this is the belief that �19. in any such case one of the parties to the conflict is less wrong, and that this one can be claimed to be not really wrong at all. There are however several objections to this move to neutralise the dilemmas (1) First, wrong party. there is no guarantee that there always is a less Both parties may be equally wrong, no way of deciding which is less wrong. Vietnam example; To take and there may be our hypothetical if we withdraw half a million people will die; but if we do not withdraw the war will continue and half a million people will die; clearly the example may be elaborated. There may be no grounds for choice. (2) The fact that one party is less wrong than the alternative is no grounds for saying that it is not wrong at all. In fact the case would normally be described as one of choice between " two evils", two wrong aciwsese©; if one chooses the lesser of two evils, then one still chooses an evil. ing One is simply not justified in claim1 that, where p involves killing 10 people, p is not wrong simply on the grounds that ~p involves killing 15 people, any more than one is in the case of preference theory justified in saying that p, which brings a gift of $10, is not a good thing simply on the grounds that ~p brings a gift of $11. things; (3) They are both good and in our moral case, both are wrong. If we do say this, plainly it will be very difficult to find any moral principles which can be asserted with any confidence universally. In fact it will probably be possible to find hypothetical counterexamples to any statement of the form "All actions of type x are wrong", just by producing a case where p is an action of type x, but ~p is an even worse action. that p, although an action of type x, is not wrong, It will follow so we will have �However, a counterexample. it seems to be important that we should be able to assert such general principles, and doing so gives us an essential way of assessing, morally, (4) Finally, types of actions. the proposed redescription of the case as involving only one wrong element, the one which is more wrong, leaves out an essential feature of such a case, that it is a dilemma, case where one cannot but act wrongly. If we omit this element the case is not properly described, it is falsified; a we may as a result find ourselves unable to explain many resulting features of the situation which result from the conflict, e.g. human behavioural features >n such a situation involving hesitation, doubt, inaction, perhaps anguish and guilt. All these will appear quite irrational. (5) Assigning a priority to our moral rules itself does nothing to resolve the logical problem raised by the dilemmas, (although it may solve the practical problem of how best to act). % For this logical problem iX the problem of how to arrange our logic so as to be able to describe such cases adequately and without falsification or incon-sisteney. Arranging a priority, so that A one alternative can be claimed to be less wrong, does not solve the logical problem, which is that whatever happens will be wrong, that T cannot be identical with I. The consequence that whatever happens is wrong cannot be removed unless as well as a priority assignment one also adopts the principle that what is less wrong is not wrong at all. But this principle leads to inconsistency for then the less wrong action is both wrong and not wrong. To be consistent this method must introduce a new concept of wrong in addition to the old one, say "wrong2" , and the less wrong action can be said to be not "wrong2". But now the original problem is �21. still not eliminated, because the problem was not that whatever be is . happened would /'wrong2" (although this/now false), but that whatever happened would be wrong, which is still true. sort of priority - dominated concept cannot replace, may supplement, the original concept. And this although it �Sf- The problem of classifying these dilemmas. z mainly using the term ’wrong’. We have stated our dilemmas However, it may seem that this is ambiguous, and that it is possible, or desirable, to make a further distinction, between pi inciples which are obligatory and principles which are prohibitory. For wrongs can be due to two very different causes - om^iission or commission. The distinction between obligation and prohibition principles can be explained initially as follows: an obligation principle of the form Op read ’it ought to be the case that p’,Qt is �f ? L ' r jT f'.Jlz.f:? /t/tjyJ /4-< 'it ought to come about that p'. This says that something, p, ought to should happen that p'A, r, happen, an ideal situation I. that is^ that it is a member of & A situation^satisfies Op, Op if p is not in it then, if p is In it ( p eaJ;and violates p's presence satisfies Op, whereas (pZ S?) • £ ["Obligation" Z7 —:----- is ’ being used here its omission or absence violates it. in a somewhat unusual sense, 4 for Lemmon seems to be right in urging that obligations are usually contractual in nature. and contracts may be contracts to do something or to refrain from However, we doing something - hence both positive and negative. must press 'obligation' and 'obligatory' and adjective corresponding to it * into service as a noun ought to be the case that' in order to avoid clumsiness and for lack of any other suitable words. The other class of principles, hand, we shall write prohibitive principles, on the other 'Ep' and read 'it is forbidden that p'. These principles claim that p is the sort of action which should p is not a member of the ideal situation I. be avoided satisfies Fp, situation a such that p Z such that pea violates it. a situation a whereas p's omission or absence satisfies Fp, whereas pSoccurrence or presence violates it. is paralleled on the obligations) The distinction action level by the distinction between action and by that between and inaction, A 'sins of omission' and 'sins of commision' A (which violate (which violate prohibitions). 'I have done those things which I ought not to have done' violating a prohibition but also, and not equivalently, not done those things which I ought to have done', thus 'I have thus violating An obligation is satisfied by doing something, an obligation. a prohibition by failing to do something, by avoiding something. It is important not to confuse 0~p, which says that should happen' or 'that ~p 'It is wrong that p', with Fp which says ’that p should not happen', or it * should not happen that p'. This �distinction is clear, as a scope distinction, in the English reading However the two are continually confused in modal treatments of But deontic logic, since given Modal Muddle p / I = ~p g I. that to say/p should happen is not to say anything about what should not happen but leaves the issue as to whether ~p should or should And to say that p should not happen is not say and 0~p tells anything about ~p,/whether it should happen or not. not happen open. aj us that ~p is a member of I, where.Fp tells us that p is not a member of 1.^ Dilemmas then seem to fall into three classes depending upon whether the principles which lead to them are obligation or prohibition principles^or both. Fp and F~p, Thus we obtain Op and 0~p, and Op and Fp from our examples depending upon how the principles involved are construed^ a<Tprohibitory or obligatory. (A): Dilemmas obtained from prohibition principles, Fp, % F~p1. i.e. cases of We obtain cases of this sort given principles of the * form. — (1) Whenever P satisfies condition C, (Action form: (2) it shouldn't happen that p. action of type x are wrong) it shouldn't happen that p. A Whenever p satisfies condition C', The dilemma is obtained where p satisfies condition C, ~p satisfies condition C'. Jo O F and - ■L Give the semantical reading of 0 and F?and the examples with 'wrong' . Then mention the necessity for distinction between 0~p and Fp. (1) Wrongs divide into sins of omission and sins of commission. (2) These are semantically different. (3) Unless one distinguishes these concepts semantically have the consistency assumption again. Give the readings. one will �10. Examples can also be obtained from two distinct prohibitory These are cases where the state of affairs described principles. (for reasons given by the first by p is really indescribable principle) (for different reasons given by the second principle). able, * (tndesir For/(B) and the state of affairs described by ~p is m^-ally The second category of dilemmas are dilemmas obtained from obligation principles i.e. cases of Op & O~p, for some p. We obtain cases of this sort given principles of the form:(1) Whenever p satisfies condition C, (2) Whenever p satisfies condition C', it should happen that p it should happen that p. The dilemma is obtained when for a given p, p satisfies condition C and ~p satisfies condition C': (C) Finally, so Op and O~p. examples derived from conflicting but not inconsistent moral principles, which urge both that p should occur and that it should not occur i.e. and prohibited. cases of Op and Fp, where p is both enjoined These cases come about where are principles of the following sort: (1) Whenever p satisfies condition C, p should happen. (2) Whenever p satisfies condition C', p should not happen. The dilemma results because one can find cases one and the same state of affairs C and condition C'? e.g. (p) (in T) where satisfies both condition as^our example derived from Lemmon's uAcrw-tt bolew, x gives back the gun and helping a murderer. (p) is a case both of keeping a promise But promises must be kept, so Op holds. However actions which help murderers are forbidden and should not occur; examples, hence Fp also holds. unlike the previous kind, It seems that these sorts of cannot be generated by a single moral principle, but requires two principles which come into conflict. �With a certain degree of artifice we can arrange our examples into these categories, with f A) groups being prohibitions the (fe)groups obligations, and the (C) groups mixed. �It is necessary then to avoid the modal treatment and to But though 0 principles and F principles distinguish 0~ and F. are distinct, 0 and F provide alternatives bases for (semantically) The O-principles correspond semantically to deontic system. inclusion principles,the F formulated principles to exclusion Thus e.g. principles. TRfH 5® where iff iff TROH * , (UH) (TRfH oX(p,H) = f) In contrast, I(Fp,T) = t iff (UH) TROH d Kp,H) Thus the modellingswill mirror f) . one another, with R Rf For the representation of principles then we can work satisfactorily with an O-basis, or with an F-basis, but not with a mixed basis which uses both 0 and F principles. Failure to distinguish 0~p and Fp will provide a ground for the mistaken consistency assumption: iff p i H. for it will follow from evaluation rules �12. The cases described satisfy the characterisation of moral For the principles involved are not inconsistent, yet dilemmas. they are not satisfiable in T. In the case of the first set of leading to Fp and F~p, dilemmas, the principles could not be satisfied unless neither p nor ~p occurred. necessarily complete, But since T is they cannot be satisfied in T. of the second set of examples, Op and 0~p, In the case the principles could only be satisfied if both p and ~p occur, hence since T is con­ sistent, they cannot be satisfied in T. different. The third case is very Here it cannot be satisfied because one and the same proposition satisfies both conditions for occurring and conditions for not occurring? this proposition, hence our principles direct, with respect to that it should occur and that it should not occur. This also cannot be satisfied in T, since p is either a member of T, or not a member of T. The principles involved are not however inconsistent ones; for in each case a finite proposition modelling of the principles can be provided. In the third case, directives, despite the fact there are inconsistent given a contingent proposition p^, which satisfies the antecedent conditions, no inconsistency need result because such a proposition p^ may not occur. In other words, though the principles together with p^ form an inconsistent set, p-^ is essential and can be deleted from the set since contingent; and the set without p1 as the principles on their own are satisfactory is consistent, where no antecedents satisfy both, a po£S»4ta- case. ■ v r • The principles ** (a. though inconsistent in application are not inconsistent^ i In the first two cases(they are T consistent?) also it is a contingent matter that the principles come i ... into^ cannot be satisfied in T; r; for detachment of a contingent truth is made, viz that the given ? proposition satisfies the conditions. �13. since they constantly arise““without sacrificing the generality of moral principles. For unless carefully treated dilemmas will/ as we shall see, provide counterexamples to moral principles. Our moral dilemmas result from judgements which cannot be satisfied in T, so that whatever happens will be wrong. Howe is there/still quite a crucial difference between the first two classes and the third class of dilemma. In the third case the result of the dilemma on detachment of a contingent premiss that p satisfies c and c' simultaneously is an inconsistency, cannot both belong and not belong to the ideal set-up I. since p Although the principles upon which the judgement Op and Fp was based were not themselves mutually inconsistent, moral judgerent they do result in a inconsistent that p both ought to happen and ought not to happen is prohibited from happening. Given that p has both properties, the moral principles concerned are in conflict. This is brought out by the fact that if p does satisfy these conditions, cannot be any situation, T-like or not, there in which the principles are satisfied. Furthermore here we have a case where each moral judgement provides a counterexample to the other. If Op and Fp both obtained, both the principles from which they were derived would be false; principle for Op would provide a counterexample to the prohibitory (p) (if p satisfies c’ then Fp) since Op ~Fp; while Fp would provide a counterexample to the obligatory principle (if p satisfies c then Op). (p) �J \ 14. In view of these points it seems that a moral code which resulted in this sort of conflicting judgement is defective; the principles involved should either be restricted by tightening one or other of conditionsc and c', or else restated by reformulating one or other of the principles, (p) (Cp => F~p) replaced by (p) (C'p => 0~p) . or i.e. either (p) (C'p => Fp) (p) (Cp => Op) is is replaced by the case is reduced to one of the first In short, two cases. In this case the dilemma arises because the principles In the first two cases however involved come into conflict. the difficulty does not arise from conflicting principles, but is simply a case where our not v/ judgements cannot both be satisfied in T, because they are conflicting, but because of the peculiar Where Op and 0~p both hold, nature of T. (or Fp and F~p) what- ever happens will be wrong, because p & ~p cannot both hold in T, The dilemma is however simply explained nor p & ~p fail to hold. and the judg.ements accepted once it is understood that I, situation, action, is not T-like. The dilemma may produce a conflict in because given the logical structure of T and the limitations it imposes upon action, both judgements. it is impossible to act in accordance with But this does not effect the judgements themselves; as moral judgenents, assessments of the moral worth of p of affairs) conflict. (a state of ~p^jthey are quite compatible and there is no To say that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong is in no way to be inconsistent, true. the ideal and both judgements may very well be The absence of conflict also explains the fact that such cases can be produced from single moral principles, such as 'Killing is wrong', which in no way inhibit internal conflict. �15. Judgements such as 'p is wrong of action or states of affairs; as to how to act in T. alternative in T, Hence Op does not compare p with its ~p. Such judgements are implicitly comparative, not to ~p's worth, but to the Thus if we reach situations as to moral worth of its absence. (using moral criteria for selection), if for every situation H, H+p is worse than H-p. in a situation assess types and do not simply give directions but p's worth is assessed relative, desirability & ~p is wrong' p is wrong If p's presence makes the situation morally worse than it would be if p were absent, then p is wrong. But now it is a straightforward matter to claim that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong; one is aHL simply claiming that situations without p^orally preferable to the that (should be chosen^etc.); same situations with p * and also situations without ~p are morally preferable to that same situation with ~p in it. These judgements in no way conflict, and if we were in a position to choose a situation with neither of them in, we could satisfy both judgements simultaneously. is the choice must be regarded as a hypothetical one, As it and the judgements as representing a kind of thought experiment, rather than in giving directions as to how to behave in T. The choice embodied in such a judgement is one between two hypothetical situations and not between alternative versions of T. It is just for this reason that this type of moral judgement is adequate for assessing morally different types of actions or sorts of states of affairs. Because we are concerned with choosing between hypothetical situations, we can opine that all actions of a certain specifiable type and states of affairs satisfying a certain condition are wrong (not wrongyetc.), without risking * In the case of Op & 0~p. In the case of Fp & F~p one ismaking a slightly different claim, that a situation from which p's absent is morally better than some in which it is present. Note that the difference between 0 and F can be to the difference in directionthe rankings. �16. falsification because of the contingent features of T. Finally, in such a judgement one is concerned with assessing the action or state of affairs in itself rather than passing judgement about the best way to act in a particular situation. Dilemmas of this sort then, as opposed to dilemmas of the conflict sort first discussed, are not the result of defective moral codes or principles and do not require any readjustment or resolution (beyond psychological acceptance of the fact that it is sometimes inevitable that what happens is wrong and that perfectibility is impossible). They do not provide counterexamples to general In contrast moral principles based on contingent features of T. codes containing the conflict type of dilemma are defective. Any code containing two principles of the form 'wherever p satisfies Cl, Op' and ’Whenever p satisfies C2, Fp’ where C1 and C2 are not inconsistent, will be defective because there is a possible situation (a hypothetical case) with a p^ which satisfies both C1 Whence the inconsistent pair Fp, potentially inconsistent. & Op,. and C2. Any such code is at least This sort of defectiveness of a moral code might be excusable if it were inevitable. But it is not. can be avoided if we adopt either 0 or F as primitive, and state our judgements in terms of one or other of them, but not both. alternative, terms, conflicting is intolerable. moral It The principles stated in No principle could be asserted with any confidence, because they would hold or fail just according to whether or not a suitable proposition with conflicting properties appeared in T and provided a counterexample. And since this is contingent whether such principles hold or not would be entirely a matter of good or bad luck. Moral judgements on the other hand ought to apply beyond T to possible situations, ought to be non-empirical and apply to hypothetical cases, matter of accident. and ought not to hold just as a �4 C ‘S’ -X f * �univeralisa'blemoral principle was a judgement The general ‘ 7^' about types of action or states of affairs and compared p's presence in a situation with its absence from the same situation on a scale of moral desirability. This concept of wrongness is essential to be able to state general moral judgements. But as well as this concept we can distinguish another important concept which is designed to assess not types of action but what is the best course of action in a given situation. This is obtained by comparing p's presence in a situation not with its absence but with the presence of its rivals in a given situation, e.g. ~p in the case of T. p will be said to be ’the best course of action' ~p are both wrong) if a situation Thus (even where p and (usually T), with p in, ranks higher morally then the same one with ~p in. A more practical - concept still can be obtained by comparing p and its practical rivals, say will be the best course of action practical alternative q) f Y r if a situation (as compared with its (usually T) (morally) when p is in it than when q is in it. between alternative ways of extending will rank higher One chooses T. It is important as Lemmon points out to distinguish this concept clearly from the more general concept earlier explained. Lemmon is wrong in suggesting that this is not a moral concept at all and does not give rise to moral judgements but to judgements of expedience. The judgements involved in this case are still moral in the sense that the criteria for ranking situations are �22 specifically moral ones and not based simply, say, on aesthetic considerations or desirability considerations. clear that this distinction Yet it is (which we shall call the distinction between differential obligation and intrinsic obligation) must be ignored and eliminated if obligation is treated as a modal functor For give/} the principle of Modal Muddle (H) (p e H = ~p e H) semantical recipes we have given will be identical. p's presence in H with p's absence (p / H) comparing p in H with ~p's being in H. the To compare will be the same as It is essential however to distinguish this notion of 'best course of action' (differential basic notion we have discussed, because it has quite different properties. * It cannot replace although it can supplement, The reasons are as follows other notion. 02 does not allow for (1) the moral dilemmas. p with its practical alternative in T, e.g. For since we compare ~p, to say that Op & 0~p is to say that a situation H such p e H is morally better than a situation H such that ~p e H, and also to say that a situation H such that ~p e H is better than one such that p e H. This is a (Similar results will ensue when F is taken as a contradiction. basis). (2) 02 cannot allow for general moral judgements of the form "All actions (states of affairs) counterexample. of type x are wrong" without fear of For no matter how compelling our principle and how repugnant the type of action described, we can almost always find a case where the only alternative action is worse. however repugnant p may be, Hence, it will not in this case be wrong, a counterexample to one general judgement will be provided. new notion then cannot do the same job as the old; —----------------------------------------- . and Our it should be , We u^e such as 'the best thing in the circumstances' 'the right thing', 'the correct course all in all' to capture differential obligations . �23. regarded as parasitic, because it can be alternatively represented as admitting the wrongness of the alternatives, but going on to weigh up the alternatives to obtain a recipe for practical action. (3) implies can" slogan It is to this notion that the "ought applies. O2P o locjically possible p, because one has selected p as the best course of action from logically possible alternatives in T. Indeed ’02p’ can be made to imply ‘p is physically possible' (or even physically possible to the person being exhorted) by comparing p with its physically possible alternatives in ranked situations. In a similar way, the concept of blame attaches to failure to follow the best course of action,i.e. if p is better as a course of action than its and one fails to do it. action.* (practical) alternatives, One is not blameworthy for doing p merely only as good as, because p is no better than, i.e. alternatives, one is blameworthy its remaining it has to be worse than some alternative course of It is important to note that blame attaches to this second differential concept of obligation, rather than the first intrinsic notion, for the possibility and obvious unfairness of someone's being blamed for doing wrong where both Op and 0~p hold and he has no alternative which is not wrong would otherwise be a powerful objection to cases of moral dilemmas. (5) Finally, differential obligation makes a basically different type of judgement from the intrinsic notion. not of a type of action or state It is an assessment or of affairs, the action/state of affairs in itself, but of the situation in which it occurs, action in this situation. This is reflected in such phrases as "the best thing in the circumstances" "the right thing to do the conditions obtained at the time)", etc. * Oh well, you cannot be blamed. circumstances . the (given Hence it is not You did the best thing in the �universalisable , and does not try to be. It “results in a recipe for action, and is closely allied to advice or exhortation/orders , persuasion, recommendation or other directed activities. Intrinsic obligation however/ frafc^s no account of possible action and does not need to; it assesses action-types regardless of how they occur in a given situation. This last point is important in connection with argument about moral dilemmas. For the confusion between our two concepts has a disastrous effect on argument, particularly those hotly disputed arguments which occur in the case of moral dilemmas. The following sort of argument, due to confusion between Oi and O2 is all too common in such cases. Actions of type x are wrong (1') (if p satisfies c then Oi~p). (p) This must be Oj because it represents a general and exceptionless (2) p is an action (3) ~ 02 i.e. ~p: (state of affairs) judgement about a type. of type x. p should not be done. Therefore do not do p. The argument is plainly unsatisfactory because the fact that Oi~p holds is not sufficient to establish that 02~p To holds. do this one would have to show that the alternative, p, was not worse or even just as good. not be so. And in cases of dilemmas this may very well To establish 02~p one needs to show not merely that p is wrong but that there is some better course of action. The fallacy derives from trying to base a recipe for action on the intrinsic obligation notion, Oi. �s 25. A closely related confusion holds that it is inconsistent to claim that p is a wrong type of action, that it should be done nonetheless the best course of action. August 6 197 x (e.g. is repugnant etc., but - because it is nevertheless Canberra Times Editorial, on abortion reads as follows: "It is significant, and inconsistent with its official stand that the s ynod should have qualified its recommendation to family doctors with the words "however regrettable we feel this to be"." to be inconsistentthen, one states to be What is being claimed is that one should recommend a course of action (morally) there is no inconsistency. regrettable or repugnant. But of course One is simply saying that ~p is wrong, "Oi-p", but that it is nevertheless the best thing to do given the circumstances because the alternatives are worse?i.e. "O2P"• The distinction between differential and intrinsic obligation, then, seems to be an important factor in assessing the validity of argument where moral dilemmas are concerned. �/, �2 �ft I z^z/ / rt&jZy 7-, I � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document MORAL DILEMMAS AND THE LOGIC OF DEONTIC NOTIONS Richard Routley and Vai Plumwood^ The §1. paradoxes of deontic logic consistency and the and modal requirements. Especially since mid-century many systems of deontic logic have been advanced, which logic of such deontic attempt to explore the prohibition, and wrong. right all Almost which treat deontic notions as modal, notions as obligation, permission and modal not demand functors, All such systems are mistaken m a For deontic functors such as obligation and prohibition are but are more highly of degree greater a systems, i.e. as if strict or provable equivalents are intersubstitutable within them preserving truth. quite fundamental way. systems have been modal these intensional than propositional modal modal than discrimination and so functors, logics can provide. The damage caused by the mistaken treatment of deontic notions as modal shows up in various ways, but we shall be primarily concerned with only one of these, the consistency requirements and the exclusion thereby of moral dilemmas. which the modal damage appears is through a Another way in series of related paradoxes, such as, directly, the paradoxes of derived obligation, and, less directly, the paradoxes of the Robber and the Good Samaritan. The consistency requirements come out in two ways in mainstream deontic systems. consistency Firstly, a negation are requirement, - obligatory in the that usual no claim such is symbolism, Op that ~0~p, both it i.e. and its ~(0p & 0~p) — appears as a principle, frequently a postulate, in all mainstream absolute systems.21 Such absolute systems, which are variants on alethic modal systems, are characteristically obtained from corresponding alethic systems by replacing the modal axiom, that’ or ’it ought to be the case that’, or the functor ’□ ’, modal (such as logics system demands world is ’it is obligatory ’it ought to be seen to that', replaces ’it is necessary that', of alethic systems. We know of course that consistency requirement; some ~0~p - where ’O’, read Op D p, by the deontic axiom, Op the doxastic systems) the standard but it appears that the intended interpretation of deontic the consistency requirement. or encapsulates acceptable subsequently introduced, can be designed without For its semantical equivalent what is permitted (i.e. is that in symbols (Px)STx) which is surely true (for let world x be determined precisely by what is so permitted). Moreover, the second related way in which consistency escaped by a modal formulation of deontic (or doxastic) logics. figures cannot be so For it seems clear, 2 and is widely agreed, that 0 satisfies the following distribution principle: (1) Op&OqiffO(p&q). Since however 0 is modal, and p & ~p & q p&~p (i.e. - the sides are strictly equivalent), 0(p & ~p) iff 0(p & ~p & q) Thence, Op & 0~p implies 0(p & ~p), which implies 0(p & ~p & q), and (2), by (1) which implies Oq; (2) if there are cases of moral dilemmas where Op and also 0~p, i.e. then obligation spreads so that any claim is obligatory. This argument tells against all mainstream deontic logics; rock-bottom system, minimal deontic logic. for it holds in the This logic MDS, presented by von Wright and others (see e.g. Hilpinen 81, p.3 and p.5), adds to classical sentential logic CL (with rules of Material Detachment and Substitutivity duly extended) the one-place connective P, of permissibility, subject to just the conditions P(A v B) e (1’) PA v PB and Intersubstitutivity of provably equivalent CL (i.e. truth functional) wff Now define a connective - in fact the standard obligation Then, where A and B are any CL wff, 0(A & B) OA =£j£~P~A. negation and It then follows, given that (extensional) principles to De Morgan = ~(~P~A & ~P~B). follows), 0 moral claim is dilemmas obligatory, the consequence as above of the nothing functor ) * (2 - thus: OA & OB, upon applying of (1 ) * that P~(—A & —B) (or by variants thereupon that which form OA & 0~A, (extensional) i.e. any permissible. The that is OB, revealing variant argument applies the provable CL-equivalence A & -A = B & ~B to get 0(A & ~A) = 0(B & ~B). d OB & 0~B => OB. Then (in condensed notation) OA & 0~A => 0(A & ~A) => 0(B & ~B) That is, if there are any deontic moral dilemmas (of such forms as OA & 0~A) then everything is obligatory. other forms; But there are moral dilemmas, of this and and not everything is obligatory. incorrect. So too are all its extensions, and Therefore minimum deontic logic is thereby all mainstream systems. For 'most systems of deontic logic include the system’ of von Wright 'as a subsystem' (F & H, p.13). There is little appreciation of the involve in the ethical Hare, having set up a force of these arguments or of what they literature. But one prominent example will dilemma, and rejected one logical have to suffice. route out, proceeds to pronounce that 'it is not very helpful to try to sort out these difficulties by some relatively minor tinkering with the calculus of deontic logic. The linguistic and logical intuitions which give rise to them are all right so far as they go' (82, 3 intuitions behind the mainstream systems are not alright, but lead to The p.28). deontic collapse and to a heap of paradoxes; and a bit of '’tinkering" is enough to remove the worst difficulties.5 (2’) and The trouble lies we shall argue, just with the modal requirement (i.e. its usual extension to all wff). that not everything is obligatory, evident For while it is This leaves much to be defended. on no more than the strength of a few examples (such as that it is not obligatory that everyone visit the tallest eucalypt every day), none of the other assertions is so uncontroversial. Given that there are such moral dilemmas, as will be argued at length, and given that sentential logic CL is admissible when applied to consistent situations (which are all that are elsewhere (in arguments: required RLR in especially), modal the namely, the arguments there are a claim that has been argued above), two only and requirement, one fault the which to points at half of the distributivity principle, specifically r (O-adjunction). OA & OB -> 0(A & B) But it is bizarre to have to fail O-adjunction in order OA & 0~A =5 B has quite especially when OB to stand, 0(A & ~A) to be correctly foundation. And obligation. For, not it contemplated among in the things, is a irrelevant mates 7 desperate measure , systems since it intended role and mainstream against entirely other is conceded that its Faulting O-adjunction rejected. goes it to allow the paradox O-adjunction can be argued is without meaning for from of the semantics of 0, along these lines:- Roughly OA is true iff A holds in all acceptable situations. But if A holds in all such situations and B does also then so does A & B, validating O-adjunction. Accordingly, the trouble must be located in the modality requirements. This can be seen from another angle also. obligation, which also underlies O-adjunction, An important logical feature of is its transmissibility, that what is tightly entailed by what is obligatory is also obligatory; in symbolic form, A ■+ B -o OA -> OB But now, (0-transmission). if entailment is erroneously construed as strict implication, which is what the modal requirement would have us do, then 0(A & ~A) -> OB, since by a paradox of strict implication A & ~A B. If there are moral dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~A), as will be contended, then this result is sufficiently damaging on its own, and focusses the trouble on the modal requirement. properly maligned OA & 0~A ->0B. Otherwise apply O-adjunction, to obtain the 4 the Both and consistency requirements should modality be challenged then by anyone who claims that, for some p, both Op and 0~p (and that such judgements are not merely prima facie, vanishing upon further reflection). Many have argued that such cases do occur, indeed are central examples of value conflict, and are of fundamental importance in ethics.$ We want to go even further and claim, firstly, that such cases occur quite frequently, as cases of conflicting obligations, conflicting rights, and genuine moral dilemmas - so in particular there are many cases where both p and ~p ought to be the case - and secondly, that adequate logical treatment of such cases requires an underlying logic of a distinctively paraconsistent kind. we shall cases has, argue, with many important arguments and cases. many of logic rendered deontic Neglecting such incapable of dealing adequately The matter is particularly serious since fiercely debated moral cases are cases of moral dilemmas, lthe most e.g. limited resources, nuclear war, permissible war tactics. While our initial argument will overlap previous work,9 it goes beyond it by adding a semantical treatment and moral of explanation semantical dilemmas, and in setting adequate deontic logics within the framework of paraconsistent logic. simple The §2. resolution relevant epicycling. classical versus The relevant It has already been indicated. solution to the base problem is disarmingly simple. Abandon the modal assumption, that obligation, permissibility, and so on, are modal This blocks logical equivalents. functors allowing replacement of modal from OCA & ~A), or from OA & 0~A, to 0(B & ~B) and thence to OB. giving up intersubstitutivity are replacement coentailment, not simply just more in contexts; deontic rigorous than lax strict equivalence. intimately - the Spread with What ones. is permitting required is While A & ~A and B & ~B are strictly equivalent, they do not coentail one another. connected modal It does not involve conditions the the move law, That is as much of a fallacy as - one A that would have that a & ~A -> B, contradiction such as A & ~A entails any statement whatsoever. An alternative satisfactory distinctive implciation deontic way then logic of should explaining be in particular of relevant paraconsistent, feature of relevant logics, their and the is solution, simply and through why the a most rejection of the paradoxes of strict Spread. For, as remarked, one logical characteristic of deontic notions such as obligation is their transmissibility; i.e. where A entails B then OA is logically sufficient for OB.10 Then were entailment strict implication it would follow at once by Spread that 0(A & ~A) -> OB, whence by O-adjunction, OA & 0~A -> OB. basis of interpretations straightforwardly on RLR II). of Transmissibility may be independently argued for on the entailment (e.g. as content inclusion), and follows the semantical analysis of obligation to be advanced (cf. also 5 A good deal of effort has already been expended in trying to save mainstream deontic theory from the worst of the difficulties and consistency requirements. Most of through its modal it encounters, the repairs however attempted amount to epicycling: trying to tack theory-saving devices onto the initial theory, rather than questioning any fundamental features of it. Intractable exposed. problems is called What the with so-called minimal the standard system of deontic system already have been logic is in an even worse position than the minimal system, because it adds to the minimal system as an axiom 12 Then any standard system including a moral dilemma, 0(p^ & ~p ), is 13 o o simply inconsistent. For Op => Pp, hence Pp^ & ~Pp-j where p1 is pQ & ~pQ. ~p(p & ~p). Main marketed deontic logics are epicyclic variations on (i) standard deontic logic, being modal attempts to repair defects in earlier prototypes. They include (ii) reductions of systems of type (i) to alethic logics by introduction of a constant ’o’ read, for example, ’the world will be worse off’ or 'punishment ought to cr is the moral sanction or some bad state of affairs. follow’: is defined Then *0' EK-A^cr); i.e. A is obligatory iff the negation of A (non-fulfilment of A, it OA is said) necessitates the sanction. It is usually postulated: -0^. Such reductive frameworks, since they include minimal deontic logic, repeat its defects. (iii) relativistic systems which attempt axiomatise to circumstances, c', conditional of reads ’p is obligatory given, or permission and conditional obligation; thus ’0(p/c) * in notions underlying model being that of conditional the probability. These systems were designed chiefly to avoid the paradoxes of derived obligation to which systems of type really in (as and (i) probability (ii) theory) lead. to But the new operator, /, compensate for implicational connective in the modal framework assumed. so-called "logics of conditional e.g., van Fraassen, p.438 ’... obligation" still lack the is introduced of an adequate So, not surprisingly, these exclude moral dilemmas (thus, it would be more apt to say that we have here a logic of obligation that remains after obligational conflicts are resolved'). (iv) systems which conditional d, such include a modal conditional functor superior to the material­ as a Stalnaker-Lewis-style conditional, conditional deontic notions like those of (iii) can be defined. in terms of which But these systems, since modal, do not escape modal limitations and problems (see further RLR). (v) systems based on a logic of change or action. These systems turn out to be reducible to a combination of absolute systems with tense logics, i.e. 14 to multiply modal systems and so repeat the problems of modal systems. None of these modal types are satisfactory, none can be made so, they amount because of 6 What is at modal assumptions, like consistency requirements, that they all involve. fault is not merely types of systems of this sort, which confine the framework to a worlds possible defect enough, one thereby and but the write in conditions, consistency that is though sweeping consistency interpretation of deontic more logic, that ’principles of deontic logics are conditions of consistency for normative systems’.^ The consistency interpretation - which is deeply entrenched in much ethical theory (especially making no adequate allowance from Kant) deriving that for what is essential fundamentally mistaken, - is moral dilemmas and to morality, the familiar inconsistency of normative systems. Documenting moral dilemmas. Cases of moral dilemmas are, perhaps unfortunately, §3. both familiar and inevitable. perhaps not, and logic theory deontic (including is unfortunate It such for standard deontic approximations rough as utilitarianism) since they have ultimately to be dismissed as inadequate to account for the data. is also often extremely On the other dilemmas. awkward who those for such dilemmas hand, probity, and are a main source of moral change. A moral dilemma occurs when considerations, for instance cannot T situation in act (where such a of which shape cannot, or precisely as way afford real tests of moral worth and 16 is confronted with moral perhaps not directly inconsistent, factual the probably cannot, facts satisfy to principles, binding obtain); principles that is, one so as to or although be satisfied Then the situation T cannot but induce a moral fix. considerations. in moral (but not only when) one the in themselves enmeshed find It in the (probably) meet moral This can come about in two ways, either because of the logical limitations supposedly satisfied by T, in particular its consistency feature (that, whatever p, does not) or through certain contingent features if p holds in T then ~p of T. In what follows we shall concentrate on a major subclass of what are commonly accounted moral dilemmas, those of (paraconsistent) logical interest where what is given or derived are pairs such as OA and OB, WA and WB (i.e. A is wrong and so is B), or the like, where A and B are And incompatible. of particular logical importance are cases where deontically incompatible pairs such as Op and 0~p, Wp and W~p, or the like are guaranteed. The examples of moral dilemmas we consider provide only a small selection from the rich variety of such dilemmas, but hopefully they illustrate that variety. Several of the examples involve more than one moral principle: however some commonly- adopted moral principles generate dilemmas, of one sort or another, their own. pretty much on Consider for instance first principles of the following type: Situations involving the (indiscriminate) killing of numbers of (uninvolved) people should be avoided, should not happen, are wrong - principle at very first approximation of the form (p)(p satisfies condition C + Wp). Applying such a principle, a dilemma results 7 where and occurs a large number of people will be killed, if p obtains or if ~p obtains a large number of people will also be killed. War situations provide obvious examples, with the V(ietnam) dilemma typical. 17 For example, people have described the situation in Vietnam as follows (not that it really is this way): If the Americans withdraw from Vietnam, a large number of people If the Americans stay in (do not withdraw from) Vietnam, will be killed. number of people will withdraw from C. Hence under be killed. Vietnam', Hence, condition satisfies p where p is C 'the Americans withdraw from ~p and the principle both p and ~p are wrong, similar is the company commander's dilemma. of his troops will be killed. a large also i.e. satisfies condition 18 Wp and W~p. Rather If he invades the hamlet, a large number If he does not invade the hamlet the prisoners held Taking p as 'he invades the hamlet', p satisfies C and therein will be killed, etc. ~p satisfies C. Therefore, Wp & W~p. Both p and-not p are wrong; neither would occur The killing does not however have to be of large numbers in an acceptable situation. of people to induce moral dilemmas. variants on the commander's dilemma Favourite regularly wheeled out concern murdering a potential murderer to prevent him killing several other presented people and with the related constrained option killing of some choice situations smaller special person is where a group of people (or creatures) in order to avoid the certain killing of a larger or less favoured group 1Q of creatures. 7 The pacifist's (or differently seen, patriot's) dilemma, which Lemmon draws from on Sartre, concerns the proposition p^: Z goes to war. If Z does not go to war, he help his friends and fails to fellow countrymen when they are in desperate need. Thus ~p-j is wrong, W-p-j , on the principle that so failing to help one's friends and fellow countrymen is wrong. If Z goes to war, he will be involved in killing people he has nothing morally or otherwise against; whence Wp^, on the principle that things which involve such killing are wrong. Therefore again Wp^ and W~pp A different sort of example, again however involving the taking of life in one way or another is the abortion dilemma (as conceived by Anglicans, say). presented as a clash between conflicting rights. to life (i.e. (on that the one part of the should not foetus); have one's In one corner, there is the right in the other, the right to bodily integrity body used against one's detriment for someone else’s benefit) on the part of the mother. where a particular state of affairs is an instance of both so (~p) and will principles. Hence Wp. would deny the mother's right to bodily integrity. Whence adjoining, Wp & W~p. to one's A dilemma results performance of an abortion (p) would deny the foetal right to life. not doing This can be The But Hence W~p. 8 Not so far removed from these examples, particularly when omission is conflated with commission, are environmentally-oriented examples involving sacrifice (broadly construed), for resources. Suppose that we have a duly qualified principle to the effect that things which lead to the feeding of starving people should happen. example the is a dilemma of limited three cases:- First following Suppose also that we have limited resources, and have decided to distribute these as follows: If the coin comes down heads (p), then group A of starving people will be fed. But if the coin does not come down heads (~p) then group B of starving people will be fed. Plainly in an ideal situation both p and ~p will occur, that is the coin will come down heads and it will not come down heads, so that both groups of people will be fed. And if the moral principle cited is correctly applied then a case of Op and 0~p results. course minor Of involved leads to conclusions of the form adjustment of the principle W~p and W—p, whence Wp. For an analogous conservationist * s (or humanitarian * s) dilemma consider the case forest where it ought to happen that the is chopped down, the benefit of the for presently starving (or etc.), and it ought to happen that the forest is preserved by positive action and Op dilemma for the benefit of coming generations (or etc.). 0~p emerges the from of application distinct In this case the The principles. society dilemma, concerns the reform of primitive societies so that they primitive Consider the dilemma of a feminist environmentalist as conform to outside standards. regards Aboriginal On the women. other hand, suppression of women in Aboriginal society should be opposed; on the other hand major western interference in Aboriginal affairs should be avoided; but changing the position of women would constitute major interference. Different examples involving public institution) dilemma, which following:- On the one hand, the be restricted and the funds will principle being the concerns preposition p2: the University The Vice-Chancellor, or rather his advisor on logic, argues opposes the government. both separate principles are the Vice-Chancellor * s (or formulated Wp2, p2 is wrong, students and accordingly). On because the University’s learning in general will suffer the other hand, W~p2, ~p2 (the is wrong because #p# will strengthen the present iniquitous status quo (the principle being states that of affairs which strengthen the present status quo be philosophers, is iniquitous avoided). Therefore, conjoining Wp2 & W~p2» A signifi ant source of moral dilemmas, long observed by afforded by a relatively unrestricted institution of promising, and more generally by parallel institutional arrangements for entering perhaps worth distinguishing two classes of cases. situations, Z is under an obligation into (moral) Firstly, contracts. It is in purely contractual p, because of a contract or promise, and also 9 under an obligation q, because of a (likely different) contract, where q entails or In the second sort of case, Z has promised to do ~p, and hence commits one to ~p. But p also satisfies conditions C, 0~p. it emerges, and Z adheres to the principle (q)(Cq ->0q), whence Op. As an example of the second type consider Lemmon’s simple and dated example, adapted from Plato: A friend leaves me with his gun saying he will be back for it in the evening, and I promise to return it when he calls. He arrives in a distraught condition, demands his gun, and announces he is going to shoot his wife because she has been unfaithful. I ought to return the gun, since I promised to do so - a case of obligation. And yet I ought not to do so, since to do so would be to be indirectly responsible for a murder, and my moral principles are such that I regard this as wrong. I am in an extremely straightforward moral dilemma, evidently resolved by not returning the gun (62, p.148). According to Lemmon the outcome is both Op, where p is ’I return the gun’, and also The 0~p. namely, for first an inference concerning promise-keeping; every q, that q is a genuine promise entails Oq (for genuine promises follows engender obligations), from and p is a immediate genuine promise. inference of the following sort: for every q, The second follows that q really contributes to a murder implies Wq, and that p really contributes to a murder; and moreover, -> 0~q. using an for every q, Wq Even if this last principle is repudiated a dilemma remains: for both Op and Wp, i.e. I ought to return the gun and it is wrong that I return the gun. that the initial principle sustains the conclusion 0~q as well. (It may be In any case, it is not difficult to amend Lemmon’s example so that it does, or more important, so as to render the ensuing dilemma more convincing.) Other dilemmas recur in variant form with contracts and promises. For instance, limited resources dilemmas reappear as follows: we promise all our surplus to a group of poor only to have even poorer people turn up. where one's deception, employment calls or participation in for activities Similarly work and role dilemmas, which are the production of nuclear morally repugnant (such as or chemical weapons), may arise either contractually, e.g. one signed up for the position, or from duty, e.g. to provide for one's family. Some of the moral dilemmas we have made look more determinate than perhaps they should, or than they would be if the circumstances were filled out, or got filled out slightly differently. Then we should find that some of the dilemmas take the form of Lemmon's more complex class, namely those where rather than OA and 0~A, what one has is Prob OA and Prob 0~A, where Prob is the probability functor ’it is probable that'. Lemmon describes this class of "fully dilemmatic situations" in these terms: ’there 10 is some, but not conclusive, evidence that one ought to do something, and there is some, but not conclusive, evidence that one ought not to do that thing’ (pp.152-3). sort of dilemma is again drawn from Sartre: in A real-life working example of this brief, Sartre’s pupil is under some (sort of) obligation to stay with his mother, but he also probably under is an obligation, felt only ambiguously, to join the Free French in England (for a fuller description see Lemmon, pp.153-4). Lemmon suggests that this class of dilemmas is, and perhaps should stay beyond deontic formalisation: however the dilemmas are now within the scope of formalisation of a sort by multiple functor intensional logics of a type not different represent such principles as ’’ought implies can”.22 those already from needed to Though we have presented a wide variety of dilemmas, some of them in some detail - to the dispel that dilemmas common prejudice are a rare phenomena that can be safely set aside or that need not be taken seriously in an ethical theory - we have by no means exhausted the range and wealth of such dilemmas. the extent of analogues practical of these Nor have we indicated the dilemmas; fact is that similar dilemmas are frequent in economics, over budgeting, devaluation (we ought to devalue because ... and we ought not to devalue because ...), and so on. Nor have we brought out the political significance of the dilemmas; but the fact also is that some of the deeper problems in moral and political theory revolve around dilemmas. Familiar examples are issues of (permitting permissiveness interests possibly harming or licence individuals to pursue offending others) and freedom (restricting freedom as regards actions which infringe others * freedom), of paternalism and state authority versus civil liberties, and of democracy as against minority interests. A assortment varied accounts of the where sources of examples is source of moral dilemmas, for moral claims conflict, contractual obligations. Lemmon also in particular and promises, is attracted principles as those morally simplistic that they generally arise greatest (p.150). But he fact that one and the same conflicting directives requiring type, since principle may conflict with or duties, may conflict with one another principle can deliver such removing by an account of this latter underestimates the extent of conflict, and neglects the contract or in e.g. duty with principles, principles with while realising that it will not always suffice, principle important (e.g. double maximization happiness of the greatest number). As well a sufficient variety of tough examples helps remove the illusion that moral dilemmas can one and all be escaped. Admittedly, fortunately, there are ways around some of the dilemmas we have outlined, especially those we have borrowed. with perhaps further around the dilemmas), artifice in setting up the cases (to exclude But lateral moves some of the dilemmas stand: from them (as is further argued in 11 residue ’To insist that there is in every case a solution without is no escape. § 6) there false is the to moral facts’ p.132), Marcus (Barcan a theme she well illustrates with the abortion dilemma. §4. deontic Paraconsistent logic cannot be modal makes it modal treatment the relevant development. logic: An adequate deontic have to be paraconsistent. but will For a modal treatment to accommodate moral dilemmas - which are hard data impossible it makes as dilemmas treat dilemmas impossible to (§3)• A without proper catastrophic collapse (as shown in §1). The of principles standard deontic logic are, however, as added to readily various paraconsistent logics as they are to modal or classical logic - at least this (e.g. OP), in (da Costa negation-weakened namely logic and now distinguished style) logic paraconsistent and For Jaskowski-style discussive logics there are some difficulties; relevant logics. in styles of paraconsistent two of the main for is true particular, the given of rejection can principles, adjunction such logics satisfactorily include O-adjunction, OA & OB -> 0(A & B), which reflects adjunction in for the possible-worlds sentential framework It would seem not; acceptable worlds? logic offers no way of handling of Jaskowski-style the form 0(C & ~C) that result by O-adjunction. properly accommodate dilemmas, for dilemmas concerning obligation, where such as moral clearly principles difficulties; For these require impossible worlds Generally, Jaskowski-style logics are in deep trouble trying to where C & ~C holds. adjunctive full-strength moral dilemmas of logics Negation—weakened hold. they cannot deliver expected deontic also are interconnections, e.g. in the deontic ’’square of opposition”, presented shortly, which depends crucially on normal principles. negation In difficulties. Relevant brief, deontic the reasons types of paraconsistent logics logics can both avoid choosing relevant logics over for (the substantial sets these of other main reasons for which are given in OP) are accentuated still farther as soon as applications, such as to deontic logic, are Accordingly we will assume a relevant logical base, and a relevant semantical made. in what follows. framework, Even so, much of what we say and do can be adapted to other logical bases, e.g. negation-weakened or positive-plus bases. Often a combined syntactical-semantical is approach more fruitful and illuminating than either a syntactical-axiomatic or a semantical approach carried out separately. Each enriches and controls the other.23 Such is the case with relevant logical theory, logic. Even analogue of and so it is with relevant deontic logic, which builds on relevant so, a standard syntactical deontic standard superstructure, relevant logic. beginning logic we normally added can is easier. simply add For an to obtain exact a analogue relevant of the to classical logic, to (what supersedes CL) 12 For minimal relevant deontic logic, MD, the one-place functor 0 - of obligation, as usual read (e.g. ’It ought suitable some to be extending system that’ - is added (the case) B system basic the to some relevant logic of RLR conforms to the usual formation rule: where A is a wff so is OA. however are options at Functor, F read ’It is forbidden that’, is defined thus: ’It is permissible that’, is defined : PA =Df~FA. FA =Df 0~A (cf. OED); and P, read There this stage (as at e.g. stages), can morality, be argued, from directions several other F could oh introduced independently. But this leads to complications that are unnecessary. It 0 The other familiar functors of deontic logic, F and P, are defined in the usual way. ’It is wrong that’ or, less satisfactorily, Functor I). (e.g. from the rationality be of from the meaning or semantics of obligation, from the idea of commitment), that 0 satisfies at least the following requirements:[RM] A -> B -> OA -> OB, i.e. where A + B is a theorem so is OA -> OB. That is to say, where A entails B is provable so is OA entails OB, obligation transmits over provable entailment. Hence the claim that this principle (R7 of RLR II) is a transmission principle. [K] OA & OB regards the i.e. -> 0(A & B), conjunction; or, a conjunction of obligations entails obligation as to adjunction (principle G of RLR II). These two important it put 25 principles, entailment and adjunction, make 0 a a little differently 0 is closed which ensure that 0 is closed under under provable systemic functor (in the sense of RLR II), and ensure that it has a relational (i.e. first order) semantical analysis. The postulates which correspondingly minimally characterise deontic functions F and P now follow by relevant logic upon applying the definitions. They are as follows:For wrongness: A For permissibility : With the A + B -*> functor further B —f> FByFA Q, FA & FB P(A v BH, PAv PA + PB defined F(A v B) QA =Df ~0A, a reduced pb deontic square of opposition follows: 0Ax ...............FA PA^ .............. .QA The opposites are dotted peripheral opposed, as modally, relations of the modal in the way the solid lines show. But the square are bound to be the lost given the 13 the modal (on fact of deontic dilemmas square Prior 62 p.220). see is worth It observing, however, that the peripheral relations can be reinstated through adoption of the so-called consistency scheme OA -> ~FA, i.e. OA + ~0~A; [D] and that the relevant deontic logic that results still excludes the rubbish brought in along deontic standard necessary truths, Nordamericano of that course not (though paradoxes, essentially because paradoxical etc.), deontic obligatoriness the of spread principles are not whereas triviality), incorporate dilemmas. the as degenerate dilemma-permitting The problem with deontic logics which include [D] also cannot they well as logic, Antipodean form we are advocating. is deontic In short, relevant theory can deliver a clean-cut, clean-living, dilemma- available. free (e.g. logic include relevant moral dilemmas systems without without can [D] inconsistency consistently These various logical claims, as to the modal rubbish that is not brought along, can all be made good by application of the semantical theory. The semantics shows what does not hold, as well as further explaining why the principles that hold do. Semantics for MD result upon adding to modellings for relevant logic a two-place relation S, on worlds, which is subject to the following condition W. b and Sbc then Sac, Where a i.e. where world a precedes b (indeed canonically a is contained in b) and world c is accepted vis-a-vis b then c is accepted vis-a-vis a. Given that a is a subworld of b this is evident enough. Distinctive features of the underlying semantical modellings for relevant logic - consisting of structures of the form <T, K, 0, R, *, be sufficiently and, well-known any in are case, explained v> - should elsewhere. These structures differ from the best of those for modal logics, the nonnormal structures <T, K, N, R, v> for the Lewis systems S2 and S3, in the following ways:- The class K of worlds, to which the factual (base) world T belongs, is expanded to include a much more comprehensive class of inconsistent and incomplete worlds; the class N of normal worlds K is in adjusted theorems hold; relation R, to a three-place the class to v(p, sentential a) relation = parameter 1) regular worlds, i.e. worlds; on then and wff. I(A, b) = 1, where all on is subject to a constraint where I is the so that Specifically, where a < b and p holds in a p holds in b, p. Conditions v for every world a and b modelling structures are hereditariness condition extends to all wff; i.e. in symbols, where a 1 then those used in modelling implication, is relaxed from a two-place inclusion of worlds is duly reflected. (written 0 of in K and every such that this b & I(A, a) = interpretation function which extends v to all Inclusion, <, can be added as an extra component of the model structures, but in fact it can be defined thus: a < b =Df (Px 0)Rxab. Finally relevant modellings 14 add to modal modellings a new function, *, in terms of which negation is evaluated, 27 which facilitates the inclusion of inconsistent and incomplete worlds. same role and interpretation as in standard relation S has the The semantical It is employed in the semantical evaluation of obligation functor 0, deontic theory. which is given by the following rule: I(0a, a) = 1 iff, for every world b such that Sab, I(A, b) = 1, i.e. OA holds at world a iff, for each world b accepted vis-avis a, A holds at b.28 The rule is a world relativisation of the idea that what is obligatory is what holds in all accepted worlds. (morally) It is thus an evident adaption of Leibnitzian prescriptions, given the linkages between obligation or moral binding and moral "musts” or imperatives, on the one side, and morally possible and or acceptable accepted worlds, the on other. The for motivation unrelativised connections can be forged at base world T; for there A is (morally) required, I(0A, T) = 1, iff for every b for which Mb I(A, b) = 1 (where Mb =Df STb), i.e. That is, what is required is iff A holds in every (morally) accepted world. what holds in all accepted or received worlds. Other construals of the semantical apparatus are of course open. tempting ideal, temptation (a succumbed to initially) regard the accepted worlds as and Sab as ’b is ideal as seen from c’. to read Mb as 'b is ideal’ i.e. to It is a little But that is like requiring supererogation in cases where the meeting of commitments or obligations is enough: the worlds do not need to be that good but simply to pass, to meet required standards. is worlds. acceptable through A perhaps easier construal than by way of accepted worlds construal That is alright provided the term ’’acceptable” is deployed, as it often is, nonevaluatively : for it is important in the semantical assessment to prescriptions for be able to make an evaluative step—down, to give meaning evaluative expressions nonevaluative terms. in Naturally this does not imply that evaluative notions are naturalistically eliminated, any more than familiar terms, extensional reductions, semantical extensional analysis of intensional implies that intensionality is removed: both are merely pushed down into the not-further-explained apparatus of worlds. Obligation is construed by way of what goes on in acceptable or accepted worlds, not what happens in permissible or permitted directly with the construal of permissibility. one another, but in worlds, because this latter Given modal muddles the two reduce to the more subtle relevant setting star shift is involved in the transfer from accepted to permitted worlds. The (derived) semantical rule for P is this: KPA, a) = ties 1 iff for some b such that Uab I(A, b) = 1, where Uab . b * Sa 15 at base Thus, A is permissible, world T, i.e. I(PA, = 1) iff A holds at some 1, permitted world b; what is permissible is worldwise what is somewhere permitted. modal equation of relations U and S further axioms, deontic the (where namely if Sab (in effect, condition then Sa ) b * (Pb)Sab The corresponds to e.g. guaranteed, is modally by ~0(P & ~p)) by the scheme OA ^PA. Now modal-strength deontic logics typically do include an axiom scheme of the form [D’J OA -> ~PA, i.e. from (alethic) is obligatory is not that permissible, under modal is, Indeed this used to be considered what distinguished deontic ~0~A. assumptions, OA logics what modal on logics the one side, which include a stronger principle analogous to OA -*■ A, and epistemic logics on the other, which were weaker in that [D’J failed. However [D’J, like [D], is deontically incorrect because it rules out consistent inclusion of moral dilemmas; or, to turn matters around, cases where OA & 0~A, [D’]» which or OA & FA, hold counterexample [D]. may seem a little more plausible transform of it on usual deontic definitions. than Similarly these cases refute [D], but is a definitional For what is obligatory is not ipso facto permissible where the obligatory item is also wrong, as in dilemmatic cases. To distance relevant deontic logic from modal analogues, while at the same time demonstrating that relevant theory can encompass moral dilemmas unproblematically , we next assume that some moral dilemmas hold, that is that for some p, both Op and Fp. Since however propositional quantifiers much complicate the semantical apparatus we shall introduce constants into the syntax, and let p^ be the first constant for which a dilemma ensues. That is, a new axiom, extending the logic, is [DD] 0p1 & Fpp i.e. p1 is dilemmatic.3° The modelling condition for [DD], is wd. For each a in 0, for some world x, Sax and v(ppx) = 1= v(ppX ). * This condition, which does not involve T, does not impose nonclassical conditions on normal worlds. Accordingly [DD] is only a weakly paraconsistent requirement; it does not imply that inconsistency protrudes into the factual or regular worlds. Indeed one advantage of the semantics is that it enable proof that dilemmatic judgements can be included without inconsistency. By contrast, modal theories cannot include even one half of [DD] do) without automatically excluding dilemmatic judgements. consideration has a thesis 0p2 for some (either will Suppose the logic under Then for every x in 0 there is some y such that Sxy with p2 set to hold at y. But modally this is enough to guarantee that [D] holds materially, More explicitly, so ~(0A & 0~A) generally, suppose otherwise that in i.e. there can be no such dilemmas. some model the material form of [D] failed; I(OA, then = T) 1 = I(A~O, T), which impossibility at y since I(A, y) = 1 i I(A, y). syntactical problems earlier in 1). even for Although [DD] implies Op^, very weak obligatory is conjured from the fact some for STy yields y This is a semantical analogue of the deontic logics (considered type of modal it does not say, nor does it follow, that OT for any Such modal stupidity as that every necessary and every tautology T (e.g. C v ~C). truth is since automatically removed that relevant in the relevant wash. can be This theory removes such paradoxes as p1 from which 0(A v ~A) would follow modally by 0—distribution (i.e. A v ~A, Again the [RM]). semantics can be applied to establish the point in proper detail. primitive principles of minimal relevant logic are open to challenge, Both the and [K] * Jennings has been disputed by Schotch (in Jennings and 81). The main Schotch- arguments against [K] — which induces what they call ’paradoxes of complete * aggregation essentially turn — automatically avoided on modal deontic by relevant and assumptions, Their theory. accordingly are (p.152, also main point p.154) is that [K] obliterates the distinction between [D] (i.e. Op ~0~p) and [Con] ~0 , i.e. in effect ~0(r & ~r). Their argument depends on construing implication in [D] as material-implication and on strict replacement. ~0~p iff ~(0p & 0~p), i.e. iff ~0(p & ~p) using [K] Then Op and its provable converse, i.e. iff ~0(r & ~r) using p & ~p - . r & ~r and strict According to the relevant approach the trouble is not with [K] but with replacement. the modal assumptions, which are independently objectionable (see 1). Their further argument begins from the premiss that ’we should certainly want to include among our deontic principles the law of moral consistency [Con] across cuts all different things. moral theories’ (pp.153-6). The ... because that principle premiss appears to conflate What cuts across all moral theories is the theme that some things, such as a sufficiently evil state of affairs, are not obligatory, whence ~0s. does cut across all theories is the assumption that there are no moral dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~A), which is what [Con], with not just that there What are theories like properly defined, would imply. those of Lemmon and Sartre It is which include contradictory obligations; it is also that some theorists would want to insist that there is something logically wrong with principles like [Con], e.g. that it doesn’t make sense to talk of the nonobligatoriness of absurdity. Schotch and Jennings do contend that we should allow for moral conflict of the form OA & OB where A and B are inconsistent. their assumptions there [K] stops rejection of are moral dilemmas that yielding Since then B -> ~A, of the 0(A & -A). it follows that on form OA & 0~A. Yet as they Certainly only themselves have reported, the consensus view is that there are (in the end) no dilemmas of the form OA & O~A: insofar, all theories’, ’cuts across then, rejection of dilemmas of the form 0(A & ~[~]A) so, near enough, does rejection of those of the form OA & 0~A. What certainly does not emerge is that there can [K]. The be no deontic logic which takes as a primitive law the principle be can that best if done, subscribe to [K], we is to formalise ethical theories - namely those which do not allow moral certain particular conflicts (p. 156). logics provide decisive counterexamples to this contention. Relevant deontic They can take [K] as primitive: they allow for moral conflict; but they do so by allowing, like Lemmon, for moral inconsistency.31 disconcerting More from flowing the than fundamental difficulties deriving principles, transmission [K] from are allegedly those difficulties include which well-advertised paradoxes of deontic logic. § 5. Resultant on impact other relevant paraconsistent shift. and puzzles of paradoxes deontic theory of the Often cleaning up one logical puzzle in due technical detail has a beneficial effect on surrounding puzzles and on associated problems in the area. Light is cast on, and So it turns out also in the case of moral dilemmas. Among them sometimes solutions are delivered for, a number of other linked problems. are the following puzzles generated by theorems of (relevant) deontic logic. are, the ’’paradoxes of commitment”. Where material implciation => is in first place, defined as usual, e.g. T1. There ~A v ~B, it is a theorem that A ° B 0(B => A), whence if OA then 0(B 25 A), OA sometimes read: A if is then obligatory anything one commits to A, or: ’Doing anything commits us to doing what is obligatory’; T2. FA OCA => B), if 0~A then 0(A = B), sometimes read: if A is forbidden then doing A commits one to doing anything at all, or: ’Doing what is not permitted commits us to doing anything whatever’ readings are proceed from Prior from there interpretation of paradoxes symbols, the The claims read off are paradoxical. 62, p.224). to little justification - reading ’0(A commits one to doing B’. the in and (the quoted in logic this case B)’ as depends, always, depends crucially on - But to on the what has as a commitment relation, e.g. as ’doing A Such a reading which presupposes that material implication is a satisfactory conditional can in no way be sustained (see RLR), and that is the end of the problem. that A then paradoxical guises; and it If, ought to for example, T1 be features disappear. these commitment the case is simply read: if it ought to be the case that either not B or A, then the alleged However puzzles have a tendency to reappear in new puzzles are no exception. Even with conditional 18 terms of obligation applied to a properly defined in obligation conditional, the puzzles in reemerge new forms, example, for genuine (relevant) in is what called ’’Ross’s paradox”, and in related transmission problems. It has been claimed that the principle, OA -> 0(A v B), yielding if OA then 0(A v B) T3. is which T1, to equivalent is Ross paradox principle), - paradoxical to do either A or B, it may be More generally, given OA, obligatory to read a letter but not to read or burn it. there is an obligation example, for because, where the content of B may be totally do to established. (The comment goes beyond what T3 supplies, but that is not material). the in circumstance which obligation the to is set inappropriate A or A similar objection is made to the analogous permissibility principle PA ■> P(A v B), T4. Ross’s paradox, on the alleged grounds that there are examples where A is permissible but A For example, be. not the following it is permissible that to post a takes based on some one application of T4 is said to the paradoxical: letter false proposition the distance implies that it is permissible to post a The assumption that there is some sort of paradox here is letter or kill one’s aunt. however B may the towards that the permissibility of of permissibility killing the consequent one’s The aunt. proposition itself seems to be based on an application, never articulated and quite inadmissible, of Disjunctive Syllogism, distribution, P(~A &. A For PB. (A v b) ■+ B, and what results from P- it may certainly be permissible not to post However it is assuming more than standard deontic logics will grant to the letter. go on ) ~A & to the permissibility of not posting the letter and letter or killing disjunction. one’s aunt, especially given the also either derivation of posting the latter the Still going on remains tempting (and would presumably be warranted by a Lukasiewicz deontic logic analogous to his 4-valued modal logic). But so going on is to no avail in a duly relevant setting, where Disjunctive Syllogism fails: there is no admissible route here to the permissibility of killing aunt, one’s however desirable the act might otherwise be. main The transmission conditional obligation, strict implication, as problems in found also modally derived. an adequate deontic logic are, like those of They come from reliance on material or representation of implication. The worst manifestation of this is that already discussed, deontic trivialisation leading from Op^ and 0~p.| to OB, for any B, in virtue of the provability of p^ & ~p^ => B. But there are variety of lesser manifestations of the same underlying problem, of which the following example (adapted from recent discussion) is just one sort: p4. We have an obligation to feed the starving poor D. There exist starving poor. Therefore, since starving poor, it ought to be by O-transmission, the case it ought that we meet our obligation to feed the to be that there exist starving poor, a 19 that is far from obviously true. deontic logic, for the simple reason presupposition relation, conclusion of transmission problems of modal the that the cannot p4 Such analyses do not entailment. an to rather or implication, (material-) upgraded be plague relevant The many systems all enamate from excessive O-distribution on basis of implications will not them, support in the as following transmission principles typical of orthodox deontic logics, all of which should be rejected: OCA D B) D. OA 3 OB A D B -> OA 3 OB A => B =>. OA => OB. With their rejection a thorny tangle of modally-derived paradoxes is also rejected. There appears however to be an immense temptation to try to impose excessively strong transmission principles; and the same phenomenon to be seen at work in modal contexts can also be observed when a proper entailment is introduced.3^ This occurs, particular, in attempts in to ’’normalise” [RM], to strengthen it a from rule connection to an entailment, for instance, to (the characteristic S3 form) [OT] A + B +. OA + OB; it occurs with analogous changes thereon, and e.g. A-> B. PA PB and A FB + FA, as well with as imported forms of these principles, e.g. OA & (A and (A -> B) & FB As an example of the FA. B B) OB type of puzzles that [OT] produces consider p5. Grannie killed the vicar. Grannie repented for having killed the vicar The problem with putative entailments such as p5 is that, while we are ordinarily (with the context duly flashed out) inclined to agree that Grannie ought to repent, we don’t want to agree to have killed the vicar. that Grannie ought The problem turns essentially however on the availability of [OT] in place of [RM], for p5 is not a provable entailment of the underlying logical theory (and there is little case for it one), trying to make sc [RM] does not apply to p5, in contrast with awkwardness [OT] appears to require, of having somehow entailment, is thereby straightforwardly avoided.33 Most the of paradoxes falling paradoxes and Robber paradoxes can be paradoxes and usual forms of these resolution. one’s According helping a man under such to deny descriptions as similarly resolved or avoided. variations upon [OT]. The is that p5 Good Samaritan an The original them certainly succumb to such to the Robber’s paradox if robbing a man is forbidden then The Good Samaritan whom one has robbed is also forbidden. paradox is a further turn on this paradox: not only the robber’s helping a man he has robbed is wrong, so is someone else’s, a good Samaritan’s, helping the robbed man (see Prior 58). - be It is undoubtedly paradoxical that it should - especially as a matter of logic wrong to help a man who has been robbed: but do any fundamental deontic 20 principles commit us to such a thing, for appropriate substitutions on variables? No, These puzzles all take the following form: B, which describes something they do not. admittedly wrong, gets in or implied as part of the description of something larger, A, arising as a result of the situation in B; however A is not wrong but perhaps even Nothing required. theory; and in none of shows this the however that A B literature can examples in the the provable in is it There be. logical is another important feature, commonly neglected however, which is that A does not assert B. If it did, then A, since amounting to A & B, would appear to be wrong also, as B is. This points to a difficulty also for the usual assumption that A entails B; for then A (certainly modally) coentails A & B, whence the wrongness of A coincides with that of A & B, the wrongness of which would seem to be guaranteed by B. If however A only involves B in a weaker sense, [OT] is exonerated.3^ The paradoxes can be pushed another way, to contest this data, and bear against systems as minimal as MD. For MD yields theorems like the following: T5. FB T6. 0( F(A & B), whence if FB then F(A & B). OB, whence if 0(A & B) then OB. &B) theses, Such minimal it is now suggested, are paradoxical in the same way as the Robber. This is not so: only gross confusion of decidedly distinct syntactical forms - a practice formalisation can unfortunately encourage - could support such a suggestion. If it is wrong to rob a man then it is wrong to rob him and help him;35 but it is not thereby wrong to help him, indeed to help him who has been robbed. But the relative and the tense shift are both important; and the whole relative clause in no way reduces to a conjunction conjoining robbing the man. The positivistic objection that the paradoxes of deontic logic show that there is really no ’’logic of norms” has come even from a modern founder of deontic logic, von Wright. This he now contends that There is no such thing as an "entailment” between a norm Op and a norm 0(p q) - and Ross’s paradox makes us aware of the absurdity of talking as though it existed. ... Ross was right when he offered his paradox as a proof that, properly understood, there could not be such a thing as a logic of norms (82, p.15, rearranged, emphasis suggested in text). And he ’essentially (p.14). (also also But mistakenly) of variations given that one regards and the von Wright contains such normative tautologies Op are inevitable. Thus while ’’paradoxes’* the same, viz. wants also the of deontic so-called to supply logic as Ross’s Paradox’ a deontic logic, which 0(p q), some subtle and dubious distinctions Op & ~0(p q) is normatively inconsistent, inconsistent; while Op can be thus said to ’’normatively entail” 0(p q) it is not it does not; and while Op comes rational commitment to Op, it does not carry logical commitment to it. the Unlike said are connections associated to and entailment (p.15). no paradoxes induce other But normative these relations, what is said go to for normative entailment can be said as well as regards entailment, that one (e.g. a law giver) is Op adopts who rationally to 0(p q) going on to endorse the entailment of 0(p q) by Op. for a oitrary addition away there is no puzzle in associations are cleared once mistaken modal q. Indeed committed The ’’paradoxes” of deontic logic are not a reflection of the illusory notion of a logic of norms but rather a product of a modal logic of norm. However von Wright has other significant reasons for insisting that (in a sense) ’norms have no logic or that normative discourse is ’’alogical”’ from noncognitivism, that symbolising norms, formulas’, ’prescriptive standard a on One derives (p.4). interpretation deontic ’do not express true and false propositions. It makes no sense to speak of relations of contradiction or entailment between formulas when thus interpreted ’ hold nontruthvalued regards as semantical This is not so: (p.4). theory relevant as such discourse, for sketched logical relations such as inconsistency logic deontic carries no commitment to the position that normative discourse is truthvalued. 0 interpreted In imperatives. fact ineradicable The values 1 and by way of holding are not intended to be tied to truth and falsity, except at the factual world T (see RLR1); and that exception is readily removed. judgements, instead normative received, logic the both (the point requirements e.g. Otherwise the etc.). adjustments the and of the form Fp, semantical can be said to be in theory its ’’semantical” is developed, For force (or is as before. With such minor theory conform to noncognitivist to meet von Wright’s argument, in Morscher, pp.97-8). Von Wright’s other reason for coming out against a logic of norms is but grist It is that ’there cannot be a logic of norms because a for the paraconsistent nill. could enjoin contradictory legislator (at ’’relative least serves" Morscher, ...) dilemmas. it but p.98). to the is normal not states of affairs. This might be irrational purpose which the institution of giving orders logically excluded, it is not alogical’ (cited in That is, a legislator can set up (usually unintentionally) deontic This is certainly not triviality, by modal-strength indictment, not of deontic deontic logic, It impossible. but logics. of a is simply excluded, Once again the on criticism certain modally-dominated pain of is an approach to it.36 §6. Upsetting the moral consensus: unrealisable obligations, and inevitable wrongs. The theme that there are moral dilemmas, like those cited, which stand, which do not dissolve upon rational reflection, philosophers, 3? and apparently runs agains the consensus among moral certainly upsets dominant positions in ethical theory, notably 22 broadly Kantian positions (built into much contemporary British moral philosophy) and utilitarian positions (which pervade Anglo-American and theory value thinking, especially outside narrowly philosophical circles). Kantian positions suppose that morality is above all a rational procedure of a certain sort (which we tentatively grant), and that rationality requires consistency. Or put differently, but for instance, must be consistent. Thus what is obligatory, equivalent given modal assumptions, ought implies can, OA -> OA, for every A and some Wherever an agent appears to be in a moral dilemma suitable possibility functor 0. this is a matter of appearance only, a moral illusion which will (and must) vanish on further rational reflection.^ This Kantian assumption should be rejected: moral dilemmas are part of the data and no illusion, and no amount of reflection need budge them. By insistence upon consistency requirements, and through failure, consequently, to recognise intractable moral dilemmas, deontological theories have been forced to jump through a variety of different hoops and to weaken considerably their positions. In particular, temporary and moral firm principles are almost invariably weakened to something much more provisional. is experience While important, some revisability of principles in the light of such wholesale weakening of principles is decidedly There is a point then in trying to undesirable, on both logical and moral grounds. expose some of the tangled assumptions on which the weakening is based, and to loosen their grip. The assumptions involved on a Kantian approach include these: H1. Moral principles - in those concerning justice, particular more fairness and the basic principles of obligation, such as like - are to be explained at bottom as principles of rationality, or rational behaviour for persons. H2. Rationality is a matter of consistency; certainly it implies it. H3. Consistency reduces to, or can be accounted for, through possibility. Put together these assumptions yield the theme H4. What is obligatory must be possible - ought-implies-can , for short. So if that gives, so do some of the assumptions. but on moral dilemmas, It does give, not just because of So also then independent grounds. should the assumptions give; and they fail not just on the grounds that they lead to themes like H4. The deeper trouble is that they are based on a super-modal view of things which combines modal assumptions with rational strong The assumptions. combination is important, for once the modal assumptions are rejected, it becomes fairly transparent that the rationality assumptions, whatever their merit, cannot such things as moral framework or system or course of action. rational case, systems: removing much more modal is required assumptions - a than rationality main present uniquely determine Rather there are rival for uniqueness. exercise - In any destroys such rationality route to ought-implies-can. Finally consistency is neither necessary nor That it is not sufficient is indicated by a variety of sufficient for rationality. consistent worlds which do not conform to minimal rationality requirements. is converse relevant refuted which conform inconsistent worlds by meet rationality requirements (see further RLR and OP). H3 fails, paradoxes induces ~0A -> ~(A ° B), generally is not just that the Modality removed. of paradoxes with entailment, e.g. anything all. from isolated transmitted to are inconsistent is arguments Not only H2 (as a necessary assumptions parallelling proposition impossible inconsistency It modal when consistency of an fails, also is not 40 this indiscriminate way. However to rationality to sufficient reason and the like), and by dialethic theories which standards (e.g. condition) The more impossibility in collapse; ought-implies-can at there are distinct from those supplied by moral dilemmas. counterexamples to the theme, The counterexamples concern obligations (or oughts) which are impossible, in some sense, to realise, counterexamples Op & ~0p) But wrongdoings. most the of possibility Derivatively then (substituting ~p for unrealisable obligations. that wrongs are inescapable, there are many determinates of possibility examples than concern also mere involve, in their logical possibility necessitated (and necessity), and less anemic notions of correspondingly broader notions of original (and p in setting, necessity than a narrow logical necessity). perhaps strained, adaption, and, in any case, they serve to undermine the point and Nonetheless they sometimes admit of, force of the ought-implies-can dictum (which is to link obligation to freedom to do otherwise), and These examples all arise nature, circumstances, its effective use against moral dilemmas. seriously weaken thereby because agents are constrained in one way or another - by fate, the Gods, their past actions - but are not thereby released from their obligations or exonerated from wrong-doing. Consider first very down-to-earth types of counterexample to ought-implies-can, before turning to more high-flown but not altogether dissimilar examples from our barbaric past. ’Suppose that I say "I ought to go and see him, but I can’t because I don’t know where he is”. There need be nothing inconsistent in such a remark; and, yet there would be if "ought” always implied ’’can'” (Hare 63, p.52). same with situation ”’I where ought I've to return driven the this car I’ve car so far borrowed, away that returning it in time to keep a promise’ (Thomason, p.175). but I It is much the can’t”, there is said no chance in a of my Likewise the claim of the person who cannot swim that she ought to rescue the child caught in the current but can't. One traditionally important class of counterexamples derives from the Catholic doctrine of perplexity secundum quid.^ Donegan, in defending what he calls 'the 24 Hebrew-Christian tradition’, contends that once one has sinned one May be faced with situations from which one cannot escape without further wrong-doing (77, p.152). That ♦ is, one may be so placed (through one’s own fault) that one ought not to perform any of the available actions though one cannot do otherwise. So it is necessary that one act in a way that is forbidden. Protestant thinkers, particular Luther, appear to have considered the human race involved in one grand secundum quid on account of original sin. ’God punished justly sinners who not could otherwise do Luther believed that than sin’ that God and ’provided men with a law they were unable to keep and then righteously damned them for failing to keep it’. 242 The Calvinists also were committed - but through their doctrine of predestination predestined to sin, unpalatable conclusion - to rather they cannot but by suggesting Because conclusions. similar humans are However Calvin attempted to escape this sin. that in some suitable sense are not sinners compelled, that it is somehow possible for them to do otherwise than they do. J Given however the theme of predestination this attempt to escape looks unconvincing. Any stronger determinism that does not also obliterate morality is in a similar Creatures will have obligations which they cannot fulfil because they predicament. are determined and will to do otherwise, sometimes be bound to do wrong. Plainly where this becomes a general and automatic matter, a serious erosion of moral notions such as responsibility, normally linked to obligation, is bound to set in. However isolated cases analogous to those of determinism can occur without such erosion of moral notions (as indeed with moral dilemmas themselves). rigidifying personality and ossifying character are of this gets older Cases of A person as she sort. may build up a personality so rigid that she cannot escape from it. At some point it becomes impossible (at least psychologically) for her to act other than she does, yet on some occasions she ought not to act in the way she does. outcome resembles that with original sin though the route taken Yet even if we grant that the person ought not to have got still we are entitled to our moral judgements; modern morality * The is very different. into such a position, as Pigden puts it, ’an enlightened can allow such violations of ought-implies-can. Classical Greek morality certainly seems to have allowed for such violations. In Homeric ethics a man could be blamed for failings he could not avoid, unavoidable wrong-doing. and so for Subsequently it was taken for granted that impossible moral requirements could be placed upon a hero, yet he could be blamed for failing to meet them. Thus the situation of Agamemnon and of Oedipus, both despite their struggles, despite their awareness of their predicaments and their anguish, were bound, indeed, fated, to act wrongly, and were duly blamed for their wrong-doing. 25 There have been various attempts to salvage the ought-implies-can theme, through a residual Kantianism. presupposes-can Thus Hare proposes, but does not really work out, an ought- a with theme weaker relation presupposition logical replacing implication (53, p.54); and both Barcan Marcus and Morscher suggest a model theoretic connection: essentially that for OA to hold true A must be satisfiable in some world, and so, modally, A is consistent. But within a relevant setting, the satisfiability is hardly a requirement and does not ensure consistency. constraint, Once again, consistency is only obtained at the cost of other more important connections, such as Nor does Hare’s comparison with presupposition (on p.54) succeed. O-adjunction. the analogy such situations the worked implies-can. as practical question those and dilemmas moral But (pace Hare, p.55) as to what to do not would counterexamples affording If arise in ought- to the question most certainly does arise in many cases. §7. Resolving proceed, in moral any dilemmas, dilemma so far situation be. as can easily are Recipes for what provided, enough decidedly poor recipes have been much canvassed in the literature. how to to, indeed several Among these are deontic ranking recipes, which would have us impose some type of priority ordering on deontic principles, so that consistency is maintained and in every situation there is a dominant rule; defeasibility recipes, which would have us weaken all deontic rules to merely prima facie or other-things-being—equal principles and operate, when things look would going like have wrong, utilitarian by and assessment; pure-chance recipes, which situationally but arbitrarily by such methods as us determine outcomes coin toss. Such recipes fail to meet important conditions of adequacy upon any account of the way resolution is effected, if and when it can be, namely: A1. The account should sufficiently resemble what rational choosers do when they find themselves in a moral dilemma. Many human choosers have moral principles, have not rigorously ordered in such which, as against ranking recipes, a way as to exclude dilemma they situations, and which, as against thorough-going defeasibility recipes, they are not prepared to give Thus, in addition, away or modify when they encounter snags. A2. The principles induce which moral dilemmas are not generally abandoned or qualified, but very often stand. Naturally sometimes moral dilemmas, especially development and revision of principles. if they recur, do lead to moral But the logic of dilemma situations does not force changes or adjustment and none may be made; and typically none will be made, where dilemmas are resolved, resolve dilemmas which they may not be. The assumption that we must is probably a hangover from consistency assumptions, that deontic inconsistency must be removed - whereas all we have to do is act, or do nothing, in 26 the face of them. Part of what is wrong with the idea of a predetermined ordering of principles, the conflict, and also the they remove is that as with utilitarianism procedures, felt tension, and often anguish, that goes with it. Even if the appeal to priority succeed in some cases, it does not in fact work, and 45 general. For with Lemmon’s complex dilemmas where ordering of principles does not could succeed, in uncertainties enter be can there preassigned no solution moral to the in dilemma virtue of higher-order principles or a given ordering of one’s duties and obligations and the like, because part of the very dilemma is just one’s uncertainty as to one’s actual situation (p.153). In any event dilemmas do not go away as they should if the conflicting obligations were merely prima facie. Very often someone in a moral dilemma is in a fix and feels it^^; and doesn’t say ”My God there isn’t a problem, I must simply look up the book principles are ranked and what’s to be done’, to see how these not having been so prepared. in which we, as it were, merely .... dilemmas in which we morally prepared, have to look up the solution in our private ethical code, are rare ... and in case any of little practical Of interest. are those importance greater dilemmas in this class where some decision of a moral character is required Our predicament is here so described that, whatever we do, even if we do ... nothing at that might mean), we are doing all (whatever something which we ought not to do, and so can be called upon to justify either our activity or our inactivity (Lemmon, p.151). The usual deontological positions, which deontic weaken principles to provisional or prima facie principles to avoid problems with dilemmas, also play into utilitarian hands. reflecting things that of in often is which only are to act overriding requirement character utilitarians want For the for such to represent most a way disguised (a sc part as to of obligation statements concerning distributed, e.g. are the taken coherent way as derivative; net utilities position from would their own the deontic make this Deontic principles such as reduce somehow distributed type of action which tends to maximize utility. accounts typically rule out moral dilemmas: both apart or to tend complex to be an action is obligatory when it maximizes (expected) utility and it is of a recognised cannot they ar . - principles as deontic maximize utility, maximisation principle so only for the most part also). those all maximise utility, and indeed 27 Such reductive for example, an action and its opposite if an action increases utility then its opposite characteristically diminishes it. if all moral injunctions More generally, answer back ultimately to just one standard, maximum utility, then there can be no real conflict (but etc.). for these It is apparent conflict through failure to calculate correctly, sorts of reasons that the considerable data now accumulated regarding moral try to explain away, to utilitarians deny that there can be So they are in the awkward position of having to dispute, dilemmas. genuine moral and only dilemmas. But how, when stuck in moral dilemmas, do we proceed to reach a decision? For a 47 decision is called for: those in dilemma situations still often have to act. The intuitive procedure in such dilemma situations is not difficult to grasp. terminology is regularly employed, and is instructive. to those the in - dilemmas weighed assessed, are The same Alternatives - outcomes open up, the balance. put in The familiar scales picture, with the scale sensitive to evaluative weights, is helpful - except it that can suggest, weighed against another, whereas there may be as with of justice where one thing is two competing principles or just that there are several. scales the options, In the light of such a weighing up of alternatives, those in dilemmas then determine what they should do, what is best, or satisfactory, ’If ... we are to act here in good faith,we shall recognise in the circumstances . that the dilemma is what it is and make the best decision we can * There is an attempt to then intuitive apply (Lemmon 62, p.151). methods, decision consist which in assessing and weighing the alternative outcomes open, and maximizing or satisizing on these This outcomes. already very looks consequentialist decision theory, which is what, a like preanalytic account of in a qualified way, we shall reach It is in a qualified way for several reasons; not only may no best (or even towards. sufficiently good) outcome be determinable - there is nothing approaching a decision procedure here - but the further decision theory methods apply within moral dilemmas, so they supply, at best, a second best resolution, a first best result requiring removal of moral dilemma constraints and so being ruled out. Those in dilemma unworkable (and situations usually do not resort to anything as mostly arbitrary and often ineffective) utilitarian as complex and assessment procedures. Nor do they surrender to pure chance procedures. A3. The account should not give way to irrationalism, but should adhere to rational decision procedures, which are not necessarily, however, effective. This requirement rules out pure chance methods, which are only appropriate where it is a matter of indifference which way the decision, if any, Even where some resort to methods can give a worse outcome than might be obtained. tie-breaking devices is appropriate, that may dilemma, but rather to some component of the not be situation. Otherwise such goes. to the final Envisage, outcome of a for instance, a decision-tree for an issue where a tie-breaking device such as a coin toss is applied to a high branch and that proves sufficient for rational decision methods to resolve 28 Then it would be irrational to try to resolve the whole issue the issue concerned. by coin toss. Nonetheless A4. The account should be appropriately situational. That is, the account should be applicable to each situation on its own merits, taking It should not simply be a rule­ detailed account of the features of that situation. for in dilemma cases the rules have ceased to yield a resolution and based account, into a are locked be will fix position. situational, it will not that of situational be involve resort to pure—chance methods. by situation, situational most part, by example) or example by virtue of A3 and A4, though the account Thus, procedures ethics where such ethics Nor is a situational ethics (ethics situation For the of a broader type being recommended. into operation where a moral only go dilemma is reached; in general, deontic rule-based procedures apply. The broad outlines of a satisfactory account are beginning to emerge. Before we consider apply rational decision methods to each given dilemma situation. is how this to be so as account, to be said about the needs For to meet apparent objections. insensitive those accomplished more to in switches language, both FA and A, some options, and yet that, also F~A, that it ought also be that so B, very idea of it should be that B, where B entails We do not however go on to one of A and -A, so that not both A and ~A are ruled out. claim the is both A and ~A are ruled out as moral that situations, in certain in For are we not only claiming that decision-theoretic resolution of moral dilemmas. for structure of the things, there is, to among other contradiction a It should that not both A and ~A ruled are out morally.49 What is being claimed that B, or an adequate thing, is the best thing to do in the constrained circumstances, that B should be done in that sense, net that B is lifted to status obligation enough in the circumstances, by looking at you does not the can B is In brief, <»B, "second-best obligation"). determined (though imply OB. acceptable worlds worlds where B holds which fail to be acceptable. say, if you like, that it is a the best that can be done or good is not going to be When <£>B holds where B When holds, because there are holds is not going to be settled in general by falling back on deontic rules, because in the interesting cases the rules are jammed. But such deontic rules dees not being beyond imply being beyond rational procedures, indeed procedures that may be represented by way of rules (though not controlled by deontic rules). The rational procedures in question are essentially those of decision theory. What is required is a decision as to what can be done in the circumstances; and this can be determined by relevant alternatives. be of something weighing up the expected outcomes and selecting among The selectiin may be of the best in the circumstance; satisfactory in the circumstances. The approach adopted pluralistic, allowing for both maximizing and satisizing procedures. 29 the it may can be Maximizers will of course argue that it would be irrational to select anything but the best among the alternatives (given that it was conceded to be the best); But satisizers will resist arguments.what such elaborates is what upon we a under do decision done normally this:- Set out the relevant alternatives, action courses of alternative. to us open Select a best, i.e. way - is - merely which in outline the results that the different list to. analysis intuitive more i.e. lead will a in theory Determine the of each likely value with maximum likely value, an alternative or a The basic procedure is childishly simple, but filling sufficiently good alternative. out the details may be extremely difficult or even impossible in a satisfactory way. The in problems, normally order increasing alternatives open, establishing their probability, rankings to them. things these cases, favourable more delineating the assigning values or desirability techniques from decision theory however for doing all There are in are: difficulty, of and in less circumstances favourable guestimates can be made or resort had to fuzzy methods. To descend to concrete applications (where procedures may be clearer than at the theoretical level), consider again the Platonic dilemma discussed by Lemmon, where I ought to return my friend’s gun and also ought not to do so. The alternatives are to return the gun and have the wife shot, or to return the gun avoiding a shooting but thereby breaking an undertaking. the alternative first wife It is certain, in the circumstances, that under the will be shot, highly a undesirable outweighing the lesser undesirability of the second alternative. the value of second Since the expected first, exceeds that of the alternative considerably much outcome, the best thing in the circumstances is to return the gun. However undertaking goes Lemmon to seriously the return ’to gun suggesting that one sacrifices one’s astray in utilitarian considerations’ No doubt (p.152). utilitarian considerations would bring out (could be massaged to bring out, rather) a But the fact is that no consideration (or interpersonal comparisons) similar result. of the utilities pleasures and pains contemplated. ’’critical involves an (whoever Lemmon utilitarian ones. the everybody of (involved they confuses are), the in is made, consequentialist universe, or or even needs whatever), to considerations with be their remotely much narrower Similarly the recipe Hare suggests for resolving moral dilemmas at level”, namely illegitimate resort to assimilation act-utilitarianism of (see, consequentialist e.g. 82, considerations p.43), under utilitarianisms. In certain respects Lemmon’s Platonic dilemma is not a good example of a moral dilemma; tougher in particular, dilemmas, the it is too easily resolved, and so characteristic features of pain, emerge, moral dilemmas can anguish, indecision, get omitted. As thus begins to be divided roughly into two types, easy and hard. 30 Easy dilemmas are those that are comparatively easy to find a way through eventually, and But hard ones are those that leave people caught in the dilemma so are resolvable. at least uncomfortable irresolvable. they whatever to choose and do, are so in a good sense Though a way-through or a way-out may be charted by decision methods, it is a way that leaves those involved morally uneasy, dissatisfied, or worse. For at the far hard end of the spectrum lie those dilemmas of tragic dimensions. Although consequential decision rationally within moral dilemma theory provides a for model how proceed to situations, by no means everyone confronted with a moral dilemma will apply such procedures in an intuitive way, even though many will. For one thing, there is plenty of scope for bad faith, irrationality and and more generally, for non-rational procedures; and severe moral dilemmas often enough induce non-rational and even paralytic or self-destructive modes in those who are caught in them. another, For there are indirect ways of obtaining the effects of decision theory, analogue decision theory so to say. Counselling, whether through a friend or a professional counsellor, is an important analogue: there the discussive mode helps to bring out eludicating of and assemble alternatives, undesirability of each. the and elements the of the advantages decision and approach, the desirability and theory drawbacks, Alternatively, or as well, these elements may be bought out by reflecting on a range of similar situations and experience there using these cases as some sort of precedent, in particular, for determining value rankings of alternatives open. Moral dilemmas have corollaries for moral ways of doing things. is that perfectibility of the moral scheme of things is impossible. One corollary Any sufficiently rich set of rules risks inconsistency, and will be inconsistent if completed. dilemmas are thus inevitable be; in the larger scheme of things. Moral This is as it should for it is in this way especially that moral development occurs and moral stature is obtained. 31 ^A much earlier version of this paper was presented by the second author at the Australian National University in 1975. Subsequently much of the paper was lost; what survived is largely incorporated in the first three sections, especially §3. However the new version takes over the leading ideas of the initial version. The authors are much indebted for comments and criticism to C. Pigden, R. Goodin and G. Priest. was ^This even true Maliy’s of pioneering system of 1926 which permitted replacement of logical equivalents within the scope of obligation function 0 (see F & Von Wright’s seminal work H p.3). (in 51), which set the pattern for mainstream deontic logic, was explicitly based on the modal comparison of deontic functors with modal functors, and built modal that break the modal systems, exceptional assumptions in at the bottom of the theory. The connection, are deontic systems based on relevant logics on such systems see RLR, chapter 8. ^These paradoxes are explained, obligation, paradoxes of derived and their see modal bases exposed, On the for some of the p.224; and Prior 62, further in §5. considerable literature on paradoxes like those of the Robber and Good Samaritan, see anthologies and the Hilpinen A detailed uniform treatment of especially Vermazen. all these and other deontic paradoxes in the framework of relevant logic is given in RLR II. 4In its equivalent form, Op => ~Fp, i.e. what is obligatory is not forbidden, it is the dubbed ’’Bentham’s Law” by von Wright 81, p.2. 5In a way, furthermore, avoids that the , problems Hare’s and complexities attempt to transfer a levels-resolution to deontic paradoxes would lead to if worked out paradoxes. the compare properly: any In counterintuitively, case, that problems of semantical if we were even ’ought’ is ambiguous levels say, to as to Hare as levels, avoid to some semantical proposes, but tinkering would still be required to fix up a deontic calculus at each level. Moreover, there are good grounds for doubting that the so far ill-characterised and artificial distinction of levels that Hare wants to impose can be satisfactorily made out. For one thing, critical hardly the holds up; level for separation intuitive of the paradoxes intuitive are from the typical of rational or act utilitarian assessments at the upper level, and we can be rational and critical, and ask for why- explanations, at both levels. ^There are various different form, OA, OB -> ^It is this principle can take, e.g. also a rule 0(A & B), and a rather useless material form, OA & OB =>. 0(A & B). tried criticised below. forms however by Schotch and Jennings, p.152; their argument is It is also suggested by Barcan Marcus, p.134., and toyed with by 32 Williams o In particular Lemmon, taking off from Sartre, has argued this in two important papers, neglected in mere recent philosophical literature on moral dilemmas and moral conflict. earlier Recent British work, in literature that it could logical further the next note). on conflict of values has particular, profitably have taken into ignored account (see Such an uninformed approach is however not uncharacteristic of British philosophy. ^Especially Lemmon’s work 62 and 65. But although Lemmon suggests (in 62, e.g. p.150) that there are no logical problems in accommodating moral dilemmas, including those of the form 0(A & ~A), none of the systems of deontic logic he presents (e.g. in 65), not even the very weak systems, can do so without trivialising. The reasons for collapse are the modal ones already explained. Apart from the work of Lemmon and a few who follow him, work which at least suggests the need for a bridge even if it does not offer so much as good working plans for one, the literature on moral dilemmas tends to bifurcate - into purely philosophical material which does not address the logical issues, and largely logical material which characteristically avoids the crucial moral issue of dilemmas, which the logics espoused cannot handle (and maybe because of that: otherwise the logical literature On the regrettable lack of interaction between deontic logicians disputes the data). and ethicists, the latter being the worse offenders, see also Thomason’s notes. 10 In fact the latter implication of O-transmission could be much weakened for the purpose of the arguments, e.g. the form A B - > OA D OB would serve to make the point. 11 Gumanski 80 affords a good example of the complication resulting, complication readily removed by relevant logic relocation. 12 The argument thoroughtly for this fallacious. ’principle of deontic contingency’ Either an in F & H, p.13, is illegitimate quantificational conversion (from some to all) or a modal confusion (from p & ~p to q & ~q) is used to get from P(p & ~p) for some p - which is all the denial of deontic contingency gives - to Pq, that is, to ’everything is permitted’. 1^For see axiom, (D1) Op =>~0~p, of the standard systems as formulated in F & H, p.13, and use the interdefinability of P and 0, e.g. PB 4 1 ~0~B. There would be little point in presenting features of the epicycling systems of types (iii)-(v) in any detail since all will be quickly dismissed. In any event, details can be found in the Hilpinen surveys 33 (71 and 81), texts which are ir fact restricted to epicycling positions within the dominant modal paradigm for deontic Even Schotch and Jennings, who do question some minimal principles, remain logics. staunchly the within modal sphere, their as possible worlds and semantics their substitutivity principles reveal. 15 F & H, p.8, in support p.16. This consistency interpretation appears to have extensive Scandinavia. Of course if consistency were meant in a different sense (that of regularity), it would be different. But it is not: see the development in F & H, p.l6ff. 16 Cf. Lemmon: philosophers that ’It ... does the not to seem adoption of have been new morality a associated with the confrontation of a moral dilemma. much by observed an agent ethical by is frequently Indeed, it is hard to see what else would be likely to bring about a change of moral outlook other than having to make a difficult moral decision’ (62, p155). not settled without so to speak Similarly Barcan Marcus (p.12): ’although idealistically, a source of moral motion. dilemmas are is, Moral inconsistency residue, the recognition of their reality has a dynamic force. 17 In 1975 when the paper was first drafted and presented this example was still topical. However at most times in modern human history there are many candidates to substitute for variable V. 18 In the narrow scheme of standard deontic logic, these would be recast in terms of the forbidden functor F, defined as 0~. However in relevant logic settings, it is a further question, not settled by the framework whether W reduces to 0~. * ^Williams 20 are Jim-Pedro example (in 81) is of this type. As there are other war dilemmas, and especially nuclear war dilemmas, so there other violence. pacifist dilemmas, e.g. the problem of violence to prevent greater On nuclear war dilemmas, and on the main pacifist dilemma, see the War and Peace series. 21 For many of the contractual arrangements, isomorphism, known moral dilemmas we consider, especially those there are analogous legal dilemmas. preserving very many important logical generated by For there is a wellfeatures between moral obligations and rights and wrongs and corresponding legal obligations and rights and wrongs. The complexity of legal frameworks, the relatively independent design of using parts and divine numerous lack of design control legal of likelihood the dilemmas and sources decidedly complexity to high. analogous An is dilemmas moral for consistency, or checks argument considered in render the fjrom the McConnell, p.275ff. pp Lemmon’s final treatment, but (fifth) type of ’’moral dilemma” does so far resist more formal is that the mainly because class concerned description and lacks even clear working examples. so far These are, defies adequate roughly, situations ‘in which an agent has to make a decision of a recognisably moral character though he is completely unprepared ... by his present moral outlook’ and has somehow to fashion a new moral outlook. is There so far of here nothing especial paraconsistent concern. By no means all the types of situations falling under Lemmon’s ’classification of moral dilemmas’ (62, classifying types of first class and p.156) are dilemmas. situation’, ‘moral the classification starts out is nothing dilemmatic about there and which Lemmon about the second, little Indeed the ‘does not wish to call ... moral dilemmas, because [as with the first] in all the cases our moral situation is perfectly clear’ (p.143). The main types of moral dilemmas Lemmon discerns, the third and fourth classes, are precisely those treated in the text. The concurrence even of several different, 23()f course the control is limited. perhaps apparently independent, logical approaches is no sure guide to correctness of an explication or has to answer back satisfactorily to The matter still account. preanalytic principles. 22* In dilemmas, the initial version of this paper three into types (0, 0~; complication was based on a mistake, collapse. are F, a rather F~; and artificial classification of 0,F) was proposed. But this that equation of 0~A and FA would lead to modal And, apparently a more natural and simpler theory does emerge if 0~ and F equated. Naturally definitional than coentailment. More highly equation intensional in this context does not differences between the imply more notions, which there are, remain unaffected. What holds for F does not automatically transfer independently. ^The labels and Jennings. [RM] and [K], convenient to P. Perhaps P should be treated in what follows, are taken from Schotch Note that although symbolically virtually the same as the originals, they symbolize different determinate principles. ^See as well as RLR I, Routley 72, Routley and Meyer 73 and OP. 35 the 2?Under four-valued American plan for relevant logic * can be semantics, avoided. But here the superior two-valued Australian plan is followed. 2&Though here we simply take the rule over from standard deontic semantics, it can be argued in several ways, explained (though usually for the analogous necessity functor) as in RLR. class of such A, b One way is this:- in situation a, where OA holds, consider the i.e. {C: I(OC, a) = 1}. This gives an initially acceptable set up with respect to a; and indeed would yield the sought rule (with S improved to a but for 1-1 relation) fail, conditions the fact that bo may not be a world because required closure conspicuously We primeness. can however extend though not ba, uniquely, so that world requirements are met. The picture looks like this: S is the composition of the function (from a to b ) and the extension (to the b-’s). The b.’s are the accepted worlds vis-a-vis a. ^The point and role of evaluative step-down is explained in Routley 83. 3°The strategy resembles that earlier in Routley and Meyer 75 in Plainly there is room for other postulates, formulating explicitly dialethic logic. e.g. exploited In virtue of the model theorem Ot, where 0p2 where p2 is not dilemmatic, etc. t is any tautology, such a postulate is guaranteed in standard deontic logic, but it is rightly left as an option in relevant deontic logic, and also in Barcan Marcus. third 31A type of argument for rejecting [KJ is implicit in Schotch and and also in Barcan Marcus, namely that without [K] both moral conflict and Jennings, the Kantian ought-implies-can principle can be retained. That supposes of course that the Kantian principle is a desirable one, worth going considerably out of one’s logical way disaster to retain. [KJ But the is not from the combination of Kantian only in principle involved theory with moral dilemmas: reaching other equally solid and respectable principles than [KJ could be considered for rejection. ^2At this logic and point we do detour analyses of moral beyond our dilemmas, to look critique of modalisation of deontic at some separate puzzles in deontic logic - which have also been used against the idea of a formal treatment of ethics. And the approach we take to these further 36 puzzles - by limiting transmission in the fashion of weaker, and deeper logics - is largely independent of principles, the reaminder IN short, we could have taken a different approach to paper. of the these transmission puzzles, without varying the rest of the paper. 33 Of course it can be argued that one is storing up problems for (much) later on when the logical theory repenting have fuller a better developed, is much more fully developed, and predicates like those of logical role. so also will be presumably when But the logical theory is the distinctions between types of predicates and those sustaining transmission. 34 It is common practice indict deontic logic by so stating the deontic ’'paradox" that they smuggle in much more than a satisfactory entailment relation could warrant and more even than a modal relation would grant. paradoxes will be presented as arguments Here is an example. These [deontic] against Consider the Good Samaritan paradoxes formulated the "standard" as follows: deontic logics. 1) A is obligated to help an injured criminal 2) If A is obligated to do B then A is obligated to do whatever B entails. (This is a principle of the standard deontic logics.) 3) There could not be an injured criminal if someone did not commit a crime. So 4) A is obligated to bring it about that someone commit a crime. (From 1- 3 by the standard deontic logics.) The So 5) logics are standard deontic (For flawed. 4) is outrageous, though its premisses are not.) Entailment principles do not justify the importing of 'bringing about' in clause 4). 35 And wrong to rob him and not rob him, and so on. Conjunction is not here connexive with one conjunct undercutting another - though connexive deontic logic is what some seem to be seeking. ^Accordingly Morscher's retreat to "rational norms" and "rational legislating" is But unnecessary. presupposed again that a deontic Morscher the grasps key point, that von Wright has logic must contain certain consistency-type principles, and that 'this presupposition need not be fulfilled' (p.98). 37 Schotch and Jennings, community of moral philosophers' philosophy, analysis. where claim 'widespread support for (a) among the (a) is the theme 'that cases of real moral Most likely this claim, like most such sociological claims conflict cannot occur'. in (pp.152-3) is merely impressionistic, and not based on any sort of survey or But we expect further investigation would tend to confirm it. no J Thus, to take just one example: there appears to be a conflict 'One may be in a situation of course in which of principles each of which appears categorically 37 binding - but natural reflection will ultimately show that one or other must prevail’ Benn (p.5). But examples abound. The reason reflection removes inconsistency is that obligations do not collide. We have it from Kant himself Because however duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the objective practical necessity of certian actions, ... it follows that a conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntor). (Metaphysis of Morals, cited in Barcan Marcus, p.323.) But does it world the (merely) practical follow not of without action However necessity. sweeping a but the worlds concering consistency assumption picked out by function not of objective these worlds are, moral dilemmas certainly appear to show, sometimes inconcistent. There are depending what is the explanation can go, various different ways and contractual arrangements a route like that of Hobbes through Rawls will be followed. Given less, taken e.g. granted. for only grounded example, For or preferences given choice individual behaviour, interests a semantical route might be And so on. tried. 110 The inadequacy of modal accounts of inconsistency is explained in detail in RLR, chapter 5. ji -1 These examples and most of those that follow were suggested by C. Pigden, who also supplied the references. HO The first quote is from Kenny, p.75, the second from Skinner, p.7, both of which furnish additional details. 4^Cf. Kenny, p.78. 24/4 According to MacIntyre 66. The situation of Agamemnon and Oedipus are remarked upon in Williams 81, p.80. There there are is not a substantial and cannot literature be general arguing, not entirely universally applicable principles in all circumstances of their application. conclusively, rules for that ranking of Thus, for example, Ross, p.41, also discussed in Barcan Marcus, p.124, Barcan Marcus, p.135, Hare 82, pp.32-4. It seems that such a result would be proved, as regards effective rules, by methods of reversion theory. 38 ^The relevant; points Hare makes concerning anguish remorse and (82, pp.29-30) are they apply also against his own proposal to treat all principles as prima facie. But points concerning anguish and guilt are not decisive; account of how these attitudes arise can be given from for one thing, an modal a angle (cf. the discussion in Barcan Marcus, p.127). ^By no means all dilemmas require resolution, e.g. those of no practical import such as purely theoretical dilemmas of freedom, etc. liberty, These can, in principle, just stand. 48 As Lemmon explains (in 62), really following Sartre, there is considerable scope for bad faith and opting out of our responsibilities here, e.g. pretending that no decision is called for, or that another has preempted the decision, or that the decision is otherwise determined or out of our own control. 49No doubt we could tough it out dialectically, but the basis for doing so is Any lacking. adherence contradictions to calles for especially rigorous justification 500n satisizing decision theory, and the dialectic between maximizers and satisizers, see MS. Fuzzy decision theory is however only in the initial stages of development at present. 5^This is just one of several reasons why Hare’s grand synthesis (in 82) of Kant and the utilitarians, initially appealing in its two level tidiness and simplicity, goes down the philosophical drain. A main reason is that the synthesis is built upon, and incorporates, consistency and modal assumptions, and so is inadequate moral data to be accounted for theoretically (see further War and Peace II). to the REFERENCES R. Barcan Marcus, 121-136. Journal of Philospohy 77 (1980) ’Moral dilemmas and consistency , * S. I. Benn, ’Public and private morality: clean living and dirty hands’ in Public and Private in Social Life (ed. S.I. Benn and G.F. Gaus), Croom Helm, London & Canberra, 1983, 155-182. A. Donegan, The Theory of Morality, Chigago University Press, Chicago, 1977. D. Follesdal and R. Hilpinen, ’Deontic pp.1-35; referred to as F & H. B. C. logic: van Fraassen, ’The logic of conditional Logic 1 (1972) 417-38. an introduction’ Hilpinen in obligation’. Journal 1971, of Philospohical L. Gumanski, ’On deontic logic’, Studia Logica 39 (1980) 63-75. S. Hampshire (ed), Public and Private Morality, Cambridge University Press, 1978. R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, Clarendon, Oxford, 1963. R.M. Hare, Moral Thinking, Conflicts’). Clarendon, Oxford, 1982 (see especially chapter 2 ’Moral R. Harrison, Rational Action, Cambridge University Press, 1979. R. Hilpinen (ed). Deontic Dordrecht, 1971. Logic: Introductory and Systematic Readings, Reide1, R. Hilpinen (ed), New Studies in Deontic Logic, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1981. A. Kenny, The God of the Philosophers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979. E.J. Lemmon, ’Moral dilemmas’, Philosophical Review 71 (1962) 139-58. E.J. Lemmon,’ Deontic (1965) 39-71. Logic and the T. McConnell, ’Moral dilemmas and Philosophy 8 (1978) 269-87. logic of imperatives’, consistency in ethics’, Logique et Canadian Analyse 8 Journal A. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966. of 39 A. A. Martino (ed.), Deotnic Logic, Computational Systems, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1982. Linguistics and Legal Information E. Morscher, ’Antinomies and incompatibilities within normative languages’ in Martino 82, pp.83-102. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1971; hereafter OED. G. Priest and R. Routley, On Paraconsistency, Research Australian National University, 1983; hereafter OP. in Papers Logic, #13, A.N. Prior, Formal Logic, Second edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962. A.N. Prior, ’Escapism: the logical basis of ethics' (ed. A.I. Melden), Seattle, 1958. in Essays in Moral Philosophy, W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good, Oxford University Press, New York, 1930. R. Routley, ’War and Peace I. On the ethics of large-scale nuclear war and war­ deterrence, and the political fall-out’, Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy, #5, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1983. R. Routley, ’On the alleged inconsistency and moral insensitivity and fanaticism of pacifism’, Inquiry 26 (1984) , ; also War and Peace II. R. Routley, ’Maximizing, satisficing, satisizing: the difference in real and rational behaviour under rival paradigms’, Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy, #10, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1984; hereafter MS. R. and V. Routley, ’The semantics of first degree entailment’, Nous 6 (1972) 335-59. R. and V. Routley, ’Semantical foundations of value theory’, Nous (1983) 441—56. R. Routley and R.k. Meyer, ’The semantics of entailment I’, in Truth, Syntax, and Modality (ed. H. Leblanc) North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1973» pp.199-243. R. Routley and R.K. Meyer, ’Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency of the world’, Studies in Soviet Thought 16 (1976) 1-25. R. Routley and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, Part I (1982) and Part II (1984); referred to as RLR I and RLR II respectively. A. Ryan, The Idea of Freedom, Oxford, 1970. P. Schotch and pp.149-62. R.E. Jennings, ’Non-Kripkean deontic logic’, in Hilpinen 81, 40 Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern University Press, Cambridge, 1978. Political Thought, Volume 11, Cambridge R. M. Thomason, ’Deontic logic as founded on tense logic’, in Hilpinen 81, pp.165-175. B. Vermazen, 'The (1977) 1-71. logic of practical 'ought’-sentences’, Philosophical Studies 32 B. Williams, Moral Luck, Cambridge United Press, 1981. B. Williams, 'Conflict of values' in Williams 81, pp.71-82; also in Ryan 79. G.H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1951. G.H. von Wright, ’On the logic of norms/ and actions’, M. Hilpinen 81, pp.3-35. G.H. ven Wright, ’Norms, truth and logic’ in Martino 82, pp.3-20. TYRANT MOPE ON NOPAL DILEMMAS 1. ethics. 2. Revolutionising Possible heading, why the failure to comprehend moral dilemmas. All these Reading force^'^^e off in other directions. Undoubtedly a great deal of ethics has been messed up by a failure to understand moral dilemmas. ' ... The failure is often reported; for instance human since justifiable claims ... and are rights claims, they be outweighed by other As in all conflicts of moral principles, human rights reasons must be weighed other moral can against one another by an as yet poorly understood and ill-defined process' (Rajfles, p.42). The failure shows up on the apparent clash between doing ethics by way of principles and doing ethics consistency reasons, principles. vor principles break down, through examples. or dilemmatic And examples. examples it is thought for air^. thought to refute A proper approach to dilemmas removes the tension between examples and principles and allows a synthesis to be achieved. 3. Moral rectitude. Now is notion this to be unpacked0 mhere are competing explanations, e.g. 1) in terms of obligation and deontics; 2) by way of consequentialist rectitude decisive. assessment. Pettit to make moral mhen it requires assessment thus 3) Method 1) unless dilemma; otherwise method 2\ rectitude so it is absolute in terms of O. 4. wants This is impossible. Mcjlly's system has no moral dilemmas, since ~fu For it proves trivial deontically. But he also wants to run 0~u^ - at least intentionally. Aquinas denies certain moral dilemmas, e.g. Np & F~p, in the doctrine concerning perplexus simpliciter F & N p.12. 5. Investigate further the connection of permitted and accepted worlds, and commission? This 'possibly permitted' does not involve discussed in NNL. the fallacy of reducing permission * 'permissible to It does tie with the suggested connection of commission and omission through the * function. 2 6. Is problem of the individual in society, of a person in politics, an organisation or a company of this type i.e. dilemma of freedom? Of. a dilemma that can just stand, like the theoretical also Machiavellian a problem: person in public must (morally?) act evilly sometimes. 7. of PUBLIC distinction The moralities. VS MORALITIES PRIVATE implies that there are two The BASE ARGUMENT against is this: But there are not two. if we acknowledge this conception of morality as requiring some action as the thing to do, how, logically speaking, could there be two moralities0 the thing to do when they conflict? overriding reason for action?^ How could morality then What is provide an Similarly &n utilitarianism single maximisation recipe and results. (/? DOEBN'01 REQUIRE KANTIANISM.) However A can to be subject conflicting public and private claims. Seen this way ^public vs private just generates.heap of further moral dilemmas, and the 2 moralities ^is just shoddy attempt to escape these dilemmas, expedient (i.e. would become n shoves morality out as in the Hinduism resolution dilemmas. of often in a way that’s politically of the way for expediency'1. The 2 moralities * int if pursued this distinction-making attempt at / Something special about public/private case0 Or differently, why are arguments from expedience so much more acceptable in public sphere0 Be^n gives r interest some reasons, but these oughtn't to justify a difference. | public interest DIRTY HANDS PROBLEM (PARADOX) is like GOOD SAM? behalf of the statecommitting murder. Sometimes it is right get one's hands dirty. E.g. Doing such and such on OR just a straight dilemma? to try to succeed, and then it must also be right to But one's hands get dirty from doing what it is wrong to do. And how can it be wrong to do what is right? Or how can we get our hands dirty by doing what we ought to do9 Z M. Walzer, Philosophy and Public Affairs, moral 2, 10°^, dilemma. 164. Op Walzer sees this as a tragic dilemma: p-> q Oq, but 0~q. Example: but really a torturing captured terrorist to extract information to save innocent lives. The problems start from questions of relations between two different moralities. Conclusion: 8. Conflict conscience 'that, the public to at its most liberal, loyalty, overriding moral liberalism in end. to a On between will stand the individual, tried committed concern for its collective interest, the one hand the individual as a relate this ambiguous model of the a individual and as an autonomous, citadel, on the other, the overriding perverse, wilful obstacles in the way of the general will. to with no gainsaying, and the claims of possessed of liberties that only he himself can waive, by consent; State, equipped society, not T have only to liberal conceptions of what belongs to the private and what to the public, but also to the tension between a morality of principles and one of valued outcomes, which, in my view, is very closely connected with the ambiguity of the model . * ("Renn? 9. Argument for weak paraconsistent position. Morality is a guide to action. Action is consistent. So have to r?l consistencize. ^Inconclusive"1. Like law one consistencizes (e.g. for action^ alright. But that confirms that it is inconsistent in the first place. 10. The difference. fought distinction is, it It hands the opposition its case. is objected, a Simply not so. distinction without a The following have been redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. • • • • • Letter, unidentified author to Richard, 27 Jul 1984 re Moral dilemmas. (2 pages (1 leaf)) Reference card and handwritten paper, ? Alchourron and Bulygin (1 reference card + 5 leaves) Letter, Charles to Richard, undated re New Studies in Deontic Logic and Castañeda's proposed deontic logic. (2 pages) Cuttings from unidentified publication, The paradoxes of deontic by Hector-Neri Castañeda (page 46-47), and Some main problems of deontic by Jaakko Hintikka 9page 94-96. (2 leaves) Letter, unidentified author to Richard, with annotations by Sylvan?, undated, re Moral dilemmas. (7 leaves) Ml Although the sorts of examples we have described seem familiar enough, it might well be disputed that they are correctly described as cases of Op and 0~p, or in the alternative representation as cases of Fp & F~p. The main ground for this is the belief that 19. in any such case one of the parties to the conflict is less wrong, and that this one can be claimed to be not really wrong at all. There are however several objections to this move to neutralise the dilemmas (1) First, wrong party. there is no guarantee that there always is a less Both parties may be equally wrong, no way of deciding which is less wrong. Vietnam example; To take and there may be our hypothetical if we withdraw half a million people will die; but if we do not withdraw the war will continue and half a million people will die; clearly the example may be elaborated. There may be no grounds for choice. (2) The fact that one party is less wrong than the alternative is no grounds for saying that it is not wrong at all. In fact the case would normally be described as one of choice between " two evils", two wrong aciwsese©; if one chooses the lesser of two evils, then one still chooses an evil. ing One is simply not justified in claim1 that, where p involves killing 10 people, p is not wrong simply on the grounds that ~p involves killing 15 people, any more than one is in the case of preference theory justified in saying that p, which brings a gift of $10, is not a good thing simply on the grounds that ~p brings a gift of $11. things; (3) They are both good and in our moral case, both are wrong. If we do say this, plainly it will be very difficult to find any moral principles which can be asserted with any confidence universally. In fact it will probably be possible to find hypothetical counterexamples to any statement of the form "All actions of type x are wrong", just by producing a case where p is an action of type x, but ~p is an even worse action. that p, although an action of type x, is not wrong, It will follow so we will have However, a counterexample. it seems to be important that we should be able to assert such general principles, and doing so gives us an essential way of assessing, morally, (4) Finally, types of actions. the proposed redescription of the case as involving only one wrong element, the one which is more wrong, leaves out an essential feature of such a case, that it is a dilemma, case where one cannot but act wrongly. If we omit this element the case is not properly described, it is falsified; a we may as a result find ourselves unable to explain many resulting features of the situation which result from the conflict, e.g. human behavioural features >n such a situation involving hesitation, doubt, inaction, perhaps anguish and guilt. All these will appear quite irrational. (5) Assigning a priority to our moral rules itself does nothing to resolve the logical problem raised by the dilemmas, (although it may solve the practical problem of how best to act). % For this logical problem iX the problem of how to arrange our logic so as to be able to describe such cases adequately and without falsification or incon-sisteney. Arranging a priority, so that A one alternative can be claimed to be less wrong, does not solve the logical problem, which is that whatever happens will be wrong, that T cannot be identical with I. The consequence that whatever happens is wrong cannot be removed unless as well as a priority assignment one also adopts the principle that what is less wrong is not wrong at all. But this principle leads to inconsistency for then the less wrong action is both wrong and not wrong. To be consistent this method must introduce a new concept of wrong in addition to the old one, say "wrong2" , and the less wrong action can be said to be not "wrong2". But now the original problem is 21. still not eliminated, because the problem was not that whatever be is . happened would /'wrong2" (although this/now false), but that whatever happened would be wrong, which is still true. sort of priority - dominated concept cannot replace, may supplement, the original concept. And this although it Sf- The problem of classifying these dilemmas. z mainly using the term ’wrong’. We have stated our dilemmas However, it may seem that this is ambiguous, and that it is possible, or desirable, to make a further distinction, between pi inciples which are obligatory and principles which are prohibitory. For wrongs can be due to two very different causes - om^iission or commission. The distinction between obligation and prohibition principles can be explained initially as follows: an obligation principle of the form Op read ’it ought to be the case that p’,Qt is f ? L ' r jT f'.Jlz.f:? /t/tjyJ /4-< 'it ought to come about that p'. This says that something, p, ought to should happen that p'A, r, happen, an ideal situation I. that is^ that it is a member of & A situation^satisfies Op, Op if p is not in it then, if p is In it ( p eaJ;and violates p's presence satisfies Op, whereas (pZ S?) • £ ["Obligation" Z7 —:----- is ’ being used here its omission or absence violates it. in a somewhat unusual sense, 4 for Lemmon seems to be right in urging that obligations are usually contractual in nature. and contracts may be contracts to do something or to refrain from However, we doing something - hence both positive and negative. must press 'obligation' and 'obligatory' and adjective corresponding to it * into service as a noun ought to be the case that' in order to avoid clumsiness and for lack of any other suitable words. The other class of principles, hand, we shall write prohibitive principles, on the other 'Ep' and read 'it is forbidden that p'. These principles claim that p is the sort of action which should p is not a member of the ideal situation I. be avoided satisfies Fp, situation a such that p Z such that pea violates it. a situation a whereas p's omission or absence satisfies Fp, whereas pSoccurrence or presence violates it. is paralleled on the obligations) The distinction action level by the distinction between action and by that between and inaction, A 'sins of omission' and 'sins of commision' A (which violate (which violate prohibitions). 'I have done those things which I ought not to have done' violating a prohibition but also, and not equivalently, not done those things which I ought to have done', thus 'I have thus violating An obligation is satisfied by doing something, an obligation. a prohibition by failing to do something, by avoiding something. It is important not to confuse 0~p, which says that should happen' or 'that ~p 'It is wrong that p', with Fp which says ’that p should not happen', or it * should not happen that p'. This distinction is clear, as a scope distinction, in the English reading However the two are continually confused in modal treatments of But deontic logic, since given Modal Muddle p / I = ~p g I. that to say/p should happen is not to say anything about what should not happen but leaves the issue as to whether ~p should or should And to say that p should not happen is not say and 0~p tells anything about ~p,/whether it should happen or not. not happen open. aj us that ~p is a member of I, where.Fp tells us that p is not a member of 1.^ Dilemmas then seem to fall into three classes depending upon whether the principles which lead to them are obligation or prohibition principles^or both. Fp and F~p, Thus we obtain Op and 0~p, and Op and Fp from our examples depending upon how the principles involved are construed^ a<Tprohibitory or obligatory. (A): Dilemmas obtained from prohibition principles, Fp, % F~p1. i.e. cases of We obtain cases of this sort given principles of the * form. — (1) Whenever P satisfies condition C, (Action form: (2) it shouldn't happen that p. action of type x are wrong) it shouldn't happen that p. A Whenever p satisfies condition C', The dilemma is obtained where p satisfies condition C, ~p satisfies condition C'. Jo O F and - ■L Give the semantical reading of 0 and F?and the examples with 'wrong' . Then mention the necessity for distinction between 0~p and Fp. (1) Wrongs divide into sins of omission and sins of commission. (2) These are semantically different. (3) Unless one distinguishes these concepts semantically have the consistency assumption again. Give the readings. one will 10. Examples can also be obtained from two distinct prohibitory These are cases where the state of affairs described principles. (for reasons given by the first by p is really indescribable principle) (for different reasons given by the second principle). able, * (tndesir For/(B) and the state of affairs described by ~p is m^-ally The second category of dilemmas are dilemmas obtained from obligation principles i.e. cases of Op & O~p, for some p. We obtain cases of this sort given principles of the form:(1) Whenever p satisfies condition C, (2) Whenever p satisfies condition C', it should happen that p it should happen that p. The dilemma is obtained when for a given p, p satisfies condition C and ~p satisfies condition C': (C) Finally, so Op and O~p. examples derived from conflicting but not inconsistent moral principles, which urge both that p should occur and that it should not occur i.e. and prohibited. cases of Op and Fp, where p is both enjoined These cases come about where are principles of the following sort: (1) Whenever p satisfies condition C, p should happen. (2) Whenever p satisfies condition C', p should not happen. The dilemma results because one can find cases one and the same state of affairs C and condition C'? e.g. (p) (in T) where satisfies both condition as^our example derived from Lemmon's uAcrw-tt bolew, x gives back the gun and helping a murderer. (p) is a case both of keeping a promise But promises must be kept, so Op holds. However actions which help murderers are forbidden and should not occur; examples, hence Fp also holds. unlike the previous kind, It seems that these sorts of cannot be generated by a single moral principle, but requires two principles which come into conflict. With a certain degree of artifice we can arrange our examples into these categories, with f A) groups being prohibitions the (fe)groups obligations, and the (C) groups mixed. It is necessary then to avoid the modal treatment and to But though 0 principles and F principles distinguish 0~ and F. are distinct, 0 and F provide alternatives bases for (semantically) The O-principles correspond semantically to deontic system. inclusion principles,the F formulated principles to exclusion Thus e.g. principles. TRfH 5® where iff iff TROH * , (UH) (TRfH oX(p,H) = f) In contrast, I(Fp,T) = t iff (UH) TROH d Kp,H) Thus the modellingswill mirror f) . one another, with R Rf For the representation of principles then we can work satisfactorily with an O-basis, or with an F-basis, but not with a mixed basis which uses both 0 and F principles. Failure to distinguish 0~p and Fp will provide a ground for the mistaken consistency assumption: iff p i H. for it will follow from evaluation rules 12. The cases described satisfy the characterisation of moral For the principles involved are not inconsistent, yet dilemmas. they are not satisfiable in T. In the case of the first set of leading to Fp and F~p, dilemmas, the principles could not be satisfied unless neither p nor ~p occurred. necessarily complete, But since T is they cannot be satisfied in T. of the second set of examples, Op and 0~p, In the case the principles could only be satisfied if both p and ~p occur, hence since T is con­ sistent, they cannot be satisfied in T. different. The third case is very Here it cannot be satisfied because one and the same proposition satisfies both conditions for occurring and conditions for not occurring? this proposition, hence our principles direct, with respect to that it should occur and that it should not occur. This also cannot be satisfied in T, since p is either a member of T, or not a member of T. The principles involved are not however inconsistent ones; for in each case a finite proposition modelling of the principles can be provided. In the third case, directives, despite the fact there are inconsistent given a contingent proposition p^, which satisfies the antecedent conditions, no inconsistency need result because such a proposition p^ may not occur. In other words, though the principles together with p^ form an inconsistent set, p-^ is essential and can be deleted from the set since contingent; and the set without p1 as the principles on their own are satisfactory is consistent, where no antecedents satisfy both, a po£S»4ta- case. ■ v r • The principles ** (a. though inconsistent in application are not inconsistent^ i In the first two cases(they are T consistent?) also it is a contingent matter that the principles come i ... into^ cannot be satisfied in T; r; for detachment of a contingent truth is made, viz that the given ? proposition satisfies the conditions. 13. since they constantly arise““without sacrificing the generality of moral principles. For unless carefully treated dilemmas will/ as we shall see, provide counterexamples to moral principles. Our moral dilemmas result from judgements which cannot be satisfied in T, so that whatever happens will be wrong. Howe is there/still quite a crucial difference between the first two classes and the third class of dilemma. In the third case the result of the dilemma on detachment of a contingent premiss that p satisfies c and c' simultaneously is an inconsistency, cannot both belong and not belong to the ideal set-up I. since p Although the principles upon which the judgement Op and Fp was based were not themselves mutually inconsistent, moral judgerent they do result in a inconsistent that p both ought to happen and ought not to happen is prohibited from happening. Given that p has both properties, the moral principles concerned are in conflict. This is brought out by the fact that if p does satisfy these conditions, cannot be any situation, T-like or not, there in which the principles are satisfied. Furthermore here we have a case where each moral judgement provides a counterexample to the other. If Op and Fp both obtained, both the principles from which they were derived would be false; principle for Op would provide a counterexample to the prohibitory (p) (if p satisfies c’ then Fp) since Op ~Fp; while Fp would provide a counterexample to the obligatory principle (if p satisfies c then Op). (p) J \ 14. In view of these points it seems that a moral code which resulted in this sort of conflicting judgement is defective; the principles involved should either be restricted by tightening one or other of conditionsc and c', or else restated by reformulating one or other of the principles, (p) (Cp => F~p) replaced by (p) (C'p => 0~p) . or i.e. either (p) (C'p => Fp) (p) (Cp => Op) is is replaced by the case is reduced to one of the first In short, two cases. In this case the dilemma arises because the principles In the first two cases however involved come into conflict. the difficulty does not arise from conflicting principles, but is simply a case where our not v/ judgements cannot both be satisfied in T, because they are conflicting, but because of the peculiar Where Op and 0~p both hold, nature of T. (or Fp and F~p) what- ever happens will be wrong, because p & ~p cannot both hold in T, The dilemma is however simply explained nor p & ~p fail to hold. and the judg.ements accepted once it is understood that I, situation, action, is not T-like. The dilemma may produce a conflict in because given the logical structure of T and the limitations it imposes upon action, both judgements. it is impossible to act in accordance with But this does not effect the judgements themselves; as moral judgenents, assessments of the moral worth of p of affairs) conflict. (a state of ~p^jthey are quite compatible and there is no To say that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong is in no way to be inconsistent, true. the ideal and both judgements may very well be The absence of conflict also explains the fact that such cases can be produced from single moral principles, such as 'Killing is wrong', which in no way inhibit internal conflict. 15. Judgements such as 'p is wrong of action or states of affairs; as to how to act in T. alternative in T, Hence Op does not compare p with its ~p. Such judgements are implicitly comparative, not to ~p's worth, but to the Thus if we reach situations as to moral worth of its absence. (using moral criteria for selection), if for every situation H, H+p is worse than H-p. in a situation assess types and do not simply give directions but p's worth is assessed relative, desirability & ~p is wrong' p is wrong If p's presence makes the situation morally worse than it would be if p were absent, then p is wrong. But now it is a straightforward matter to claim that p is wrong and that ~p is also wrong; one is aHL simply claiming that situations without p^orally preferable to the that (should be chosen^etc.); same situations with p * and also situations without ~p are morally preferable to that same situation with ~p in it. These judgements in no way conflict, and if we were in a position to choose a situation with neither of them in, we could satisfy both judgements simultaneously. is the choice must be regarded as a hypothetical one, As it and the judgements as representing a kind of thought experiment, rather than in giving directions as to how to behave in T. The choice embodied in such a judgement is one between two hypothetical situations and not between alternative versions of T. It is just for this reason that this type of moral judgement is adequate for assessing morally different types of actions or sorts of states of affairs. Because we are concerned with choosing between hypothetical situations, we can opine that all actions of a certain specifiable type and states of affairs satisfying a certain condition are wrong (not wrongyetc.), without risking * In the case of Op & 0~p. In the case of Fp & F~p one ismaking a slightly different claim, that a situation from which p's absent is morally better than some in which it is present. Note that the difference between 0 and F can be to the difference in directionthe rankings. 16. falsification because of the contingent features of T. Finally, in such a judgement one is concerned with assessing the action or state of affairs in itself rather than passing judgement about the best way to act in a particular situation. Dilemmas of this sort then, as opposed to dilemmas of the conflict sort first discussed, are not the result of defective moral codes or principles and do not require any readjustment or resolution (beyond psychological acceptance of the fact that it is sometimes inevitable that what happens is wrong and that perfectibility is impossible). They do not provide counterexamples to general In contrast moral principles based on contingent features of T. codes containing the conflict type of dilemma are defective. Any code containing two principles of the form 'wherever p satisfies Cl, Op' and ’Whenever p satisfies C2, Fp’ where C1 and C2 are not inconsistent, will be defective because there is a possible situation (a hypothetical case) with a p^ which satisfies both C1 Whence the inconsistent pair Fp, potentially inconsistent. & Op,. and C2. Any such code is at least This sort of defectiveness of a moral code might be excusable if it were inevitable. But it is not. can be avoided if we adopt either 0 or F as primitive, and state our judgements in terms of one or other of them, but not both. alternative, terms, conflicting is intolerable. moral It The principles stated in No principle could be asserted with any confidence, because they would hold or fail just according to whether or not a suitable proposition with conflicting properties appeared in T and provided a counterexample. And since this is contingent whether such principles hold or not would be entirely a matter of good or bad luck. Moral judgements on the other hand ought to apply beyond T to possible situations, ought to be non-empirical and apply to hypothetical cases, matter of accident. and ought not to hold just as a 4 C ‘S’ -X f * univeralisa'blemoral principle was a judgement The general ‘ 7^' about types of action or states of affairs and compared p's presence in a situation with its absence from the same situation on a scale of moral desirability. This concept of wrongness is essential to be able to state general moral judgements. But as well as this concept we can distinguish another important concept which is designed to assess not types of action but what is the best course of action in a given situation. This is obtained by comparing p's presence in a situation not with its absence but with the presence of its rivals in a given situation, e.g. ~p in the case of T. p will be said to be ’the best course of action' ~p are both wrong) if a situation Thus (even where p and (usually T), with p in, ranks higher morally then the same one with ~p in. A more practical - concept still can be obtained by comparing p and its practical rivals, say will be the best course of action practical alternative q) f Y r if a situation (as compared with its (usually T) (morally) when p is in it than when q is in it. between alternative ways of extending will rank higher One chooses T. It is important as Lemmon points out to distinguish this concept clearly from the more general concept earlier explained. Lemmon is wrong in suggesting that this is not a moral concept at all and does not give rise to moral judgements but to judgements of expedience. The judgements involved in this case are still moral in the sense that the criteria for ranking situations are 22 specifically moral ones and not based simply, say, on aesthetic considerations or desirability considerations. clear that this distinction Yet it is (which we shall call the distinction between differential obligation and intrinsic obligation) must be ignored and eliminated if obligation is treated as a modal functor For give/} the principle of Modal Muddle (H) (p e H = ~p e H) semantical recipes we have given will be identical. p's presence in H with p's absence (p / H) comparing p in H with ~p's being in H. the To compare will be the same as It is essential however to distinguish this notion of 'best course of action' (differential basic notion we have discussed, because it has quite different properties. * It cannot replace although it can supplement, The reasons are as follows other notion. 02 does not allow for (1) the moral dilemmas. p with its practical alternative in T, e.g. For since we compare ~p, to say that Op & 0~p is to say that a situation H such p e H is morally better than a situation H such that ~p e H, and also to say that a situation H such that ~p e H is better than one such that p e H. This is a (Similar results will ensue when F is taken as a contradiction. basis). (2) 02 cannot allow for general moral judgements of the form "All actions (states of affairs) counterexample. of type x are wrong" without fear of For no matter how compelling our principle and how repugnant the type of action described, we can almost always find a case where the only alternative action is worse. however repugnant p may be, Hence, it will not in this case be wrong, a counterexample to one general judgement will be provided. new notion then cannot do the same job as the old; —----------------------------------------- . and Our it should be , We u^e such as 'the best thing in the circumstances' 'the right thing', 'the correct course all in all' to capture differential obligations . 23. regarded as parasitic, because it can be alternatively represented as admitting the wrongness of the alternatives, but going on to weigh up the alternatives to obtain a recipe for practical action. (3) implies can" slogan It is to this notion that the "ought applies. O2P o locjically possible p, because one has selected p as the best course of action from logically possible alternatives in T. Indeed ’02p’ can be made to imply ‘p is physically possible' (or even physically possible to the person being exhorted) by comparing p with its physically possible alternatives in ranked situations. In a similar way, the concept of blame attaches to failure to follow the best course of action,i.e. if p is better as a course of action than its and one fails to do it. action.* (practical) alternatives, One is not blameworthy for doing p merely only as good as, because p is no better than, i.e. alternatives, one is blameworthy its remaining it has to be worse than some alternative course of It is important to note that blame attaches to this second differential concept of obligation, rather than the first intrinsic notion, for the possibility and obvious unfairness of someone's being blamed for doing wrong where both Op and 0~p hold and he has no alternative which is not wrong would otherwise be a powerful objection to cases of moral dilemmas. (5) Finally, differential obligation makes a basically different type of judgement from the intrinsic notion. not of a type of action or state It is an assessment or of affairs, the action/state of affairs in itself, but of the situation in which it occurs, action in this situation. This is reflected in such phrases as "the best thing in the circumstances" "the right thing to do the conditions obtained at the time)", etc. * Oh well, you cannot be blamed. circumstances . the (given Hence it is not You did the best thing in the universalisable , and does not try to be. It “results in a recipe for action, and is closely allied to advice or exhortation/orders , persuasion, recommendation or other directed activities. Intrinsic obligation however/ frafc^s no account of possible action and does not need to; it assesses action-types regardless of how they occur in a given situation. This last point is important in connection with argument about moral dilemmas. For the confusion between our two concepts has a disastrous effect on argument, particularly those hotly disputed arguments which occur in the case of moral dilemmas. The following sort of argument, due to confusion between Oi and O2 is all too common in such cases. Actions of type x are wrong (1') (if p satisfies c then Oi~p). (p) This must be Oj because it represents a general and exceptionless (2) p is an action (3) ~ 02 i.e. ~p: (state of affairs) judgement about a type. of type x. p should not be done. Therefore do not do p. The argument is plainly unsatisfactory because the fact that Oi~p holds is not sufficient to establish that 02~p To holds. do this one would have to show that the alternative, p, was not worse or even just as good. not be so. And in cases of dilemmas this may very well To establish 02~p one needs to show not merely that p is wrong but that there is some better course of action. The fallacy derives from trying to base a recipe for action on the intrinsic obligation notion, Oi. s 25. A closely related confusion holds that it is inconsistent to claim that p is a wrong type of action, that it should be done nonetheless the best course of action. August 6 197 x (e.g. is repugnant etc., but - because it is nevertheless Canberra Times Editorial, on abortion reads as follows: "It is significant, and inconsistent with its official stand that the s ynod should have qualified its recommendation to family doctors with the words "however regrettable we feel this to be"." to be inconsistentthen, one states to be What is being claimed is that one should recommend a course of action (morally) there is no inconsistency. regrettable or repugnant. But of course One is simply saying that ~p is wrong, "Oi-p", but that it is nevertheless the best thing to do given the circumstances because the alternatives are worse?i.e. "O2P"• The distinction between differential and intrinsic obligation, then, seems to be an important factor in assessing the validity of argument where moral dilemmas are concerned. /, 2 ft I z^z/ / rt&jZy 7-, I  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 140, Item 1: Draft of Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions ; Draft of Moral dilemmas ; Notes, correspondence and cutting on moral dilemmas and deontic logic Subject The topic of the resource Typescript of drafts of two papers, undated. Second paper with handwritten emendations, and first paper published, Routley R and Plumwood V (1984) 'Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic notions', Discussion papers in environmental philosophy, 6. Dept. of Philosophy, Australian National University. Includes three letters addressed to Richard: 27 July 1984 (handwritten, 1 leaf (2 pages)), author unidentified re Moral dilemmas; Undated (handwritten, 2 pages), from Charles re New Studies in Deontic Logic and Castaneda's proposed deontic logic; Undated (handwritten, 7 leaves with annotations by Sylvan?), author unidentified re Moral dilemmas; and one letter from Richard Sylvan? to Philip, undated (handwritten (photocopy), 3 pages), re feedback on a paper. Includes incomplete draft paper, Other attempts to neutralise moral dilemmas (21 leaves), with handwritten emendations, undated. Description An account of the resource Letters and cuttings redacted from access file (PDF) due to copyright restrictions. Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Routley&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Routley</a> <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Val+Plumwood&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Val Plumwood</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 140, Item 1 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [87] leaves. 64.35 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:ba641e1">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:ba641e1</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy Box 140: File Cabinet 1 Draw 2 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/5db24f9062978c3cb3ac367788f0837b.pdf 5499c94435baef11855853b3b0cd8ab9 PDF Text Text ABSTRACT OF PROBLEMS and SOLUTIONS in DEEP ECOPOLITICAL THEORY A reshaping of social and political institutions, which are often outmoded or suboptimal and certainly commonly anti-environmental, is now prominent on theoretical agendas, at least in Australia. One such project is the multi-million dollar "Reshaping Australian Institutions^^ project at the Australian National University. At the same time there is widespread disenchantment with prevailing politics in Australia. Accordingly there is an opportunity to put radical green themes on agendas for real political and institutional change. A deep change, however, which is what deep green theories require, encounters several problems. For one, there appears to be a contradiction between demands for, on the one side, increasing environmental regulations and welfare arrangements, characteristically dependent upon bureaurcratic centralisation and economic growth, and on the other, decentralized lower impact organisation, which halts anti-environmentally industry and economic growth. A functional resolution, partially dissolving a central state, is outlined, along with a theory of encephaletic organisation. Further problems to surmount include human chauvinism and present-time bias, even in present t4best practice” democratic institutions. Deep demarchoidal resolutions of these problems are sketched and defended. R. Sylvan RMB 683 Bungendore Australia 2621 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia Description An account of the resource In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid". Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document ABSTRACT OF PROBLEMS and SOLUTIONS in DEEP ECOPOLITICAL THEORY A reshaping of social and political institutions, which are often outmoded or suboptimal and certainly commonly anti-environmental, is now prominent on theoretical agendas, at least in Australia. One such project is the multi-million dollar "Reshaping Australian Institutions^^ project at the Australian National University. At the same time there is widespread disenchantment with prevailing politics in Australia. Accordingly there is an opportunity to put radical green themes on agendas for real political and institutional change. A deep change, however, which is what deep green theories require, encounters several problems. For one, there appears to be a contradiction between demands for, on the one side, increasing environmental regulations and welfare arrangements, characteristically dependent upon bureaurcratic centralisation and economic growth, and on the other, decentralized lower impact organisation, which halts anti-environmentally industry and economic growth. A functional resolution, partially dissolving a central state, is outlined, along with a theory of encephaletic organisation. Further problems to surmount include human chauvinism and present-time bias, even in present t4best practice” democratic institutions. Deep demarchoidal resolutions of these problems are sketched and defended. R. Sylvan RMB 683 Bungendore Australia 2621  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Abstract of Problems in deep ecopolitical theory Subject The topic of the resource Printout, undated. Description An account of the resource One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [1] leaf. 492.07 KB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7537d8b">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7537d8b</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Australian National University - Typing Table at End of Desk Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk Box 18: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/ba75dba8d0f6535e9a8ad23c06661759.pdf a87f09d687c26e038cbebfae6678172f PDF Text Text 13.6.96 GREEN POLITICAL THEORY: a different account Green political theory is divided according to one of our guides1, rather like Gaul according to Caesar, into three parts: —a green theory of value, —a subordinate green theory of agency, and —a green lifestyle program, portrayed as a set of altogether dispensible lifestyle recommendations. While it is the high-handed insistent dismissal of green lifestyles by this guide, Goodin, that has captured the attention of critics and been highlighted, the brash partitioning of green political theory, and the surreptitious dismissal therewith of significant parts of it, should not pass unnoticed. To the contrary, virtually the whole of what political theory is taken to treat comes up for reassessment once green lights are played upon it, certainly under deeper green illumination. That bogus exhaustiveness taken for granted, that all there is to it amounts to value and action, no doubt derives largely from an underlying utilitarianism, according to which other theoretical matters can be subsumed under these.2 In short, partly through dispensing with lifestyle considerations, primarily by virtue of a background utilitarianism operating within a conventional state-setting, Goodin can suppose that green political theory reduces to these two parts: a theory of value and a subordinate theory of agency. Such a reduction is however much too simple, leaving out, as it does, much of ethics of political relevance, as well as a large slab of politics. For example, ethical omissions include the fields of deontology (environmental permissions, prescriptives, directives; environmental justice, rights and so on), of virtue theory, and of accountability. Among political omissions most striking is the absence of any due consideration of institutional and ideological alternatives to what now prevails. Prevailing Western political arrangements—with staged elections, urban bureaucratic control, incremental reformism (often environmentally regressive), and so on—are simply taken for granted. Above all, there is no critique of the state, an increasingly important part of radical green politics. One reason for this gross omission— f radical green theory from what is presented as green political theory—is that Goodin does not question the conventional political assumption that the appropriate objective of green political activity consists in gaining power or influence within established statist arrangements, for example at best through electoral 1 R. Goodin Green Political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge 1992. This was undoubtedly a book worth criticizing. 2 See the appendix. �2 success enabling control of some of the administrative and executive functions of state (we shall encounter this conventional “political realism^^ again later). However significant strands of green political theory no longer accept this assumption. A related reason, reaching deeper, is that Goodin likewise does not question, as strands of green theory now do, what helps undergird the conventional political assumption and reformist utilitarianism, an Enlightenment ideology with its faith in reason and science, technologically-based progress, overall human goodness and dominance, and so on.3 The bold overstatement of claims, along with misrepresentation as to what green political theory comprises, is symptomatic of much of the book: overstatement and undersubstantiation.4 Virtually all main themes of the book are false, indeed rather patently so once exhibited unadorned, because limited truths are overextended; and they are undersupplied with cogent support. So it is with the green theory of value, which inflates what is a significant factor in green evaluation into the supposed total green theory. So it is with the green package, which is presented as having an absolutely tight integration, which it in fact lacks. And so on, as will appear. Not only are main themes seriously defective; more disappointing, a salvage operation will not yield a lode of green gold. As troubling is the anti-subversive character of the work. Goodin has wheeled another Trojan horse into green territory, a horse bringing a number of anti-green academic warriors armed with anti-green ideas and sentiments, and engaged in and advocating anti-green lifestyles, (as will emerge).5 Of course, 'Green political theory' is a clever title, which is complemented by a politically clever introduction on the crises which are not minimized or marginalised but given considerable weight—all of which suggest that the text might be of much more interest to politically inclined greens than the usual academic fare. But the title does not say how the green theory is to be treated, explained and encouraged, exposed and condemned. Neither really. The text is not written for greens (though the publishers obviously hope they may buy it,6 or be 3 For an exposition and criticism of Enlightenment Ideology, see Sylvan TM. 4 In part because these sorts of deficiencies have not been addressed in reviews of the book, I decided to persevere with this less charitable critique (a tiresome exercise bound to alienate). Regrettably most of the reviews appear to derive from a political science orientation. They trip lightly by philosophical fundamentals, where the book is noticeably weak, and vulnerable. And they tend to be very light on argument. 5 Trojan horses are in extensive use by academics, particularly in green regions. We will encounter a number of these horses. They are evident from sociology to biogeography and climatology, and particularly prominent around economic enslaves. 6 They form part of the intended audience for the book according to accompanying publishers' work and flyers. Indeed the publishers have participated in the deception, supplying a cover featuring a boss of the Green Man from the cloisters of Norwich cathedral, which sends, as they �3 tricked into buying it), but for a cohert of academic colleagues—for colleagues who form part of the prevailing system, of politics-more-or-less-as-usual and so on. Deapite its character, there are several useful and attractive features of Goodin's book, which do make it worthwhile reading for awake greens of theoretical bent (one of these features is an Appendix, putting together succinctly a green political program). It is a smoothly written book, encouraging readers to glide along, glossing over the underlying content and messages, and not grasping the enormity of some of what is presented, for instance even as green gospel. It may be just the style that is attractive (the cut of the book, the easy flow, an appealingly simple structure, and other stylish features), rather than details of the real content. If the book has a weakness from the PR angle, it may lie in its flippancy, and failure to take several green issues seriously, both of which sometimes enter irritatingly and will turn off some committed greens. But, by and large, it is a splendidly packaged work; it is what is packaged and what is pushed on greens that is the trouble. For a book purportedly on green theory, treatment of greens is extraordinary condescending. Not much notice is going to be taken of 'what self-styled greens... happen to believe', 'what positions greens actually do take' (p.vii). (How then does he justify the green attributions he proceeds to make, e.g. 'green theory of value5? Evidently his procedure is methodologically unsound). No, it is 'an attempt to saves greens from themselves5 (p.viii). To rescue them,4to tidy up' their slovenly positions—while throwing away critical features of green approaches, such as green lifestyles—Goodin is particularly concerned that green lifestyles should not be seen as part of a rectified green political package. Green lifestyle recommendations are entirely dispensible (so he and others can look and indeed be green without deffort, without making any green contribution; they are conveniently absolved from any relevant action, or lifestyle adjustment). At one stage Goodin claims that the theory is 'moderately deep'. But elsewhere he has more accurately said that it is a pale green theory, very pale green given the attitude taken to green lifestyles. Green Political Theory it may be called: deeper green political theory, at least, it certainly is not, even genuine green it but dubiously is. However Goodin's aim, he regularly informs us, is once again not 4to describe what positions greens actually do take5. His project is a normative one, aimed instead to show what positions greens should take, given their core concerns... what they have to say given their core values'?. In this attempt he should be seen to remarks, 'precisely the contrary signal concerning the nature of the author's project in there behind the Green Man's work*. 7 P. viii - p.vii, itals added. �4 fail entirely. He is astray not merely on the core concerns of many of them (which concerns are far from uniform), but also in loosely coupled resultant positions. Greens are under no such obligations as Goodin would load them with; they are not boxed in as he would suppose. The approach is not only condescending towards greens; it is a touch arrogant. The aim is said to be 'to show greens how to cast their position in the strongest possible form\8 This will turn out to be not a strong theoretical form, by any means, but merely a strong form pragmatically, given a raft of assumptions about prevailing electoral arrangements, an interests theory of voting and human behaviour, and so on. According to many a green however, thereby made are some of the assumptions that have to be turned around if humanly undesirable features are to be avoided, if social collapse of one sort or another is to be avoided. At the very outset, Goodin does something to offset such concerns, as those concerning limits of growth.9 He rolls out a familiar quasi-inductive argument, beloved of economists, that past predictions of limits have been riotously astray (e.g. Jeavons on coal, Meadows and others in Limits of Growth on tin). Granted some predictions have, those regularly offered as illustrations; though others have not, naturally such examples are not emphasized. Not only is the inductive base for the quasi-inductive argument defective, the argument itself exhibits some flaws. That it has been claimed before and shown wrong is hardly decisive evidence that it will not be right a next time. Recall not only the boy who cried "wolf' too often and was eventually consumed, but also the turkeys who every week approaching Christmas triumphantly announced that everything was proceeding just fine. [Simple enumerative induction is not reliable in such settings.] On this-here green theory of value. Much of Goodin's text, that segment that is not pleasant enough "ecopolitical fiir5 (stock descriptions of ecological problems, green movement and their platforms, and so on), is occupied in one way or another with what he is pleased call to 'a green theory of value', quickly to become 'the green theory of value'. Most of the remainder develops from a complementing 4green theory of action5.10 This green theory of value is pushed in a surprisingly deontological fashion, likely to arouse immediate suspicions: as what greens should adopt and wear, if they know what is good for them. A theory of value is just a theory of the good, so it is engagingly asserted at the outset. Not so, unless the rest of what is considered to belong to value theory (standing, 8 P.viii. 9 See the beginning of the main text p.l. 10 This theory of value is also presented in a much published paper, 'A green theory of value'. As to the definite formulation, the green theory, see many places in the text, e.g. p.87. �5 considerability, worth, rating, and so on) reduces. It does not (and Goodin makes no effort to effect a reduction). It will become plain that Goodin is rather good at presenting topics as what they are not. The practice goes beyond introductory and presentational matters to what is taken to be central, value theory. 'A theory of value is, quite simply, a theory of the good', so we are engagingly informed.11 A theory of value is much more comprehensive than a theory of the good (as a perusal of Austrian value theory will quickly confirm), and does not contract, without extensive and dubious reductions (there is the 'quite simply5), to a theory of the good. Do not anticipate then what is promised: a green theory of value. As it turns out, not only are greens short­ changed on value, they get a very small serve of theory, and again a very pale green offering at that. There are certain peripheral obstacles to this purported green theory of value. In particular, does it even measure up to admittedly lax standards for a theory as to value? As is readily ascertained, the "theory” does not even say what a value is like and is, what kind of object, what identity criteria it satisfies, what postulates it conforms to. Let us call what is presented a pseudo-theory. Perhaps it can be upgraded to a theory, but requisite work is so far lacking. Is this "green pseudo-theory" green? This sort of challenge Goodin is aware of and aims to deflect. Granted the pseudo-theory is admittedly shallow, all politically acceptable theories have to be, he suggests, for instance to seize wide common ground, etc. But this too is astray, because of pluralistic alternatives. According to this green pseudo-theory, not only is naturalness a source of green value, naturalness is the source of value (i.e. goodness). How does Goodin arrive at this identification? By various unsound moves. Most simply, he invalidly concludes, from a consideration of 'naturalness as a source of (green) value', that it is the source of value.12 Such an inference from an indefinite to a definite description is invalid unless uniqueness conditions are independently ensured. Less simply, there is a simplistic derivation of "theories of value" from the three conventional factors of economic production: land (or resources), labour, and capital, each of which is schematically linked to corresponding theories of value. No doubt the land ethic and the labour theory of value just could suggest as much, but it is dubious that anyone much, green or otherwise disposed, would rest content for long with such a “pure" theory, as the factors operate together, not separately. Moreover, the economic “derivations" of these theories should be enough to raise serious green doubts about them. 11 P.19. This claim is also made in several other overlapping Goodin productions. 12 Ibid. p.30. �6 The core theme resulting from the identification is that natural objects are valuable, i.e. good, because they are the result of natural processes and not artificial or human ones. What gives natural objects their value is precisely their naturalness.13 In support of his green theory, Goodin produces a rather nauseating sociological argument, along the following lines: 'humans' have a deeply felt need to find meaning in their lives, i.e. to see their lives as set within a larger context with which they can feel linked. Such a context is provided by nature. In fuller presentation, it is claimed that people want coherence 'between their inner worlds and the external world'; that 'whatever makes people strive for harmony within their own lives would also lead them to strive to lead their lives in harmony with the external world'; and that 'natural processes provide just such a larger context... within which we can set out our own life plans and projects5.14 The argument is entirely shallow, appealing to what some humans want (if they do, not even to what might be good for them); it is utterly instrumental, with nature an instrument for human wants and needs; it is extraordinarily weak, each step being highly contestable; and it does not lead to the intended conclusion, uniqueness of naturalness not being shown. Moreover, for what it is worth, the argument also commits the naturalistic fallacy, purportedly arriving at an identification of value, as what is natural, on the basis of "natural" human wants and needs.15 Observe that this is Goodin's theory as to green theory, an ultimately shallow theory, reached in a shallow economic way, defended in a shallow sociological way, hardly likely to be reflective of deeper green thought. However, it is made to look in some places as if it were some sort of descriptive account; while at other places it appears as a normative account, as if it 13 find quote 14 Ibid p.3& 15 An identification of that Moorean nonnatural feature as natural furthermore. It is worth appending a relevant point from Brennan (pp.805-6): For theorists like Goodin, the status of environmental systems, species and non-human animals appears to be problematic. Although he regards them as proivind a large, independent context within which human life makes sense, it seems that he at the same time regards them as akin to consumer goods, to be displayed, consumed or prozed according to our informed preferences. For those influenced by the resource economists, it can be hard to understand the challenge posed by environmental ethics»>. Once nature is thought of as a resource, a standing reserve, a set of processes and objects that have the potential to satisfy human desires, it is easy to think of it as a nothing more than that. And the challenge posed by any ethic which is properly called 'environmental' is to find a way of articulating the attitude that nature is indeed a great deal more than that. �7 were a very reasonable thing for greens to expouse. But really it is of neither sort; it is neither descriptive of green positions, nor something they should, or would reasonably, adopt; rather it is a theory foisted on greens. It might be pretended that Goodin has offered a "reconstruction”， a rational reconstruction even, of green theory; but such a pretence fails as the construction fails, to meet even basic adequacy conditions, as will appear. As regards descriptive elements, no solid evidence is assembled that most, or even some, greens adopt this green theory, with naturalness as the sole source. Indeed Goodin offers no evidence that any do, and perhaps none of any standing do.16 Furthermore, as but little investigation reveals, there is not a single green "theory" of value, but various different, sometimes competing, positions. Nor could a single essence be satisfactorily distilled from those positions, and even what could be distilled would not resemble Goodin's construction. For some conspicuous green positions, such as ecofeminism or deep ecology, would in no way underwrite naturalness as the source of value, or for that matter a single source of value. More generally, the principles and arguments advanced within green critiques of reductionist science—including that central lesson of ecology, that meaning is to be found in connections, in patterns, in relations—similarly militate against any reductionist grounding of value. Conveniently Goodin appears to absolve us from more detailed fieldwork on green positions. His intention, he boldly announces, is to make it clear to greens and others not what greens in fact think, but what they should think. Indeed he pushes this normative tack to amazing length; only if greens change in the direction he indicates will they be able to make any practical difference to public policies! That rash claim has already been resoundingly falsified. But as regards prescriptive aspects, no intellectually alert greens would adopt Goodin's theory, either. It is not simply because they have other objectives on their agendas, than directly influencing party politics. It is because the theory is seriously defective, and open to evident, damaging objections. So it should not be sought by greens. A central reason why no aware greens should adopt the theory, and why it should be rejected is that it is open to a range of fairly decisive counterexamples. There are many natural items, natural objects or processes, that are not, either on the face of it or after reflection, valuable, as they are or were or where they are. Much that is natural is at least very problematic, some is downright bad. A first class of problematic examples, not involving life in a direct way, 16 It is suggested, by Achtenberg, that McKibben may, but a reading of The End of Nature does not support such a suggestion. As it happens, the situation with McKibben is more than a little curious. For what McKibben want to insist upon—adopting an inadmissibly high redefinition of natural—is that realy nothing is natural any more (hence The End) whence courtesy of Goodin, nothing is valuable any more. But that is not what McKibben wants to say, or says. �8 are those occurrences clustered together as natural disasters, catastrophes, and the like. Included therewith are earthquakes, landslides, soil erosion, meteorite collisions, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, cyclones, ice ages, and so on. These examples include dramatic and damaging (natural) variations in the natural more stable course of events, variations with climatic or geophysical origins. Consider the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1775 which so shocked European intellectuals (and was construed by Voltaire as evidence that Gthe natural world is farm from the best of all possible). By contrast, Goodin would be obliged to maintain that it was a good event, because natural (just as good as the new arrival of a passenger pigeon on a splendid autumnal morning) and presumably not at all shocking because of the natural beneficence of the whole disaster. No doubt the problems with global warming, ozone depletion, and so forth, that so exercise Goodin at the outset of his text, are that these are not natural (being induced by human activity which falls outside what is natural, under one conventional ruling); no doubt these would be valuable, and unproblematic, processes were they to proceed naturally without human intervention or assistance. So it was with the volcanic eruptions that demolished the splendid pink and white terraces and laid waste much beautiful New Zealand forest last century; so it was with the earlier ice-age which much reduced the richness of New Zealand flora, eliminating 3 of 4 groups of palms; these were good, even admirable, events. Similar ridiculous outcomes issue when we turn to life (life forms somehow still achieve a privileged role in Goodin, though they are no more natural). Consider the wide range of monsters, cripples, sports, freaks, and so on that natural processes, such as birth, regularly deliver: deformities, malignant mutations, and so on, outcomes that are still generally hidden away, put out of general sight, or quietly removed, at least in the case of more hideous outputs. It is very difficult to see that all these objects are good, even just as good as the most splendid products of nature.17 Roughly Goodin has landed in a similar awkward position to the theist 17 It seems admissible to record that I put several such counterexamples to Goodin well before he undertook final revision of his working typescript. Here is his response on these and connected issues (Goodin, personal communication, numbered and reordered with [1] now proceeding [2]): [1] [2] A somatic organism in a natural environment is a (nonmoral) normative system. Whatever has that much complexity, richness, self-organization, telos has (presumptively) value. I think I still incline to say (despite your chastening) that a sponaneous biological life is always of prima facie value (intrinsic). Though I recognize at once that such value can sometimes be overridden and become in some environmental contexts a new disvalue. And here I just hold in abeyance what the overlay of moral agency with the moral (past biological) life in humans does to the presumption. �9 who announces that all the natural works of God are good, and is then confronted by awful work such as monstrosities or catastrophes. He can try, like the theist, to fall back to some larger valuable setting of which these prima facie nonvaluable components are an integral part; in Goodin's case there is a wider encompassing theory available, namely evolutionary theory (with variation required for natural selection).18 But already this means significant qualification and modification of Goodin's original theory, and shift to a different and so far undeveloped theory. Better to abandon the original theory, given that superior alternatives are on offer namely multiple factor theories, with naturalness one factor in the mix.19 There remain many other lesser difficulties for theories like Goodin's which try to reduce value-making factors to one, such as naturalness (or biological life, richness, or whatever). For naturalness, difficulties arise with pests and weeds, which may be quite natural objects, but objects which are located in the wrong places, notably outside their natural range. No doubt Goodin's theory can be elaborated to take account of such exceptions, but elaborated it needs to be. Other difficulties arise with natural objects which are in natural places, but which are in some way out of balance with their natural environment, for instance through excess numbers, excessive predation (leading to population collapses, etc.). Consider, for example, members of a natural herd of elephants, grown too large for their natural environment, who become destroyers, demolishing significant forests in their range. Again this is natural enough in the circumstances, but the outcomes are certainly not good, nor praiseworthy or the like. The deficiencies of the approach as offering a “theory” of value are accentuated by the specific narrow recipe Goodin tries to impose on greens. In particular, it appears to supply only an on-off qualitative assessment. An item is either good or not according as it is natural, and that [3] I will have to interpet monstrosities, mutation, deformities as struggling life, somehow a necessary part of the process, even though they are in some respects failures. Anyway, more on that some other time. [4] I also hold that (geo) physical nature can sometimes have intrinsic value, so that life, while sufficient for value prima facie, is not necessary for it. A few comments:- Paragraph [1] already points to a more satisfactory, sophisticated theory than greens are saddled with, with a mix of factors (of which naturalness is surely one) yielding presumptive value. Paragraphs [2] and [3] also indicate elements of a more sensitive theory, again at substantial odds with that presented in the book. Paragraph [3] suggest the sort of theological or evolutionary escape discussed in the text below; it does nothing to counter the counterexamples. 18 Also the theist's problems concerning maximization are perhaps reduced in this setting. 19 See e.g. EE or FF. �10 is all. But not all items are of the same value, which is all this allows: valuable because natural. Some, while not being “more natural”，are much more valuable than others. It is well known that comparative assessments, such as bettemess, and likewise quantitative assessments cannot be directly defined in terms of mere quantitative assessments, and it is sufficiently appreciated that a satisfactory axiological theory should account at least for comparative assessments. In this respect too, Goodin's pseudo-theory falls far short of adequacy. On the other side of the qualitative divide, even the best art museums and the best painings within them are not valuable, not good, because not natural. Even if Goodin should say, what his text sometimes suggests, that his green "theory" applies only to natural objects, artifacts are left out, then the theory is at best seriously incomplete. Greens will have some more comprehensive theory of value which covers all items, and integrates a range of assessments of artifacts with natural objects: naturalness will properly disappear as sole criterion, becoming but one factor. It is noteworthy that much of the subsequent development of green political theory in Goodin's text does not depend upon the excessively strong value theory he tries to load upon greens; it does not require—r always, for that matter, use—naturalness as sole criterion. Much of what comes later, all that appears right enough, will "go through" will naturalness as a critical factor. Where appropriate call this the alternate scheme, according to which naturalness is only one critical, but not always decisive, factor in a mix. The alternate scheme is an integral part of that different green account alluded to above. On the touted tightly-integrated Green package, and strong holism. Certain extraordinarily bold claims are advanced, under the banner of 'a unified moral vision5 in the chapter advertised as 4the unity of the green programme\ Notably the green theory of value...[as] elaborated... is what underlies and unifies the entire green political programme .... It is what makes it illogical and inconsistent for other, more established parties to try picking and choosing some bits off that agenda, without accepting all the rest of its demands as well.20 The claims are never established, would not be established by what is suggested, and indeed cannot be satisfactorily established, because the claims do not stand up. The arguments outlined are seriously wanting. Even what is said would make good the claims would not (traces are not enough for "making good^^); but in any case Goodin does not attempt these things, opting to proceed 'more impressionistically *. 20 p.87. The same sort of theme is reiterated (with but minor variations) subsequently, e.g. p.92. Note the ascent from an everyday theory of the good to a unified moral vision. �11 Even impressionistically little works satisfactorily. For 'the green theory of value' of Goodin is not 'uniquely able to account for the coherence of the green public-policy proposals\2122Apart from the critical features, to be considered below, that green proposals do not enjoy the sort of coherence alleged, and that established parties can, and do, pick over green programs selectively, the uniqueness claim, the special position of Goodin's theory, is quietly dropped in the impressionistic "argument". All that is used is the alternate scheme, that a concern for nature informs, directly or indirectly, all the connected 'plants in the green programme'.22 Evidently a variety of concerns for nature can motivate and justify attitudes and procedures regarding pollution, waste, environmental destruction, and so forth. Uniqueness lapses. Worse, the more remote, less directly environmental parts of the green agenda do not fall out eith of Goodin's theory or from the alternate scheme. In a note, Goodin concedes as much; but these (decentralization, grass roots democracy, nonviolence, and much else) derive so he claims, from the subsidiary, but logically separate, green theory of agency.23 Whether they do so derive or not (they do not), they do not derive indirectly from a green theory of value, because of the separation of agency from value. For similar reasons, the "integrated" green programme (outlined in an Appendix) begins to unravel. All that Goodin tries to make out, then only suggestively, is that the alternative scheme helps in explaining certain green attitudes that appear anomalous or otherwise problematic. Even should this exercise succeed (and its success is at best mixed), it would not achieve what is required. Interestingly, the Appendix, 'The Green Political Programme5—far from demonstrating that the narrow green theory of value runs through all green policy, not just the overly 'environmental5 parts—helps in revealing what a patchwork the presented programme is really, a patchwork from which separate patches can be unsewn. A basic problem with the whole approach is this: that there is not a single green program, different green groups have different programms. Witness the many internal disputes, the very public conflicts between social and deep ecology, between animal liberationists and nature greens, between luddites and smart new- age technologists, between spiritual and secular greens, and son. Granted various loose conalitions may be stitched together; but they are various, not unique, and the stitching is very loose, and may easily be undone, for different repackaging. In short, there are many green packages, corresponding to different green theories of value and agency and so on. As there is 21 Ibid p.87. 22 Ibid. p.87. Goodin himself slides back to the indefinite, to a green theory of value, e.g. p.88. 23 Note & p.8& �12 no single green theory, so there is no such tightly unified single package, which is what empirical evidence also seems to show. Moreover, established parties have drawn very selectively upon these sorts of packages, and filched elements selectively. Witness the fate of the early Values party in New Zealand. 'The prima facie wrongness of ... piecemeal borrowing from the greens is easily explicated. It derives straight forwardly from the logic of consistency. It would be simply wrong to embrace a theory of value... for some purposes while shunning it for others. The truth status of value theories just does not flicker on and off like that/2425Embedded therein, in this strong holism, is one basic confusion that pervades the book, a confusion between a theory and what derives from it, between a source and its outputs. Nothing in logic stops selective borrowing from what derives from a program, however tightly integrated. Strong holism is far too strong; it would imply that we cannot adopt, or even toy with, one part of some value theory, or ethical theory on Goodin's account of the matter, without embracing the lot. We cannot accept some on Moore's claims, some of Spinoza's analyses, part of Aristotle without being stuck with the whole. Eclecticism, at least as regards a theory of value, is impossible. Which is absurd, and a reductio thereto of a seriously defective argument. The conclusion has to be that yet another of Goodin's main themes is seriously astray and should be rejected: that 'greens make (radical) demands on an all-or-nothing basis525, that greens 'might reasonably demand that we implement their political program on an all-or-nothing basis5.26 On the misadvertised green theory of agency: green collective organization・ The title 'The Green Theory of Agency5 is something of a misnomer. Most of the chapter consemed (chapter 4) is taken up with what is inaccurately headed 'Principles of green political structures*, which treats not agency but certain elements of macro-political organisation, notably decentralization and policy coordination (itself headed, misleadingly, 'think globally, act locally5). Most of the remainder of the chapter is occupied with what is headed, generally, 'Principles of green political action', but reduces to 'democratic participation5 and 'nonviolence5, and with 'Principles of green party organisation', cut down to 'grassroots democracy5 and 'nrotation in office*, both something of travesties, given the indicated sweep and generality. The theory of "agency" is itself rather a part of a theory of collective action. Virtually nothing on agency in the usual sense of individual action theory enters, except a footnote 24 p.92, partly reiterating the integrated package theme. 25 p.168? [check, locate] 26 Back cover. �13 referring to some work on the topic, and no theory at all of green individual agents (their lifestyles, etc.). The relevant part of collective action theory looks not so much at the roles of operative agents and their individual instrumentality, as at the character and corodinating mechanisms of collective action, namely that needed or designed to realize green values. And really, what is considered is green collective organization, which comprises not only action and practices, but also associated political procedures and structures. Into this expanded account, furthermore, some large assumptions are written, assumptions not accepted by many greens: roughly, reduction of the political to the collective, and of the collective to aggregated individuals, i.e. themes of individualism.2728These reductive assumptions, which are inserted and infiltrated unargued, come to matter in the material on policy coordination, which adopts a standard game-theory approach drawn from the received reductive theory of collective action, a theory unlikely to gain much green applause, for all its academic fashionability. The case for green engagement in coalitions is less straightforward than depicted. No doubt greens who opt for this course of action—what Goodin tries to insist upon, involvement in the politics of the established system—do not then have the option of spuming power-sharing opportunities when those opportunities present themselves. Our guide is, however, too optimistic about how often such opportunies are like to occur, and too sanguine about how they are likely to operate to green advantage. For one thing, greens are not the only political forces within conventional politics who have a theory of value. Furthermore, just as greens seeking to enter into a coalition with a party of the electoral left (at present the only plausible option) must look askance at the likely ttincohe^ence^^ of the compromise reached, so too must the other coalescing party. If, under such circumstances, 'the blame for the logical incoherence would lie with the parties that insisted on adulterating the green programme528, so too, from the perspective of the party of the left, must *the blame for the logical incoherence lie with the greens who insisted on adulterating the pink programme'. It should come as little surprise then, that the evidence suggests that parties of the moderate left are every bit as reluctant to enter into coalitions with the greens as the greens are with them.29 Green agents: their lifestyles, their commitments, their changed consciousness. These matters feature large in American deep ecology; they are neglected or dismissed in Goodin. His rejection of green personal lifestyles is indicative, in these terms, of personal green consciousness and commitment, and of but subdued or diminished green values. It seems fair to remark that only weak environmental commitments are displayed in the book (however 27 See e.g. p.l 14 top. 28 To cite Goodin p.179. 29 Hay op.cit., where various examples confirming the final claim are assembled. �14 even weak commitments, typical of much academic literature, are better than none, typical of former academic literature); or, more provocatively, to infer that Goodin has not really absorbed genuine green values (else he would act personally). What does come through from the book is that Goodin remains something of an outsider to green activism. That he is not together at the cutting edge of things green is betrayed by occasional telling slips, as with what greens worry about in different places (esp. pp. 180-1). It is not that what he asserts is wrong; it is that emphases and contrasts are different. Reasons offered for rejection of green lifestyles are, where clear, extraordinarily weak. Consider what is offered: • living too close to nature, too much in harmony with it, might cause it to lose its valued role for us30一which is (remember) to provide us with a larger context in which we can see our lives as being set! Test the force of the argument by comparing living in the vicinity of other valued items: worthy lives, art, music, intellectual accomplishments. Moreover, there are counter­ arguments and considerations: that closeness brings respect and awe, and can enhance appreciation of value. Consider the idea of Christians distancing themselves from Cathedrals and Churches, ritual and practice. • to achieve political change, greens should make every effort to minimise the perceived distance between themselves and the “orthodox” community一whereas the association of 'alternative lifestyling5 with 'green' has exactly the opposite effect. Such a claim reveals much as regards subcontests, such as: claimants commitments and seriousness, type and extent of change envisaged, and so on. Christians, feminists, revolutionaries and others would not be too impressed. As in other reaches where orthodoxy may be morally or otherwise amiss, so with regard to green lifestyles: There is a case for a politics of “exemplary practice”； for whilst some people will treat those who so engage as objects of scorn and ridicule, it is evident that many people have been recruited to green values through positive contact with experiments in "right living”，or with elements of green lifestyles. It is important too that at least some people endeavour to demonstrate how green principles might be put into practice at the level of daily living. • Bizarre examples, selective unfavourable examples, advanced under the heading 'green heresies5.31 Granted 'some of this “exemplary practice” might be so outlandish that it reflects negatively on larger green projects. But the influence of this can be overstated; this sort of game can be played with many things that have features to recommend parts of them. After all, every social movement and every tradition of political philosophy, has its fringe-dwellers, even its 30 Thus p.81ff. 31 pp.78-81. �15 practitioners of a particular reductio ad absurdum extracted from a larger coherency.32 • local lifestyle set the focus astray. It should be on grander issues, on global environmental problems, fate of earth, etc. But plainly more regional and local problems also matter, esp. for preservation of habitats, creatures, etc. And here personal and local things can be very important. Finally, there are other reasons for green lifestyles. For example, for the structural changes necessary for environmentally satisfactory societies of one sort or another, something like internalization of green values and adoption of a green lifestyle proves highly advantageous. To this end and others, committed green subcultures and inspiring individual examples are extremely valuable. APPENDIX: a defective setting. Many productions that may look new and interesting in fact prove conservative, brushing off and wheeling out old ideas as if they would accomplish all requisite work. That is, it is implicitly claimed, under conservative approaches, that prevailing paradigms offer all necessary resources for capturing what has (wrongly) been presented as radically new.33 In environmental philosophy a classical exercise of this sort, well received by an environmentally conservative or reactionary establishment, was Passmore's text. Passmore's (and was followed, in a slightly expanded and apparently more liberal setting by Attfield, in a series of broadly consequentialist productions. Now the exercise repeated in environmental political theory by Goodin, who simply imports utilitarianism as supplying a unique and unquestionable rationality, in place of Passmore's vague utilitarianism of humans interests. It does not bode well for a genuinely green theory that its presentation lies virtually entirely within a shallow utilitarian setting, the setting of the dominant economic and public policy paradigm. For just such a setting is what has assisted significantly in getting the Earth into the present environmental mess. Consider what Goodin tries to insist upon in his section (s.1.3) on the arguments (and also elsewhere):- He assumes, in so trying to preempt the range of arguments, both that —the case for environmental protection has to be made in utilitarian terms if it is to prove effective —the most telling arguments concern the ways environmental protection measures are required to further human interests (and intertwined items: people, profits, property, resources, etc.). It is worth commencing erosion of these commonplace assumptions immediately. As for what arguments "work”，are telling or effective, that depends heavily on the context, who is engaged 32 This paragraph borrows heavily from Hay. 33 Brennan's third reductive trend(p.800. �16 in a dialogue, and so on. Those with deep green sympathies are not going to be vastly impressed by a sheaf of utilitarian and human interests (first and only) arguments, any more than by other privileged class arguments. Goodin seems to have rather assumed that, in effect, we are always paired with our political masters, who are and will remain shallow utilitarians. Even now this is by no means uniformly so, and there are grounds for hope that things could be much ameliorated in the future. Accordingly there is little reason to accept Goodin's further excessive claim that the 'essence' of the arguments (all satisfactory arguments he really wants to have us concede) remains the same: 'inadequate protection of the human environment, seriously compromised human interests\34 Pretty much the same problematic ethos is likewise taken for granted for proposed remedies: a standard economic public policy framework, with the essence of the remedy consisting in correcting market failure. From deeper green perspectives this is extraordinarily tired stuff, with "remedies" that have been tried and tried and continue to fail. As part of his case, he tries the stock shallow strategy of rubbishing the idea of admitting interests beyond humans (to grant animals interests is hardly to ''widen'' or ttextend^^ interests). The arguments are all very cheap, and the counter-case is not properly addressed. Regrettably, a shallow utilitarianism raises its ugly head all over the place. A few examples: 'it is more important that the right things be done than that they be done in any particular way or through any particular agency * (p.120). But it is unnecessary to document utilitarian imput as Goodin himself has provided it in susequent work. A main orientation of Goodin's work一which help explain several of its features一 is towards policy-makers or would-be policy-makers. Among such audiences utilitarian and economic rationales contue to be greeted enthusistically. For one reason, such rationales seem made to order when policy makers, or "bureaucratic rationality,5, require 'a means of justifying decisions that may be unpopular with large members of people5. For through these rationales they have seemed able to give principled reasons for action. The policy-maker can claim to have weighed up all the relevant considerations for and against a course of action; each consideration was in some way commensurable with every other—perhaps because each had a dollar value associated with it—and so it was possible to reach a determinate conclusion, by fair and objective means. The appearance of determinacy, fairness and objectivity is an important tool for those who wield and manipulate power in business, government, and even universities. But this rationalizing use of economic approaches should be resisted by everyone, including economists themselves.35 34 Ibid p.8 (check). 35 Brennan p.807. �17 The reasons are now entirely familiar ones. References Achtenberg, W., Review of Goodin, Environmental Values, (1994). Foucault, M., 'What is Enlightenment5 Goodin, R., Green political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Habermus, J., 'Modernity—an incomplete project*, in Postmodern Culture (ed. H. Foster), Pluto Press, London, 1987. Hay, P., Review of Goodin typescript, University of Tasmania, 1994. McGowan, J., Postmodernism and Its Critics, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 199x. Osborne, P, 'Modernity is a qualitative, not a stromological, category: notes on the dialectics of differential historical time', in Postmodernism and the re-reading of modernity (ed. F. Barker and others) Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1991/2. Priest, G., 'On alternative geometries, arithmetics, and logics; a tribute to Lukasiewicz5, typsescript, 1996. Routley, R. and V., “Human chauvinism and environmental ethics' referred to as EE Routley, R. and V., The Fight for the Forests，referred to as FF. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 13.6.96 GREEN POLITICAL THEORY: a different account Green political theory is divided according to one of our guides1, rather like Gaul according to Caesar, into three parts: —a green theory of value, —a subordinate green theory of agency, and —a green lifestyle program, portrayed as a set of altogether dispensible lifestyle recommendations. While it is the high-handed insistent dismissal of green lifestyles by this guide, Goodin, that has captured the attention of critics and been highlighted, the brash partitioning of green political theory, and the surreptitious dismissal therewith of significant parts of it, should not pass unnoticed. To the contrary, virtually the whole of what political theory is taken to treat comes up for reassessment once green lights are played upon it, certainly under deeper green illumination. That bogus exhaustiveness taken for granted, that all there is to it amounts to value and action, no doubt derives largely from an underlying utilitarianism, according to which other theoretical matters can be subsumed under these.2 In short, partly through dispensing with lifestyle considerations, primarily by virtue of a background utilitarianism operating within a conventional state-setting, Goodin can suppose that green political theory reduces to these two parts: a theory of value and a subordinate theory of agency. Such a reduction is however much too simple, leaving out, as it does, much of ethics of political relevance, as well as a large slab of politics. For example, ethical omissions include the fields of deontology (environmental permissions, prescriptives, directives; environmental justice, rights and so on), of virtue theory, and of accountability. Among political omissions most striking is the absence of any due consideration of institutional and ideological alternatives to what now prevails. Prevailing Western political arrangements—with staged elections, urban bureaucratic control, incremental reformism (often environmentally regressive), and so on—are simply taken for granted. Above all, there is no critique of the state, an increasingly important part of radical green politics. One reason for this gross omission— f radical green theory from what is presented as green political theory—is that Goodin does not question the conventional political assumption that the appropriate objective of green political activity consists in gaining power or influence within established statist arrangements, for example at best through electoral 1 R. Goodin Green Political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge 1992. This was undoubtedly a book worth criticizing. 2 See the appendix. 2 success enabling control of some of the administrative and executive functions of state (we shall encounter this conventional “political realism^^ again later). However significant strands of green political theory no longer accept this assumption. A related reason, reaching deeper, is that Goodin likewise does not question, as strands of green theory now do, what helps undergird the conventional political assumption and reformist utilitarianism, an Enlightenment ideology with its faith in reason and science, technologically-based progress, overall human goodness and dominance, and so on.3 The bold overstatement of claims, along with misrepresentation as to what green political theory comprises, is symptomatic of much of the book: overstatement and undersubstantiation.4 Virtually all main themes of the book are false, indeed rather patently so once exhibited unadorned, because limited truths are overextended; and they are undersupplied with cogent support. So it is with the green theory of value, which inflates what is a significant factor in green evaluation into the supposed total green theory. So it is with the green package, which is presented as having an absolutely tight integration, which it in fact lacks. And so on, as will appear. Not only are main themes seriously defective; more disappointing, a salvage operation will not yield a lode of green gold. As troubling is the anti-subversive character of the work. Goodin has wheeled another Trojan horse into green territory, a horse bringing a number of anti-green academic warriors armed with anti-green ideas and sentiments, and engaged in and advocating anti-green lifestyles, (as will emerge).5 Of course, 'Green political theory' is a clever title, which is complemented by a politically clever introduction on the crises which are not minimized or marginalised but given considerable weight—all of which suggest that the text might be of much more interest to politically inclined greens than the usual academic fare. But the title does not say how the green theory is to be treated, explained and encouraged, exposed and condemned. Neither really. The text is not written for greens (though the publishers obviously hope they may buy it,6 or be 3 For an exposition and criticism of Enlightenment Ideology, see Sylvan TM. 4 In part because these sorts of deficiencies have not been addressed in reviews of the book, I decided to persevere with this less charitable critique (a tiresome exercise bound to alienate). Regrettably most of the reviews appear to derive from a political science orientation. They trip lightly by philosophical fundamentals, where the book is noticeably weak, and vulnerable. And they tend to be very light on argument. 5 Trojan horses are in extensive use by academics, particularly in green regions. We will encounter a number of these horses. They are evident from sociology to biogeography and climatology, and particularly prominent around economic enslaves. 6 They form part of the intended audience for the book according to accompanying publishers' work and flyers. Indeed the publishers have participated in the deception, supplying a cover featuring a boss of the Green Man from the cloisters of Norwich cathedral, which sends, as they 3 tricked into buying it), but for a cohert of academic colleagues—for colleagues who form part of the prevailing system, of politics-more-or-less-as-usual and so on. Deapite its character, there are several useful and attractive features of Goodin's book, which do make it worthwhile reading for awake greens of theoretical bent (one of these features is an Appendix, putting together succinctly a green political program). It is a smoothly written book, encouraging readers to glide along, glossing over the underlying content and messages, and not grasping the enormity of some of what is presented, for instance even as green gospel. It may be just the style that is attractive (the cut of the book, the easy flow, an appealingly simple structure, and other stylish features), rather than details of the real content. If the book has a weakness from the PR angle, it may lie in its flippancy, and failure to take several green issues seriously, both of which sometimes enter irritatingly and will turn off some committed greens. But, by and large, it is a splendidly packaged work; it is what is packaged and what is pushed on greens that is the trouble. For a book purportedly on green theory, treatment of greens is extraordinary condescending. Not much notice is going to be taken of 'what self-styled greens... happen to believe', 'what positions greens actually do take' (p.vii). (How then does he justify the green attributions he proceeds to make, e.g. 'green theory of value5? Evidently his procedure is methodologically unsound). No, it is 'an attempt to saves greens from themselves5 (p.viii). To rescue them,4to tidy up' their slovenly positions—while throwing away critical features of green approaches, such as green lifestyles—Goodin is particularly concerned that green lifestyles should not be seen as part of a rectified green political package. Green lifestyle recommendations are entirely dispensible (so he and others can look and indeed be green without deffort, without making any green contribution; they are conveniently absolved from any relevant action, or lifestyle adjustment). At one stage Goodin claims that the theory is 'moderately deep'. But elsewhere he has more accurately said that it is a pale green theory, very pale green given the attitude taken to green lifestyles. Green Political Theory it may be called: deeper green political theory, at least, it certainly is not, even genuine green it but dubiously is. However Goodin's aim, he regularly informs us, is once again not 4to describe what positions greens actually do take5. His project is a normative one, aimed instead to show what positions greens should take, given their core concerns... what they have to say given their core values'?. In this attempt he should be seen to remarks, 'precisely the contrary signal concerning the nature of the author's project in there behind the Green Man's work*. 7 P. viii - p.vii, itals added. 4 fail entirely. He is astray not merely on the core concerns of many of them (which concerns are far from uniform), but also in loosely coupled resultant positions. Greens are under no such obligations as Goodin would load them with; they are not boxed in as he would suppose. The approach is not only condescending towards greens; it is a touch arrogant. The aim is said to be 'to show greens how to cast their position in the strongest possible form\8 This will turn out to be not a strong theoretical form, by any means, but merely a strong form pragmatically, given a raft of assumptions about prevailing electoral arrangements, an interests theory of voting and human behaviour, and so on. According to many a green however, thereby made are some of the assumptions that have to be turned around if humanly undesirable features are to be avoided, if social collapse of one sort or another is to be avoided. At the very outset, Goodin does something to offset such concerns, as those concerning limits of growth.9 He rolls out a familiar quasi-inductive argument, beloved of economists, that past predictions of limits have been riotously astray (e.g. Jeavons on coal, Meadows and others in Limits of Growth on tin). Granted some predictions have, those regularly offered as illustrations; though others have not, naturally such examples are not emphasized. Not only is the inductive base for the quasi-inductive argument defective, the argument itself exhibits some flaws. That it has been claimed before and shown wrong is hardly decisive evidence that it will not be right a next time. Recall not only the boy who cried "wolf' too often and was eventually consumed, but also the turkeys who every week approaching Christmas triumphantly announced that everything was proceeding just fine. [Simple enumerative induction is not reliable in such settings.] On this-here green theory of value. Much of Goodin's text, that segment that is not pleasant enough "ecopolitical fiir5 (stock descriptions of ecological problems, green movement and their platforms, and so on), is occupied in one way or another with what he is pleased call to 'a green theory of value', quickly to become 'the green theory of value'. Most of the remainder develops from a complementing 4green theory of action5.10 This green theory of value is pushed in a surprisingly deontological fashion, likely to arouse immediate suspicions: as what greens should adopt and wear, if they know what is good for them. A theory of value is just a theory of the good, so it is engagingly asserted at the outset. Not so, unless the rest of what is considered to belong to value theory (standing, 8 P.viii. 9 See the beginning of the main text p.l. 10 This theory of value is also presented in a much published paper, 'A green theory of value'. As to the definite formulation, the green theory, see many places in the text, e.g. p.87. 5 considerability, worth, rating, and so on) reduces. It does not (and Goodin makes no effort to effect a reduction). It will become plain that Goodin is rather good at presenting topics as what they are not. The practice goes beyond introductory and presentational matters to what is taken to be central, value theory. 'A theory of value is, quite simply, a theory of the good', so we are engagingly informed.11 A theory of value is much more comprehensive than a theory of the good (as a perusal of Austrian value theory will quickly confirm), and does not contract, without extensive and dubious reductions (there is the 'quite simply5), to a theory of the good. Do not anticipate then what is promised: a green theory of value. As it turns out, not only are greens short­ changed on value, they get a very small serve of theory, and again a very pale green offering at that. There are certain peripheral obstacles to this purported green theory of value. In particular, does it even measure up to admittedly lax standards for a theory as to value? As is readily ascertained, the "theory” does not even say what a value is like and is, what kind of object, what identity criteria it satisfies, what postulates it conforms to. Let us call what is presented a pseudo-theory. Perhaps it can be upgraded to a theory, but requisite work is so far lacking. Is this "green pseudo-theory" green? This sort of challenge Goodin is aware of and aims to deflect. Granted the pseudo-theory is admittedly shallow, all politically acceptable theories have to be, he suggests, for instance to seize wide common ground, etc. But this too is astray, because of pluralistic alternatives. According to this green pseudo-theory, not only is naturalness a source of green value, naturalness is the source of value (i.e. goodness). How does Goodin arrive at this identification? By various unsound moves. Most simply, he invalidly concludes, from a consideration of 'naturalness as a source of (green) value', that it is the source of value.12 Such an inference from an indefinite to a definite description is invalid unless uniqueness conditions are independently ensured. Less simply, there is a simplistic derivation of "theories of value" from the three conventional factors of economic production: land (or resources), labour, and capital, each of which is schematically linked to corresponding theories of value. No doubt the land ethic and the labour theory of value just could suggest as much, but it is dubious that anyone much, green or otherwise disposed, would rest content for long with such a “pure" theory, as the factors operate together, not separately. Moreover, the economic “derivations" of these theories should be enough to raise serious green doubts about them. 11 P.19. This claim is also made in several other overlapping Goodin productions. 12 Ibid. p.30. 6 The core theme resulting from the identification is that natural objects are valuable, i.e. good, because they are the result of natural processes and not artificial or human ones. What gives natural objects their value is precisely their naturalness.13 In support of his green theory, Goodin produces a rather nauseating sociological argument, along the following lines: 'humans' have a deeply felt need to find meaning in their lives, i.e. to see their lives as set within a larger context with which they can feel linked. Such a context is provided by nature. In fuller presentation, it is claimed that people want coherence 'between their inner worlds and the external world'; that 'whatever makes people strive for harmony within their own lives would also lead them to strive to lead their lives in harmony with the external world'; and that 'natural processes provide just such a larger context... within which we can set out our own life plans and projects5.14 The argument is entirely shallow, appealing to what some humans want (if they do, not even to what might be good for them); it is utterly instrumental, with nature an instrument for human wants and needs; it is extraordinarily weak, each step being highly contestable; and it does not lead to the intended conclusion, uniqueness of naturalness not being shown. Moreover, for what it is worth, the argument also commits the naturalistic fallacy, purportedly arriving at an identification of value, as what is natural, on the basis of "natural" human wants and needs.15 Observe that this is Goodin's theory as to green theory, an ultimately shallow theory, reached in a shallow economic way, defended in a shallow sociological way, hardly likely to be reflective of deeper green thought. However, it is made to look in some places as if it were some sort of descriptive account; while at other places it appears as a normative account, as if it 13 find quote 14 Ibid p.3& 15 An identification of that Moorean nonnatural feature as natural furthermore. It is worth appending a relevant point from Brennan (pp.805-6): For theorists like Goodin, the status of environmental systems, species and non-human animals appears to be problematic. Although he regards them as proivind a large, independent context within which human life makes sense, it seems that he at the same time regards them as akin to consumer goods, to be displayed, consumed or prozed according to our informed preferences. For those influenced by the resource economists, it can be hard to understand the challenge posed by environmental ethics»>. Once nature is thought of as a resource, a standing reserve, a set of processes and objects that have the potential to satisfy human desires, it is easy to think of it as a nothing more than that. And the challenge posed by any ethic which is properly called 'environmental' is to find a way of articulating the attitude that nature is indeed a great deal more than that. 7 were a very reasonable thing for greens to expouse. But really it is of neither sort; it is neither descriptive of green positions, nor something they should, or would reasonably, adopt; rather it is a theory foisted on greens. It might be pretended that Goodin has offered a "reconstruction”， a rational reconstruction even, of green theory; but such a pretence fails as the construction fails, to meet even basic adequacy conditions, as will appear. As regards descriptive elements, no solid evidence is assembled that most, or even some, greens adopt this green theory, with naturalness as the sole source. Indeed Goodin offers no evidence that any do, and perhaps none of any standing do.16 Furthermore, as but little investigation reveals, there is not a single green "theory" of value, but various different, sometimes competing, positions. Nor could a single essence be satisfactorily distilled from those positions, and even what could be distilled would not resemble Goodin's construction. For some conspicuous green positions, such as ecofeminism or deep ecology, would in no way underwrite naturalness as the source of value, or for that matter a single source of value. More generally, the principles and arguments advanced within green critiques of reductionist science—including that central lesson of ecology, that meaning is to be found in connections, in patterns, in relations—similarly militate against any reductionist grounding of value. Conveniently Goodin appears to absolve us from more detailed fieldwork on green positions. His intention, he boldly announces, is to make it clear to greens and others not what greens in fact think, but what they should think. Indeed he pushes this normative tack to amazing length; only if greens change in the direction he indicates will they be able to make any practical difference to public policies! That rash claim has already been resoundingly falsified. But as regards prescriptive aspects, no intellectually alert greens would adopt Goodin's theory, either. It is not simply because they have other objectives on their agendas, than directly influencing party politics. It is because the theory is seriously defective, and open to evident, damaging objections. So it should not be sought by greens. A central reason why no aware greens should adopt the theory, and why it should be rejected is that it is open to a range of fairly decisive counterexamples. There are many natural items, natural objects or processes, that are not, either on the face of it or after reflection, valuable, as they are or were or where they are. Much that is natural is at least very problematic, some is downright bad. A first class of problematic examples, not involving life in a direct way, 16 It is suggested, by Achtenberg, that McKibben may, but a reading of The End of Nature does not support such a suggestion. As it happens, the situation with McKibben is more than a little curious. For what McKibben want to insist upon—adopting an inadmissibly high redefinition of natural—is that realy nothing is natural any more (hence The End) whence courtesy of Goodin, nothing is valuable any more. But that is not what McKibben wants to say, or says. 8 are those occurrences clustered together as natural disasters, catastrophes, and the like. Included therewith are earthquakes, landslides, soil erosion, meteorite collisions, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, cyclones, ice ages, and so on. These examples include dramatic and damaging (natural) variations in the natural more stable course of events, variations with climatic or geophysical origins. Consider the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1775 which so shocked European intellectuals (and was construed by Voltaire as evidence that Gthe natural world is farm from the best of all possible). By contrast, Goodin would be obliged to maintain that it was a good event, because natural (just as good as the new arrival of a passenger pigeon on a splendid autumnal morning) and presumably not at all shocking because of the natural beneficence of the whole disaster. No doubt the problems with global warming, ozone depletion, and so forth, that so exercise Goodin at the outset of his text, are that these are not natural (being induced by human activity which falls outside what is natural, under one conventional ruling); no doubt these would be valuable, and unproblematic, processes were they to proceed naturally without human intervention or assistance. So it was with the volcanic eruptions that demolished the splendid pink and white terraces and laid waste much beautiful New Zealand forest last century; so it was with the earlier ice-age which much reduced the richness of New Zealand flora, eliminating 3 of 4 groups of palms; these were good, even admirable, events. Similar ridiculous outcomes issue when we turn to life (life forms somehow still achieve a privileged role in Goodin, though they are no more natural). Consider the wide range of monsters, cripples, sports, freaks, and so on that natural processes, such as birth, regularly deliver: deformities, malignant mutations, and so on, outcomes that are still generally hidden away, put out of general sight, or quietly removed, at least in the case of more hideous outputs. It is very difficult to see that all these objects are good, even just as good as the most splendid products of nature.17 Roughly Goodin has landed in a similar awkward position to the theist 17 It seems admissible to record that I put several such counterexamples to Goodin well before he undertook final revision of his working typescript. Here is his response on these and connected issues (Goodin, personal communication, numbered and reordered with [1] now proceeding [2]): [1] [2] A somatic organism in a natural environment is a (nonmoral) normative system. Whatever has that much complexity, richness, self-organization, telos has (presumptively) value. I think I still incline to say (despite your chastening) that a sponaneous biological life is always of prima facie value (intrinsic). Though I recognize at once that such value can sometimes be overridden and become in some environmental contexts a new disvalue. And here I just hold in abeyance what the overlay of moral agency with the moral (past biological) life in humans does to the presumption. 9 who announces that all the natural works of God are good, and is then confronted by awful work such as monstrosities or catastrophes. He can try, like the theist, to fall back to some larger valuable setting of which these prima facie nonvaluable components are an integral part; in Goodin's case there is a wider encompassing theory available, namely evolutionary theory (with variation required for natural selection).18 But already this means significant qualification and modification of Goodin's original theory, and shift to a different and so far undeveloped theory. Better to abandon the original theory, given that superior alternatives are on offer namely multiple factor theories, with naturalness one factor in the mix.19 There remain many other lesser difficulties for theories like Goodin's which try to reduce value-making factors to one, such as naturalness (or biological life, richness, or whatever). For naturalness, difficulties arise with pests and weeds, which may be quite natural objects, but objects which are located in the wrong places, notably outside their natural range. No doubt Goodin's theory can be elaborated to take account of such exceptions, but elaborated it needs to be. Other difficulties arise with natural objects which are in natural places, but which are in some way out of balance with their natural environment, for instance through excess numbers, excessive predation (leading to population collapses, etc.). Consider, for example, members of a natural herd of elephants, grown too large for their natural environment, who become destroyers, demolishing significant forests in their range. Again this is natural enough in the circumstances, but the outcomes are certainly not good, nor praiseworthy or the like. The deficiencies of the approach as offering a “theory” of value are accentuated by the specific narrow recipe Goodin tries to impose on greens. In particular, it appears to supply only an on-off qualitative assessment. An item is either good or not according as it is natural, and that [3] I will have to interpet monstrosities, mutation, deformities as struggling life, somehow a necessary part of the process, even though they are in some respects failures. Anyway, more on that some other time. [4] I also hold that (geo) physical nature can sometimes have intrinsic value, so that life, while sufficient for value prima facie, is not necessary for it. A few comments:- Paragraph [1] already points to a more satisfactory, sophisticated theory than greens are saddled with, with a mix of factors (of which naturalness is surely one) yielding presumptive value. Paragraphs [2] and [3] also indicate elements of a more sensitive theory, again at substantial odds with that presented in the book. Paragraph [3] suggest the sort of theological or evolutionary escape discussed in the text below; it does nothing to counter the counterexamples. 18 Also the theist's problems concerning maximization are perhaps reduced in this setting. 19 See e.g. EE or FF. 10 is all. But not all items are of the same value, which is all this allows: valuable because natural. Some, while not being “more natural”，are much more valuable than others. It is well known that comparative assessments, such as bettemess, and likewise quantitative assessments cannot be directly defined in terms of mere quantitative assessments, and it is sufficiently appreciated that a satisfactory axiological theory should account at least for comparative assessments. In this respect too, Goodin's pseudo-theory falls far short of adequacy. On the other side of the qualitative divide, even the best art museums and the best painings within them are not valuable, not good, because not natural. Even if Goodin should say, what his text sometimes suggests, that his green "theory" applies only to natural objects, artifacts are left out, then the theory is at best seriously incomplete. Greens will have some more comprehensive theory of value which covers all items, and integrates a range of assessments of artifacts with natural objects: naturalness will properly disappear as sole criterion, becoming but one factor. It is noteworthy that much of the subsequent development of green political theory in Goodin's text does not depend upon the excessively strong value theory he tries to load upon greens; it does not require—r always, for that matter, use—naturalness as sole criterion. Much of what comes later, all that appears right enough, will "go through" will naturalness as a critical factor. Where appropriate call this the alternate scheme, according to which naturalness is only one critical, but not always decisive, factor in a mix. The alternate scheme is an integral part of that different green account alluded to above. On the touted tightly-integrated Green package, and strong holism. Certain extraordinarily bold claims are advanced, under the banner of 'a unified moral vision5 in the chapter advertised as 4the unity of the green programme\ Notably the green theory of value...[as] elaborated... is what underlies and unifies the entire green political programme .... It is what makes it illogical and inconsistent for other, more established parties to try picking and choosing some bits off that agenda, without accepting all the rest of its demands as well.20 The claims are never established, would not be established by what is suggested, and indeed cannot be satisfactorily established, because the claims do not stand up. The arguments outlined are seriously wanting. Even what is said would make good the claims would not (traces are not enough for "making good^^); but in any case Goodin does not attempt these things, opting to proceed 'more impressionistically *. 20 p.87. The same sort of theme is reiterated (with but minor variations) subsequently, e.g. p.92. Note the ascent from an everyday theory of the good to a unified moral vision. 11 Even impressionistically little works satisfactorily. For 'the green theory of value' of Goodin is not 'uniquely able to account for the coherence of the green public-policy proposals\2122Apart from the critical features, to be considered below, that green proposals do not enjoy the sort of coherence alleged, and that established parties can, and do, pick over green programs selectively, the uniqueness claim, the special position of Goodin's theory, is quietly dropped in the impressionistic "argument". All that is used is the alternate scheme, that a concern for nature informs, directly or indirectly, all the connected 'plants in the green programme'.22 Evidently a variety of concerns for nature can motivate and justify attitudes and procedures regarding pollution, waste, environmental destruction, and so forth. Uniqueness lapses. Worse, the more remote, less directly environmental parts of the green agenda do not fall out eith of Goodin's theory or from the alternate scheme. In a note, Goodin concedes as much; but these (decentralization, grass roots democracy, nonviolence, and much else) derive so he claims, from the subsidiary, but logically separate, green theory of agency.23 Whether they do so derive or not (they do not), they do not derive indirectly from a green theory of value, because of the separation of agency from value. For similar reasons, the "integrated" green programme (outlined in an Appendix) begins to unravel. All that Goodin tries to make out, then only suggestively, is that the alternative scheme helps in explaining certain green attitudes that appear anomalous or otherwise problematic. Even should this exercise succeed (and its success is at best mixed), it would not achieve what is required. Interestingly, the Appendix, 'The Green Political Programme5—far from demonstrating that the narrow green theory of value runs through all green policy, not just the overly 'environmental5 parts—helps in revealing what a patchwork the presented programme is really, a patchwork from which separate patches can be unsewn. A basic problem with the whole approach is this: that there is not a single green program, different green groups have different programms. Witness the many internal disputes, the very public conflicts between social and deep ecology, between animal liberationists and nature greens, between luddites and smart new- age technologists, between spiritual and secular greens, and son. Granted various loose conalitions may be stitched together; but they are various, not unique, and the stitching is very loose, and may easily be undone, for different repackaging. In short, there are many green packages, corresponding to different green theories of value and agency and so on. As there is 21 Ibid p.87. 22 Ibid. p.87. Goodin himself slides back to the indefinite, to a green theory of value, e.g. p.88. 23 Note & p.8& 12 no single green theory, so there is no such tightly unified single package, which is what empirical evidence also seems to show. Moreover, established parties have drawn very selectively upon these sorts of packages, and filched elements selectively. Witness the fate of the early Values party in New Zealand. 'The prima facie wrongness of ... piecemeal borrowing from the greens is easily explicated. It derives straight forwardly from the logic of consistency. It would be simply wrong to embrace a theory of value... for some purposes while shunning it for others. The truth status of value theories just does not flicker on and off like that/2425Embedded therein, in this strong holism, is one basic confusion that pervades the book, a confusion between a theory and what derives from it, between a source and its outputs. Nothing in logic stops selective borrowing from what derives from a program, however tightly integrated. Strong holism is far too strong; it would imply that we cannot adopt, or even toy with, one part of some value theory, or ethical theory on Goodin's account of the matter, without embracing the lot. We cannot accept some on Moore's claims, some of Spinoza's analyses, part of Aristotle without being stuck with the whole. Eclecticism, at least as regards a theory of value, is impossible. Which is absurd, and a reductio thereto of a seriously defective argument. The conclusion has to be that yet another of Goodin's main themes is seriously astray and should be rejected: that 'greens make (radical) demands on an all-or-nothing basis525, that greens 'might reasonably demand that we implement their political program on an all-or-nothing basis5.26 On the misadvertised green theory of agency: green collective organization・ The title 'The Green Theory of Agency5 is something of a misnomer. Most of the chapter consemed (chapter 4) is taken up with what is inaccurately headed 'Principles of green political structures*, which treats not agency but certain elements of macro-political organisation, notably decentralization and policy coordination (itself headed, misleadingly, 'think globally, act locally5). Most of the remainder of the chapter is occupied with what is headed, generally, 'Principles of green political action', but reduces to 'democratic participation5 and 'nonviolence5, and with 'Principles of green party organisation', cut down to 'grassroots democracy5 and 'nrotation in office*, both something of travesties, given the indicated sweep and generality. The theory of "agency" is itself rather a part of a theory of collective action. Virtually nothing on agency in the usual sense of individual action theory enters, except a footnote 24 p.92, partly reiterating the integrated package theme. 25 p.168? [check, locate] 26 Back cover. 13 referring to some work on the topic, and no theory at all of green individual agents (their lifestyles, etc.). The relevant part of collective action theory looks not so much at the roles of operative agents and their individual instrumentality, as at the character and corodinating mechanisms of collective action, namely that needed or designed to realize green values. And really, what is considered is green collective organization, which comprises not only action and practices, but also associated political procedures and structures. Into this expanded account, furthermore, some large assumptions are written, assumptions not accepted by many greens: roughly, reduction of the political to the collective, and of the collective to aggregated individuals, i.e. themes of individualism.2728These reductive assumptions, which are inserted and infiltrated unargued, come to matter in the material on policy coordination, which adopts a standard game-theory approach drawn from the received reductive theory of collective action, a theory unlikely to gain much green applause, for all its academic fashionability. The case for green engagement in coalitions is less straightforward than depicted. No doubt greens who opt for this course of action—what Goodin tries to insist upon, involvement in the politics of the established system—do not then have the option of spuming power-sharing opportunities when those opportunities present themselves. Our guide is, however, too optimistic about how often such opportunies are like to occur, and too sanguine about how they are likely to operate to green advantage. For one thing, greens are not the only political forces within conventional politics who have a theory of value. Furthermore, just as greens seeking to enter into a coalition with a party of the electoral left (at present the only plausible option) must look askance at the likely ttincohe^ence^^ of the compromise reached, so too must the other coalescing party. If, under such circumstances, 'the blame for the logical incoherence would lie with the parties that insisted on adulterating the green programme528, so too, from the perspective of the party of the left, must *the blame for the logical incoherence lie with the greens who insisted on adulterating the pink programme'. It should come as little surprise then, that the evidence suggests that parties of the moderate left are every bit as reluctant to enter into coalitions with the greens as the greens are with them.29 Green agents: their lifestyles, their commitments, their changed consciousness. These matters feature large in American deep ecology; they are neglected or dismissed in Goodin. His rejection of green personal lifestyles is indicative, in these terms, of personal green consciousness and commitment, and of but subdued or diminished green values. It seems fair to remark that only weak environmental commitments are displayed in the book (however 27 See e.g. p.l 14 top. 28 To cite Goodin p.179. 29 Hay op.cit., where various examples confirming the final claim are assembled. 14 even weak commitments, typical of much academic literature, are better than none, typical of former academic literature); or, more provocatively, to infer that Goodin has not really absorbed genuine green values (else he would act personally). What does come through from the book is that Goodin remains something of an outsider to green activism. That he is not together at the cutting edge of things green is betrayed by occasional telling slips, as with what greens worry about in different places (esp. pp. 180-1). It is not that what he asserts is wrong; it is that emphases and contrasts are different. Reasons offered for rejection of green lifestyles are, where clear, extraordinarily weak. Consider what is offered: • living too close to nature, too much in harmony with it, might cause it to lose its valued role for us30一which is (remember) to provide us with a larger context in which we can see our lives as being set! Test the force of the argument by comparing living in the vicinity of other valued items: worthy lives, art, music, intellectual accomplishments. Moreover, there are counter­ arguments and considerations: that closeness brings respect and awe, and can enhance appreciation of value. Consider the idea of Christians distancing themselves from Cathedrals and Churches, ritual and practice. • to achieve political change, greens should make every effort to minimise the perceived distance between themselves and the “orthodox” community一whereas the association of 'alternative lifestyling5 with 'green' has exactly the opposite effect. Such a claim reveals much as regards subcontests, such as: claimants commitments and seriousness, type and extent of change envisaged, and so on. Christians, feminists, revolutionaries and others would not be too impressed. As in other reaches where orthodoxy may be morally or otherwise amiss, so with regard to green lifestyles: There is a case for a politics of “exemplary practice”； for whilst some people will treat those who so engage as objects of scorn and ridicule, it is evident that many people have been recruited to green values through positive contact with experiments in "right living”，or with elements of green lifestyles. It is important too that at least some people endeavour to demonstrate how green principles might be put into practice at the level of daily living. • Bizarre examples, selective unfavourable examples, advanced under the heading 'green heresies5.31 Granted 'some of this “exemplary practice” might be so outlandish that it reflects negatively on larger green projects. But the influence of this can be overstated; this sort of game can be played with many things that have features to recommend parts of them. After all, every social movement and every tradition of political philosophy, has its fringe-dwellers, even its 30 Thus p.81ff. 31 pp.78-81. 15 practitioners of a particular reductio ad absurdum extracted from a larger coherency.32 • local lifestyle set the focus astray. It should be on grander issues, on global environmental problems, fate of earth, etc. But plainly more regional and local problems also matter, esp. for preservation of habitats, creatures, etc. And here personal and local things can be very important. Finally, there are other reasons for green lifestyles. For example, for the structural changes necessary for environmentally satisfactory societies of one sort or another, something like internalization of green values and adoption of a green lifestyle proves highly advantageous. To this end and others, committed green subcultures and inspiring individual examples are extremely valuable. APPENDIX: a defective setting. Many productions that may look new and interesting in fact prove conservative, brushing off and wheeling out old ideas as if they would accomplish all requisite work. That is, it is implicitly claimed, under conservative approaches, that prevailing paradigms offer all necessary resources for capturing what has (wrongly) been presented as radically new.33 In environmental philosophy a classical exercise of this sort, well received by an environmentally conservative or reactionary establishment, was Passmore's text. Passmore's (and was followed, in a slightly expanded and apparently more liberal setting by Attfield, in a series of broadly consequentialist productions. Now the exercise repeated in environmental political theory by Goodin, who simply imports utilitarianism as supplying a unique and unquestionable rationality, in place of Passmore's vague utilitarianism of humans interests. It does not bode well for a genuinely green theory that its presentation lies virtually entirely within a shallow utilitarian setting, the setting of the dominant economic and public policy paradigm. For just such a setting is what has assisted significantly in getting the Earth into the present environmental mess. Consider what Goodin tries to insist upon in his section (s.1.3) on the arguments (and also elsewhere):- He assumes, in so trying to preempt the range of arguments, both that —the case for environmental protection has to be made in utilitarian terms if it is to prove effective —the most telling arguments concern the ways environmental protection measures are required to further human interests (and intertwined items: people, profits, property, resources, etc.). It is worth commencing erosion of these commonplace assumptions immediately. As for what arguments "work”，are telling or effective, that depends heavily on the context, who is engaged 32 This paragraph borrows heavily from Hay. 33 Brennan's third reductive trend(p.800. 16 in a dialogue, and so on. Those with deep green sympathies are not going to be vastly impressed by a sheaf of utilitarian and human interests (first and only) arguments, any more than by other privileged class arguments. Goodin seems to have rather assumed that, in effect, we are always paired with our political masters, who are and will remain shallow utilitarians. Even now this is by no means uniformly so, and there are grounds for hope that things could be much ameliorated in the future. Accordingly there is little reason to accept Goodin's further excessive claim that the 'essence' of the arguments (all satisfactory arguments he really wants to have us concede) remains the same: 'inadequate protection of the human environment, seriously compromised human interests\34 Pretty much the same problematic ethos is likewise taken for granted for proposed remedies: a standard economic public policy framework, with the essence of the remedy consisting in correcting market failure. From deeper green perspectives this is extraordinarily tired stuff, with "remedies" that have been tried and tried and continue to fail. As part of his case, he tries the stock shallow strategy of rubbishing the idea of admitting interests beyond humans (to grant animals interests is hardly to ''widen'' or ttextend^^ interests). The arguments are all very cheap, and the counter-case is not properly addressed. Regrettably, a shallow utilitarianism raises its ugly head all over the place. A few examples: 'it is more important that the right things be done than that they be done in any particular way or through any particular agency * (p.120). But it is unnecessary to document utilitarian imput as Goodin himself has provided it in susequent work. A main orientation of Goodin's work一which help explain several of its features一 is towards policy-makers or would-be policy-makers. Among such audiences utilitarian and economic rationales contue to be greeted enthusistically. For one reason, such rationales seem made to order when policy makers, or "bureaucratic rationality,5, require 'a means of justifying decisions that may be unpopular with large members of people5. For through these rationales they have seemed able to give principled reasons for action. The policy-maker can claim to have weighed up all the relevant considerations for and against a course of action; each consideration was in some way commensurable with every other—perhaps because each had a dollar value associated with it—and so it was possible to reach a determinate conclusion, by fair and objective means. The appearance of determinacy, fairness and objectivity is an important tool for those who wield and manipulate power in business, government, and even universities. But this rationalizing use of economic approaches should be resisted by everyone, including economists themselves.35 34 Ibid p.8 (check). 35 Brennan p.807. 17 The reasons are now entirely familiar ones. References Achtenberg, W., Review of Goodin, Environmental Values, (1994). Foucault, M., 'What is Enlightenment5 Goodin, R., Green political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Habermus, J., 'Modernity—an incomplete project*, in Postmodern Culture (ed. H. Foster), Pluto Press, London, 1987. Hay, P., Review of Goodin typescript, University of Tasmania, 1994. McGowan, J., Postmodernism and Its Critics, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 199x. Osborne, P, 'Modernity is a qualitative, not a stromological, category: notes on the dialectics of differential historical time', in Postmodernism and the re-reading of modernity (ed. F. Barker and others) Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1991/2. Priest, G., 'On alternative geometries, arithmetics, and logics; a tribute to Lukasiewicz5, typsescript, 1996. Routley, R. and V., “Human chauvinism and environmental ethics' referred to as EE Routley, R. and V., The Fight for the Forests，referred to as FF.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Draft of Green political theory: a different account Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, dated 13 Jun 1996. Description An account of the resource One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-06-13 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [17] leaves. 11.63 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:960c201">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:960c201</a> https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/d75844da363477e0a040dc1548e6e077.pdf 6e902a860ae1f5d903cbe328de2a2e37 PDF Text Text A dialethic approach to paradoxes of social and political theory Conspectus: The rough working idea is this: These paradoxes get treated in the same way as moral dilemmas in deontic theory. Namely they are accepted, so theory and assumptions do not require revision and excision. Rather is required is elaboration, additions to say what do when a dilemma is encounter (e.g. proceed to fall back on rational decision theory, as modified). Thus it is with voters paradoxes, inconsistent preferences, Arrow’s theorem, and so on: STET! let them stand. If they are encountered head-on, then work through them using alternative methods. It is an important point that methods do not give out, as things do not go haywire when consistency is encountered. Let us start with desires and preferences, which are the basic items in much theory (eg. stock economics). Although standard theory smooths out—removes—inconsistencies in agents’ desires and preferences, it is widely appreciated that they can both be inconsistent. A person can both want something for one set of reasons or urges and not want it perhaps for another (e.g. because moral constraints enter). The so-called empirical “problem” of nontransitive preferences is, turned around, simply a case of inconsistency. A simple case (like that of voting paradoxes) is where an agent has circular preferences. Over some loop, which may be quite large an agent prefers a to bi, bi to b2, ... bn-i to bn and bn to a. So by transitivity this agent prefers a to bi and bi to a, and similar, which preferences are inconsistent. Given the usual assumption that a Pb implies ~bPa, these circular preferences are explicitly inconsistent. Yet such preference ordering are frequently observed, especially in children (who are often keen to exhibit preferences). A theory admitting explictly inconsistent preferences has to be paraconsistent, on pain of triviality otherwise. Certainly a theory where inconsistency was not exposed, but is to say locked up in preference relations need not be paraconsistent, but such a theory would be only partial, not a sufficiently full theory revealing what was transpiring. A normal modal theory would, for instance, be worthless in the presence of inconsistent preferences or desires, because it would yield such results as that any such agent desires everything. (For instance, by virtue of systematic requirements for D, desire, it follows that Dp & D~p -» DB. The system requirements are A -* B/DA -» DB and DA & DB -> D(A & B).) The state of an agent with inconsistent preferences or desires need not run out of control. Consistency is not the only constraint, the only limit on logical licence, but a special, often excessively powerful one. In these cases control can be provided by agents not processing trivial preferences or desiresi, by some, sufficiently many, things not being preferred or desired. More comprehensively, a rather minimally adequate agent will have both a logically organised set of inclusions, preferences that obtain or are held, etc., and of exclusions, items that are not desired etc. Thus a more satisfactory logic for this sort of area will exhibit both acceptances and rejections. For example: i- DA & DB -> D(A & B) usual coounterexamples to �which assume inconsistent desire cannot obtain explicitly. Normally where h DA then i- D(A& B); but of course an agent may not desire something on its own, which would be differently formulated. Most important, h Dp. That is necessary, though far from sufficient for a coherent agent (and it as with coherents agents, as distinct from consistent agents, that we are now primarily concerned). Now it is not difficult to show that there are paraconsistent logical theories that can combine all these sorts of features with inconsistency in desires or preferences, e.g. with i- D (qo & ~qo) for some qo (for some agent). If individual agents can have inconsistent motivational states, so, still more, can groups of agents. Broadly, many sorts of pooling induce inconsistency: of information, knowledge, and so on, as is now well appreciated. But if of beliefs why not of desires, if of information why not of preferences, which, for one thing, are based on information? Such inconsistency induced by aggregation is what manifests itself in voting paradoxes. Now we can adapt an argument from what do in case of individual agent situation to apply to what do in group case. Namely, not revise and elide, but proceed on through an inconsistency; proceed by further available methods, e.g. further voting differently arranged. (Compare perhaps a football match which results in a draw or stalemate. Do not go back and try to start over. Play on into extra time, with new rules to give a more rapid outcome.) To the extent that it can be carried out on the basis of received preference theory, standard economic theory can be simulated on the basis of paraconsistent preference theory. For there are, in general, simply more preferences to start with, for instance in extending to utility functions, expanding typically in complete preference orderings. Indifference curves can be constructed in the standard way, the only difference being that there will be some singularities, as regards where items are both preferred and not. A conundrum for green theory over democracy, which it typically supports, is put in a sharp form as follows1: Democracy concerns procedures, environmentalism certain outcomes. What guarantee can there be that the procedures will deliver the outcomes? That democracy will yield a way of protesting environments? First greens are not seeking guarantees, which they could not in general expect. 1 Goodin under way So-wind p.168. �a ABSTRACT OF PROBLEMS and SOLUTIONS in DEEP ECOPOLITICAL THEORY A reshaping of social and political institutions, which are often outmoded or suboptimal and certainly commonly anti-environmental, is now prominent on theoretical agendas, at least in Australia. One such project is the multi-million dollar “Reshaping Australian Institutions” project at the Australian National University. At the same time there is widespread disenchantment with prevailing politics in Australia. Accordingly there is an opportunity to put radical green themes on agendas for real political and institutional change. A deep change, however, which is what deep green theories require, encounters several problems. For one, there appears to be a contradiction between demands for, on the one side, increasing environmental regulations and welfare arrangements, characteristically dependent upon bureaurcratic centralisation and economic growth, and on the other, decentralized lower impact organisation, which halts anti-environmentally industry and economic growth. A functional resolution, partially dissolving a central state, is outlined, along with a theory of encephaletic organisation. Further problems to surmount include human chauvinism and present-time bias, even in present “best practice” democratic institutions. Deep demarchoidal resolutions of these problems are sketched and defended. R. Sylvan RMB683 Bungendore Australia 2621 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document A dialethic approach to paradoxes of social and political theory Conspectus: The rough working idea is this: These paradoxes get treated in the same way as moral dilemmas in deontic theory. Namely they are accepted, so theory and assumptions do not require revision and excision. Rather is required is elaboration, additions to say what do when a dilemma is encounter (e.g. proceed to fall back on rational decision theory, as modified). Thus it is with voters paradoxes, inconsistent preferences, Arrow’s theorem, and so on: STET! let them stand. If they are encountered head-on, then work through them using alternative methods. It is an important point that methods do not give out, as things do not go haywire when consistency is encountered. Let us start with desires and preferences, which are the basic items in much theory (eg. stock economics). Although standard theory smooths out—removes—inconsistencies in agents’ desires and preferences, it is widely appreciated that they can both be inconsistent. A person can both want something for one set of reasons or urges and not want it perhaps for another (e.g. because moral constraints enter). The so-called empirical “problem” of nontransitive preferences is, turned around, simply a case of inconsistency. A simple case (like that of voting paradoxes) is where an agent has circular preferences. Over some loop, which may be quite large an agent prefers a to bi, bi to b2, ... bn-i to bn and bn to a. So by transitivity this agent prefers a to bi and bi to a, and similar, which preferences are inconsistent. Given the usual assumption that a Pb implies ~bPa, these circular preferences are explicitly inconsistent. Yet such preference ordering are frequently observed, especially in children (who are often keen to exhibit preferences). A theory admitting explictly inconsistent preferences has to be paraconsistent, on pain of triviality otherwise. Certainly a theory where inconsistency was not exposed, but is to say locked up in preference relations need not be paraconsistent, but such a theory would be only partial, not a sufficiently full theory revealing what was transpiring. A normal modal theory would, for instance, be worthless in the presence of inconsistent preferences or desires, because it would yield such results as that any such agent desires everything. (For instance, by virtue of systematic requirements for D, desire, it follows that Dp & D~p -» DB. The system requirements are A -* B/DA -» DB and DA & DB -> D(A & B).) The state of an agent with inconsistent preferences or desires need not run out of control. Consistency is not the only constraint, the only limit on logical licence, but a special, often excessively powerful one. In these cases control can be provided by agents not processing trivial preferences or desiresi, by some, sufficiently many, things not being preferred or desired. More comprehensively, a rather minimally adequate agent will have both a logically organised set of inclusions, preferences that obtain or are held, etc., and of exclusions, items that are not desired etc. Thus a more satisfactory logic for this sort of area will exhibit both acceptances and rejections. For example: i- DA & DB -> D(A & B) usual coounterexamples to which assume inconsistent desire cannot obtain explicitly. Normally where h DA then i- D(A& B); but of course an agent may not desire something on its own, which would be differently formulated. Most important, h Dp. That is necessary, though far from sufficient for a coherent agent (and it as with coherents agents, as distinct from consistent agents, that we are now primarily concerned). Now it is not difficult to show that there are paraconsistent logical theories that can combine all these sorts of features with inconsistency in desires or preferences, e.g. with i- D (qo & ~qo) for some qo (for some agent). If individual agents can have inconsistent motivational states, so, still more, can groups of agents. Broadly, many sorts of pooling induce inconsistency: of information, knowledge, and so on, as is now well appreciated. But if of beliefs why not of desires, if of information why not of preferences, which, for one thing, are based on information? Such inconsistency induced by aggregation is what manifests itself in voting paradoxes. Now we can adapt an argument from what do in case of individual agent situation to apply to what do in group case. Namely, not revise and elide, but proceed on through an inconsistency; proceed by further available methods, e.g. further voting differently arranged. (Compare perhaps a football match which results in a draw or stalemate. Do not go back and try to start over. Play on into extra time, with new rules to give a more rapid outcome.) To the extent that it can be carried out on the basis of received preference theory, standard economic theory can be simulated on the basis of paraconsistent preference theory. For there are, in general, simply more preferences to start with, for instance in extending to utility functions, expanding typically in complete preference orderings. Indifference curves can be constructed in the standard way, the only difference being that there will be some singularities, as regards where items are both preferred and not. A conundrum for green theory over democracy, which it typically supports, is put in a sharp form as follows1: Democracy concerns procedures, environmentalism certain outcomes. What guarantee can there be that the procedures will deliver the outcomes? That democracy will yield a way of protesting environments? First greens are not seeking guarantees, which they could not in general expect. 1 Goodin under way So-wind p.168. a ABSTRACT OF PROBLEMS and SOLUTIONS in DEEP ECOPOLITICAL THEORY A reshaping of social and political institutions, which are often outmoded or suboptimal and certainly commonly anti-environmental, is now prominent on theoretical agendas, at least in Australia. One such project is the multi-million dollar “Reshaping Australian Institutions” project at the Australian National University. At the same time there is widespread disenchantment with prevailing politics in Australia. Accordingly there is an opportunity to put radical green themes on agendas for real political and institutional change. A deep change, however, which is what deep green theories require, encounters several problems. For one, there appears to be a contradiction between demands for, on the one side, increasing environmental regulations and welfare arrangements, characteristically dependent upon bureaurcratic centralisation and economic growth, and on the other, decentralized lower impact organisation, which halts anti-environmentally industry and economic growth. A functional resolution, partially dissolving a central state, is outlined, along with a theory of encephaletic organisation. Further problems to surmount include human chauvinism and present-time bias, even in present “best practice” democratic institutions. Deep demarchoidal resolutions of these problems are sketched and defended. R. Sylvan RMB683 Bungendore Australia 2621  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Draft of A dialethic approach to paradoxes of social and political theory ; Abstract of Problems in deep ecopolitical theory Subject The topic of the resource Printouts of draft paper and abstract, undated. Description An account of the resource Papers original housed together with a paper clip. One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [3] leaves. 2.02 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:f3409b4">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:f3409b4</a> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk Box 18: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/2f6dabd2b76b0e39c93150be86c837bf.pdf 3b6452d1e3793a5073876a489e21484a PDF Text Text 29.5.95 PROBLEMS IN DEEPER GREEN POLITICAL ORGANIZATION: an Australian perspective on radical institutional change. ... people are ready for change and the impending debate will result in constitutional change. We should, therefore, explore all options ... J As elsewhere, there is growing dissatisfaction with Australia's political institutions, and increasing demand to change them. This demand, hiding co-optative elements, has been initiated and fostered in a conspicuously top-down fashion, by politicians and by academics. There is so far little surge of political enterprise at grass-roots levels, little pressure for the usually very limited changes proposed. Nonetheless, along with apathy, there is widespread popular disenchantment with present political arrangements. There is now an opportunity (although still only a small window no doubt) to put green and radical themes on the agenda for real political change in Australia. That opportunity should not be missed, within Australia, or elsewhere. While the exposition that follows concentrates upon Australia, as a convenient advanced example, much of what is argued and urged applies or adapts elsewhere. 1. Disenchantment with politics, and political proposals for change. There is now evident in Australia, what is variously described as disillusionment and anxiety, cynicism and pessimism about the state of politics—a loss of confidence in it, and a retreat from commitment. As much and more, Mackay has nicely exposed in a survey of the Australian situation: anxiety about the nature and quality of Australian politics [has] increased. ... Widespread anxiety about the state of politics is based [in part] on an uneasy feeling that, if the parties are not going to stand for some identifiable philosophy, and the leaders are going to be chosen on the basis of their potential as television performers or even as head-kickers, then the only appropriate response is cynicism. That cynicism is reflected in a turning away from support for the major parties ... and revealed in the attitudes of young Australians ...12 who often cannot be bothered registering to vote, or voting (though voting is legally compulsory). 1 Hon. Ian Macphee, ‘A new constitution?’. Of course Macphee did not really mean all options, nor even all constitutional options. Furthermore, his claim about preparedness of people for change is incompatible with Mackey’s data (mentioned below) on exhaustion with change. 2 Mackay pp. 174-177. For all the Australian casualness of Mackay's presentation, his sociological findings are nonetheless fairly solidly survey and interview based (if occasionally stretching the data). Main findings are replicated by other sociologists. �2 ♦> Lack of confidence is beginning to show not only as cynicism about politicians, but also as doubt about the integrity of Australia's political institutions.3 In a recent survey, ‘62 percent of [Australians] expressed either little or no confidence in the political system. Such a figure accurately reflects the mood of the Australian community’.4 Australian loss offaith in conventional politics is attributed to a mix of factors. A first explanatory factor as regards this disenchantment comes from the changes in politics already remarked (ranging from policy issues to media performers) and from resultant uncertainty. ‘... the Australian electorate is confused about which party stands for what, and about whether any party has a long-term commitment to any particular point of view’ .5 A complex ‘second factor ... concerns the adversarial nature of two-party politics’.6 How can this ‘two party, adversarial approach ... continue to be appropriate when the distinctions between the two parties themselves are so hard to define’? But ‘redefinition of party politics implies the possibility of a redefinition of the whole parliamentary process itself’. Why ‘when parties seem quite capable of stealing each other's policies or of invading each other's traditional philosophical territory, [can not] politicians work together in a more co­ operative and harmonious spirit’?7 ‘Adversarial politics may have made sense ... when ... distinctions between the parties were stark and when arguments about principle could be justified; today, the idea that politicians would be arguing over a point of principle or philosophy is almost unthinkable.... [They] are much more likely to be arguing over matters of personality, prejudice and power than over issues which effect the long-term health of the body politic’.8 ‘The quality of parliamentary debate is regarded not only as a symptom of the adversarial nature of the institution, but also as a symptom either of the poor quality of politicians ..., or of the effect of the system on those who are enmeshed in it’.9 Unless there is 3 Ibid, p.178 4 Ibid. The figure is the more surprising inasmuch as such disillusioning factors as corruption and graft are not features of overt political life in Austral-asia by comparison with elsewhere in the hemispherical region. 5 Ibid. pp. 178-179. 6 Ibid. The adversarial character of dominant State legal systems is also becoming subject to more and more criticism. It appears likely that significant movement towards different inquiratorial systems will occur, not least because of the huge expense and growing unaffordability of adversarial systems. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid, p.180. 9 Ibid, p.179. It is a symptom of both, the latter especially. �3 marked improvement in party philosophies, programs and performance, ‘the call to re-examine the nature of the parliamentary process will gather momentum’.1011 A third relevant factor contributing to loss of faith is the impression of Australians that ‘they are overgoverned ’H, with too many expensive bureaucracies and too many houses of parliament. Conflicts between State and Federal parliaments — and between the various State parliaments themselves — are regarded as a particularly unproductive expenditure of political energy, and Australians question whether 15 houses of parliament may be too many for the efficient government of 18 million people. The sheer number of parliaments is often blamed for the problem of too many bureaucracies and for many duplications of bureaucratic and political activity between State and Federal governments. ... Whilst there is little love felt in the Australian community for Canberra and for the idea of more centralised government even that is beginning to appear preferable .... The widespread support for the idea of a republic which emerged during 1992 is closely related to the underlying sense that Australia is overdue for some kind of reexamination of its political institutions, and even the notion of Federation itself. ... As debate about the idea of a republic proceeds ... it has begun to incorporate the idea that Australian's political structures and systems might be quite significantly reformed.12 Such disaffection reflects too a growing awareness that Australia’s political arrangements owe more to historical accident than to rational design. Even though the main proposals for change no doubt remain reformist in character and could lead in unfortunate directions, some of them are far-reaching by normal standards. Both the extensive disenchantment with present political arrangements and the felt need for significant change further suggest political times are not altogether normal. Elements underpinning a political paradigm shift are already present, as are features supporting rational redesign, to which radical additions are now feasible. So far there have been, along with normal inertial resistance to change, two main responses to growing pressure for change: political, from politicians, ex-politicians and political commentators, and academic from intellectuals, academic entrepreneurs and academic journalists. By and large, political responses have been grander, more sweeping and vaguer; 10 Ibid, p.181. 11 Ibid, p.181, itals added. The problem has now surfaced strikingly in the heavily indebted Australian Capital Territory (“toy town” as its is facetiously called locally) which is swamped by bureaucracy, where it has been discovered that there is one expensive bureaucrat for every fifteen persons. 12 Ibid. p. 181-2. Republican proposals have been circulating for some time. But the cause was finally taken up by prominent politicians, who made it their own, after which it became a popular issue. Mackay's accurate presentation of popular support for political change contrasts drolly with the first part of his book which depicts an Australian populace exhausted by change and longing for the old ease and somnolence. �4 academic responses more theoretical and cautious, piecemeal and detailed. But there are no grand detailed plans. Under the leading proposal so far for political change, Australia's constitutional monarchy will be displaced by a constitutional republic with its own head of state displacing the monarch, but with perhaps minimal adjustments otherwise. Nonetheless, as a result, republicanism is in the air. Politicians have begun to contemplate other practical reforms, while academics have begun to embroider theories around republicanism and institutional reform. What happens to the Australian federation of states is one of the many unresolved issues presently being debated. The main reason for reform offered by the political camp can be summed up simply as changing geopolitical circumstances. The camp tends not to acknowledge what would reflect adversely upon it, the poorness of federal political practice. Rather it tends to attribute popular dissatisfaction to economic circumstances and uncertainties: declining real standards of living, extensive unemployment, persistent recession until recently, problems to be surmounted by full-steam ahead untrammelled economic growth, to be attained by recoupling Australia to the Asian economic express. Meanwhile an orchestrated republican movement can help divert popular political attention from poor political management and a gloomy economic predicament. Much has changed in the century since present antiquated political arrangements were hammered out, arrangements making the newly-fashioned Commonwealth of Australia, politically a federation of states, into a constitutional monarchy coupled to Britain, arrangements of convenience fashioned for very different circumstances. Most non-symbolic linkages with Britain, which has been inching towards a place in a united Europe, have already been severed. Australia has gradually begun to appreciate its geo-political position in the Indian-Pacific region (and the money-making opportunities for a sagging resource-based economy in allegedly booming parts of Asia). Whence the main idealistic proposal: for an independent republic, decoupled from Europe, assuming its own (prominent) place in its geo-political regions. In principle at least, place and region begin to assume, or resume, some of their neglected, but historic, significance (however that is not how it is yet seen). Most proposals for constitutional and federal reform fit within that limited idealistic conception. One important proposal, advanced by established political players, their most radical proposal so far, includes abolition of the present states. Such a proposal would clearly represent a welcome step in anarchist directions, were it not regularly offset by the idea of a strengthened central state.13 Supposing this latter unfortunate idea is bracketed for the moment, 13 Anarchists can even rest (if uneasily) with a constitution, so long as it provides for an organisation, Australia Inc. even, sufficiently different from a state and its authoritarian trappings. �5 ♦> then what is being seriously considered already starts to look like a much more rational regionalism than what presently prevails. The present states of Australia are undoubtedly an anachronism, based on accidental boundaries of a contingent colonial history. They are ecologically irrational management units, utterly failing to reflect ecological regions. Yet the states possess extensive environmental and other management powers, inappropriate ‘powers which derive from what was largely a political bargaining process conducted a century ago.’ Another effect of inapposite state-federal arrangements, especially ‘funding arrangements, has been to lock out local government and, more importantly, local communities. ... local communities must be given greater control over those decisions of government which effect their lives ...’; the opportunity ‘to design and provide the services which are needed locally.’14 At this stage of the dialectic McPhee slides easily and naturally from localism to regionalism. A glance at the map reveals natural regions for local government on a viable scale [an optimistic contention]. Some cross State boundaries, and I would envisage that State governments would be replaced with regional governments. These would be more akin to larger local governments and would certainly not have the trappings of the States. They should not have parliaments and the expensive, unwieldy and inefficient bureaucracies which characterise our States. They should have a small number of full-time councillors ... Regional governments should be solely accountable to their ratepayers ...15 . So far so good: however McPhee thereupon begins to infiltrate stock (small Z) liberal management assumptions. Nonetheless the basic idea to retain is simple: that of ecologicallyrational local and regional rearrangement of anachronistic state partitions. regionalization should be greened, as reform should be radicalized. But that More generally, opportunites now present themselves to insert more radical ideas throughout the debate about Australia’s future directions. For much has been left off political agendas for change, not merely environments and habitats of their less prominent or noisy inhabitants, but also such issues as rights and liberties, transformation of antiquated legal and executive frameworks, and so on. Omission of (human) rights is especially remarkable in states such as Australia, whose constitutions astonishingly do not mention at all (what is however often supposed to justify states) individual rights, such rights only being ensured, so far as they are, assumptions from uncodified common law, by 14 All quotes in this paragraph are drawn from McPhee. An address along similar lines to the Hon. Ian McPhee, also proposing abolition of the states, was delivered by the former Prime Minister R.G. Hawke. Hawke's speech, by contrast with McPhee's, attracted much media attention, and though facilely dismissed as “unrealistic” by some practicing politicians, appeared to gain a good deal of support. 15 McPhee ibid. �6 indirect routes (statutes regarding treatment of minorities and the like). Nor do the political camps pushing limited change speak of rights or liberties; a very limited conception of adjustments required prevails (though without rights and liberties and a generous public sphere there is little, and little prospect of, justification for a state at all). Accordingly political agendas for change need to be conspicuously broadened, to accommodate a decidedly more ambitious range of constitutional and institutional redesign. 2. A project within a project: radically reshaping Australian institutions. Academic entrepreneurs have also responded quickly to proposals for constitutional and institutional changes. Early to scramble on the bandwagon was the institution to which I am affiliated, the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, with its ambitious decade-long project, Reshaping Australian Institutions: Towards and Beyond 2001.16 One small part of this project does connect with the republican push, which no doubt helped inspire it and gain its funding. The academic version of republicanism furnishes an institutional and historic setting, tracing its roots back to ancient Rome, and thereby linking in, what admits much modem adaptation, notions of citizenship and civic virtues. But most of the project is independent of any republican reorganisation. The Reshaping Australian Institutions project is presented in predominantly reformist fashion, unsurprisingly. It is supposed, for instance, to ‘provide major input into evaluation and reform of Australia's institutions’; indeed it is explicitly ‘aimed at contributing to Australian constitutional reform’.17 Nothing however precludes consideration of reshaping or transforming Australian institutions — those of the whole ecological region — in a unreformist and possibly unconstitutional way, in a radical way. Admittedly, the rough boundary between reformist and radical routes becomes even more blurred when the constitution of a country is open for possible major reconsideration and much political infrastructure may be altered. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a strong central state, the stock boundary stands intact. For reformist changes would amount to comparatively small adjustments leaving the state substantially intact. For example, a minimal transformation, 16 A recent brief description of this two million dollar project, now outlined in several places, is given in Tynan, pp.17-19. Fuller descriptions are available from a main coordinator of the project, J. Braithwaite, Law, RSSS, ANU. One of the many strands (17 at last count) of this project is an environmental (or green) strand. The immediate predecessor of this article was presented in a workshop at RSSS on green political theory, arranged under the project. That accounts for some of the otherwise puzzling structure of what has eventuated. Another earlier version was tried out at Ecopolitics VIII, Pacific Visions, held at Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand, in July 1994. 17 ‘Reshaping Australian institutions: towards and beyond 2001’ in Tynan , p.17, italics added. �7 of the sort presently much favoured, from constitutional monarchy to Australian republic, though entailing non-negligible constitutional redrafting, need only amend the roles of a few elite power- and position-holders. By contrast, radical changes would substantially alter that strong central state, perhaps (as will be proposed) eliminating it altogether. There are appealing reasons for attempting wider, more radical investigations. For, firstly, there may be more satisfactory institutional structures not accessible, or even visible, along normal constitutional reform routes. Secondly, there is a demand, a small but growing demand from green directions for instance, for radical institutional change. It would be prudent, then, to make some investigation of the options, to assess their prospects. Thirdly, reflection on such structures would certainly be part of a more comprehensive study of and theory of institutional design, which the Reshaping project also presents as an objective. Fourthly, much more controversially, major environmental problems cannot be satisfactorily solved along merely reformist paths. For states, what are reformed, states themselves are ecologically dysfunctional. In practice this appears obvious enough. Simply reflect upon their environmental records; these are even worse than those abysmal records compiled for human rights. But the practical case can be argued in detail in a state by state way, or less laboriously, through the familiar rough classification of states into first, second and third world states. In main third world regions, the rise of the state has seen the serious decline of environments. Those third world states that have not largely destroyed their natural environments are in rapid process of doing so. The activities involved are, furthermore, not merely tolerated by these states but are usually actively encouraged (e.g. with state participation or by state concessions, as through taxation advantages, subsidies, export incentives, etc.). Further, the role of exploitation and plunder of remaining natural “resources”, and depletion of “biological capital”, by third world states, most of which are now trapped in debt and structural adjustment, has increased many-fold in the last two decades. How destructively second world states of eastern Europe treated their own (and also other regions’) environment, how they over-expoited and polluted them, has recently been much publicized. While the recent record in first world states is no doubt marginally better, many of these states dominated their natural environments and their wild inhabitants in the past, and have heavily polluted and congested their urban and industrial regions. Nor does their present record gain an environmental pass. For example, those that have any natural forests (similarly fisheries) left are in the process of eliminating or degrading most of what remains; most are failing seriously in meeting (their own) targets on greenhouse emissions, and so on. More theoretically, it is unlikely that states, increasingly focussed narrowly upon shallow and short-term economic agendas, will or can deliver satisfactorily environmentally. A prime reason is this: states are ineluctably committed, more and more as their populations expand, to high levels of economic activity characteristically to �0 economic growth of sorts which impact heavily environmentally, inducing inevitable degradation.18 Accordingly, there are then, or should be, two bands to any green (or environmental) strand of a restructuring Australian institutions project: not merely an important reformist side, but as well a radical spread. It is part of this underfunded and undersupported radical spread which forms the main object of investigation in what follows, that part that relinquishes present state structures, in favour of more environmentally benign institutions - which no doubt can be designed, even if not so readily brought into practical operation.19 In order to reach radical redesign ideas quickly, let us touch only lightly upon some of the more distinctively green reasons for this anarchoid quest (familiar anarchist reasons stand: the illegitimacy of present states, the undesirability and severe disutility of states, which typically are highly destructive and corrosive institutions based on concentration of power, hierarchical authority, massive coercion, manipulation by economic elites, technobureaucracy, utilitarian rationality, and sundry other evils.20) As indicated, present states are incompatible with stock ecologically sustainable practices, because of their heavy unrelenting commitments to shallow economic growth. More generally, standard states and their practices comprise very significant parts of environmental problems, but quite insufficient parts of any solutions. Moreover, states constitute an enormous and destructive drain on regional environments, a feature particularly evident in smaller states which are always looking out for revenue-raising expedients for their own expensive running. Apart from those greens who have recognised the excessive environmental costs of states and their heavy demands on environments, and thus or otherwise have come to recognise the desirability of their withering away, there are many more who have become ambivalent about states, who appreciate their very problematic character and very questionable legitimacy, but do not see yet how to get along altogether without them, or more exactly (to indicate thereby a partial resolution) without certain functions that they serve. Indeed to point immediately towards a resolution of this crucial problem, the functional dissolution idea advocated is this: that the functioning parts may be separately utilized without the colossal whole. The state is not 18 This theme, that states are normally ecologically dysfunctional, is documented and argued in detail elsewhere; see e.g. Carter and especially Sylvan 96. On the dismal environmental records of particular states see Ponting. For shocking figures and illustrations as regards environmental exploitation in third world states, see Bello, pp. 57-65. 19 Nonetheless practical revolutionary displacement of the state is not so remote, or difficult, as is generally supposed. 20 To adapt a referee’s trenchant summary. For detail on some familiar anarchist reasons, see Burnheim and above all Marshall. �9 an organism the functioning parts of which must fail without the whole. So it may well be the enormous fat of state can simply be shed, to great advantage. In any event, ‘the State is a social institution’, always ‘within’, Marxists continue, ‘a concrete historic setting’.21 Granted, it is an institution. For an institution in the relevant sense is ‘a society or association for the organisation or promotion of some particular object or function’.22 Institutions include therefore the state, the central state. So it too is up for reshaping, radical slimming, and possible removal in a concrete historical setting, such as late twentieth century Australia. Whittling away the state means in turn dismantling corporate capitalism, which now dwells in symbiosis with the bureaucratic state, and also much else, often environmentally undesirable, that the state affords a supportive framework for and enables to flourish. Ideas and schemes for radical redesign are already available from rich anarchist and socialist sources, those for green design and reshaping from growing and diverse environmental sources. In main part, then, radical ecoredesign is a matter of convivially meeting (not joining) the two, an intersection that favours anarchist inputs. Something of the sort has already been attempted, in an environmentally shallower way, in eco-anarchism, alias social ecology, and in a deeper way, in deep-green social theory.23 Moreover, it could be attempted in other kinds of deeper green theory—itself really a plurality of theories, which however does not itself force radical ecoredesign, though most variants would support it. Thus Naess's “deep ecology” for example, which is not so far politically radical, only strongly reformist, could (and should) be given a radical turn.24 Concentrating upon the radical spread of deeper green theory does not preclude concomitant reformist investigation and activity. Both sides of the green street should be played. Reformist opportunities should of course be pursued—incremental change, social engineering, “ecologizing” economics, greening bureaucrats, lobbying politicians, and like activity (but better really to cut through much such pleading and obiesance and be rid of politicians and bureaucrats). There are many reformist proposals being advanced for the greening of Australian federal institutions—with but few so far having much impact on 21 Thus, Green p.61, who adds quite wrongly that Proudhon and his disciples do not see it that way ‘but as an abstraction and aberration’. 22 Adaptation of the Oxford English Dictionary. An institution is, so to say, an organitution. 23 On social ecology, see Bookchin 90, and for information on deep-green social theory, see Sylvan and Bennett 94 and Routleys 80. 24 As to the political character of deep ecology, and why it should be turned, see Sylvan and Bennett 94, where an expose of the political theory of Naess's ecosophy is presented. �practice.25 Nonetheless, more limited, more constrained, proposals of this sort certainly have a better chance, within the prevailing paradigm, of making a difference than radical redesigns, too smartly dismissed as “unrealistic” or “utopian”. No doubt the normal “reshaping institutions” investigations are rightly focussed then upon institutional reform, not upon revolutionary reshaping, where much freer scope for redesign is offered. However the real possibility of radical change should not be excluded; green radicals should be prepared. There have been various opportunities for revolutionary change in Australian history, the last occurring, according to some historians, with the ignominious fall of the Whitlam government. There may well be opportunities again both in the near and intermediate future, especially should some solid work be put into propagating the prospect. In the near term there is economic disarray, social fragmentation, and constitutional destabilization; in the longer term increasing ecological problems and expanding eco-catastrophes loom. Under present incremental reform and regression, for all the spasmodic environmental rhetoric, comparatively little in the way of radical green change occurs or can be expected. Witness, for comparison, the snail pace of the establishment movement towards a rather minimal grey republicanism in Australia, or differently away from meeting carbon-reduction commitments. It is increasingly doubtful, given prevailing responses to economic and other difficulties, that present structural and systematic problems confronting Australia, for example, will be satisfactorily addressed, environmental problems such as extensive and expanding land and water degradation not least. Furthermore, under more incremental reform, the sorts of problems concerning reorganising society in deeper green ways, problems that provide subsequent topics, would likely not arise. So in getting beyond more muddling along, do imagine fairly free scope for institutional eco-redesign is somehow dispensed. One nice corollary is that once it is worked out where to go organisationally, it is much easier to ascertain how to arrive there. 3. A basic problem of structure: central or decentralised organisation? There are large and immediate advantages in pursuing a problem-oriented approach to redesign. That approach, which will tend towards anarchoid outcomes, will be anarchistically guided in this respect: Unless there is a genuine problem, already causing difficulties or developing, nothing need be done; otherwise let things alone, let Being be.26 On this non­ 25 There are many many narrower economic and technological proposals. One of the more interesting wider proposals comes from an Opposition not noted for its green initiatives and commitments, for an overseeing Department of Sustainable Development, a Department that could see to the greening of all federal institutions. 26 To echo also Heideggerian wisdom. The non-prejudicial term ‘anarchoid’ is deployed, not because what emerges will not be anarchistic (as characterized in Marshall and in Sylvan 94), but because it �11 managerial low-work approach a good deal of structure presently inoperational, and of idle regulation presently enacted, can be removed; organisational arrangements can be very significantly down-sized. The leading methodological idea is that enough relevant (biodegradable) structure is introduced to resolve organisational problems, but not substantially more. Organisational oversupply and waste is thus avoided. Moreover, much structure that keeps so much environmentally destructive industry in business is likewise shed. Among basic problems for deeper green theory are those of political reorganisation and so of organisation. Evidently institutions, and their types, are critical to such organisation. And a major organisational problem for any putative green society concerns structure', to take a critical case, whether society is centrally organised (concentrated, bureaucratised, hierarchical, large- scale and so on) or decentralised (dispersed, non-hierarchical, small-scale and supposedly beautiful, and so on). This focal problem, to centralise or not to centralise, is sometimes presented as a serious dilemma for concerned green theorists.27 The binary horns of this dilemma are respectively: on the one hom, the pull (or push) to localisation and regionalisation, to non-anonymous smallscale low-impacting environmentally-friendly arrangements, to diffusion of power and dismantling of the incubus of a central state with its crippling costs and unfriendly practices; and on the other horn, the need for continuing and further central income generation and welfare (re)distribution, central regulation and control, and the pressures to environmental reliance upon and use of the central state.28 The dilemma has been trenchantly posed as follows: ... the demands of the Greens sometimes appear contradictory, in seeking increasing environmental regulation and welfare measures... alongside a halt to industrial expansion, the very source of income for the welfare state. Yet the expansion and further centralization of the bureaucratic state apparatus is neither their overt goal nor covert motivation. Quite the contrary. Their genuine long term vision is of a decentralized, steady state society of self-sufficient, relationally autonomous (albeit interlinked) regions.29 departs from standard forms of anarchism in significant respects, not least in planned political organization. In this exercise organization is of the essence. 27 As by Jacobs of The Green Economy, who has posed the problem sharply, as part of an argument however for retaining the central state (and much of present status quo arrangements). 28 Environmental reasons for favouring small-scale bioregional organisation are nicely gathered in McLaughlin, chapter 10. 29 Unknown source. �12 As it happens, not only does the theoretical and utopian literature run both ways, towards and away from centralisation, but so does practice and experience. As to theory, anarchisticallyinclined presentations tend to favour decentralisation, perhaps with some central compensation through federation (thus recent Blueprints, ecotopias, and so on), whereas socialisticallyinclined presentations invariably opt for powerful central states (to control and redistribute grander social programs, etc.). As to practice, there are local councils, community organisations, residents' groups aiming to keep out, or to remove, the state-sponsored nuclear plants, toxic waste incinerators, waste dumps or super-highways, on the one horn; and, on the other, central states blocking, modifying, or regulating local or regionally promoted schemes for large dams (e.g. Tasmania's Franklin), forest exploitation, pulp mills, strip mining, and so on.30 To some extent, the way the problem has often been re-presented, in terms of a dilemma between top-down and bottom-up structure and power transmission, already points towards a theoretical resolution: namely, both, or rather enough of both. But how is this combination to be achieved? An answer does not fall out by pure reason, operating in isolation from other problems. By taking advantage of information gathered from other connected problems, a promising answer can be teased out. Neither standard socialism nor anarchism afford answers, socialism because it leaves the central institution of state intact. But standard anarchism, much more promising, does not resolve the problem either, because federation, as usually explained, does not leave enough structure; it may not even concede sufficient power to delegates to constrain exploitative local communities. A solution to such dilemma lies through a combinational strategy, which includes partial dissolution of the central state, into its actual organisational functions in each region. While removing the state, itself source of several environmental and social problems, and its concentration of power, invariably under environmentally unfriendly control, functional dissolution nonetheless retains its apparently essential services, including (where necessary) those of environmental regulation. Relevant continent-wide functions would persist or be introduced: for example, services controlling inflow into Australia of damaging forms and materials such as toxic wastes and exotic pest species, or regulating outflow from Australia of native wildlife and flora. In part, ecoregional functionalism offers a radical continuation of the separation ofpowers of recent historical process, of church and state, legislature and executive, and so forth. As these functions come to operate separately while remaining coordinated, so would those functional arrangements and institutions dissolving the state. 30 Much turns on the exploitative character of certain local and regional communities, their get-richquick schemes, what they are prepared to do to survive in old or superficially affluent ways, and so on. �13 It is a major illusion of modem political theory that a central state, ceded monopolies on coercion, currency, taxation and so on, is necessary in order to secure adequate supply of public goods, including public order and environmental regulation. To the contrary, the most that appears required, the most that arguments would support, is some network of specific organisations functioning to look after specific kinds of goods and services, those necessary for this or that, that are not otherwise supplied. There is no inherent reason why communities should not institute and regulate specialised bodies coordinated among themselves (by negotiations or, failing that, through recognised arbitrators) to ensure the adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of damaging crime. Each such institution could gain community standing from its support base, for instance through achieving democratically-generated recognition. Such an institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and like admissible means, and in doing this it could mobilize in co-operation with communities and with other recognised institutions. There are many examples of such institutions operating successfully both regionally and internationally; for instance, those for postal and communicational arrangements, international sporting bodies, international academies and clubs, environmental and consumer organizations.31 4. Selecting satisfactory political arrangements within the span of anarchoid options. Anarchoid options come in a wide variety of forms, including, among others, both right­ leaning individualistic or capitalistic varieties, and left-leaning social or communitarian varieties.32 A suitably generous political pluralism will allow for all these forms, while not encouraging all, as they are of very different merit. For example, some may be neglectful or repressive of some of their inhabitants, or destructive of their environments; others, superior in 31 This passage borrows from the summary in Burnheim 86 p.221 of Burnheim 85. For much fuller elaboration see Burnheim 85 and Sylvan 94. The critical issue of funding administration, without a coercive taxation system, is also broached in these places (and developed in Sylvan 96). The broad proposal is that low-cost administration, much of which would be volunteer, could be funded by rents (there would be no property in land and resources), use charges, and fines. 32 There are many more varieties of political systems than much recent theory has cared to concede. For example, to take right-leaning dimensions, all of individualism, market-organization and capitalism function substantially independently. There can be markets without capitalism (characterised through opportunities to accumulate capital), and conversely, capitalism without free market arrangements. And so on. Most historic and modern systems, upon which political theory has tended inadmissibly to concentrate almost exclusively, are hybrid arrangements with mixes of different elements drawn from both “left” and “right”. �14 these socio-environmental regards, may not be. Dismantling or deconstructing a state does not, on its own, make a sharp selection between alternatives. No doubt the hope is, what can be striven for, that adequate designs are sought and adequate selections made, that inadmissible forms rapidly perish. Those remaining forms that are admissible can be ranked; for instance, they might be graded according to defeasible criteria based upon “pillars” of German green movement such as environmental sensitivity, democratic institutions, and nonviolent practices. While right-leaning anarchoid arrangements could work in theory (e.g. under what is improbable, benevolent capitalism), they are unlikely to succeed in practice, for several reasons. Consider, to illustrate in outline, why that much promoted rightist form, market (or “liberal”) capitalism is unlikely to serve. For one reason, an intrusive state is likely to emerge, with state controlled and state funded standing military and police forces, needed to defend capitalist interests and accumulation, to protect private property, to uphold endemic social inequalities, and to enforce particular market and trade structures, with a substantial and heavy taxation system to fund these forces and a corresponding bureaucracy needed to administer and regulate these and other institutions, such as those required to guarantee that capitalist liabilities are strictly limited and to keep markets (far from self-regulating) unclogged, “free” and competitive. Not only are anarchoid conditions thus violated, so are those for benign green societies. In normal practice, market capitalism tends to be highly environmental exploitative, as modern history demonstrates all too plainly (plainly too it is not alone in this propensity, so are other modem statist systems). Furthermore, given the sorts of humans these systems tend to elevate, and exalt, and the sorts of practices (including extravagant consumption for all that can afford it) they encourage and sometimes even enforce, extensive exploitation is to be expected and liable to persist. At least that is so without, what is thereupon required in a self-reinforcing spiral, further state intervention to distort “natural” capitalistic incentives and institutions, to limit practices on private property (thereby effectively altering the institution), to establish new instruments and commodities such as pollution licences, green investments and futures, and so forth.33 Even though a shallow greenness can also be sprayed upon parts of market capitalism (factories in fields, forest reserves retained for tourists, and so on), and some green showcase exhibits tacked on, environmental depth cannot. Shallowness is both an inevitable consequence of the justifying socio-economic theory, and also an expected best outcome of practice. Accordingly in institutional design it is much more promising to look in democratic left­ leaning directions. For, as argued, it would be rash to gamble upon any bright new dawn of environmentally and socially benign market capitalism, which in any event could easily revert back towards dark industrial times. However, very similar arguments to those sketched could 33 Infiltrated, along with propaganda on behalf of such instruments, is much mythology, including acclaimed environmental virtues of private property and privatization generally. �15 be developed as regards centralised socialism, especially as untempered by democratic procedures. While island communities of a wide range of varieties are naturally not excluded under anarchoidal pluralism, brighter continental prospects lie through modifications of democratic sociality, which appears to permit much of what is sought in design. Under duly decentralized social organization, each requisite function would be carried out by some association of agents comprising operative and support staff (that is, as regards bare formal structure, more or less as now, in institutions like departments and corporations). For direct accountability downwards, and also to ensure desirable separation and dilution of power, upper operatives, those of a directing or steering committee (the nervous system of the organisation), would be democratically selected (from a relevant lower level constituency, and from the whole people of an ecoregion in case of a typical bottom level institution). Note well that selection is not election: election is but one method of democratic selection, and often enough not an altogether satisfactory method. The point of some sort of democratic selection, as a guiding though not invariant rule, is manifold: it is in part to ensure due accountability, in part to prevent unethical accumulation of power in special classes, and in part for reasons that devolve from the very notion of democracy itself. In brief, certain forms of democracy offer promising prospects for green reorganisation, particularly within complementing left-leaning settings where those forms can function in favour of sustainability. However even with an informed democracy in place, there are few guarantees. Some structure, such as limited executive power separated from judicial and administrative functions, needs to be set in place to block or retard worse eventualities (such as mob actions, selection of tyrants, mistreatment of noncitizens and so on). Even then several thorny problems remain for any deeper green political reorganization. 5. Problems of chauvinism and present-time bias in democratic political institutions. In modem usage of the motherhood term democracy, two main lines are visible: included are not only forms of political organisation where ‘power [is presumed to] reside in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them ... or by officers [selected] by them’, but ‘often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege’34. It is on the basis of this second line that the call for democracy has operated to remove chauvinism and discrimination of a range of forms: against unpropertied minorities, nonconformists, women, blacks, tribals, and so on. Even so pursuit 34 Oxford English Dictionary entry 1, main entry. These two lines are by no means the only distinctive lines now visible: increasingly conspicuous in calls for “democracy”, notably in Asia, are calls to freedom and rights: not merely for basic legal freedoms such as free assembly, fair process and so on, but for freedom to access information (the “right to know”). �16 of the line, where successful, has not generally conferred adequate representation and rights on several of these groups; but, more important, pursuit has stopped short in its inclusions at certain humans, such as those granted citizenship—though relevant interests of many other creatures and welfare of many of other items may be affected by what those citizens elect to do. While democratic voters can perhaps be entrusted to take some account of those near and dear (within remarkably sharp limits, as the situation of women in many regions still shows), such as those deemed incompetent to vote: the young, deranged, and so on, much evidence reveals that they cannot be relied for what is less near or dear (and indeed are easily herded into casting their votes in accord with a shallow mercantilism). Consider what gets left out, outcasts of even perfect democratic control:• spatially distant agents. For example, the interests of many humans outside USA are much affected by practices of the US government, which however is outside their democratic reach. • temporally distant agents. Since the past is past, it is future agents who would be affected, often drastically affected, by present practices, that matter. Some way of taking due account of future agents, their interests and welfare, is required, even under shallow long-term ecology, that is under lighter green positions. Sustainable development has been regularly diverted into—what is part of what it is about—such a way, an indirect and so far utterly ineffectual way. Much more of importance is also excluded according to deep-green theory: • creatures with interests, other than present human citizens, and • items with welfare, but perhaps lacking interests. The category includes items with intrinsic value, whose value can be effected, made to fare worse or better. A major problem, little addressed, is how to take due account of such democratically excludeds. It is a problem especially for deeper green theories: that deep problem is, so to say, how to obtain satisfactory representation of all that is of value in the natural world? That way of putting it, while a little misleading, does point to a particular type of resolution. Problems special to deep ecopolitical theory, include, that is, issues as to adequacy of representation of items of value outside those humans that are represented, representation of their interests, where they have them, of their welfare otherwise, of favourable conditions for their sustenance, continuation and retention of value. Democracy of discussed modem sorts, whether representative or participative, will not serve these purposes at all satisfactorily. For instance, insofar as party-political representative democracies represent anything (even human “bottom lines” as is sometimes erroneously supposed), they appear to represent primarily interests of certain business-allied elites. Among the issues are of course those as to adequacy of retention and protection of nonhuman items of intrinsic value, tropical forests and their inhabitants and elements for instance. �17 As observed, there is really no organisational alternative to proceeding with and through agents, preferably well-disposed and quality agents. It is hard to guarantee either politically. As agents are but a subclass of what requires democratic representation and what should have its welfare or interests considered, how are the rest to be taken care of satisfactorily? There are significant older responses to like problems, through totems and taboos, guardians and constraints. Looked at one way the problem repeats, more or less, a familiar problem: namely, how in larger constituencies do decision-making agents represent the whole mass of agents and others in the constituency? A main democratic answer, designed to avoid many shortcomings of alternatives, was: by representative means—only “representation” was almost never taken seriously or literally enough. The sorts of considerations that made representation a promising resolution make what is to be proposed—where representation has, in any case, to be expanded —also promising. A key principle is this: all relevant items are to be represented. Relevance criteria enter importantly. Steering committees of lower level institutions among the main decision-making bodies should be appropriately representative of all items whose welfare is affected by their decisions (principle of deepened demanarchy). Under more equitable arrangements, then, some decision-engaged agents will have to be selected as representative of relevant classes of excludeds. Electoral arrangements do not so readily allow for such; sortition, well-designed selection by lot, does.35 Of course, however good the selection processes, however disinterested and well-intentioned the agents selected, some bias may remain. Nonetheless prejudice and maltreatment can be much reduced. As already hinted, deepened representation is not the only promising resolution of the present problem that might be tried. Another, which could be attempted either separately or concurrently, operates through the directive of ecologically sustainable development, requiring as a constraint, not only intergenerational equity but also preservation of items of ecological value.36 It might be suggested that such a directive be made mandatory, applying to all relevant steering committees. But, as already evident, there are severe obstacles to getting such a directive properly implemented. (In prevailing oligarchical circumstances, even very dilute versions are worth pressing for however, as they would offer definite improvements upon what presently happens.) 6. A fundamental dilemma for deeper green organization: democratic or authoritarian procedures? 35 No doubt there are electoral approximations; e.g. candidates in separate classes for each category to be represented. 36 For elaboration of this option, see Sylvan and Bennett 94 and its sequel. �18 There is strictly no logical space for a deeper green democracy, according to Saward for one. For there is a clash, an essential tension, between democratic procedures and deeper green values and commitments, notably to intrinsic values in nature. The main drift of the argument is that green values, which are mandatory for deeper greens, require for their implementation anti­ democratic, indeed authoritarian procedures; otherwise they cannot be guaranteed. This nasty conundrum for green theory over democracy, which the theory typically sponsors, is put in sharper form as follows:37 Democracy concerns procedures, environmentalism certain outcomes. What guarantee can there be that the procedures will deliver the outcomes? What guarantee that democracy would yield a way of protecting environments? However the type of situation is worse than a matter of guarantees, which greens are not really seeking and could not in general expect. (For here as almost everywhere else, things can go wrong. Anarchism especially supplies few absolutes and little certainty.) It is a type of situation, moreover, which effects not only environmentalism but any sort of social and other amelioration, and even democracy itself. For democratic procedures may yield unsatisfactory and even anti-democratic outcomes. Unfortunately there are few or no guarantees that meritorious forms will eventuate or persist. Political history itself copiously illustrates that. But it can be argued theoretically. For example, succession of regimes must occur (owing to finite lifetimes of power-holders, etc.), and in successional transitions deterioration can occur; nor are there effective mechanisms that can exclude decline absolutely. Democratic procedures of certain sorts offer better controls, and better prospects of satisfactory transition than most others available, but even they afford no cast-iron guarantees of adequacy, and they are beset by paradoxes of their own. With inadequate democratic structures plausible scenarios are easily designed where just such outcomes occur, for instance as in what has been called a “paradox of democracy” where a constituency elects an anti-democratic tyrant.38 A concerned attempt is made by Saward to mount a destructive version of such a paradox against deep-green political theory (which he darkly calls ‘dark green’). The version is based upon holism and intrinsic value requirements, coupled with democratic demands, of deeper green theory. In clearest form, the version runs as follows: Holism implies consistency or compatibility. But intrinsic value maintenance and democracy are not compatible, under evident conditions (e.g. democratic procedures result in diminution or destruction of intrinsic value). Firstly, partial confirmation for this explication: 37 Goodin, condensing Saward, p. 168. 38 Such paradoxes of democracy, and variants thereupon, are presented trenchantly by Popper, and presumed nullified in Sylvan and Bennett 90. Improved structures can undoubtedly much reduce the likelihood and problematicness of paradoxical overthrows. �19 [The green imperative] usually contains a number of elements, variously economic, political, social, geographical, religious, and so on. Its force comes partly from the holism it embodies, and partly from its basis in the idea of the ‘intrinsic value’ of nature. Holism implies that the various elements which make up the imperative are compatible. The elements of the imperative gain their importance, and their links with each other, by being referable back to a common, intrinsic value of nature. It is at this point that we can pick up the position of democracy or ‘direct democracy’ in lists of basic values set out by greens. [These goals are the elements of the overall green imperative, and gain their importance from both the holistic nature and intrinsic merit of the values which the imperative represents]39 * As should now be plain, and is becoming plainer, consistency is not an invariant desideratum, and not to be insisted upon; coherence is what is “implied” and what supersedes consistency.40 As more than a century of Hegelian theory should have revealed, there can be inconsistent wholes. A further key assumption in the argument is that guaranteeing that intrinsic value is protected (or like absolutes sustained) will require undemocratic procedures, such as authoritarian ones. An underlying assumption (soon to be rejected, for instance as incorporating an offensive false dichotomy) is that only undemocratic, authoritarian procedures fit with deeper green imperatives or givens.41 Several illustrations are offered of inconsistency of green imperatives with types of democratic procedures—none of which tell, without testing adaptation, specifically against deeper green positions. A first illustration is directed against Porritt: A direct democratic procedure (is not) compatible with imperative goals like ‘local production for local need’, ‘low consumption’, ‘labour-intensive production’, and ‘voluntary simplicity’ (other items from Porritt’s list).42 Against this and other illustrations, it is worth emphasizing goals resemble objectives and targets; goals are goals which are not mandatory and by no means always achieved, especially if the achievers, like present humans, fall short (e.g. in ecological sensitivity) or their organisational means and opportunities are inadequate. Observe too the oppositional attempt to convert or to twist (since it is an up-grading by high redefinition) goals and programs and principles—through ‘imperative goals’ and the like—into ‘imperatives’, ‘prescribed outcomes’, undeniable principles, ultimates. That attempt should be resisted. A second example looks at an alleged 39 G. Saward, p.65; square bracketed sections are taken from an earlier circulated version of this article. 40 See Priest and others. 41 G. Saward, p.63 42 Saward, p.66. �20 contradiction in the programme of the German Green Party. ‘Grassroots democracy’ is one of the four ‘basic principles’ of the party’s ‘global conception’. Another is the ‘ecological’: ‘Proceeding from the laws of nature, and especially from the knowledge that unlimited growth is impossible in a limited system, and ecological policy means understanding ourselves and our environment as part of nature’. In effect, this means that certain outcomes are proscribed from decision-making procedures. Such proscribed outcomes must surely go well beyond any plausible list of outcomes which must be proscribed in the interests of defending a direct democratic decision procedure. Therefore, there is a clear contradiction between elements of the value-set, whereas given the holism the green imperative is based on we would have the right to expect these goals and values to be thoroughly compatible.43 The last charge repeats the critical point already rejected, that holism implies consistency. A further critical point should also be rejected: the flawed inference that ‘certain outcomes are proscribed’. A political party in a democratic system has to be prepared to see its principles, however spendid, overridden, certainly by other parties if they gain or hold political power. There is a misconception too about principles (especially higher level principles) and their roles: ‘principles [too] can only be akin to [givens and] “laws of nature”, against which democratic procedures must inevitably be traded off the board’. Sets of principles, which may themselves turn out to be inconsistent, are hardly akin to natural laws; consider for instance reasons for their revision, procedures for rechecking and revision, and so on. In any case, democratic procedures are not traded away against laws of nature, which they may try to upset or suppress. (Rather effort should be directed at informing the electorate and the like.) To reinforce his case, Saward appeals to other authors who have advanced similar claims (it is like appealing for confirmation of a newspaper report to other newspapers). Boris Frankel accuses Rudolf Bahro of an ‘anti-democratic ’ vision of an ecological society, given that politics as conflict will have no place in a sea of ‘givens’. He sees the dilemma as being similar to that of socialists—deeming certain things as desirable in an ultimate sense, but proclaiming attachment to democracy and the diversity it implies. Ophuls has stated the matter especially clearly. The basic question about politics, he writes, is ‘Is the way we organize our communal life and rule ourselves compatible with ecological imperatives and other natural laws? ... how we run our lives will be increasingly determined by ecological imperatives’44 In an ecological society, enough of the demos (members of democratic constituency) will hold ecological attitudes and vote or select accordingly, almost by definition. Problems of effecting change lie with unecological communities, which may not support ecological principles under instituted democratic procedures (as presently in many places). Principles, and ecological “givens”, stand, they remain ‘desirable in an ultimate sense’, but they are not followed and 43 Saward, p.66. 44 Saward, p.67. Note that only a very streamlined version of Saward’s case is being presented. �21 implemented, while revealed democratic preferences go unchanged. There need be no ‘anti­ democratic vision’, but rather an unecological praxis, which principled greens will work to change. The route is accordingly barred to Say ward’s important conclusions...: that at best direct democracy[, and for that matter indirect forms of democracy,] can only be at or near the bottom of value-lists of greens. A commitment to democracy must clash with core green values which, if taken on board, limit the range of acceptable policy outcomes beyond these self-binding constraints that democracy logically requires.45 What Saward proposes instead is depressingly familiar: pragmatism, jettison intrinsic value. Out therewith go deep-green positions. ... greens should not think in terms of overriding principles or [green] imperatives. Indeed, it suggests that to think in terms of imperatives based on arguments about intrinsic merit is unjustifiable.46 Fortunately the argument developed does not sustain the proposals. There is, to iterate a central point, no internal or latent contradiction between (deep-)green policy objectives and democratic procedures. Rather, green objectives would fail to be achieved without well- disposed decision makers, who may not straightforwardly reflect any “will” of the demos. A logical requirement on a realistic set of political objectives is that there are accessible circumstances where they are realisable, where all elements of the whole would obtain. It should not be required that there are are no situations where they may conflict, become inconsistent. It is certainly not required that they are realised, by whatever means. A community, as variously represented, can choose better or worse. There are many means available, which it may shun (again there are no absolute guarantees), enabling it to choose better, including improved structures, attitudinal change and consciousness raising, and so on. In the end Saward too recognises the popular power of attitudinal change, thereby himself removing his previous imposition of authoritarian means upon greens. There 45 Saward, p.68. The lead-in to Saward’s proposal was clearer in the earlier circulated version, which ended in more precise (and dubious) form: A commitment to democracy must clash with values that are inherent to ecologism—and ecologism is about inherency, intrinsic values, laws of nature and holism. Things—like democracy—that can only have instrumental value must lose out to imperatives backed by inescapable canonical force. 46 Saward, p.75. Of course it is now put in terms of “imperatives”; it would be better expressed simply in terms of (what did not figure in the earlier version) principles, policy objectives or the like. Opposition to deeper green political approaches often derives, as in Saward and in Goodin, from a underlying shallow utilitarianism. The differences concern not only depth; they also concern the rejection of individual interest bases, in favour of welfare bases and holism of deeper approaches. �22 * needs, from a green perspective [and others], to be a change in political culture such that it will be compatible with sustainability. This, of course, is a familiar theme from green writing. How[?] ... It can only be the case that ‘political change will ony occur once people think differently or, more particularly, that sustainable living must be prefaced by sustainable thinking’. By abandoning foundationalist myths of intrinsic merit, greens abandon the implicit arrogance that have made democracy such a tenuous part of green political theory.47 But he overstates the attitudinal point, with ‘only...the case’. People can be politically led (retardation, however, as distinct from genuine advancement, is more familiar); they could just elect a green government which instituted, under permissible democratic methods, sustainable living or the like. Worse still, his final ungrammatical sentence is a complete non-sequitur. Attitudinal change may include coming to appreciate intrinsic merit in natural things other than humans, and seeing through pragmatic utilitarianism. 7. Ecoregional demanarchoid reshaping of Australian political institutions: one beginning. Is such a radical restructuring as that suggested feasible? Initial investigations hold out the hope that major problems for deeper green theory can be solved, at least in theory. Investigations accordingly suggest that the project within the Reshaping Australian Institutions project is viable and worth pursuing. A logical next stage offers sketches for a radical political reorganisation of Australia.48 Evidently there would be many designs (thereby removing facile jeers against “the blueprint”, a part of co-optative strategy for persistence with prevailing statist arrangements). Among the many designs, some few, conforming to favoured principles, would be selected for detailed study. If the study were attempted, most appropriately through systems modellings, then flexibility could be built into modellings, so that even though only a few basic designs were examined, many variations would be feasible. Not only .is systems modelling particularly well suited to modelling network designs; it also further offers prospects for computing simulation and implementation, and even some simulated political experimentation. Furthermore, such modellings begin to give some grasp on the size and 47 Saward, p.77. There are further defects in this passage than those noted in the text. For one, admission of intrinsic merit does not entail foundationalism. For another, such recognition of merit—which is less liable to disturb democracy, or render it tenuous, than adherence to Christianity—need carry no tinges of arrogance; to the contrary, by contrast with humanism it may yield a certain humbleness. 48 Such design, well accomplished, would help considerably in revealing what is possible, thereby providing a seriously neglected contribution to politics, itself sometimes presented, with undue licence, as the art of the possible. �23 complexity of the task (a useful comparison is with World 3 modelling of the on-going “Limits to Growth” project49, or, better, with a regionalized version of it). To get started on such ecoregional design, for Australia, two broad classifications and associated maps and charts are required: • 1. an ecoregional classification, with partitions and overlays, for Australia and its continental shelf. Observe that this classification would be hierarchical, as smaller regions merge into larger regions; but it is a benign hierarchy of levels (it facilitates no accumulation of power or wealth). Observe too that any such classification is far from unique. Plurality has already set in, and a choice of classification (or a few choices) would have to be made, taking due account of political organisational principles and objectives. Fortunately some of the preliminary classificatory work has already been accomplished in Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, where 3 broad classifications are presented and procedures for generating many more given.50 For political purposes further classification attributes (e.g. demographic features) need to be included. Ecoregions provide the basis for spatially linked administrative and community units. (Not all units need be of this sort; many contemporary arrangements are spatially unlinked). At this stage a basic principle of decentralization and distributed and smaller-scale organization can be invoked, namely • subsidiarization: organisational functions should be allowed to fall down to (or to be pushed down to) the lowest level compatible with their satisfactory performance. Thus, for instance, most matters concerning such things as sewerage and primary education would be localized. This subsidiarization principle, drawn from classical anarchism, has been widely adopted in green planning proposals. (It is said to have been applied by the Catholic Church in administration of the Holy Roman Empire, whence the not altogether apt title derives. It is presently being reassessed for use in that successor organisation, united Europe.) No doubt the principle is open to challenge, for instance on grounds of efficiency, that larger size may prove more efficient, of duplication, and so on. But, the objective is not maximization of technological values such as efficiency factors; instead it aims to satisize on a wider framework of values, including holistic social arrangements. Presumably, however, undue duplication of expensive administrative bodies is to be avoided. Coupled with subsidiarization is another principle, • direct accountability downwards: units should answer directly to regional constituencies. This 49 See e.g. Meadows. 50 See Thackway and Cresswell. Rudiments of a politically useful classification begin to emerge on their 30 Group Regionalisation. �* 24 .contrasts with prevailing accountability (such as it is) upwards, through some indirect and tenuous, centralized circuiting chain. Naturally much more gets comprehended under accountability, for instance openness of environmental accounting. There are also principles interrelating smaller with larger regions, both bottom-up and topdown (or centre-down) principles. Among these will be • representation of smaller regions in relevant planning institutions of more comprehensive regions. Representation, appropriately regulated, would often replace anarchistic federation, which as observed appears too weak for requisite environmental control. The point needs no labouring that the classifications and principles are open to challenge at every step; for instance, there is nothing rock-hard about the type of ecoregional classification preferred, nor about social functions to be addressed. At a theoretical stage that is unproblematic: there are other (less preferable) models; elaborate your own if you want to and can. In any case, it is to be hoped that a diversity in theory might be to some extent reflected in some diversity in practice—with different regions and continents trying different arrangements, with much less of the sort of cosmopolitan political monoculture that we are presently being harassed toward, with much more resilient political biodiversity. Of course, not all political forms (including stateless types) are equally desirable or satisfactory, and some (including present state examples) are unacceptable. So there are bounds upon diversity. Moreover, what suits one community or region well may not suit another to be satisfactory for it. So too there are limits upon successful transfer of organisational structure; what works in one region may require much modification in another, or may substantially resist transfer. • 2 a social function classification, of those community matters that require explicit organisation at some level. An initial listing can be compiled by consulting Australian metropolitan telephone directories, especially the government sections that used to feature in the front (until a year ago). What results under redesign and reorganisation would, of course, look very different from what is listed. Parliaments, parties and all their supporting apparatus would vanish; the Australian Bureau of Statistics will assume a new significance and independent role, and so on. But which institutions are retained, which adapted, and so on, would depend on further social organisational features, not yet considered here. The result would be a levelled pyramidal structure, a flat-untopped network as depicted in the structural diagram below, not a power hierarchy. �25 Structural diagram: a schematic depiction of organisational structure (with some sample components indicated, but not all their network interlinkages displayed). statistics bureau upper levels: administrative, executive, research ground level: functional selectoral college Australian region (federal) immigration control of materials inflow super­ regions (a to k) interregional transport (local) regions (1 to n) arbitration bureau upper levels rental entitlements office resources income office ground level water systems sewer systems hospital systems region 1 region n While some requisite research has been undertaken upon how the various functional bodies and decision-making committees can be selected and can operate51, insufficient investigation has been made of the interrelations and adequate funding of the bodies and institutions involved — whichever they are! For little such detailed anarchoid modelling has apparently been attempted for any region anywhere. Evidently there is much to be done 51 Thus e.g. Burnheim 85. The present article is not only heavily indebted to Burnheim's work, but overlaps on-going investigations on his part. �26 theoretically. Detailed modellings could bring issues down to earth, without setting things in concrete; no doubt too they would disclose many further problems hidden in the detailing, problems to which anarchoid solutions can however reasonably be expected. Nonetheless comparatively little is likely to be done, unless requisite support is forthcoming, support in the shape of researchers (research volunteers and students) and research infrastructure (from research gifts, donations and the like). For such support, support for investigating its own demise, a state is hardly likely knowingly to supply; nor are its established research institutions. Insofar then as it is done visibly, it will probably have to be accomplished largely outside state-supported and state-supporting infrastructure, such as prominent university projects (like Reshaping Australian Institutions). Fortunately there are now other structures, such as internet and radio communicational channels, that can facilitate interconnections and interchanges of researchers, both regionally and internationally. On these sorts of anarchoid communicational bases, networks of groups interested in elaborating such alternative political modellings, both in theory and in practice, could be formed. Given the dismal state of present political arrangements, almost everywhere terrestial, there is a great need, as a very minimum, for networks of innovative researchers who share such goals.52 Richard Sylvan References. Bello, W., Dark Victory, Pluto Press, London, 1994. Bookchin, M., Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, South End Press, Boston, 1990. Burnheim, J., Is Democracy Possible?, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985. Burnheim, J., ‘Democracy, nation states and the world system’, New Forms of Democracy, (ed. D. Held and C. Pollitt) London, Sage, 1986, pp.218-239. Carter, A., ‘Towards a green political theory’, in The Politics of Nature. Explorations in green political theory (ed. A. Dobson and P. Lucardie), Routledge, London, 1993, pp.39-62. Goodin, R., Green Political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Green, G., The New Radicalism: Anarchist or Marxist?, International Publishers, New York, 1971. 52 To echo one referee. My sincere thanks to demanding referees for several helpful suggestions and many improvements. �27 Jacobs, M., The Green Economy: environment, sustainable development, and the politics of the future., Pluto Press, Concord, Mass, 1991. Mackay, H., Reinventing Australia: the mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, Hugh Mackay, Pymble, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1993. Macphee, I., A new constitution?’ (excerpts from an opening address) NILEFA Newsletter, Griffith University School of Law, June 1993. Marshall, P., Demanding the Impossible: a history of anarchism, London, Harper Collins 1992. Me Laughlin, A., Regarding Nature, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1993. Meadows D., and others, Beyond the Limits, Chesley Green, Vermont, 1992. Naess, A., Ecology, community and lifestyle (trans, and ed. D. Rothenberg), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. Ponting, C., A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. Priest, G., Routley, R. and Norman, J. (eds), Paraconsistent Logic, Philosophia Verlag, Munich, 1989. Routley, V. and R., ‘Social theories, self management and environmental problems’, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. D Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. Saward, M., ‘Green Democracy’, in The Politics of Nature: Explorations in green political theory (ed. A. Dobson and P. Lucardie) Routledge, London, 1993 pp. 63-80. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series , RSSS, Australian National University, 1990. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994. Sylvan, R., ‘Anarchism’, in Contemporary Political Theory (ed. R. Goodin and P.Pettit) Blackwell, Oxford, 1993. Sylvan, R., Green Anarchism, to appear, 1996. Thackway, R. and Cresswell, I.D., Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, Environmental Resources Information Network, Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1992. Tynan, L., The Institute of Advanced Studies, The Australian National University, May 1993. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 29.5.95 PROBLEMS IN DEEPER GREEN POLITICAL ORGANIZATION: an Australian perspective on radical institutional change. ... people are ready for change and the impending debate will result in constitutional change. We should, therefore, explore all options ... J As elsewhere, there is growing dissatisfaction with Australia's political institutions, and increasing demand to change them. This demand, hiding co-optative elements, has been initiated and fostered in a conspicuously top-down fashion, by politicians and by academics. There is so far little surge of political enterprise at grass-roots levels, little pressure for the usually very limited changes proposed. Nonetheless, along with apathy, there is widespread popular disenchantment with present political arrangements. There is now an opportunity (although still only a small window no doubt) to put green and radical themes on the agenda for real political change in Australia. That opportunity should not be missed, within Australia, or elsewhere. While the exposition that follows concentrates upon Australia, as a convenient advanced example, much of what is argued and urged applies or adapts elsewhere. 1. Disenchantment with politics, and political proposals for change. There is now evident in Australia, what is variously described as disillusionment and anxiety, cynicism and pessimism about the state of politics—a loss of confidence in it, and a retreat from commitment. As much and more, Mackay has nicely exposed in a survey of the Australian situation: anxiety about the nature and quality of Australian politics [has] increased. ... Widespread anxiety about the state of politics is based [in part] on an uneasy feeling that, if the parties are not going to stand for some identifiable philosophy, and the leaders are going to be chosen on the basis of their potential as television performers or even as head-kickers, then the only appropriate response is cynicism. That cynicism is reflected in a turning away from support for the major parties ... and revealed in the attitudes of young Australians ...12 who often cannot be bothered registering to vote, or voting (though voting is legally compulsory). 1 Hon. Ian Macphee, ‘A new constitution?’. Of course Macphee did not really mean all options, nor even all constitutional options. Furthermore, his claim about preparedness of people for change is incompatible with Mackey’s data (mentioned below) on exhaustion with change. 2 Mackay pp. 174-177. For all the Australian casualness of Mackay's presentation, his sociological findings are nonetheless fairly solidly survey and interview based (if occasionally stretching the data). Main findings are replicated by other sociologists. 2 ♦> Lack of confidence is beginning to show not only as cynicism about politicians, but also as doubt about the integrity of Australia's political institutions.3 In a recent survey, ‘62 percent of [Australians] expressed either little or no confidence in the political system. Such a figure accurately reflects the mood of the Australian community’.4 Australian loss offaith in conventional politics is attributed to a mix of factors. A first explanatory factor as regards this disenchantment comes from the changes in politics already remarked (ranging from policy issues to media performers) and from resultant uncertainty. ‘... the Australian electorate is confused about which party stands for what, and about whether any party has a long-term commitment to any particular point of view’ .5 A complex ‘second factor ... concerns the adversarial nature of two-party politics’.6 How can this ‘two party, adversarial approach ... continue to be appropriate when the distinctions between the two parties themselves are so hard to define’? But ‘redefinition of party politics implies the possibility of a redefinition of the whole parliamentary process itself’. Why ‘when parties seem quite capable of stealing each other's policies or of invading each other's traditional philosophical territory, [can not] politicians work together in a more co­ operative and harmonious spirit’?7 ‘Adversarial politics may have made sense ... when ... distinctions between the parties were stark and when arguments about principle could be justified; today, the idea that politicians would be arguing over a point of principle or philosophy is almost unthinkable.... [They] are much more likely to be arguing over matters of personality, prejudice and power than over issues which effect the long-term health of the body politic’.8 ‘The quality of parliamentary debate is regarded not only as a symptom of the adversarial nature of the institution, but also as a symptom either of the poor quality of politicians ..., or of the effect of the system on those who are enmeshed in it’.9 Unless there is 3 Ibid, p.178 4 Ibid. The figure is the more surprising inasmuch as such disillusioning factors as corruption and graft are not features of overt political life in Austral-asia by comparison with elsewhere in the hemispherical region. 5 Ibid. pp. 178-179. 6 Ibid. The adversarial character of dominant State legal systems is also becoming subject to more and more criticism. It appears likely that significant movement towards different inquiratorial systems will occur, not least because of the huge expense and growing unaffordability of adversarial systems. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid, p.180. 9 Ibid, p.179. It is a symptom of both, the latter especially. 3 marked improvement in party philosophies, programs and performance, ‘the call to re-examine the nature of the parliamentary process will gather momentum’.1011 A third relevant factor contributing to loss of faith is the impression of Australians that ‘they are overgoverned ’H, with too many expensive bureaucracies and too many houses of parliament. Conflicts between State and Federal parliaments — and between the various State parliaments themselves — are regarded as a particularly unproductive expenditure of political energy, and Australians question whether 15 houses of parliament may be too many for the efficient government of 18 million people. The sheer number of parliaments is often blamed for the problem of too many bureaucracies and for many duplications of bureaucratic and political activity between State and Federal governments. ... Whilst there is little love felt in the Australian community for Canberra and for the idea of more centralised government even that is beginning to appear preferable .... The widespread support for the idea of a republic which emerged during 1992 is closely related to the underlying sense that Australia is overdue for some kind of reexamination of its political institutions, and even the notion of Federation itself. ... As debate about the idea of a republic proceeds ... it has begun to incorporate the idea that Australian's political structures and systems might be quite significantly reformed.12 Such disaffection reflects too a growing awareness that Australia’s political arrangements owe more to historical accident than to rational design. Even though the main proposals for change no doubt remain reformist in character and could lead in unfortunate directions, some of them are far-reaching by normal standards. Both the extensive disenchantment with present political arrangements and the felt need for significant change further suggest political times are not altogether normal. Elements underpinning a political paradigm shift are already present, as are features supporting rational redesign, to which radical additions are now feasible. So far there have been, along with normal inertial resistance to change, two main responses to growing pressure for change: political, from politicians, ex-politicians and political commentators, and academic from intellectuals, academic entrepreneurs and academic journalists. By and large, political responses have been grander, more sweeping and vaguer; 10 Ibid, p.181. 11 Ibid, p.181, itals added. The problem has now surfaced strikingly in the heavily indebted Australian Capital Territory (“toy town” as its is facetiously called locally) which is swamped by bureaucracy, where it has been discovered that there is one expensive bureaucrat for every fifteen persons. 12 Ibid. p. 181-2. Republican proposals have been circulating for some time. But the cause was finally taken up by prominent politicians, who made it their own, after which it became a popular issue. Mackay's accurate presentation of popular support for political change contrasts drolly with the first part of his book which depicts an Australian populace exhausted by change and longing for the old ease and somnolence. 4 academic responses more theoretical and cautious, piecemeal and detailed. But there are no grand detailed plans. Under the leading proposal so far for political change, Australia's constitutional monarchy will be displaced by a constitutional republic with its own head of state displacing the monarch, but with perhaps minimal adjustments otherwise. Nonetheless, as a result, republicanism is in the air. Politicians have begun to contemplate other practical reforms, while academics have begun to embroider theories around republicanism and institutional reform. What happens to the Australian federation of states is one of the many unresolved issues presently being debated. The main reason for reform offered by the political camp can be summed up simply as changing geopolitical circumstances. The camp tends not to acknowledge what would reflect adversely upon it, the poorness of federal political practice. Rather it tends to attribute popular dissatisfaction to economic circumstances and uncertainties: declining real standards of living, extensive unemployment, persistent recession until recently, problems to be surmounted by full-steam ahead untrammelled economic growth, to be attained by recoupling Australia to the Asian economic express. Meanwhile an orchestrated republican movement can help divert popular political attention from poor political management and a gloomy economic predicament. Much has changed in the century since present antiquated political arrangements were hammered out, arrangements making the newly-fashioned Commonwealth of Australia, politically a federation of states, into a constitutional monarchy coupled to Britain, arrangements of convenience fashioned for very different circumstances. Most non-symbolic linkages with Britain, which has been inching towards a place in a united Europe, have already been severed. Australia has gradually begun to appreciate its geo-political position in the Indian-Pacific region (and the money-making opportunities for a sagging resource-based economy in allegedly booming parts of Asia). Whence the main idealistic proposal: for an independent republic, decoupled from Europe, assuming its own (prominent) place in its geo-political regions. In principle at least, place and region begin to assume, or resume, some of their neglected, but historic, significance (however that is not how it is yet seen). Most proposals for constitutional and federal reform fit within that limited idealistic conception. One important proposal, advanced by established political players, their most radical proposal so far, includes abolition of the present states. Such a proposal would clearly represent a welcome step in anarchist directions, were it not regularly offset by the idea of a strengthened central state.13 Supposing this latter unfortunate idea is bracketed for the moment, 13 Anarchists can even rest (if uneasily) with a constitution, so long as it provides for an organisation, Australia Inc. even, sufficiently different from a state and its authoritarian trappings. 5 ♦> then what is being seriously considered already starts to look like a much more rational regionalism than what presently prevails. The present states of Australia are undoubtedly an anachronism, based on accidental boundaries of a contingent colonial history. They are ecologically irrational management units, utterly failing to reflect ecological regions. Yet the states possess extensive environmental and other management powers, inappropriate ‘powers which derive from what was largely a political bargaining process conducted a century ago.’ Another effect of inapposite state-federal arrangements, especially ‘funding arrangements, has been to lock out local government and, more importantly, local communities. ... local communities must be given greater control over those decisions of government which effect their lives ...’; the opportunity ‘to design and provide the services which are needed locally.’14 At this stage of the dialectic McPhee slides easily and naturally from localism to regionalism. A glance at the map reveals natural regions for local government on a viable scale [an optimistic contention]. Some cross State boundaries, and I would envisage that State governments would be replaced with regional governments. These would be more akin to larger local governments and would certainly not have the trappings of the States. They should not have parliaments and the expensive, unwieldy and inefficient bureaucracies which characterise our States. They should have a small number of full-time councillors ... Regional governments should be solely accountable to their ratepayers ...15 . So far so good: however McPhee thereupon begins to infiltrate stock (small Z) liberal management assumptions. Nonetheless the basic idea to retain is simple: that of ecologicallyrational local and regional rearrangement of anachronistic state partitions. regionalization should be greened, as reform should be radicalized. But that More generally, opportunites now present themselves to insert more radical ideas throughout the debate about Australia’s future directions. For much has been left off political agendas for change, not merely environments and habitats of their less prominent or noisy inhabitants, but also such issues as rights and liberties, transformation of antiquated legal and executive frameworks, and so on. Omission of (human) rights is especially remarkable in states such as Australia, whose constitutions astonishingly do not mention at all (what is however often supposed to justify states) individual rights, such rights only being ensured, so far as they are, assumptions from uncodified common law, by 14 All quotes in this paragraph are drawn from McPhee. An address along similar lines to the Hon. Ian McPhee, also proposing abolition of the states, was delivered by the former Prime Minister R.G. Hawke. Hawke's speech, by contrast with McPhee's, attracted much media attention, and though facilely dismissed as “unrealistic” by some practicing politicians, appeared to gain a good deal of support. 15 McPhee ibid. 6 indirect routes (statutes regarding treatment of minorities and the like). Nor do the political camps pushing limited change speak of rights or liberties; a very limited conception of adjustments required prevails (though without rights and liberties and a generous public sphere there is little, and little prospect of, justification for a state at all). Accordingly political agendas for change need to be conspicuously broadened, to accommodate a decidedly more ambitious range of constitutional and institutional redesign. 2. A project within a project: radically reshaping Australian institutions. Academic entrepreneurs have also responded quickly to proposals for constitutional and institutional changes. Early to scramble on the bandwagon was the institution to which I am affiliated, the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, with its ambitious decade-long project, Reshaping Australian Institutions: Towards and Beyond 2001.16 One small part of this project does connect with the republican push, which no doubt helped inspire it and gain its funding. The academic version of republicanism furnishes an institutional and historic setting, tracing its roots back to ancient Rome, and thereby linking in, what admits much modem adaptation, notions of citizenship and civic virtues. But most of the project is independent of any republican reorganisation. The Reshaping Australian Institutions project is presented in predominantly reformist fashion, unsurprisingly. It is supposed, for instance, to ‘provide major input into evaluation and reform of Australia's institutions’; indeed it is explicitly ‘aimed at contributing to Australian constitutional reform’.17 Nothing however precludes consideration of reshaping or transforming Australian institutions — those of the whole ecological region — in a unreformist and possibly unconstitutional way, in a radical way. Admittedly, the rough boundary between reformist and radical routes becomes even more blurred when the constitution of a country is open for possible major reconsideration and much political infrastructure may be altered. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a strong central state, the stock boundary stands intact. For reformist changes would amount to comparatively small adjustments leaving the state substantially intact. For example, a minimal transformation, 16 A recent brief description of this two million dollar project, now outlined in several places, is given in Tynan, pp.17-19. Fuller descriptions are available from a main coordinator of the project, J. Braithwaite, Law, RSSS, ANU. One of the many strands (17 at last count) of this project is an environmental (or green) strand. The immediate predecessor of this article was presented in a workshop at RSSS on green political theory, arranged under the project. That accounts for some of the otherwise puzzling structure of what has eventuated. Another earlier version was tried out at Ecopolitics VIII, Pacific Visions, held at Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand, in July 1994. 17 ‘Reshaping Australian institutions: towards and beyond 2001’ in Tynan , p.17, italics added. 7 of the sort presently much favoured, from constitutional monarchy to Australian republic, though entailing non-negligible constitutional redrafting, need only amend the roles of a few elite power- and position-holders. By contrast, radical changes would substantially alter that strong central state, perhaps (as will be proposed) eliminating it altogether. There are appealing reasons for attempting wider, more radical investigations. For, firstly, there may be more satisfactory institutional structures not accessible, or even visible, along normal constitutional reform routes. Secondly, there is a demand, a small but growing demand from green directions for instance, for radical institutional change. It would be prudent, then, to make some investigation of the options, to assess their prospects. Thirdly, reflection on such structures would certainly be part of a more comprehensive study of and theory of institutional design, which the Reshaping project also presents as an objective. Fourthly, much more controversially, major environmental problems cannot be satisfactorily solved along merely reformist paths. For states, what are reformed, states themselves are ecologically dysfunctional. In practice this appears obvious enough. Simply reflect upon their environmental records; these are even worse than those abysmal records compiled for human rights. But the practical case can be argued in detail in a state by state way, or less laboriously, through the familiar rough classification of states into first, second and third world states. In main third world regions, the rise of the state has seen the serious decline of environments. Those third world states that have not largely destroyed their natural environments are in rapid process of doing so. The activities involved are, furthermore, not merely tolerated by these states but are usually actively encouraged (e.g. with state participation or by state concessions, as through taxation advantages, subsidies, export incentives, etc.). Further, the role of exploitation and plunder of remaining natural “resources”, and depletion of “biological capital”, by third world states, most of which are now trapped in debt and structural adjustment, has increased many-fold in the last two decades. How destructively second world states of eastern Europe treated their own (and also other regions’) environment, how they over-expoited and polluted them, has recently been much publicized. While the recent record in first world states is no doubt marginally better, many of these states dominated their natural environments and their wild inhabitants in the past, and have heavily polluted and congested their urban and industrial regions. Nor does their present record gain an environmental pass. For example, those that have any natural forests (similarly fisheries) left are in the process of eliminating or degrading most of what remains; most are failing seriously in meeting (their own) targets on greenhouse emissions, and so on. More theoretically, it is unlikely that states, increasingly focussed narrowly upon shallow and short-term economic agendas, will or can deliver satisfactorily environmentally. A prime reason is this: states are ineluctably committed, more and more as their populations expand, to high levels of economic activity characteristically to 0 economic growth of sorts which impact heavily environmentally, inducing inevitable degradation.18 Accordingly, there are then, or should be, two bands to any green (or environmental) strand of a restructuring Australian institutions project: not merely an important reformist side, but as well a radical spread. It is part of this underfunded and undersupported radical spread which forms the main object of investigation in what follows, that part that relinquishes present state structures, in favour of more environmentally benign institutions - which no doubt can be designed, even if not so readily brought into practical operation.19 In order to reach radical redesign ideas quickly, let us touch only lightly upon some of the more distinctively green reasons for this anarchoid quest (familiar anarchist reasons stand: the illegitimacy of present states, the undesirability and severe disutility of states, which typically are highly destructive and corrosive institutions based on concentration of power, hierarchical authority, massive coercion, manipulation by economic elites, technobureaucracy, utilitarian rationality, and sundry other evils.20) As indicated, present states are incompatible with stock ecologically sustainable practices, because of their heavy unrelenting commitments to shallow economic growth. More generally, standard states and their practices comprise very significant parts of environmental problems, but quite insufficient parts of any solutions. Moreover, states constitute an enormous and destructive drain on regional environments, a feature particularly evident in smaller states which are always looking out for revenue-raising expedients for their own expensive running. Apart from those greens who have recognised the excessive environmental costs of states and their heavy demands on environments, and thus or otherwise have come to recognise the desirability of their withering away, there are many more who have become ambivalent about states, who appreciate their very problematic character and very questionable legitimacy, but do not see yet how to get along altogether without them, or more exactly (to indicate thereby a partial resolution) without certain functions that they serve. Indeed to point immediately towards a resolution of this crucial problem, the functional dissolution idea advocated is this: that the functioning parts may be separately utilized without the colossal whole. The state is not 18 This theme, that states are normally ecologically dysfunctional, is documented and argued in detail elsewhere; see e.g. Carter and especially Sylvan 96. On the dismal environmental records of particular states see Ponting. For shocking figures and illustrations as regards environmental exploitation in third world states, see Bello, pp. 57-65. 19 Nonetheless practical revolutionary displacement of the state is not so remote, or difficult, as is generally supposed. 20 To adapt a referee’s trenchant summary. For detail on some familiar anarchist reasons, see Burnheim and above all Marshall. 9 an organism the functioning parts of which must fail without the whole. So it may well be the enormous fat of state can simply be shed, to great advantage. In any event, ‘the State is a social institution’, always ‘within’, Marxists continue, ‘a concrete historic setting’.21 Granted, it is an institution. For an institution in the relevant sense is ‘a society or association for the organisation or promotion of some particular object or function’.22 Institutions include therefore the state, the central state. So it too is up for reshaping, radical slimming, and possible removal in a concrete historical setting, such as late twentieth century Australia. Whittling away the state means in turn dismantling corporate capitalism, which now dwells in symbiosis with the bureaucratic state, and also much else, often environmentally undesirable, that the state affords a supportive framework for and enables to flourish. Ideas and schemes for radical redesign are already available from rich anarchist and socialist sources, those for green design and reshaping from growing and diverse environmental sources. In main part, then, radical ecoredesign is a matter of convivially meeting (not joining) the two, an intersection that favours anarchist inputs. Something of the sort has already been attempted, in an environmentally shallower way, in eco-anarchism, alias social ecology, and in a deeper way, in deep-green social theory.23 Moreover, it could be attempted in other kinds of deeper green theory—itself really a plurality of theories, which however does not itself force radical ecoredesign, though most variants would support it. Thus Naess's “deep ecology” for example, which is not so far politically radical, only strongly reformist, could (and should) be given a radical turn.24 Concentrating upon the radical spread of deeper green theory does not preclude concomitant reformist investigation and activity. Both sides of the green street should be played. Reformist opportunities should of course be pursued—incremental change, social engineering, “ecologizing” economics, greening bureaucrats, lobbying politicians, and like activity (but better really to cut through much such pleading and obiesance and be rid of politicians and bureaucrats). There are many reformist proposals being advanced for the greening of Australian federal institutions—with but few so far having much impact on 21 Thus, Green p.61, who adds quite wrongly that Proudhon and his disciples do not see it that way ‘but as an abstraction and aberration’. 22 Adaptation of the Oxford English Dictionary. An institution is, so to say, an organitution. 23 On social ecology, see Bookchin 90, and for information on deep-green social theory, see Sylvan and Bennett 94 and Routleys 80. 24 As to the political character of deep ecology, and why it should be turned, see Sylvan and Bennett 94, where an expose of the political theory of Naess's ecosophy is presented. practice.25 Nonetheless, more limited, more constrained, proposals of this sort certainly have a better chance, within the prevailing paradigm, of making a difference than radical redesigns, too smartly dismissed as “unrealistic” or “utopian”. No doubt the normal “reshaping institutions” investigations are rightly focussed then upon institutional reform, not upon revolutionary reshaping, where much freer scope for redesign is offered. However the real possibility of radical change should not be excluded; green radicals should be prepared. There have been various opportunities for revolutionary change in Australian history, the last occurring, according to some historians, with the ignominious fall of the Whitlam government. There may well be opportunities again both in the near and intermediate future, especially should some solid work be put into propagating the prospect. In the near term there is economic disarray, social fragmentation, and constitutional destabilization; in the longer term increasing ecological problems and expanding eco-catastrophes loom. Under present incremental reform and regression, for all the spasmodic environmental rhetoric, comparatively little in the way of radical green change occurs or can be expected. Witness, for comparison, the snail pace of the establishment movement towards a rather minimal grey republicanism in Australia, or differently away from meeting carbon-reduction commitments. It is increasingly doubtful, given prevailing responses to economic and other difficulties, that present structural and systematic problems confronting Australia, for example, will be satisfactorily addressed, environmental problems such as extensive and expanding land and water degradation not least. Furthermore, under more incremental reform, the sorts of problems concerning reorganising society in deeper green ways, problems that provide subsequent topics, would likely not arise. So in getting beyond more muddling along, do imagine fairly free scope for institutional eco-redesign is somehow dispensed. One nice corollary is that once it is worked out where to go organisationally, it is much easier to ascertain how to arrive there. 3. A basic problem of structure: central or decentralised organisation? There are large and immediate advantages in pursuing a problem-oriented approach to redesign. That approach, which will tend towards anarchoid outcomes, will be anarchistically guided in this respect: Unless there is a genuine problem, already causing difficulties or developing, nothing need be done; otherwise let things alone, let Being be.26 On this non­ 25 There are many many narrower economic and technological proposals. One of the more interesting wider proposals comes from an Opposition not noted for its green initiatives and commitments, for an overseeing Department of Sustainable Development, a Department that could see to the greening of all federal institutions. 26 To echo also Heideggerian wisdom. The non-prejudicial term ‘anarchoid’ is deployed, not because what emerges will not be anarchistic (as characterized in Marshall and in Sylvan 94), but because it 11 managerial low-work approach a good deal of structure presently inoperational, and of idle regulation presently enacted, can be removed; organisational arrangements can be very significantly down-sized. The leading methodological idea is that enough relevant (biodegradable) structure is introduced to resolve organisational problems, but not substantially more. Organisational oversupply and waste is thus avoided. Moreover, much structure that keeps so much environmentally destructive industry in business is likewise shed. Among basic problems for deeper green theory are those of political reorganisation and so of organisation. Evidently institutions, and their types, are critical to such organisation. And a major organisational problem for any putative green society concerns structure', to take a critical case, whether society is centrally organised (concentrated, bureaucratised, hierarchical, large- scale and so on) or decentralised (dispersed, non-hierarchical, small-scale and supposedly beautiful, and so on). This focal problem, to centralise or not to centralise, is sometimes presented as a serious dilemma for concerned green theorists.27 The binary horns of this dilemma are respectively: on the one hom, the pull (or push) to localisation and regionalisation, to non-anonymous smallscale low-impacting environmentally-friendly arrangements, to diffusion of power and dismantling of the incubus of a central state with its crippling costs and unfriendly practices; and on the other horn, the need for continuing and further central income generation and welfare (re)distribution, central regulation and control, and the pressures to environmental reliance upon and use of the central state.28 The dilemma has been trenchantly posed as follows: ... the demands of the Greens sometimes appear contradictory, in seeking increasing environmental regulation and welfare measures... alongside a halt to industrial expansion, the very source of income for the welfare state. Yet the expansion and further centralization of the bureaucratic state apparatus is neither their overt goal nor covert motivation. Quite the contrary. Their genuine long term vision is of a decentralized, steady state society of self-sufficient, relationally autonomous (albeit interlinked) regions.29 departs from standard forms of anarchism in significant respects, not least in planned political organization. In this exercise organization is of the essence. 27 As by Jacobs of The Green Economy, who has posed the problem sharply, as part of an argument however for retaining the central state (and much of present status quo arrangements). 28 Environmental reasons for favouring small-scale bioregional organisation are nicely gathered in McLaughlin, chapter 10. 29 Unknown source. 12 As it happens, not only does the theoretical and utopian literature run both ways, towards and away from centralisation, but so does practice and experience. As to theory, anarchisticallyinclined presentations tend to favour decentralisation, perhaps with some central compensation through federation (thus recent Blueprints, ecotopias, and so on), whereas socialisticallyinclined presentations invariably opt for powerful central states (to control and redistribute grander social programs, etc.). As to practice, there are local councils, community organisations, residents' groups aiming to keep out, or to remove, the state-sponsored nuclear plants, toxic waste incinerators, waste dumps or super-highways, on the one horn; and, on the other, central states blocking, modifying, or regulating local or regionally promoted schemes for large dams (e.g. Tasmania's Franklin), forest exploitation, pulp mills, strip mining, and so on.30 To some extent, the way the problem has often been re-presented, in terms of a dilemma between top-down and bottom-up structure and power transmission, already points towards a theoretical resolution: namely, both, or rather enough of both. But how is this combination to be achieved? An answer does not fall out by pure reason, operating in isolation from other problems. By taking advantage of information gathered from other connected problems, a promising answer can be teased out. Neither standard socialism nor anarchism afford answers, socialism because it leaves the central institution of state intact. But standard anarchism, much more promising, does not resolve the problem either, because federation, as usually explained, does not leave enough structure; it may not even concede sufficient power to delegates to constrain exploitative local communities. A solution to such dilemma lies through a combinational strategy, which includes partial dissolution of the central state, into its actual organisational functions in each region. While removing the state, itself source of several environmental and social problems, and its concentration of power, invariably under environmentally unfriendly control, functional dissolution nonetheless retains its apparently essential services, including (where necessary) those of environmental regulation. Relevant continent-wide functions would persist or be introduced: for example, services controlling inflow into Australia of damaging forms and materials such as toxic wastes and exotic pest species, or regulating outflow from Australia of native wildlife and flora. In part, ecoregional functionalism offers a radical continuation of the separation ofpowers of recent historical process, of church and state, legislature and executive, and so forth. As these functions come to operate separately while remaining coordinated, so would those functional arrangements and institutions dissolving the state. 30 Much turns on the exploitative character of certain local and regional communities, their get-richquick schemes, what they are prepared to do to survive in old or superficially affluent ways, and so on. 13 It is a major illusion of modem political theory that a central state, ceded monopolies on coercion, currency, taxation and so on, is necessary in order to secure adequate supply of public goods, including public order and environmental regulation. To the contrary, the most that appears required, the most that arguments would support, is some network of specific organisations functioning to look after specific kinds of goods and services, those necessary for this or that, that are not otherwise supplied. There is no inherent reason why communities should not institute and regulate specialised bodies coordinated among themselves (by negotiations or, failing that, through recognised arbitrators) to ensure the adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of damaging crime. Each such institution could gain community standing from its support base, for instance through achieving democratically-generated recognition. Such an institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and like admissible means, and in doing this it could mobilize in co-operation with communities and with other recognised institutions. There are many examples of such institutions operating successfully both regionally and internationally; for instance, those for postal and communicational arrangements, international sporting bodies, international academies and clubs, environmental and consumer organizations.31 4. Selecting satisfactory political arrangements within the span of anarchoid options. Anarchoid options come in a wide variety of forms, including, among others, both right­ leaning individualistic or capitalistic varieties, and left-leaning social or communitarian varieties.32 A suitably generous political pluralism will allow for all these forms, while not encouraging all, as they are of very different merit. For example, some may be neglectful or repressive of some of their inhabitants, or destructive of their environments; others, superior in 31 This passage borrows from the summary in Burnheim 86 p.221 of Burnheim 85. For much fuller elaboration see Burnheim 85 and Sylvan 94. The critical issue of funding administration, without a coercive taxation system, is also broached in these places (and developed in Sylvan 96). The broad proposal is that low-cost administration, much of which would be volunteer, could be funded by rents (there would be no property in land and resources), use charges, and fines. 32 There are many more varieties of political systems than much recent theory has cared to concede. For example, to take right-leaning dimensions, all of individualism, market-organization and capitalism function substantially independently. There can be markets without capitalism (characterised through opportunities to accumulate capital), and conversely, capitalism without free market arrangements. And so on. Most historic and modern systems, upon which political theory has tended inadmissibly to concentrate almost exclusively, are hybrid arrangements with mixes of different elements drawn from both “left” and “right”. 14 these socio-environmental regards, may not be. Dismantling or deconstructing a state does not, on its own, make a sharp selection between alternatives. No doubt the hope is, what can be striven for, that adequate designs are sought and adequate selections made, that inadmissible forms rapidly perish. Those remaining forms that are admissible can be ranked; for instance, they might be graded according to defeasible criteria based upon “pillars” of German green movement such as environmental sensitivity, democratic institutions, and nonviolent practices. While right-leaning anarchoid arrangements could work in theory (e.g. under what is improbable, benevolent capitalism), they are unlikely to succeed in practice, for several reasons. Consider, to illustrate in outline, why that much promoted rightist form, market (or “liberal”) capitalism is unlikely to serve. For one reason, an intrusive state is likely to emerge, with state controlled and state funded standing military and police forces, needed to defend capitalist interests and accumulation, to protect private property, to uphold endemic social inequalities, and to enforce particular market and trade structures, with a substantial and heavy taxation system to fund these forces and a corresponding bureaucracy needed to administer and regulate these and other institutions, such as those required to guarantee that capitalist liabilities are strictly limited and to keep markets (far from self-regulating) unclogged, “free” and competitive. Not only are anarchoid conditions thus violated, so are those for benign green societies. In normal practice, market capitalism tends to be highly environmental exploitative, as modern history demonstrates all too plainly (plainly too it is not alone in this propensity, so are other modem statist systems). Furthermore, given the sorts of humans these systems tend to elevate, and exalt, and the sorts of practices (including extravagant consumption for all that can afford it) they encourage and sometimes even enforce, extensive exploitation is to be expected and liable to persist. At least that is so without, what is thereupon required in a self-reinforcing spiral, further state intervention to distort “natural” capitalistic incentives and institutions, to limit practices on private property (thereby effectively altering the institution), to establish new instruments and commodities such as pollution licences, green investments and futures, and so forth.33 Even though a shallow greenness can also be sprayed upon parts of market capitalism (factories in fields, forest reserves retained for tourists, and so on), and some green showcase exhibits tacked on, environmental depth cannot. Shallowness is both an inevitable consequence of the justifying socio-economic theory, and also an expected best outcome of practice. Accordingly in institutional design it is much more promising to look in democratic left­ leaning directions. For, as argued, it would be rash to gamble upon any bright new dawn of environmentally and socially benign market capitalism, which in any event could easily revert back towards dark industrial times. However, very similar arguments to those sketched could 33 Infiltrated, along with propaganda on behalf of such instruments, is much mythology, including acclaimed environmental virtues of private property and privatization generally. 15 be developed as regards centralised socialism, especially as untempered by democratic procedures. While island communities of a wide range of varieties are naturally not excluded under anarchoidal pluralism, brighter continental prospects lie through modifications of democratic sociality, which appears to permit much of what is sought in design. Under duly decentralized social organization, each requisite function would be carried out by some association of agents comprising operative and support staff (that is, as regards bare formal structure, more or less as now, in institutions like departments and corporations). For direct accountability downwards, and also to ensure desirable separation and dilution of power, upper operatives, those of a directing or steering committee (the nervous system of the organisation), would be democratically selected (from a relevant lower level constituency, and from the whole people of an ecoregion in case of a typical bottom level institution). Note well that selection is not election: election is but one method of democratic selection, and often enough not an altogether satisfactory method. The point of some sort of democratic selection, as a guiding though not invariant rule, is manifold: it is in part to ensure due accountability, in part to prevent unethical accumulation of power in special classes, and in part for reasons that devolve from the very notion of democracy itself. In brief, certain forms of democracy offer promising prospects for green reorganisation, particularly within complementing left-leaning settings where those forms can function in favour of sustainability. However even with an informed democracy in place, there are few guarantees. Some structure, such as limited executive power separated from judicial and administrative functions, needs to be set in place to block or retard worse eventualities (such as mob actions, selection of tyrants, mistreatment of noncitizens and so on). Even then several thorny problems remain for any deeper green political reorganization. 5. Problems of chauvinism and present-time bias in democratic political institutions. In modem usage of the motherhood term democracy, two main lines are visible: included are not only forms of political organisation where ‘power [is presumed to] reside in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them ... or by officers [selected] by them’, but ‘often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege’34. It is on the basis of this second line that the call for democracy has operated to remove chauvinism and discrimination of a range of forms: against unpropertied minorities, nonconformists, women, blacks, tribals, and so on. Even so pursuit 34 Oxford English Dictionary entry 1, main entry. These two lines are by no means the only distinctive lines now visible: increasingly conspicuous in calls for “democracy”, notably in Asia, are calls to freedom and rights: not merely for basic legal freedoms such as free assembly, fair process and so on, but for freedom to access information (the “right to know”). 16 of the line, where successful, has not generally conferred adequate representation and rights on several of these groups; but, more important, pursuit has stopped short in its inclusions at certain humans, such as those granted citizenship—though relevant interests of many other creatures and welfare of many of other items may be affected by what those citizens elect to do. While democratic voters can perhaps be entrusted to take some account of those near and dear (within remarkably sharp limits, as the situation of women in many regions still shows), such as those deemed incompetent to vote: the young, deranged, and so on, much evidence reveals that they cannot be relied for what is less near or dear (and indeed are easily herded into casting their votes in accord with a shallow mercantilism). Consider what gets left out, outcasts of even perfect democratic control:• spatially distant agents. For example, the interests of many humans outside USA are much affected by practices of the US government, which however is outside their democratic reach. • temporally distant agents. Since the past is past, it is future agents who would be affected, often drastically affected, by present practices, that matter. Some way of taking due account of future agents, their interests and welfare, is required, even under shallow long-term ecology, that is under lighter green positions. Sustainable development has been regularly diverted into—what is part of what it is about—such a way, an indirect and so far utterly ineffectual way. Much more of importance is also excluded according to deep-green theory: • creatures with interests, other than present human citizens, and • items with welfare, but perhaps lacking interests. The category includes items with intrinsic value, whose value can be effected, made to fare worse or better. A major problem, little addressed, is how to take due account of such democratically excludeds. It is a problem especially for deeper green theories: that deep problem is, so to say, how to obtain satisfactory representation of all that is of value in the natural world? That way of putting it, while a little misleading, does point to a particular type of resolution. Problems special to deep ecopolitical theory, include, that is, issues as to adequacy of representation of items of value outside those humans that are represented, representation of their interests, where they have them, of their welfare otherwise, of favourable conditions for their sustenance, continuation and retention of value. Democracy of discussed modem sorts, whether representative or participative, will not serve these purposes at all satisfactorily. For instance, insofar as party-political representative democracies represent anything (even human “bottom lines” as is sometimes erroneously supposed), they appear to represent primarily interests of certain business-allied elites. Among the issues are of course those as to adequacy of retention and protection of nonhuman items of intrinsic value, tropical forests and their inhabitants and elements for instance. 17 As observed, there is really no organisational alternative to proceeding with and through agents, preferably well-disposed and quality agents. It is hard to guarantee either politically. As agents are but a subclass of what requires democratic representation and what should have its welfare or interests considered, how are the rest to be taken care of satisfactorily? There are significant older responses to like problems, through totems and taboos, guardians and constraints. Looked at one way the problem repeats, more or less, a familiar problem: namely, how in larger constituencies do decision-making agents represent the whole mass of agents and others in the constituency? A main democratic answer, designed to avoid many shortcomings of alternatives, was: by representative means—only “representation” was almost never taken seriously or literally enough. The sorts of considerations that made representation a promising resolution make what is to be proposed—where representation has, in any case, to be expanded —also promising. A key principle is this: all relevant items are to be represented. Relevance criteria enter importantly. Steering committees of lower level institutions among the main decision-making bodies should be appropriately representative of all items whose welfare is affected by their decisions (principle of deepened demanarchy). Under more equitable arrangements, then, some decision-engaged agents will have to be selected as representative of relevant classes of excludeds. Electoral arrangements do not so readily allow for such; sortition, well-designed selection by lot, does.35 Of course, however good the selection processes, however disinterested and well-intentioned the agents selected, some bias may remain. Nonetheless prejudice and maltreatment can be much reduced. As already hinted, deepened representation is not the only promising resolution of the present problem that might be tried. Another, which could be attempted either separately or concurrently, operates through the directive of ecologically sustainable development, requiring as a constraint, not only intergenerational equity but also preservation of items of ecological value.36 It might be suggested that such a directive be made mandatory, applying to all relevant steering committees. But, as already evident, there are severe obstacles to getting such a directive properly implemented. (In prevailing oligarchical circumstances, even very dilute versions are worth pressing for however, as they would offer definite improvements upon what presently happens.) 6. A fundamental dilemma for deeper green organization: democratic or authoritarian procedures? 35 No doubt there are electoral approximations; e.g. candidates in separate classes for each category to be represented. 36 For elaboration of this option, see Sylvan and Bennett 94 and its sequel. 18 There is strictly no logical space for a deeper green democracy, according to Saward for one. For there is a clash, an essential tension, between democratic procedures and deeper green values and commitments, notably to intrinsic values in nature. The main drift of the argument is that green values, which are mandatory for deeper greens, require for their implementation anti­ democratic, indeed authoritarian procedures; otherwise they cannot be guaranteed. This nasty conundrum for green theory over democracy, which the theory typically sponsors, is put in sharper form as follows:37 Democracy concerns procedures, environmentalism certain outcomes. What guarantee can there be that the procedures will deliver the outcomes? What guarantee that democracy would yield a way of protecting environments? However the type of situation is worse than a matter of guarantees, which greens are not really seeking and could not in general expect. (For here as almost everywhere else, things can go wrong. Anarchism especially supplies few absolutes and little certainty.) It is a type of situation, moreover, which effects not only environmentalism but any sort of social and other amelioration, and even democracy itself. For democratic procedures may yield unsatisfactory and even anti-democratic outcomes. Unfortunately there are few or no guarantees that meritorious forms will eventuate or persist. Political history itself copiously illustrates that. But it can be argued theoretically. For example, succession of regimes must occur (owing to finite lifetimes of power-holders, etc.), and in successional transitions deterioration can occur; nor are there effective mechanisms that can exclude decline absolutely. Democratic procedures of certain sorts offer better controls, and better prospects of satisfactory transition than most others available, but even they afford no cast-iron guarantees of adequacy, and they are beset by paradoxes of their own. With inadequate democratic structures plausible scenarios are easily designed where just such outcomes occur, for instance as in what has been called a “paradox of democracy” where a constituency elects an anti-democratic tyrant.38 A concerned attempt is made by Saward to mount a destructive version of such a paradox against deep-green political theory (which he darkly calls ‘dark green’). The version is based upon holism and intrinsic value requirements, coupled with democratic demands, of deeper green theory. In clearest form, the version runs as follows: Holism implies consistency or compatibility. But intrinsic value maintenance and democracy are not compatible, under evident conditions (e.g. democratic procedures result in diminution or destruction of intrinsic value). Firstly, partial confirmation for this explication: 37 Goodin, condensing Saward, p. 168. 38 Such paradoxes of democracy, and variants thereupon, are presented trenchantly by Popper, and presumed nullified in Sylvan and Bennett 90. Improved structures can undoubtedly much reduce the likelihood and problematicness of paradoxical overthrows. 19 [The green imperative] usually contains a number of elements, variously economic, political, social, geographical, religious, and so on. Its force comes partly from the holism it embodies, and partly from its basis in the idea of the ‘intrinsic value’ of nature. Holism implies that the various elements which make up the imperative are compatible. The elements of the imperative gain their importance, and their links with each other, by being referable back to a common, intrinsic value of nature. It is at this point that we can pick up the position of democracy or ‘direct democracy’ in lists of basic values set out by greens. [These goals are the elements of the overall green imperative, and gain their importance from both the holistic nature and intrinsic merit of the values which the imperative represents]39 * As should now be plain, and is becoming plainer, consistency is not an invariant desideratum, and not to be insisted upon; coherence is what is “implied” and what supersedes consistency.40 As more than a century of Hegelian theory should have revealed, there can be inconsistent wholes. A further key assumption in the argument is that guaranteeing that intrinsic value is protected (or like absolutes sustained) will require undemocratic procedures, such as authoritarian ones. An underlying assumption (soon to be rejected, for instance as incorporating an offensive false dichotomy) is that only undemocratic, authoritarian procedures fit with deeper green imperatives or givens.41 Several illustrations are offered of inconsistency of green imperatives with types of democratic procedures—none of which tell, without testing adaptation, specifically against deeper green positions. A first illustration is directed against Porritt: A direct democratic procedure (is not) compatible with imperative goals like ‘local production for local need’, ‘low consumption’, ‘labour-intensive production’, and ‘voluntary simplicity’ (other items from Porritt’s list).42 Against this and other illustrations, it is worth emphasizing goals resemble objectives and targets; goals are goals which are not mandatory and by no means always achieved, especially if the achievers, like present humans, fall short (e.g. in ecological sensitivity) or their organisational means and opportunities are inadequate. Observe too the oppositional attempt to convert or to twist (since it is an up-grading by high redefinition) goals and programs and principles—through ‘imperative goals’ and the like—into ‘imperatives’, ‘prescribed outcomes’, undeniable principles, ultimates. That attempt should be resisted. A second example looks at an alleged 39 G. Saward, p.65; square bracketed sections are taken from an earlier circulated version of this article. 40 See Priest and others. 41 G. Saward, p.63 42 Saward, p.66. 20 contradiction in the programme of the German Green Party. ‘Grassroots democracy’ is one of the four ‘basic principles’ of the party’s ‘global conception’. Another is the ‘ecological’: ‘Proceeding from the laws of nature, and especially from the knowledge that unlimited growth is impossible in a limited system, and ecological policy means understanding ourselves and our environment as part of nature’. In effect, this means that certain outcomes are proscribed from decision-making procedures. Such proscribed outcomes must surely go well beyond any plausible list of outcomes which must be proscribed in the interests of defending a direct democratic decision procedure. Therefore, there is a clear contradiction between elements of the value-set, whereas given the holism the green imperative is based on we would have the right to expect these goals and values to be thoroughly compatible.43 The last charge repeats the critical point already rejected, that holism implies consistency. A further critical point should also be rejected: the flawed inference that ‘certain outcomes are proscribed’. A political party in a democratic system has to be prepared to see its principles, however spendid, overridden, certainly by other parties if they gain or hold political power. There is a misconception too about principles (especially higher level principles) and their roles: ‘principles [too] can only be akin to [givens and] “laws of nature”, against which democratic procedures must inevitably be traded off the board’. Sets of principles, which may themselves turn out to be inconsistent, are hardly akin to natural laws; consider for instance reasons for their revision, procedures for rechecking and revision, and so on. In any case, democratic procedures are not traded away against laws of nature, which they may try to upset or suppress. (Rather effort should be directed at informing the electorate and the like.) To reinforce his case, Saward appeals to other authors who have advanced similar claims (it is like appealing for confirmation of a newspaper report to other newspapers). Boris Frankel accuses Rudolf Bahro of an ‘anti-democratic ’ vision of an ecological society, given that politics as conflict will have no place in a sea of ‘givens’. He sees the dilemma as being similar to that of socialists—deeming certain things as desirable in an ultimate sense, but proclaiming attachment to democracy and the diversity it implies. Ophuls has stated the matter especially clearly. The basic question about politics, he writes, is ‘Is the way we organize our communal life and rule ourselves compatible with ecological imperatives and other natural laws? ... how we run our lives will be increasingly determined by ecological imperatives’44 In an ecological society, enough of the demos (members of democratic constituency) will hold ecological attitudes and vote or select accordingly, almost by definition. Problems of effecting change lie with unecological communities, which may not support ecological principles under instituted democratic procedures (as presently in many places). Principles, and ecological “givens”, stand, they remain ‘desirable in an ultimate sense’, but they are not followed and 43 Saward, p.66. 44 Saward, p.67. Note that only a very streamlined version of Saward’s case is being presented. 21 implemented, while revealed democratic preferences go unchanged. There need be no ‘anti­ democratic vision’, but rather an unecological praxis, which principled greens will work to change. The route is accordingly barred to Say ward’s important conclusions...: that at best direct democracy[, and for that matter indirect forms of democracy,] can only be at or near the bottom of value-lists of greens. A commitment to democracy must clash with core green values which, if taken on board, limit the range of acceptable policy outcomes beyond these self-binding constraints that democracy logically requires.45 What Saward proposes instead is depressingly familiar: pragmatism, jettison intrinsic value. Out therewith go deep-green positions. ... greens should not think in terms of overriding principles or [green] imperatives. Indeed, it suggests that to think in terms of imperatives based on arguments about intrinsic merit is unjustifiable.46 Fortunately the argument developed does not sustain the proposals. There is, to iterate a central point, no internal or latent contradiction between (deep-)green policy objectives and democratic procedures. Rather, green objectives would fail to be achieved without well- disposed decision makers, who may not straightforwardly reflect any “will” of the demos. A logical requirement on a realistic set of political objectives is that there are accessible circumstances where they are realisable, where all elements of the whole would obtain. It should not be required that there are are no situations where they may conflict, become inconsistent. It is certainly not required that they are realised, by whatever means. A community, as variously represented, can choose better or worse. There are many means available, which it may shun (again there are no absolute guarantees), enabling it to choose better, including improved structures, attitudinal change and consciousness raising, and so on. In the end Saward too recognises the popular power of attitudinal change, thereby himself removing his previous imposition of authoritarian means upon greens. There 45 Saward, p.68. The lead-in to Saward’s proposal was clearer in the earlier circulated version, which ended in more precise (and dubious) form: A commitment to democracy must clash with values that are inherent to ecologism—and ecologism is about inherency, intrinsic values, laws of nature and holism. Things—like democracy—that can only have instrumental value must lose out to imperatives backed by inescapable canonical force. 46 Saward, p.75. Of course it is now put in terms of “imperatives”; it would be better expressed simply in terms of (what did not figure in the earlier version) principles, policy objectives or the like. Opposition to deeper green political approaches often derives, as in Saward and in Goodin, from a underlying shallow utilitarianism. The differences concern not only depth; they also concern the rejection of individual interest bases, in favour of welfare bases and holism of deeper approaches. 22 * needs, from a green perspective [and others], to be a change in political culture such that it will be compatible with sustainability. This, of course, is a familiar theme from green writing. How[?] ... It can only be the case that ‘political change will ony occur once people think differently or, more particularly, that sustainable living must be prefaced by sustainable thinking’. By abandoning foundationalist myths of intrinsic merit, greens abandon the implicit arrogance that have made democracy such a tenuous part of green political theory.47 But he overstates the attitudinal point, with ‘only...the case’. People can be politically led (retardation, however, as distinct from genuine advancement, is more familiar); they could just elect a green government which instituted, under permissible democratic methods, sustainable living or the like. Worse still, his final ungrammatical sentence is a complete non-sequitur. Attitudinal change may include coming to appreciate intrinsic merit in natural things other than humans, and seeing through pragmatic utilitarianism. 7. Ecoregional demanarchoid reshaping of Australian political institutions: one beginning. Is such a radical restructuring as that suggested feasible? Initial investigations hold out the hope that major problems for deeper green theory can be solved, at least in theory. Investigations accordingly suggest that the project within the Reshaping Australian Institutions project is viable and worth pursuing. A logical next stage offers sketches for a radical political reorganisation of Australia.48 Evidently there would be many designs (thereby removing facile jeers against “the blueprint”, a part of co-optative strategy for persistence with prevailing statist arrangements). Among the many designs, some few, conforming to favoured principles, would be selected for detailed study. If the study were attempted, most appropriately through systems modellings, then flexibility could be built into modellings, so that even though only a few basic designs were examined, many variations would be feasible. Not only .is systems modelling particularly well suited to modelling network designs; it also further offers prospects for computing simulation and implementation, and even some simulated political experimentation. Furthermore, such modellings begin to give some grasp on the size and 47 Saward, p.77. There are further defects in this passage than those noted in the text. For one, admission of intrinsic merit does not entail foundationalism. For another, such recognition of merit—which is less liable to disturb democracy, or render it tenuous, than adherence to Christianity—need carry no tinges of arrogance; to the contrary, by contrast with humanism it may yield a certain humbleness. 48 Such design, well accomplished, would help considerably in revealing what is possible, thereby providing a seriously neglected contribution to politics, itself sometimes presented, with undue licence, as the art of the possible. 23 complexity of the task (a useful comparison is with World 3 modelling of the on-going “Limits to Growth” project49, or, better, with a regionalized version of it). To get started on such ecoregional design, for Australia, two broad classifications and associated maps and charts are required: • 1. an ecoregional classification, with partitions and overlays, for Australia and its continental shelf. Observe that this classification would be hierarchical, as smaller regions merge into larger regions; but it is a benign hierarchy of levels (it facilitates no accumulation of power or wealth). Observe too that any such classification is far from unique. Plurality has already set in, and a choice of classification (or a few choices) would have to be made, taking due account of political organisational principles and objectives. Fortunately some of the preliminary classificatory work has already been accomplished in Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, where 3 broad classifications are presented and procedures for generating many more given.50 For political purposes further classification attributes (e.g. demographic features) need to be included. Ecoregions provide the basis for spatially linked administrative and community units. (Not all units need be of this sort; many contemporary arrangements are spatially unlinked). At this stage a basic principle of decentralization and distributed and smaller-scale organization can be invoked, namely • subsidiarization: organisational functions should be allowed to fall down to (or to be pushed down to) the lowest level compatible with their satisfactory performance. Thus, for instance, most matters concerning such things as sewerage and primary education would be localized. This subsidiarization principle, drawn from classical anarchism, has been widely adopted in green planning proposals. (It is said to have been applied by the Catholic Church in administration of the Holy Roman Empire, whence the not altogether apt title derives. It is presently being reassessed for use in that successor organisation, united Europe.) No doubt the principle is open to challenge, for instance on grounds of efficiency, that larger size may prove more efficient, of duplication, and so on. But, the objective is not maximization of technological values such as efficiency factors; instead it aims to satisize on a wider framework of values, including holistic social arrangements. Presumably, however, undue duplication of expensive administrative bodies is to be avoided. Coupled with subsidiarization is another principle, • direct accountability downwards: units should answer directly to regional constituencies. This 49 See e.g. Meadows. 50 See Thackway and Cresswell. Rudiments of a politically useful classification begin to emerge on their 30 Group Regionalisation. * 24 .contrasts with prevailing accountability (such as it is) upwards, through some indirect and tenuous, centralized circuiting chain. Naturally much more gets comprehended under accountability, for instance openness of environmental accounting. There are also principles interrelating smaller with larger regions, both bottom-up and topdown (or centre-down) principles. Among these will be • representation of smaller regions in relevant planning institutions of more comprehensive regions. Representation, appropriately regulated, would often replace anarchistic federation, which as observed appears too weak for requisite environmental control. The point needs no labouring that the classifications and principles are open to challenge at every step; for instance, there is nothing rock-hard about the type of ecoregional classification preferred, nor about social functions to be addressed. At a theoretical stage that is unproblematic: there are other (less preferable) models; elaborate your own if you want to and can. In any case, it is to be hoped that a diversity in theory might be to some extent reflected in some diversity in practice—with different regions and continents trying different arrangements, with much less of the sort of cosmopolitan political monoculture that we are presently being harassed toward, with much more resilient political biodiversity. Of course, not all political forms (including stateless types) are equally desirable or satisfactory, and some (including present state examples) are unacceptable. So there are bounds upon diversity. Moreover, what suits one community or region well may not suit another to be satisfactory for it. So too there are limits upon successful transfer of organisational structure; what works in one region may require much modification in another, or may substantially resist transfer. • 2 a social function classification, of those community matters that require explicit organisation at some level. An initial listing can be compiled by consulting Australian metropolitan telephone directories, especially the government sections that used to feature in the front (until a year ago). What results under redesign and reorganisation would, of course, look very different from what is listed. Parliaments, parties and all their supporting apparatus would vanish; the Australian Bureau of Statistics will assume a new significance and independent role, and so on. But which institutions are retained, which adapted, and so on, would depend on further social organisational features, not yet considered here. The result would be a levelled pyramidal structure, a flat-untopped network as depicted in the structural diagram below, not a power hierarchy. 25 Structural diagram: a schematic depiction of organisational structure (with some sample components indicated, but not all their network interlinkages displayed). statistics bureau upper levels: administrative, executive, research ground level: functional selectoral college Australian region (federal) immigration control of materials inflow super­ regions (a to k) interregional transport (local) regions (1 to n) arbitration bureau upper levels rental entitlements office resources income office ground level water systems sewer systems hospital systems region 1 region n While some requisite research has been undertaken upon how the various functional bodies and decision-making committees can be selected and can operate51, insufficient investigation has been made of the interrelations and adequate funding of the bodies and institutions involved — whichever they are! For little such detailed anarchoid modelling has apparently been attempted for any region anywhere. Evidently there is much to be done 51 Thus e.g. Burnheim 85. The present article is not only heavily indebted to Burnheim's work, but overlaps on-going investigations on his part. 26 theoretically. Detailed modellings could bring issues down to earth, without setting things in concrete; no doubt too they would disclose many further problems hidden in the detailing, problems to which anarchoid solutions can however reasonably be expected. Nonetheless comparatively little is likely to be done, unless requisite support is forthcoming, support in the shape of researchers (research volunteers and students) and research infrastructure (from research gifts, donations and the like). For such support, support for investigating its own demise, a state is hardly likely knowingly to supply; nor are its established research institutions. Insofar then as it is done visibly, it will probably have to be accomplished largely outside state-supported and state-supporting infrastructure, such as prominent university projects (like Reshaping Australian Institutions). Fortunately there are now other structures, such as internet and radio communicational channels, that can facilitate interconnections and interchanges of researchers, both regionally and internationally. On these sorts of anarchoid communicational bases, networks of groups interested in elaborating such alternative political modellings, both in theory and in practice, could be formed. Given the dismal state of present political arrangements, almost everywhere terrestial, there is a great need, as a very minimum, for networks of innovative researchers who share such goals.52 Richard Sylvan References. Bello, W., Dark Victory, Pluto Press, London, 1994. Bookchin, M., Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, South End Press, Boston, 1990. Burnheim, J., Is Democracy Possible?, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985. Burnheim, J., ‘Democracy, nation states and the world system’, New Forms of Democracy, (ed. D. Held and C. Pollitt) London, Sage, 1986, pp.218-239. Carter, A., ‘Towards a green political theory’, in The Politics of Nature. Explorations in green political theory (ed. A. Dobson and P. Lucardie), Routledge, London, 1993, pp.39-62. Goodin, R., Green Political Theory, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1992. Green, G., The New Radicalism: Anarchist or Marxist?, International Publishers, New York, 1971. 52 To echo one referee. My sincere thanks to demanding referees for several helpful suggestions and many improvements. 27 Jacobs, M., The Green Economy: environment, sustainable development, and the politics of the future., Pluto Press, Concord, Mass, 1991. Mackay, H., Reinventing Australia: the mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, Hugh Mackay, Pymble, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1993. Macphee, I., A new constitution?’ (excerpts from an opening address) NILEFA Newsletter, Griffith University School of Law, June 1993. Marshall, P., Demanding the Impossible: a history of anarchism, London, Harper Collins 1992. Me Laughlin, A., Regarding Nature, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1993. Meadows D., and others, Beyond the Limits, Chesley Green, Vermont, 1992. Naess, A., Ecology, community and lifestyle (trans, and ed. D. Rothenberg), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. Ponting, C., A Green History of the World, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1991. Priest, G., Routley, R. and Norman, J. (eds), Paraconsistent Logic, Philosophia Verlag, Munich, 1989. Routley, V. and R., ‘Social theories, self management and environmental problems’, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. D Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. Saward, M., ‘Green Democracy’, in The Politics of Nature: Explorations in green political theory (ed. A. Dobson and P. Lucardie) Routledge, London, 1993 pp. 63-80. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series , RSSS, Australian National University, 1990. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994. Sylvan, R., ‘Anarchism’, in Contemporary Political Theory (ed. R. Goodin and P.Pettit) Blackwell, Oxford, 1993. Sylvan, R., Green Anarchism, to appear, 1996. Thackway, R. and Cresswell, I.D., Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, Environmental Resources Information Network, Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1992. Tynan, L., The Institute of Advanced Studies, The Australian National University, May 1993.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Draft of Problems in deeper green political organization: an Australian perspective on radical institutional change Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, dated 29 May 1995. Description An account of the resource One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-05-29 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [27] leaves. 20.03 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:49579da">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:49579da</a> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk Box 18: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/e1a2873a54fce7557cfbc89ada6c8b1c.pdf cf6cba564af11d9dbcc31c7e0159ae37 PDF Text Text MOVEMENTS New social movements along with, and in partial contrast with, new politics and past­ materialism as a quasi-technical term in political science and sociology. Like the others, it is an ill-defined term. Among the problems is the extreme slackness of identity criteria, so it is too often impossible to know when one has one.1 The terms are regularly introduced as if it was known what was meant (this is a widespread intellectual sin; the legitimate end of Wittgenstein's campaign against technical terms in philosophy). A major problem with the political social science investigations so far is that the classification of movements is too coarse-grained, and that when subclassifications are made there are not in terms of movements. For example, the broad environmental movement, the level movements is sifted down to, jets analysed in a typology, of shades of green, not into submovements. A movement involves action and/ or a diseration to action in a concerted direction by a group of engaged members type of intensional set-like objects OED. ‘series of actions and endevours of a body of persons for special object’ WRONG CATEGORY, otherwise Not bad. What is the movement though? Extent of doctrine socialism/ anarchism without doctrine knowing how without knowing that or theory practice without theory e.g. golf, most stickingls language. Deep ecology attempt to shed doctrine; empasis on movement. Doctrine involved that of sub­ social paradigm (model). Further features of a movement: • a certain duration. An action group that form for a short time purpose, holds a single parade, achieves its objective and dissolves, it not a movement. These are numerous short-lived action groups that do not rate as movement, and which need not be categorised or listed. • a certain integration. of members. Although there is now a widespread push for sustainable development (and attempts by many governments to coopt and neutralise environmental activity in this way), there is no sustainable development movement. That is not just because of the multiplicity of objectives subsumed under the smooth synthesized “objective”, but because there is no due integration, no appropriate organisation of adherents. Deep ecology is now a movement; it was it when Naess first presented it as one. 1 A hyporduct is that post-materialism, usually taken as a single stock-of-affairs, splits into several. �2 Environmental movements in Australia. The Australia-wide environmental organisations are not movements, but there are movements within or associated with them. The big four organisations, of which ACF is still the largest are ACF range of objects Greenpeace branches local Wilderness Society specific object WWOrganisation Friends of the Earth which used to be a significant organisations, and still runs a national journal Chain Reaction, for fullen into decline. All these organisations are presently under pressure from declining membership and declining funding. Advocacy groups • Regionally - linked “advocacy” groups: Some of these groups are spread (e.g. over a whole state); perhaps zeroing in on local issues in campaigns, some are local, sare are in between. Examples include: National Parks, Wilderness Societies, Heritage Groups, Forestry coalitions (e.g. SE forestry coalition which is composed of smaller local movements). Anti­ freeway and public transport groups,... • Non-rigionally-linked groups. These are of course contingently tied to actiosn and campaigns at various locations. Important examples include animal-concerned groups: animal preservation and conservations groups, animal liberation. Practice groups • Lifestyle groups. There are several strands within the broad commune movement, which is alive and for the most part thriving in Australia (by contrast with other countries where is was initiated). • Issue groups, include ^forestry, forest restoration and tree planting groups, such as nationally Greening Australia regionally bush regeneration groups and independently many local planting and restoration schemes from local councils down to ornamental rainforest gardens. Earlier there was a native garden movement, fostered by organisations for growing native plants. • sustainable and organic agriculture groups. There are several different groups, depending on the (production) methods allowed*. Prominent among these is the permaculture (abbreviating “permanent agriculture”) movement, which plans an integrated agrucultural system perannual food producing plants rather than annuals. • alternative energy groups • ‘Spiritual’ with ritual and ceremony, worship of the Earth, including Council of AllBeing, Re Earthly Homage to Gaia. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document MOVEMENTS New social movements along with, and in partial contrast with, new politics and past­ materialism as a quasi-technical term in political science and sociology. Like the others, it is an ill-defined term. Among the problems is the extreme slackness of identity criteria, so it is too often impossible to know when one has one.1 The terms are regularly introduced as if it was known what was meant (this is a widespread intellectual sin; the legitimate end of Wittgenstein's campaign against technical terms in philosophy). A major problem with the political social science investigations so far is that the classification of movements is too coarse-grained, and that when subclassifications are made there are not in terms of movements. For example, the broad environmental movement, the level movements is sifted down to, jets analysed in a typology, of shades of green, not into submovements. A movement involves action and/ or a diseration to action in a concerted direction by a group of engaged members type of intensional set-like objects OED. ‘series of actions and endevours of a body of persons for special object’ WRONG CATEGORY, otherwise Not bad. What is the movement though? Extent of doctrine socialism/ anarchism without doctrine knowing how without knowing that or theory practice without theory e.g. golf, most stickingls language. Deep ecology attempt to shed doctrine; empasis on movement. Doctrine involved that of sub­ social paradigm (model). Further features of a movement: • a certain duration. An action group that form for a short time purpose, holds a single parade, achieves its objective and dissolves, it not a movement. These are numerous short-lived action groups that do not rate as movement, and which need not be categorised or listed. • a certain integration. of members. Although there is now a widespread push for sustainable development (and attempts by many governments to coopt and neutralise environmental activity in this way), there is no sustainable development movement. That is not just because of the multiplicity of objectives subsumed under the smooth synthesized “objective”, but because there is no due integration, no appropriate organisation of adherents. Deep ecology is now a movement; it was it when Naess first presented it as one. 1 A hyporduct is that post-materialism, usually taken as a single stock-of-affairs, splits into several. 2 Environmental movements in Australia. The Australia-wide environmental organisations are not movements, but there are movements within or associated with them. The big four organisations, of which ACF is still the largest are ACF range of objects Greenpeace branches local Wilderness Society specific object WWOrganisation Friends of the Earth which used to be a significant organisations, and still runs a national journal Chain Reaction, for fullen into decline. All these organisations are presently under pressure from declining membership and declining funding. Advocacy groups • Regionally - linked “advocacy” groups: Some of these groups are spread (e.g. over a whole state); perhaps zeroing in on local issues in campaigns, some are local, sare are in between. Examples include: National Parks, Wilderness Societies, Heritage Groups, Forestry coalitions (e.g. SE forestry coalition which is composed of smaller local movements). Anti­ freeway and public transport groups,... • Non-rigionally-linked groups. These are of course contingently tied to actiosn and campaigns at various locations. Important examples include animal-concerned groups: animal preservation and conservations groups, animal liberation. Practice groups • Lifestyle groups. There are several strands within the broad commune movement, which is alive and for the most part thriving in Australia (by contrast with other countries where is was initiated). • Issue groups, include ^forestry, forest restoration and tree planting groups, such as nationally Greening Australia regionally bush regeneration groups and independently many local planting and restoration schemes from local councils down to ornamental rainforest gardens. Earlier there was a native garden movement, fostered by organisations for growing native plants. • sustainable and organic agriculture groups. There are several different groups, depending on the (production) methods allowed*. Prominent among these is the permaculture (abbreviating “permanent agriculture”) movement, which plans an integrated agrucultural system perannual food producing plants rather than annuals. • alternative energy groups • ‘Spiritual’ with ritual and ceremony, worship of the Earth, including Council of AllBeing, Re Earthly Homage to Gaia.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Movements Subject The topic of the resource Printout, undated. Description An account of the resource One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [2] leaves. 1.37 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:3f37666">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:3f37666</a> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk Box 18: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/7ae32c51780962eac9b5d1373ff2ba05.pdf c78446efbe931846b95a3997f6c0e659 PDF Text Text PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN DEEP ECOPOLITICAL THEORY: an Australian perspective. ... people are ready for change and the impending debate will result in constitutional change. We should, therefore, explore all options ...T There is growing dissatisfaction with Australia's political institutions, and increasing demand to change them. This demand, hiding co-optative elements, has been initiated and fostered in a conspicuously top-down fashion, by politicians and by academics. There is so far little surge of political enterprise at grass-roots levels, little pressure for the usually very limited changes proposed. Nonetheless, along with apathy, there is widespread popular disenchantment with present political arrangements. There is now an opportunity (although still only a small window therefore no doubt) to put green and radical themes on the agenda for real political change in Australia. That opportunity should not be missed, within Australia, or elsewhere. While the exposition that follows concentrates upon Australia, as a convenient advanced example, much of what is argued and urged applies or adapts elsewhere. 1. Disenchantment with politics, and political proposals for change. There is now evident in Australia, what is variously described as disillusionment and anxiety, cynicism and pessimism about the state of politics—a loss of confidence in it, and a retreat from commitment. Recently anxiety about the nature and quality of Australian politics [has] increased.... Widespread anxiety about the state of politics is based [in part] on an uneasy feeling that, if the parties are not going to stand for some identifiable philosophy, and the leaders are going to be chosen on the basis of their potential as television performers or even as head­ kickers, then the only appropriate response is cynicism. That cynicism is reflected in a turning away from support for the major parties ... and revealed in the attitudes of young Australians ...2 who often cannot be bothered registering to vote, or voting. Lack of confidence is beginning to show not only as cynicism about politicians, but also as doubt about the integrity of Australia's political institutions.3 In a recent survey, ‘62 percent of [Australians] expressed either little or no confidence in the political system. Such a figure accurately reflects the mood of the Australian community’.4 Australian loss offaith in conventional politics is attributed to a mix of factors. A first explanatory factor as regards this disenchantment comes from the changes in politics already remarked (ranging from policy issues to media performers) and from resultant uncertainty. ‘... Hon. Ian Macphee, ‘A new constitution?’. Of course Macphee did not really mean all options, nor even all constitutional options. Furthermore, his claim about preparedness of people for change is incompatible with Mackey’s data (mentioned below) on exhaustion with change. Mackay pp. 174-177. For all the Australian casualness of Mackay's presentation, his sociological findings are nonetheless fairly solidly survey and interview based (if occasionally stretching the data). Ibid, p.178 ZbztZ. �2 the Australian electorate is confused about which party stands for what, and about whether any party has a long-term commitment to any particular point of view’.5 A complex ‘second factor ... concerns the adversarial nature of two-party politics’.6 How can this ‘two party, adversarial approach ... continue to be appropriate when the distinctions between the two parties themselves are so hard to define’? But ‘redefinition of party politics implies the possibility of a redefinition of the whole parliamentary process itself’. Why ‘when parties seem quite capable of stealing each other's policies or of invading each other's traditional philosophical territory, [can not] politicians work together in a more co-operative and harmonious spirit’?7 ‘Adversarial politics may have made sense ... when ... distinctions between the parties were stark and when arguments about principle could be justified; today, the idea that politicians would be arguing over a point of principle or philosophy is almost unthinkable. ... [They] are much more likely to be arguing over matters of personality, prejudice and power than over issues which effect the long-term health of the body politic’.8 ‘The quality of parliamentary debate is regarded not only as a symptom of the adversarial nature of the institution, but also as a symptom either of the poor quality of politicians ..., or of the effect of the system on those who are enmeshed in it’ .9 Unless there is marked improvement in party philosophies, programs and performance, ‘the call to re-examine the nature of the parliamentary process will gather momentum’.1011 A third relevant factor contributing to loss of faith is the impression of Australians that ‘they are overgovemed ’n, with too many expensive bureaucracies and too many houses of parliament. Conflicts between State and Federal parliaments — and between the various State parliaments themselves — are regarded as a particularly unproductive expenditure of political energy, and Australians question whether 15 houses of parliament may be too many for the efficient government of 18 million people. The sheer number of parliaments is often blamed for the problem of too many bureaucracies and for many duplications of bureaucratic and political activity between State and Federal governments. ... Whilst there is little love felt in the Australian community for Canberra and for the idea of more centralised government even that is beginning to appear preferable .... The widespread support for the idea of a republic which emerged during 1992 is closely related to the underlying sense that Australia is overdue for some kind of reexamination of its political institutions, and even the notion of Federation itself. ... As debate about the idea of a republic proceeds ... it has begun to incorporate the idea that 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Ibid. pp. 178-179. Ibid. The adversarial character of dominant State legal systems is also becoming subject to more and more criticism. It appears likely that significant movement towards different inquiratorial systems will occur, not least because of the huge expense and growing unaffordability of adversarial systems. Ibid. Ibid, p.180. Ibid. p. 179. It is a symptom of both, the latter especially. Ibid. p. 181. lbid. p. 181, itals added. �3 Australian's political structures and systems might be quite significantly reformed.12 Even though the main proposals for change no doubt remain reformist in character, some of them are far-reaching by normal standards. Both the extensive disenchantment with present political arrangements and the felt need for significant change further suggest political times are not normal. Elements for a political paradigm shift are already present, to which radical additions are now feasible. So far there have been, along with normal inertial resistance to change, two main responses to growing pressure for change: political, from politicians, ex-politicians and political commentators, and academic from intellectuals, academic entrepreneurs and academic journalists. By and large, political responses have been grander, more sweeping and vaguer; academic responses more theoretical and cautious, piecemeal and detailed. But there are no grand detailed plans. Under the leading proposal so far for political change, Australia's constitutional monarchy will be displaced by a constitutional republic with its own head of state displacing the monarch, but with perhaps minimal adjustments otherwise. Nonetheless, as a result, republicanism is in the air. Politicians have begun to contemplate other practical reforms, while academics have begun to embroider theories around republicanism and institutional reform. What happens to the Australian federation of states is one of the many unresolved issues presently being debated. The main reason for reform offered by the political camp can be summed up as: changing geopolitical circumstances. The camp tends not to acknowledge what would reflect adversely upon it, the poorness of federal political practice. Rather it tends to attribute popular dissatisfaction to economic circumstances and uncertainties: declining real standards of living, extensive unemployment, persistent recession until recently, problems to be surmounted by full-steam ahead untrammelled economic growth, to be attained by recoupling Australia to the Asian economic express. Meanwhile an orchestrated republican movement can help divert popular political attention from poor political management and a gloomy economic predicament. Much has changed in the century since present antiquated political arrangements were hammered out, arrangements making the newly-fashioned Commonwealth of Australia, politically a federation of states, into a constitutional monarchy coupled to Britain, arrangements of convenience fashioned for very different circumstances. Most non-symbolic linkages with Britain, which has been inching towards a place in a united Europe, have already been severed. Australia has gradually begun to appreciate its geo-political position in the Ibid. p. 181-2. Republican proposals have been circulating for some time. But the cause was finally taken up by prominent politicians, who made it their own, after which it became a popular issue. Mackay's accurate presentation of popular support for political change contrasts drolly with the first part of his book which depicts an Australian populace exhausted by change and longing for the old ease and somnolence. �4 Indian-Pacific region (and the money-making opportunities for a sagging resource-based economy in booming parts of Asia). Whence the main idealistic proposal: for an independent republic, decoupled from Europe, assuming its own (prominent) place in its geo-political regions. In principle at least, place and region begin to assume, or resume, some of their neglected, but historic, significance (however that is not how it is yet seen). Most proposals for constitutional and federal reform fit within that limited idealistic conception. One important proposal, advanced by established political players, their most radical proposal so far, includes abolition of the present states. Such a proposal would clearly represent a welcome step in anarchist directions, were it not regularly offset by the idea of a strengthened central state.13 Supposing this latter unfortunate idea is bracketed for the moment, then what is being seriously considered already starts to look like a much more rational regionalism than what presently prevails. The present states of Australia are undoubtedly an anachronism, based on accidental boundaries of a contingent colonial history. They are ecologically irrational management units, utterly failing to reflect ecological regions. Yet the states possess extensive environmental and other management powers, inappropriate ‘powers which derive from what was largely a political bargaining process conducted a century ago.’ Another effect of inapposite statefederal arrangements, especially ‘funding arrangements, has been to lock out local government and, more importantly, local communities. ... local communities must be given greater control over those decisions of government which effect their lives ...’; the opportunity ‘to design and provide the services which are needed locally.’14 At this stage of the dialectic McPhee slides easily and naturally from localism to regionalism. A glance at the map reveals natural regions for local government on a viable scale [an optimistic idea]. Some cross State boundaries, and I would envisage that State governments would be replaced with regional governments. These would be more akin to larger local governments and would certainly not have the trappings of the States. They should not have parliaments and the expensive, unwieldy and inefficient bureaucracies which characterise our States. They should have a small number of full-time councillors ... Regional governments should be solely accountable to their ratepayers ...15 . So far so good: however McPhee thereupon begins to infiltrate stock (small /) liberal management assumptions. The basic idea to retain is simple: that of ecologically-rational local and regional rearrangement of anachronistic state partitions. But that regionalization should be Anarchists can even rest (if uneasily) with a constitution, so long as it provides for an organisation, Australia Inc. even, sufficiently different from a state and its authoritarian trappings. All quotes in this paragraph are drawn from McPhee. An address along similar lines to the Hon. Ian McPhee, also proposing abolition of the states, was delivered by the former Prime Minister R.G. Hawke. Hawke's speech, by contrast with McPhee's, attracted much media attention, and though facilely dismissed as “unrealistic” by some practicing politicians, appeared to gain a good deal of support. McPhee ibid. �5 greened, as reform should be radicalized. Much has been left off these political agendas for change, not merely environments and habitats of their less prominent or noisy inhabitants, but also such issues as rights and liberties, transformation of antiquated legal and executive frameworks, and so on. Omission of (human) rights is especially remarkable in states such as Australia, whose consititutions astonishingly do not mention at all (what is however often supposed to justify states) individual rights, such rights only being ensured, so far as they are, by indirect routes (statutes regarding treatment of minorities and the like). Nor do the political camps pushing limited change speak of rights or liberties; a very limited conception of adjustments required prevails (though without rights and liberties and a generous public sphere there is little, and little prospect of, justification for a state at all). Accordingly political agendas for change need to be conspicuously broadened, to accommodate a decidedly more ambitious range of constitutional and institutional redesign. 2. A project within a project: radically reshaping Australian institutions. Academic entrepreneurs have also responded quickly to proposals for constitutional and institutional changes. Early to scramble on the bandwagon was the institution to which I am affiliated, the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, with its ambitious decade-long project, Reshaping Australian Institutions: Towards and Beyond 2001.16 One small part of this project does connect with the republican push, which no doubt helped inspire it and gain its funding. The academic version of republicanism furnishes an institutional and historic setting, tracing its roots back to ancient Rome, and thereby linking in, what admits much modern adaptation, notions of citizenship and civic virtues. But most of the project is independent of any republican reorganisation. The Reshaping Australian Institutions project is presented in predominantly reformist fashion, unsurprisingly. It is supposed, for instance, to ‘provide major input into evaluation and reform of Australia's institutions’; indeed it is explicitly ‘aimed at contributing to Australian constitutional reform’.17 Nothing however precludes consideration of reshaping or transforming Australian institutions — those of the whole ecological region — in a unreformist and possibly unconstitutional way, in a radical way Admittedly, the rough boundary between reformist and radical routes becomes even more blurred when the constitution of a country is open for possible major reconsideration and much political infrastructure may be altered. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a strong central state, the stock boundary stands intact. For reformist changes would amount to comparative small adjustments leaving it substantially intact. For example, a minimal transformation, of the 16 17 A recent brief description of this two million dollar project, now outlined in several places, is given in Tynan, pp.17-19. Fuller descriptions are available from a main coordinator of the project, J. Braithwaite, Law, RSSS, ANU. One of the many strands (17 at last count) of this project is an environmental (or green) strand. The immediate predecessor of this article was presented in a workshop at RSSS on green political theory, arranged under the project. That accounts for some of the otherwise puzzling structure of what has eventuated. ‘Reshaping Australian institutions: towards and beyond 2001’ in Tynan , p.17, italics added. �6 sort presently much favoured, from constitutional monarchy to Australian republic, though entailing non-negligible constitutional redrafting, need only amend the roles of a few elite power- and position-holders. By contrast, radical changes would substantially alter that strong central state, perhaps (as will be suggested) eliminating it altogether. There are appealing reasons for attempting wider, more radical investigations. For, firstly, there may be more satisfactory institutional structures not accessible, or even visible, along normal constitutional reform routes. Secondly, there is a demand, a small but growing demand from green direction for instance, for radical institutional change. It would be prudent, then, to make some investigation of the options, to assess their prospects. Thirdly, reflection on such structures would certainly be part of a more comprehensive study of and theory of institutional design, which the Reshaping project also presents as an objective. Fourthly, much more controversially, major environmental problems cannot be satisfactorily solved along merely reformist paths.18 A prime reason is this: a central state is ineluctably committed to high levels of economic activity which impact heavily environmentally, characteristically to economic growth of sorts which impact very adversely environmentally, inducing inevitable degradation. Accordingly, there are then, or should be, two bands to the green (or environmental) strand of the restructuring Australian institutions project: not merely an important reformist side, but as well a radical spread. It is part of this underfunded and undersupported radical spread which forms the main object of investigation in what follows, that part that relinquishes present state structures, in favour of more environmentally benign institutions - which no doubt can be designed, even if not readily brought to practical use. In order to reach radical redesign ideas quickly, let us touch only lightly upon some of the more distinctively green reasons for this anarchoid quest (familiar anarchist reasons stand: the illegitimacy of present states; the undesirability and severe disutility of states, and so on.19) As indicated, present states are incompatible with ecologically sustainable practices, because of their heavy unrelenting commitments to shallow economic growth. More generally, standard states and their practices comprise very significant parts of environmental problems, but quite insufficient parts of any solutions. Moreover, states constitute an enormous and destructive drain on regional environments, a feature particularly evident in smaller states which are always looking out for revenue-raising expedients for their own expensive running. Apart from those greens who have recognised the excessive environmental costs of states and their heavy demands on environments, and thus or otherwise have come to recognise the desirability of their withering away, there are many more who have become ambivalent about states, who appreciate their very problematic character and very questionable legitimacy, but do not see yet how to get along altogether without them, or more exactly (to point towards a 18 19 This theme, merely stated here, is argued in detail elsewhere; see esp. Sylvan 95. For a summary of these familiar reasons, see Sylvan 93, and for detail on some, see Burnheim 85 and above all Marshall. �7 resolution) without certain functions that they serve. To point immediately towards a resolution of this crucial problem, the functional dissolution idea advocated is this: that the functioning parts may be separately utilized without the colossal whole. The state is not an organism the functioning parts of which must fail without the whole. So the enormous fat of state can simply be shed, to great advantage. In any event, ‘the State is a social institution’, always ‘within’, Marxists continue, ‘a concrete historic setting’.20 Granted, it is an institution. For an institution in the relevant sense is ‘a society or association for the [organisation or] promotion of some particular object [or function]’.21 Institutions include therefore the state, the central state. So it too is up for reshaping, radical slimming, and possible removal in a concrete historical setting, such as late twentieth century Australia. Ideas and schemes for radical redesign are already available from rich anarchist and socialist sources, those for green design and reshaping from growing and diverse environmental sources. In main part, then, radical ecoredesign is a matter of convivially meeting (not joining) the two, an intersection that favours anarchist inputs. Something of the sort has already been attempted, in an environmentally shallower way, in eco-anarchism, alias social ecology, and in a deeper way, in deep-green social theory.22 Moreover, it could be attempted in other kinds of deeper green theory — itself really a plurality of theories, which however does not itself force radical ecoredesign, though most variants would support it. Thus Naess's “deep ecology” for example, which is not so far politically radical, only strongly reformist, could (and should) be given a radical turn.23 Concentrating upon the radical spread of deeper green theory does not preclude concomitant reformist investigation and activity. Both sides of the green street should be played. Reformist opportunities should of course be pursued - incremental change, social engineering, greening bureaucrats, lobbying politicians, and like activity (but better to cut through all such pleading and obiesance and be rid of politicians and bureaucrats). There are many reformist proposals being advanced for the greening of Australian federal institutions — with but few so far having much impact on practice.24 Nonetheless, more limited, more constrained, proposals of this sort certainly have a better chance of making a difference than radical redesigns, regularly smartly dismissed as “unrealistic” or “utopian”.25 No doubt the Thus, Green p.61, who adds quite wrongly that Proudhon and his disciples do not see it that way ‘but as an abstraction and aberration’. Oxford English Dictionary, adapted. An institution is an organitution. On social ecology, see Bookchin 90, and for information on deep-green social theory, see Sylvan and Bennett 94 and Routley 80. As to the political character of deep ecology, and why it should be turned, see Sylvan and Bennett 94, where an expose of the political theory of Naess's ecosophy is presented. There are many many narrower economic and technological proposals. One of the more interesting wider proposals comes from an Opposition not noted for its green initiatives and commitments, for an overseeing Department of Sustainable Development, a Department that could see to the greening of all federal institutions. Too smartly, as we argue elsewhere (e.g. Sylvan and Bennett 90). �8 normal “reshaping institutions” investigations are rightly focussed upon institutional reform, not upon revolutionary reshaping, where much freer scope for redesign is offered. However the real possibility of radical change should not be excluded; green radicals should be prepared. There have been various opportunities for revolutionary change in Australian history, the last occurring, according to some historians, with the ignominious fall of the Whitlam government. There may well be opportunities again both in the near and intermediate future, especially should some solid work be put into propagating the prospect. In the near term there is economic disarray, social fragmentation, and constitutional destabilization; in the longer term increasing ecological problems and expanding eco-catastrophes loom. For all the spasmodic environmental rhetoric, under present incremental reform comparatively little in the way of radical green change occurs or can be expected. Witness, for comparison, the snail pace of the establishment movement towards a rather minimal grey republicanism in Australia, or differently towards meeting carbon-reduction commitments. It is increasingly doubtful, given prevailing responses to economic difficulties, that present systematic problems confronting Australia will be satisfactorily addressed, environmental problems not least. Furthermore, the sorts of problems concerning reorganising society in deep green ways, problems that provide subsequent topics, would likely not arise. So do imagine that a rather free hand for institutional eco-redesign is somehow dispensed. Also, once it is seen where to go organisationally, it is much easier to discover how to arrive there. 3. A basic problem of structure: central or decentralised organisation. There are large and immediate advantages in taking a problem-oriented way. That way, which will tend towards anarchoid outcomes, will be anarchistically guided in this respect: Unless there is a genuine problem, already causing difficulties or developing, nothing need be done, let things alone let Being be.26 On this non-managerial low-work approach a good deal of structure presently inoperational, and of idle regulation presently enacted, can be removed; organisational arrangements can be very significantly down-sized. The leading methodological idea is that enough relevant (biodegradable) structure is introduced to resolve organisational problems, but not substantially more. Organisational oversupply and waste is thus avoided. Moreover, much structure that keeps so much environmental destructive industry in business is likewise shed. Among basic problems for deep ecopolitical theory are those of political reorganisation and so of organisation. Evidently institutions, and their types, are critical to such organisation. And a major organisational problem for putative green society concerns structure: to take a critical case, whether society is centrally organised (concentrated, bureaucratised, hierarchical, large-scale and so on) or decentralised (dispersed, non-hierarchical, small-scale and supposedly beautiful, and so on). This focal problem, to centralise or not to centralise, is sometimes presented as a serious 26 In vulgar parlance: if it doesn't itch don't scratch (and even if it does, resist). �9 dilemma for concerned green theorists.27 The binary horns of this dilemma are respectively: on the one horn, the pull (or push) to localisation and regionalisation, to non-anonymous smallscale low-impacting environmentally-friendly arrangements, to diffusion of power and dismantling of the incubus of a central state with its crippling costs and unfriendly practices; and on the other horn, the need for continuing and further central income generation and welfare (re-)distribution, central regulation and control, and the pressures to environmental reliance upon and use of the central state.28 The dilemma has been trenchantly posed as follows: ... the demands of the Greens sometimes appear contradictory, in seeking increasing environmental regulation and welfare measures... alongside a halt to industrial expansion, the very source of income for the welfare state. Yet the expansion and further centralization of the bureaucratic state apparatus is neither their overt goal nor covert motivation. Quite the contrary. Their genuine long term vision is of a decentralized, steady state society of self-sufficient, relationally autonomous (albeit interlinked) regions.29 As it happens, not only does the theoretical and utopian literature run both ways, towards and away from centralisation, but so does practice and experience. As to theory, anarchistically-inclined presentations tend to favour decentralisation, perhaps with some central compensation through federation (thus recent Blueprints, ecotopias, and so on), whereas socialistically-inclined presentations invariably opt for powerful central states (to control and redistribute grander social programs, etc.). As to practice, there are local councils, community organisations, residents' groups aiming to keep out, or to remove, the state-sponsored nuclear plants, toxic waste incinerators, waste dumps or super-highways, on the one horn; and, on the other, central states blocking, modifying, or regulating local or regionally promoted schemes for large dams (e.g. Tasmania’s Franklin), forest exploitation, pulp mills, strip mining, and so on.30 To some extent, the way the problem has often been re-presented, in terms of a dilemma between top-down and bottom-up structure and power transmission, already points towards a theoretical resolution: namely, both, or rather enough of both. 31 But how is this combination to be achieved? An answer does not fall out by pure reason, operating in isolation from other 27 28 29 30 31 As by Michael Jacobs of The Green Economy, who has posed the problem sharply, as part of an argument however for retaining the central state (and much of present status quo arrangements). Environmental reasons for favouring small-scale bioregional organisation are nicely gathered in McLaughlin, chapter 10. Fox, Ecopolitics III. Much turns on the exploitative character of certain local and regional communities, their getrich-quick schemes, what they are prepared to do to survive in old or affluent ways, and so on. In the immediately generated simple picture there are four options (familiar from relevant logic): predominantly top-down T both B N neither (e.g. populist anarchy) 1 predominantly bottom-up �10 problems. By taking advantage of information gathered from other connected problems, a promising answer can be teased out. Neither standard socialism nor anarchism afford answers, socialism because it leaves the central institution of state intact. Standard anarchism, much more promising, does not resolve the problem either, because federation, as standardly explained, does not concede sufficient power to representatives, for instance to constrain exploitative local communities. A solution to the dilemma lies through a combinational stragegy, which includes partial dissolution of the central state, into its actual organisational functions in each region. While removing the state, itself source of several environmental and social problems, and its concentration of power, invariably under environmentally unfriendly control, functional dissolution nonetheless retains its apparently essential services, including (where necessary) those of environmental regulation. Relevant continent-wide functions would persist or be introduced: for example, services controlling inflow into Australia of damaging forms and materials such as toxic wastes and exotic pest species, or regulating outflow from Australia of native wildlife and flora. In part, ecoregional functionalism offers a radical continuation of the separation ofpowers of recent historical process, of church and state, legislature and executive, and so forth. As these functions come to operate separately while remaining coordinated, so would those functional arrangements and institutions dissolving the state. It is a major illusion of modern political theory that a central state, ceded monopolies on coercion, currency, taxation and so on, is necessary in order to secure adequate supply of public goods, including public order and environmental regulation. To the contrary, the most that appears required, the most that arguments would support, is some network of specific organisations functioning to look after specific kinds of goods and services, those necessary for this or that, that are not otherwise supplied. There is no inherent reason why communities should not institute and regulate specialised bodies coordinated among themselves (by negotiations or, failing that, through recognised arbitrators) to ensure the adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of damaging crime. Each such institution could gain community standing from its support base, for instance through achieving democratically-generated recognition. Such an institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and like admissible means, and in doing this it could mobilize in co-operation with communities and with other recognised institutions. There are many examples of such institutions operating successfully both regionally and internationally; for instance, those for postal and communicational arrangements, international sporting bodies and international academies and clubs.32 32 This passage borrows from the summary in Bumheim 86 p.221 of Burnheim 85. For much fuller elaboration see Burnheim 85 and Sylvan 94. �11 4. Technical interlude: Strong family resemblances of ubiquitous problem-generating structures. The skeleton or scaffolding of organisation is structure; it is the frame on which organisation is hung, which organisation fills or fleshes out. The sense of structure, explicating the underlying organic image, implies as much. According, for instance, to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘structure: manner in which a building or organism or other complete whole is constructed, supporting framework or whole of the essential parts of something’. Structure itself is primarily, though not entirely, a matter of relations of elements and parts. Remarkably, the same sort of problem-generating structures occur in a range of seemingly diverse theoretical areas, to be displaced in each case by a similar sort of problem­ dissipating structure. To illustrate, consider an order on a type (or set) of items £1 given by one order relation R, where R may itself depend on item c in Q, i.e. R = Rc. For example, where Q is a system of worlds including your world the ordering R of worlds may depend on your world (and my world could supply a different order). Differently, where Q is a system of values or valued items, R may depend upon your values; and so on. As an order, R is at least transitive, and perhaps either (if like <) reflexive or (if like <) symmetric, on its range. The system <Q, R> is a simple ordered structure, or aframe. (The latter is the term now used in modal logic, where such structures are the bases of models for the logic.) A cap or top t of such a system is an element such that all items of Q bear R to t but which does not itself bear R to any element of Q. (The notion, that of supremum, and likewise maximum, may be similarly defined relative to subsets or types within Q.33) Simple Theorem. There are order structures without tops. Examples are provided by systems (often with much more structure) with no supremum. Here is a simple 6 element example drawn from relevant logical theory. +1 +2 „ - {-2, -1, -0, +0, +1, +2} +0 R = — is as shown by arrows. -0 T = {+0, +1, +2} is a truth component -1 -2 Topologically, several notions of prime political and philosophical cast are tantamount to tops in order structures, including chiefs (top persons in power rankings) hierarchs, grand leaders, centres, absolutes, and objective items. 33 Consider, a pertinent issue, the matter of A supremum t of R (in type T) is an (that) element (of T) such that all elements (of T) bear R to t but which does not itself bear R to anything (in T). �12 central control or authority, where as in the next diagram all elements answer to t. t c Cl C4 a C2 c3 b a3 ai b2 a2 bi Looked at from above t is centre of a network. In the diagram shown, it remains a structure, a flattened hierarchy, when t and relations leading to it are deleted, under decapitation so to say. What this shows in a simple fashion is that there can be ordered structures without central control (and ranging further there can be statelessness, absence of central control, anarchy without “anarchy” or chaos, because there is order), anencephaletic structures. Order, including good order of a range of sorts, does not require central controls, leaders, absolute rulers or arrangements, or similar. Order does not require hierarchy, such hierarchy.34 Let us briefly allude to a much wider philosophical sweep. Related order structural considerations to those that tell against central states, absolute rulers, top authorities as required for satisfactory order, also count against absolutes of other sorts, such as absolute truth (there need be none, as the first diagram above indicates), absolute order (thus R itself is relative to c), and objectives of various sorts, such as objective fact (another supposed absolute), objective value (supplied under an absolute order), and so on. On this broad sweep the following sorts contrast sets emerge:35 centralism elitism statism absolutism realism objectivism in rough contrast respectively with maximizing rationalism decentralism egalitarianism anarchism pluralism nonrealism nonjectivism satisizing rationalism Naturally, these simple structural considerations are only indicative, not decisive. For we might find, as more and more constraints are imposed on structures, as account is taken of 34 35 Part of what seems correct in Bookchin's vendetta against hierarchy can be captured in this way. For a fuller picture see Sylvan 94, chapter 10. �13 actual conditions, that freedom contracts, that structural arrangements are forced towards centralism or absolutism. While such forcing may now look, in the light of a little logic, implausible, it requires further argument that it need not in general eventuate. The argument here against centralism and statism takes these lines: that there is ready design of institutional arrangements for decentralised communities which does not lead back to a central state. The state is organisationally otiose. Organisation is delivered anencephaletically, more specifically through a decentralised functional ecoregionalism. As to how this can be accomplished, a sweep of anarchoidal work discloses.36 5. Problems of chauvinism and present-time bias in democratic political institutions. Under decentralized social organization, each requisite function will be carried out by some association of agents comprising operative and support staff (that is, as regards bare formal structure, more or less as now, in institutions like departments and corporations). For direct accountability downwards, and to ensure separation of power, upper operatives, those of a directing or steering committee (the nervous system of the organisation), will be democratically selected (from a relevant lower level constituency, and from the whole people of an ecoregion in case of a typical bottom level institution). Note well that selection is not election: election is but one method of democratic selection, and often enough not an altogether satisfactory method. The point of some sort of democratic selection, as a guiding not invariant rule, is manifold: it is in part to ensure due accountability, in part to prevent unethical accumulation of power in special classes, and in part for reasons that devolve from the very notion of democracy itself. In modem usage of the motherhood term democracy, two lines are visible: included are not only forms of political organisation where ‘power [is presumed to] reside in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them ... or by officers [selected] by them’, but ‘often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege’37. It is on the basis of this second line that the call for democracy has operated to remove chauvinism and discrimination of a range of forms: against unpropertied minorities, nonconformists, women, blacks, tribals, and so on. Even so pursuit of the line, where successful, has not generally conferred adequate representation and rights on several of these groups; but, more important, pursuit has stopped short at certain humans, such as those granted citizenship — though relevant interests of many other creatures and welfare of many of other items may be affected by what those citizens elect to do. While democratic Most of the key elements are already available from political theory relevant to anarchism. As to putting them together see e.g. Burnheim 85 (where demarchy and much else of relevance is explained) and Sylvan 95. Oxford English Dictionary entry 1, main entry. These two lines are not the only distinctive lines now visible: increasingly conspicuous in calls for “democracy” are Asian calls to freedom and rights: not merely for basic legal freedoms such as free assembly, fair process and so on, but for freedom to access information (the “right to know”). �14 voters can perhaps be entrusted to take some account of those near and dear (within remarkably sharp limits, as the situation of women in many regions still shows), such as those deemed incompetent to vote: the young, deranged, and so on, much evidence reveals that they cannot be relied for what is less near or dear (and indeed are easily herded into casting their votes in accord with a shallow mercantilism). Consider what get left out , outcasts of even perfect democratic control:• spatially distant agents. For example, the interests of many humans outside USA are much affected by practices of the US government, which however is outside their democratic reach. • temporally distant agents. Since the past is past, it is future agents who will be affected, often drastically affected, by present practices, that matter. Some way of taking due account of future agents, their interests and welfare, is required, even under shallow long-term ecology, that is under lighter green positions. Sustainable development has been regularly diverted into - what is part of what it is about - such a way, an indirect and so far utterly ineffectual way.38 Much more of importance is also excluded according to deep-green theory: • creatures with interests, other than present human citizens, and • items with welfare, but perhaps lacking interests. The category includes items with intrinsic value, whose value can be effected, made to fare worse or better. A major problem, little addressed, is how to take due account of such democratically excludes. It is a problem especially for deeper green theories: that deep problem is, so to say, how to obtain satisfactory representation of all that is of value in the natural world? That way of putting it, while a little misleading, does point to a particular type of resolution. Problems special to deep ecopolitical theory, include, that is, issues as to adequacy of representation of items of value outside those humans that are represented, representation of their interests, where they have them, of their welfare otherwise, of favourable conditions for their sustenance, continuation and retention of value. Democracy of discussed modern sorts, whether representative or participative, will not serve these purposes at all satisfactorily. For instance, insofar as party-political representative democracies represent anything (even human “bottom lines” as is sometimes erroneously supposed), they appear to represent primarily interests of certain business-allied elites. Among the issues are of course those as to adequacy of retention and protection of nonhuman items of intrinsic value, tropical forests and their inhabitants and elements for instance. There is no organisational alternative to proceeding with and through agents, preferably well-disposed and quality agents. It is hard to guarantee either politically. As agents are but a subclass of what requires democratic representation and what should have its welfare or interests considered, how are the rest to be taken care of satisfactorily? There are significant older responses to like problems, through totems and taboos, guardians and constraints. Looked at one way the problem repeats, more or less, a familiar problem: namely, how in larger 38 See Sylvan and Bennett 93. �15 <r constituencies do decision-making agents represent the whole mass of agents and others in the constituency? A main democratic answer, designed to avoid many shortcomings of alternatives, was: by representative means—only “representation” was almost never taken seriously or literally enough. The sorts of considerations that made representation a promising resolution make what is to be proposed—where representation has, in any case, to be expanded —also promising. A key principle is this: all relevant items are to be represented. Relevance criteria enter importantly. Steering committees of lower level institutions among the main decision-making bodies should be appropriately representative of all items whose welfare is affected by their decisions (principle of deepened demanarchy). Under more equitable arrangements, then, some decision-engaged agents will have to be selected as representative of relevant classes of excludeds. Electoral arrangements do not so readily allow for such; sortition, well-designed selection by lot, does.39 As already hinted, deepened representation is not the only promising resolution of the problem that might be tried. Another, which could be attempted either separately or concurrently, operates through the directive of ecologically sustainable development, requiring as a constraint, not only intergenerational equity but also preservation of items of ecological value.40 It might be suggested that such a directive be made mandatory, applying to all relevant steering committees. But, as already evident, there are severe obstacles to getting such a directive properly implemented. (In present oligarchical circumstances, even very dilute versions are worth pressing for, as they would offer definite improvements upon what presently happens.) 6. Ecoregional demanarchoid reshaping of Australian political institutions: one beginning. Is such a radical restructuring feasible? Initial investigations hold out the hope that major problems for deep ecopolitical theory can be solved, at least in theory. Investigations accordingly suggest that the project within the Reshaping Australian Institutions project is viable and worth pursuing. A logical next stage offers sketches for a radical political reorganisation of Australia.41 Evidently there would be many designs (thereby removing facile jeers against “the blueprint”, a part of co-optative strategy for persistence with prevailing statist arrangements). Among the many designs, some few, conforming to favoured principles, would be selected for detailed study. If the study were attempted, most appropriately through systems modellings, then flexibility could be built into modellings, so that even though only a few basic designs were examined, many variations would be feasible. Not only is systems modelling particularly well suited to modelling network designs; it also further offers prospects for No doubt there are electoral approximations; e.g. candidates in separate classes for each category to be represented. For elaboration of this option, see Sylvan and Bennett 93. Such design, well accomplished, would help considerably in revealing what is possible, thereby providing a seriously neglected contribution to politics, itself sometimes presented, with undue licence, as the art of the possible. �16 computing simulation and implementation, and even some simulated political experimentation. Furthermore, such modellings begin to give some grasp on the size and complexity of the task (a useful comparison is with World 3 modelling of the on-going “Limits to Growth” project42, or, better, with a regionalized version of it). To get started on such ecoregional design, for Australia, two broad classifications and associated maps and charts are required: • 1. an ecoregional classification, with partitions and overlays, for Australia and its continental shelf. Observe that this classification will be hierarchical, as smaller regions merge into larger regions; but it is a benign hierarchy of levels (it facilitates no accumulation of power or wealth). Observe too that any such classification is far from unique. Plurality has already set in, and a choice of classification (or a few choices) will have to be made, taking due account of political organisational principles and objectives. Fortunately some of the preliminary classificatory work has already been accomplished in Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, where 3 broad classifications are presented and procedures for generating many more given.43 For political purposes further classification attributes (e.g. demographic features) need to be included. Ecoregions provide the basis for spatially linked administrative and community units. (Not all units need be of this sort; many contemporary arrangements are spatially unlinked). At this stage a basic principle of decentralization and distributed and smaller-scale organization can be invoked, namely • subsidiarization: organisational functions should be allowed to fall down to (or to be pushed down to) the lowest level compatible with their satisfactory performance. Thus, for instance, most matters concerning such things as sewerage and primary education would be localized. This subsidiarization principle, drawn from classical anarchism, has been widely adopted in green planning proposals. (It is said to have been applied by the Catholic Church in administration of the Holy Roman Empire, whence the not altogether apt title derives. It is presently being reassessed for use in that successor organisation, united Europe.) No doubt the principle is open to challenge, for instance on grounds of efficiency, that larger size may prove more efficient, of duplication, and so on. But, the objective is not maximization of technological values such as efficiency factors; instead it aims to satisize on a wider framework of values, including holistic social arrangements. Presumably, however, undue duplication of expensive administrative bodies is to be avoided. Coupled with subidiarization is another principle, • direct accountability downwards: units should answer directly to regional constituencies. This contrasts with prevailing accountability (such as it is) upwards, through some indirect and tenuous, centralized circuiting chain. 42 43 Naturally much more gets comprehended under See e.g. Meadows. See Thackway and Cresswell. Rudiments of a politically useful classification begin to emerge on their 30 Group Regionalisation. �17 accountability, for instance openness of environmental accounting. Schematic diagram of organisation structure Structural diagram: (with some sample components indicated, but not all their network interlinkages displayed) statistics bureau upper levels: administrative, executive, research ground level: functional selectoral college Australian region (federal) immigration inflow control materials super­ regions (a to k) interregional transport, etc. (local) regions (1 to n) upper levels arbitration bureau rental entitlements office resources income office ground level water systems sewer systems hospital systems region 1 region n There are also principles interrelating smaller with larger regions, both bottom-up and top-down (or centre down) principles. Among these will be • representation of smaller regions in relevant planning institutions of more comprehensive regions. Representation, appropriately regulated, will often replace anarchistic federation, which as observed appears too weak for requisite environmental control. The point needs no labouring that the classifications and principles are open to challenge at every step; for instance, there is nothing rock-hard about the type of ecoregional classification preferred, nor about social functions to be addressed. At a theoretical stage that is unproblematic: there are other (less preferable) models; elaborate your own if you want to and �18 can. In any case, it is to be hoped that a diversity in theory might be to some extent reflected in some diversity in practice—with different regions and continents trying different arrangements, with much less of the sort of cosmopolitan political monoculture that we are presently being harassed toward, with much more resilient political biodiversity. • 2 a social function classification, of those community matters that require explicit organisation at some level. An initial listing can be compiled by consulting Australian metropolitan telephone directories, especially the government sections that used to feature in the front (until a year ago). What results under redesign and reorganisation will, of course, look very different from what is listed. Parliaments, parties and all their supporting apparatus will vanish; the Australian Bureau of Statistics will assume a new significance and independent role, and so on. But which institutions are retained, which adapted, and so on, will depend on further social organisational features, not yet considered here. The result will be a levelled pyramidal structure, a flat-untopped network, not a power hierarchy. While some requisite research has been undertaken upon how the various functional bodies and decision-making committees can be selected and can operate44, insufficient investigation has been made of the interrelations and adequate fundings of the bodies and institutions involved — whichever they are! For little such detailed anarchoid modelling has apparently been attempted for any region anywhere. Evidently there is much to be done theoretically. Detailed modellings would bring issues down to earth, without concretizing them; no doubt too they would disclose many further problems hidden in the detailing, problems to which anarchoid solutions can reasonably be expected. But comparatively little is likely to be done, unless requisite support is forthcoming, support in the shape of researchers (research volunteers) and research infrastructure (from research gifts). For such support, for investigating its own demise, a state is hardly likely knowingly to supply; nor are its established research institutions. Insofar then as it is done visibly, it will probably have to be accomplished largely outside state-supported and state-supporting infrastructure, such as prominent university projects. Richard Sylvan References. Bookchin, M., Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, South End Press, Boston, 1990. Burnheim, J., Is Democracy Possible?, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985. Burnheim, J., ‘Democracy, nation states and the world system’, New Forms of Democracy, (ed. D. Held and C. Pollitt) London, Sage, 1986, pp.218-239. 44 Thus e.g. Burnheim 85. The present article is not only heavily indebted to Burnheim's work, but overlaps on-going investigations on his part. �19 Fox, W., in Ecopolitics III, Hamilton, New Zealand. Green, G., The New Radicalism: Anarchist or Marxist?, International Publishers, New York, 1971. Jacobs, M., The Green Economy: environment, sustainable development, and the politics of the future., Pluto Press, Concord, Mass, 1991. Mackay, H., Reinventing Australia: the mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, Hugh Mackay, Pymble, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1993. Macphee, I., ‘A new constitution?' (excerpts from an opening address) NILEFA Newsletter, Griffith University School of Law, June 1993. Marshall, P., Demanding the Impossible: a history of anarchism, London, Harper Collins 1992. Me Laughlin, A., Regarding Nature, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1993. Meadows D., and others, Beyond the Limits, Chesley Green, Vermont, 1992. Naess, A., Ecology, community and lifestyle (trans, and ed. D. Rothenberg), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. Routley, V. and R., ‘Social theories, self management and environmental problems’, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. D Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series , RSSS, Australian National University, 1990. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994. Sylvan, R., ‘Anarchism’, in Contemporary Political Theory (ed. R. Goodin and P.Pettit) Blackwell, Oxford, 1993. Sylvan, R., Green Anarchism, to appear, 1995. Sylvan, R., Deep Plurallism, University of Edinburgh Press, 1994. Thackway, R. and Cresswell, I.D., Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, Environmental Resources Information Network, Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1992. Tynan, L., The Institute of Advanced Studies, The Australian National University, May 1993. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN DEEP ECOPOLITICAL THEORY: an Australian perspective. ... people are ready for change and the impending debate will result in constitutional change. We should, therefore, explore all options ...T There is growing dissatisfaction with Australia's political institutions, and increasing demand to change them. This demand, hiding co-optative elements, has been initiated and fostered in a conspicuously top-down fashion, by politicians and by academics. There is so far little surge of political enterprise at grass-roots levels, little pressure for the usually very limited changes proposed. Nonetheless, along with apathy, there is widespread popular disenchantment with present political arrangements. There is now an opportunity (although still only a small window therefore no doubt) to put green and radical themes on the agenda for real political change in Australia. That opportunity should not be missed, within Australia, or elsewhere. While the exposition that follows concentrates upon Australia, as a convenient advanced example, much of what is argued and urged applies or adapts elsewhere. 1. Disenchantment with politics, and political proposals for change. There is now evident in Australia, what is variously described as disillusionment and anxiety, cynicism and pessimism about the state of politics—a loss of confidence in it, and a retreat from commitment. Recently anxiety about the nature and quality of Australian politics [has] increased.... Widespread anxiety about the state of politics is based [in part] on an uneasy feeling that, if the parties are not going to stand for some identifiable philosophy, and the leaders are going to be chosen on the basis of their potential as television performers or even as head­ kickers, then the only appropriate response is cynicism. That cynicism is reflected in a turning away from support for the major parties ... and revealed in the attitudes of young Australians ...2 who often cannot be bothered registering to vote, or voting. Lack of confidence is beginning to show not only as cynicism about politicians, but also as doubt about the integrity of Australia's political institutions.3 In a recent survey, ‘62 percent of [Australians] expressed either little or no confidence in the political system. Such a figure accurately reflects the mood of the Australian community’.4 Australian loss offaith in conventional politics is attributed to a mix of factors. A first explanatory factor as regards this disenchantment comes from the changes in politics already remarked (ranging from policy issues to media performers) and from resultant uncertainty. ‘... Hon. Ian Macphee, ‘A new constitution?’. Of course Macphee did not really mean all options, nor even all constitutional options. Furthermore, his claim about preparedness of people for change is incompatible with Mackey’s data (mentioned below) on exhaustion with change. Mackay pp. 174-177. For all the Australian casualness of Mackay's presentation, his sociological findings are nonetheless fairly solidly survey and interview based (if occasionally stretching the data). Ibid, p.178 ZbztZ. 2 the Australian electorate is confused about which party stands for what, and about whether any party has a long-term commitment to any particular point of view’.5 A complex ‘second factor ... concerns the adversarial nature of two-party politics’.6 How can this ‘two party, adversarial approach ... continue to be appropriate when the distinctions between the two parties themselves are so hard to define’? But ‘redefinition of party politics implies the possibility of a redefinition of the whole parliamentary process itself’. Why ‘when parties seem quite capable of stealing each other's policies or of invading each other's traditional philosophical territory, [can not] politicians work together in a more co-operative and harmonious spirit’?7 ‘Adversarial politics may have made sense ... when ... distinctions between the parties were stark and when arguments about principle could be justified; today, the idea that politicians would be arguing over a point of principle or philosophy is almost unthinkable. ... [They] are much more likely to be arguing over matters of personality, prejudice and power than over issues which effect the long-term health of the body politic’.8 ‘The quality of parliamentary debate is regarded not only as a symptom of the adversarial nature of the institution, but also as a symptom either of the poor quality of politicians ..., or of the effect of the system on those who are enmeshed in it’ .9 Unless there is marked improvement in party philosophies, programs and performance, ‘the call to re-examine the nature of the parliamentary process will gather momentum’.1011 A third relevant factor contributing to loss of faith is the impression of Australians that ‘they are overgovemed ’n, with too many expensive bureaucracies and too many houses of parliament. Conflicts between State and Federal parliaments — and between the various State parliaments themselves — are regarded as a particularly unproductive expenditure of political energy, and Australians question whether 15 houses of parliament may be too many for the efficient government of 18 million people. The sheer number of parliaments is often blamed for the problem of too many bureaucracies and for many duplications of bureaucratic and political activity between State and Federal governments. ... Whilst there is little love felt in the Australian community for Canberra and for the idea of more centralised government even that is beginning to appear preferable .... The widespread support for the idea of a republic which emerged during 1992 is closely related to the underlying sense that Australia is overdue for some kind of reexamination of its political institutions, and even the notion of Federation itself. ... As debate about the idea of a republic proceeds ... it has begun to incorporate the idea that 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Ibid. pp. 178-179. Ibid. The adversarial character of dominant State legal systems is also becoming subject to more and more criticism. It appears likely that significant movement towards different inquiratorial systems will occur, not least because of the huge expense and growing unaffordability of adversarial systems. Ibid. Ibid, p.180. Ibid. p. 179. It is a symptom of both, the latter especially. Ibid. p. 181. lbid. p. 181, itals added. 3 Australian's political structures and systems might be quite significantly reformed.12 Even though the main proposals for change no doubt remain reformist in character, some of them are far-reaching by normal standards. Both the extensive disenchantment with present political arrangements and the felt need for significant change further suggest political times are not normal. Elements for a political paradigm shift are already present, to which radical additions are now feasible. So far there have been, along with normal inertial resistance to change, two main responses to growing pressure for change: political, from politicians, ex-politicians and political commentators, and academic from intellectuals, academic entrepreneurs and academic journalists. By and large, political responses have been grander, more sweeping and vaguer; academic responses more theoretical and cautious, piecemeal and detailed. But there are no grand detailed plans. Under the leading proposal so far for political change, Australia's constitutional monarchy will be displaced by a constitutional republic with its own head of state displacing the monarch, but with perhaps minimal adjustments otherwise. Nonetheless, as a result, republicanism is in the air. Politicians have begun to contemplate other practical reforms, while academics have begun to embroider theories around republicanism and institutional reform. What happens to the Australian federation of states is one of the many unresolved issues presently being debated. The main reason for reform offered by the political camp can be summed up as: changing geopolitical circumstances. The camp tends not to acknowledge what would reflect adversely upon it, the poorness of federal political practice. Rather it tends to attribute popular dissatisfaction to economic circumstances and uncertainties: declining real standards of living, extensive unemployment, persistent recession until recently, problems to be surmounted by full-steam ahead untrammelled economic growth, to be attained by recoupling Australia to the Asian economic express. Meanwhile an orchestrated republican movement can help divert popular political attention from poor political management and a gloomy economic predicament. Much has changed in the century since present antiquated political arrangements were hammered out, arrangements making the newly-fashioned Commonwealth of Australia, politically a federation of states, into a constitutional monarchy coupled to Britain, arrangements of convenience fashioned for very different circumstances. Most non-symbolic linkages with Britain, which has been inching towards a place in a united Europe, have already been severed. Australia has gradually begun to appreciate its geo-political position in the Ibid. p. 181-2. Republican proposals have been circulating for some time. But the cause was finally taken up by prominent politicians, who made it their own, after which it became a popular issue. Mackay's accurate presentation of popular support for political change contrasts drolly with the first part of his book which depicts an Australian populace exhausted by change and longing for the old ease and somnolence. 4 Indian-Pacific region (and the money-making opportunities for a sagging resource-based economy in booming parts of Asia). Whence the main idealistic proposal: for an independent republic, decoupled from Europe, assuming its own (prominent) place in its geo-political regions. In principle at least, place and region begin to assume, or resume, some of their neglected, but historic, significance (however that is not how it is yet seen). Most proposals for constitutional and federal reform fit within that limited idealistic conception. One important proposal, advanced by established political players, their most radical proposal so far, includes abolition of the present states. Such a proposal would clearly represent a welcome step in anarchist directions, were it not regularly offset by the idea of a strengthened central state.13 Supposing this latter unfortunate idea is bracketed for the moment, then what is being seriously considered already starts to look like a much more rational regionalism than what presently prevails. The present states of Australia are undoubtedly an anachronism, based on accidental boundaries of a contingent colonial history. They are ecologically irrational management units, utterly failing to reflect ecological regions. Yet the states possess extensive environmental and other management powers, inappropriate ‘powers which derive from what was largely a political bargaining process conducted a century ago.’ Another effect of inapposite statefederal arrangements, especially ‘funding arrangements, has been to lock out local government and, more importantly, local communities. ... local communities must be given greater control over those decisions of government which effect their lives ...’; the opportunity ‘to design and provide the services which are needed locally.’14 At this stage of the dialectic McPhee slides easily and naturally from localism to regionalism. A glance at the map reveals natural regions for local government on a viable scale [an optimistic idea]. Some cross State boundaries, and I would envisage that State governments would be replaced with regional governments. These would be more akin to larger local governments and would certainly not have the trappings of the States. They should not have parliaments and the expensive, unwieldy and inefficient bureaucracies which characterise our States. They should have a small number of full-time councillors ... Regional governments should be solely accountable to their ratepayers ...15 . So far so good: however McPhee thereupon begins to infiltrate stock (small /) liberal management assumptions. The basic idea to retain is simple: that of ecologically-rational local and regional rearrangement of anachronistic state partitions. But that regionalization should be Anarchists can even rest (if uneasily) with a constitution, so long as it provides for an organisation, Australia Inc. even, sufficiently different from a state and its authoritarian trappings. All quotes in this paragraph are drawn from McPhee. An address along similar lines to the Hon. Ian McPhee, also proposing abolition of the states, was delivered by the former Prime Minister R.G. Hawke. Hawke's speech, by contrast with McPhee's, attracted much media attention, and though facilely dismissed as “unrealistic” by some practicing politicians, appeared to gain a good deal of support. McPhee ibid. 5 greened, as reform should be radicalized. Much has been left off these political agendas for change, not merely environments and habitats of their less prominent or noisy inhabitants, but also such issues as rights and liberties, transformation of antiquated legal and executive frameworks, and so on. Omission of (human) rights is especially remarkable in states such as Australia, whose consititutions astonishingly do not mention at all (what is however often supposed to justify states) individual rights, such rights only being ensured, so far as they are, by indirect routes (statutes regarding treatment of minorities and the like). Nor do the political camps pushing limited change speak of rights or liberties; a very limited conception of adjustments required prevails (though without rights and liberties and a generous public sphere there is little, and little prospect of, justification for a state at all). Accordingly political agendas for change need to be conspicuously broadened, to accommodate a decidedly more ambitious range of constitutional and institutional redesign. 2. A project within a project: radically reshaping Australian institutions. Academic entrepreneurs have also responded quickly to proposals for constitutional and institutional changes. Early to scramble on the bandwagon was the institution to which I am affiliated, the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, with its ambitious decade-long project, Reshaping Australian Institutions: Towards and Beyond 2001.16 One small part of this project does connect with the republican push, which no doubt helped inspire it and gain its funding. The academic version of republicanism furnishes an institutional and historic setting, tracing its roots back to ancient Rome, and thereby linking in, what admits much modern adaptation, notions of citizenship and civic virtues. But most of the project is independent of any republican reorganisation. The Reshaping Australian Institutions project is presented in predominantly reformist fashion, unsurprisingly. It is supposed, for instance, to ‘provide major input into evaluation and reform of Australia's institutions’; indeed it is explicitly ‘aimed at contributing to Australian constitutional reform’.17 Nothing however precludes consideration of reshaping or transforming Australian institutions — those of the whole ecological region — in a unreformist and possibly unconstitutional way, in a radical way Admittedly, the rough boundary between reformist and radical routes becomes even more blurred when the constitution of a country is open for possible major reconsideration and much political infrastructure may be altered. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a strong central state, the stock boundary stands intact. For reformist changes would amount to comparative small adjustments leaving it substantially intact. For example, a minimal transformation, of the 16 17 A recent brief description of this two million dollar project, now outlined in several places, is given in Tynan, pp.17-19. Fuller descriptions are available from a main coordinator of the project, J. Braithwaite, Law, RSSS, ANU. One of the many strands (17 at last count) of this project is an environmental (or green) strand. The immediate predecessor of this article was presented in a workshop at RSSS on green political theory, arranged under the project. That accounts for some of the otherwise puzzling structure of what has eventuated. ‘Reshaping Australian institutions: towards and beyond 2001’ in Tynan , p.17, italics added. 6 sort presently much favoured, from constitutional monarchy to Australian republic, though entailing non-negligible constitutional redrafting, need only amend the roles of a few elite power- and position-holders. By contrast, radical changes would substantially alter that strong central state, perhaps (as will be suggested) eliminating it altogether. There are appealing reasons for attempting wider, more radical investigations. For, firstly, there may be more satisfactory institutional structures not accessible, or even visible, along normal constitutional reform routes. Secondly, there is a demand, a small but growing demand from green direction for instance, for radical institutional change. It would be prudent, then, to make some investigation of the options, to assess their prospects. Thirdly, reflection on such structures would certainly be part of a more comprehensive study of and theory of institutional design, which the Reshaping project also presents as an objective. Fourthly, much more controversially, major environmental problems cannot be satisfactorily solved along merely reformist paths.18 A prime reason is this: a central state is ineluctably committed to high levels of economic activity which impact heavily environmentally, characteristically to economic growth of sorts which impact very adversely environmentally, inducing inevitable degradation. Accordingly, there are then, or should be, two bands to the green (or environmental) strand of the restructuring Australian institutions project: not merely an important reformist side, but as well a radical spread. It is part of this underfunded and undersupported radical spread which forms the main object of investigation in what follows, that part that relinquishes present state structures, in favour of more environmentally benign institutions - which no doubt can be designed, even if not readily brought to practical use. In order to reach radical redesign ideas quickly, let us touch only lightly upon some of the more distinctively green reasons for this anarchoid quest (familiar anarchist reasons stand: the illegitimacy of present states; the undesirability and severe disutility of states, and so on.19) As indicated, present states are incompatible with ecologically sustainable practices, because of their heavy unrelenting commitments to shallow economic growth. More generally, standard states and their practices comprise very significant parts of environmental problems, but quite insufficient parts of any solutions. Moreover, states constitute an enormous and destructive drain on regional environments, a feature particularly evident in smaller states which are always looking out for revenue-raising expedients for their own expensive running. Apart from those greens who have recognised the excessive environmental costs of states and their heavy demands on environments, and thus or otherwise have come to recognise the desirability of their withering away, there are many more who have become ambivalent about states, who appreciate their very problematic character and very questionable legitimacy, but do not see yet how to get along altogether without them, or more exactly (to point towards a 18 19 This theme, merely stated here, is argued in detail elsewhere; see esp. Sylvan 95. For a summary of these familiar reasons, see Sylvan 93, and for detail on some, see Burnheim 85 and above all Marshall. 7 resolution) without certain functions that they serve. To point immediately towards a resolution of this crucial problem, the functional dissolution idea advocated is this: that the functioning parts may be separately utilized without the colossal whole. The state is not an organism the functioning parts of which must fail without the whole. So the enormous fat of state can simply be shed, to great advantage. In any event, ‘the State is a social institution’, always ‘within’, Marxists continue, ‘a concrete historic setting’.20 Granted, it is an institution. For an institution in the relevant sense is ‘a society or association for the [organisation or] promotion of some particular object [or function]’.21 Institutions include therefore the state, the central state. So it too is up for reshaping, radical slimming, and possible removal in a concrete historical setting, such as late twentieth century Australia. Ideas and schemes for radical redesign are already available from rich anarchist and socialist sources, those for green design and reshaping from growing and diverse environmental sources. In main part, then, radical ecoredesign is a matter of convivially meeting (not joining) the two, an intersection that favours anarchist inputs. Something of the sort has already been attempted, in an environmentally shallower way, in eco-anarchism, alias social ecology, and in a deeper way, in deep-green social theory.22 Moreover, it could be attempted in other kinds of deeper green theory — itself really a plurality of theories, which however does not itself force radical ecoredesign, though most variants would support it. Thus Naess's “deep ecology” for example, which is not so far politically radical, only strongly reformist, could (and should) be given a radical turn.23 Concentrating upon the radical spread of deeper green theory does not preclude concomitant reformist investigation and activity. Both sides of the green street should be played. Reformist opportunities should of course be pursued - incremental change, social engineering, greening bureaucrats, lobbying politicians, and like activity (but better to cut through all such pleading and obiesance and be rid of politicians and bureaucrats). There are many reformist proposals being advanced for the greening of Australian federal institutions — with but few so far having much impact on practice.24 Nonetheless, more limited, more constrained, proposals of this sort certainly have a better chance of making a difference than radical redesigns, regularly smartly dismissed as “unrealistic” or “utopian”.25 No doubt the Thus, Green p.61, who adds quite wrongly that Proudhon and his disciples do not see it that way ‘but as an abstraction and aberration’. Oxford English Dictionary, adapted. An institution is an organitution. On social ecology, see Bookchin 90, and for information on deep-green social theory, see Sylvan and Bennett 94 and Routley 80. As to the political character of deep ecology, and why it should be turned, see Sylvan and Bennett 94, where an expose of the political theory of Naess's ecosophy is presented. There are many many narrower economic and technological proposals. One of the more interesting wider proposals comes from an Opposition not noted for its green initiatives and commitments, for an overseeing Department of Sustainable Development, a Department that could see to the greening of all federal institutions. Too smartly, as we argue elsewhere (e.g. Sylvan and Bennett 90). 8 normal “reshaping institutions” investigations are rightly focussed upon institutional reform, not upon revolutionary reshaping, where much freer scope for redesign is offered. However the real possibility of radical change should not be excluded; green radicals should be prepared. There have been various opportunities for revolutionary change in Australian history, the last occurring, according to some historians, with the ignominious fall of the Whitlam government. There may well be opportunities again both in the near and intermediate future, especially should some solid work be put into propagating the prospect. In the near term there is economic disarray, social fragmentation, and constitutional destabilization; in the longer term increasing ecological problems and expanding eco-catastrophes loom. For all the spasmodic environmental rhetoric, under present incremental reform comparatively little in the way of radical green change occurs or can be expected. Witness, for comparison, the snail pace of the establishment movement towards a rather minimal grey republicanism in Australia, or differently towards meeting carbon-reduction commitments. It is increasingly doubtful, given prevailing responses to economic difficulties, that present systematic problems confronting Australia will be satisfactorily addressed, environmental problems not least. Furthermore, the sorts of problems concerning reorganising society in deep green ways, problems that provide subsequent topics, would likely not arise. So do imagine that a rather free hand for institutional eco-redesign is somehow dispensed. Also, once it is seen where to go organisationally, it is much easier to discover how to arrive there. 3. A basic problem of structure: central or decentralised organisation. There are large and immediate advantages in taking a problem-oriented way. That way, which will tend towards anarchoid outcomes, will be anarchistically guided in this respect: Unless there is a genuine problem, already causing difficulties or developing, nothing need be done, let things alone let Being be.26 On this non-managerial low-work approach a good deal of structure presently inoperational, and of idle regulation presently enacted, can be removed; organisational arrangements can be very significantly down-sized. The leading methodological idea is that enough relevant (biodegradable) structure is introduced to resolve organisational problems, but not substantially more. Organisational oversupply and waste is thus avoided. Moreover, much structure that keeps so much environmental destructive industry in business is likewise shed. Among basic problems for deep ecopolitical theory are those of political reorganisation and so of organisation. Evidently institutions, and their types, are critical to such organisation. And a major organisational problem for putative green society concerns structure: to take a critical case, whether society is centrally organised (concentrated, bureaucratised, hierarchical, large-scale and so on) or decentralised (dispersed, non-hierarchical, small-scale and supposedly beautiful, and so on). This focal problem, to centralise or not to centralise, is sometimes presented as a serious 26 In vulgar parlance: if it doesn't itch don't scratch (and even if it does, resist). 9 dilemma for concerned green theorists.27 The binary horns of this dilemma are respectively: on the one horn, the pull (or push) to localisation and regionalisation, to non-anonymous smallscale low-impacting environmentally-friendly arrangements, to diffusion of power and dismantling of the incubus of a central state with its crippling costs and unfriendly practices; and on the other horn, the need for continuing and further central income generation and welfare (re-)distribution, central regulation and control, and the pressures to environmental reliance upon and use of the central state.28 The dilemma has been trenchantly posed as follows: ... the demands of the Greens sometimes appear contradictory, in seeking increasing environmental regulation and welfare measures... alongside a halt to industrial expansion, the very source of income for the welfare state. Yet the expansion and further centralization of the bureaucratic state apparatus is neither their overt goal nor covert motivation. Quite the contrary. Their genuine long term vision is of a decentralized, steady state society of self-sufficient, relationally autonomous (albeit interlinked) regions.29 As it happens, not only does the theoretical and utopian literature run both ways, towards and away from centralisation, but so does practice and experience. As to theory, anarchistically-inclined presentations tend to favour decentralisation, perhaps with some central compensation through federation (thus recent Blueprints, ecotopias, and so on), whereas socialistically-inclined presentations invariably opt for powerful central states (to control and redistribute grander social programs, etc.). As to practice, there are local councils, community organisations, residents' groups aiming to keep out, or to remove, the state-sponsored nuclear plants, toxic waste incinerators, waste dumps or super-highways, on the one horn; and, on the other, central states blocking, modifying, or regulating local or regionally promoted schemes for large dams (e.g. Tasmania’s Franklin), forest exploitation, pulp mills, strip mining, and so on.30 To some extent, the way the problem has often been re-presented, in terms of a dilemma between top-down and bottom-up structure and power transmission, already points towards a theoretical resolution: namely, both, or rather enough of both. 31 But how is this combination to be achieved? An answer does not fall out by pure reason, operating in isolation from other 27 28 29 30 31 As by Michael Jacobs of The Green Economy, who has posed the problem sharply, as part of an argument however for retaining the central state (and much of present status quo arrangements). Environmental reasons for favouring small-scale bioregional organisation are nicely gathered in McLaughlin, chapter 10. Fox, Ecopolitics III. Much turns on the exploitative character of certain local and regional communities, their getrich-quick schemes, what they are prepared to do to survive in old or affluent ways, and so on. In the immediately generated simple picture there are four options (familiar from relevant logic): predominantly top-down T both B N neither (e.g. populist anarchy) 1 predominantly bottom-up 10 problems. By taking advantage of information gathered from other connected problems, a promising answer can be teased out. Neither standard socialism nor anarchism afford answers, socialism because it leaves the central institution of state intact. Standard anarchism, much more promising, does not resolve the problem either, because federation, as standardly explained, does not concede sufficient power to representatives, for instance to constrain exploitative local communities. A solution to the dilemma lies through a combinational stragegy, which includes partial dissolution of the central state, into its actual organisational functions in each region. While removing the state, itself source of several environmental and social problems, and its concentration of power, invariably under environmentally unfriendly control, functional dissolution nonetheless retains its apparently essential services, including (where necessary) those of environmental regulation. Relevant continent-wide functions would persist or be introduced: for example, services controlling inflow into Australia of damaging forms and materials such as toxic wastes and exotic pest species, or regulating outflow from Australia of native wildlife and flora. In part, ecoregional functionalism offers a radical continuation of the separation ofpowers of recent historical process, of church and state, legislature and executive, and so forth. As these functions come to operate separately while remaining coordinated, so would those functional arrangements and institutions dissolving the state. It is a major illusion of modern political theory that a central state, ceded monopolies on coercion, currency, taxation and so on, is necessary in order to secure adequate supply of public goods, including public order and environmental regulation. To the contrary, the most that appears required, the most that arguments would support, is some network of specific organisations functioning to look after specific kinds of goods and services, those necessary for this or that, that are not otherwise supplied. There is no inherent reason why communities should not institute and regulate specialised bodies coordinated among themselves (by negotiations or, failing that, through recognised arbitrators) to ensure the adequate maintenance or production of various types of public goods, including control of damaging crime. Each such institution could gain community standing from its support base, for instance through achieving democratically-generated recognition. Such an institution would aim to secure execution of its recommendations and decisions by sanctions and like admissible means, and in doing this it could mobilize in co-operation with communities and with other recognised institutions. There are many examples of such institutions operating successfully both regionally and internationally; for instance, those for postal and communicational arrangements, international sporting bodies and international academies and clubs.32 32 This passage borrows from the summary in Bumheim 86 p.221 of Burnheim 85. For much fuller elaboration see Burnheim 85 and Sylvan 94. 11 4. Technical interlude: Strong family resemblances of ubiquitous problem-generating structures. The skeleton or scaffolding of organisation is structure; it is the frame on which organisation is hung, which organisation fills or fleshes out. The sense of structure, explicating the underlying organic image, implies as much. According, for instance, to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘structure: manner in which a building or organism or other complete whole is constructed, supporting framework or whole of the essential parts of something’. Structure itself is primarily, though not entirely, a matter of relations of elements and parts. Remarkably, the same sort of problem-generating structures occur in a range of seemingly diverse theoretical areas, to be displaced in each case by a similar sort of problem­ dissipating structure. To illustrate, consider an order on a type (or set) of items £1 given by one order relation R, where R may itself depend on item c in Q, i.e. R = Rc. For example, where Q is a system of worlds including your world the ordering R of worlds may depend on your world (and my world could supply a different order). Differently, where Q is a system of values or valued items, R may depend upon your values; and so on. As an order, R is at least transitive, and perhaps either (if like <) reflexive or (if like <) symmetric, on its range. The system <Q, R> is a simple ordered structure, or aframe. (The latter is the term now used in modal logic, where such structures are the bases of models for the logic.) A cap or top t of such a system is an element such that all items of Q bear R to t but which does not itself bear R to any element of Q. (The notion, that of supremum, and likewise maximum, may be similarly defined relative to subsets or types within Q.33) Simple Theorem. There are order structures without tops. Examples are provided by systems (often with much more structure) with no supremum. Here is a simple 6 element example drawn from relevant logical theory. +1 +2 „ - {-2, -1, -0, +0, +1, +2} +0 R = — is as shown by arrows. -0 T = {+0, +1, +2} is a truth component -1 -2 Topologically, several notions of prime political and philosophical cast are tantamount to tops in order structures, including chiefs (top persons in power rankings) hierarchs, grand leaders, centres, absolutes, and objective items. 33 Consider, a pertinent issue, the matter of A supremum t of R (in type T) is an (that) element (of T) such that all elements (of T) bear R to t but which does not itself bear R to anything (in T). 12 central control or authority, where as in the next diagram all elements answer to t. t c Cl C4 a C2 c3 b a3 ai b2 a2 bi Looked at from above t is centre of a network. In the diagram shown, it remains a structure, a flattened hierarchy, when t and relations leading to it are deleted, under decapitation so to say. What this shows in a simple fashion is that there can be ordered structures without central control (and ranging further there can be statelessness, absence of central control, anarchy without “anarchy” or chaos, because there is order), anencephaletic structures. Order, including good order of a range of sorts, does not require central controls, leaders, absolute rulers or arrangements, or similar. Order does not require hierarchy, such hierarchy.34 Let us briefly allude to a much wider philosophical sweep. Related order structural considerations to those that tell against central states, absolute rulers, top authorities as required for satisfactory order, also count against absolutes of other sorts, such as absolute truth (there need be none, as the first diagram above indicates), absolute order (thus R itself is relative to c), and objectives of various sorts, such as objective fact (another supposed absolute), objective value (supplied under an absolute order), and so on. On this broad sweep the following sorts contrast sets emerge:35 centralism elitism statism absolutism realism objectivism in rough contrast respectively with maximizing rationalism decentralism egalitarianism anarchism pluralism nonrealism nonjectivism satisizing rationalism Naturally, these simple structural considerations are only indicative, not decisive. For we might find, as more and more constraints are imposed on structures, as account is taken of 34 35 Part of what seems correct in Bookchin's vendetta against hierarchy can be captured in this way. For a fuller picture see Sylvan 94, chapter 10. 13 actual conditions, that freedom contracts, that structural arrangements are forced towards centralism or absolutism. While such forcing may now look, in the light of a little logic, implausible, it requires further argument that it need not in general eventuate. The argument here against centralism and statism takes these lines: that there is ready design of institutional arrangements for decentralised communities which does not lead back to a central state. The state is organisationally otiose. Organisation is delivered anencephaletically, more specifically through a decentralised functional ecoregionalism. As to how this can be accomplished, a sweep of anarchoidal work discloses.36 5. Problems of chauvinism and present-time bias in democratic political institutions. Under decentralized social organization, each requisite function will be carried out by some association of agents comprising operative and support staff (that is, as regards bare formal structure, more or less as now, in institutions like departments and corporations). For direct accountability downwards, and to ensure separation of power, upper operatives, those of a directing or steering committee (the nervous system of the organisation), will be democratically selected (from a relevant lower level constituency, and from the whole people of an ecoregion in case of a typical bottom level institution). Note well that selection is not election: election is but one method of democratic selection, and often enough not an altogether satisfactory method. The point of some sort of democratic selection, as a guiding not invariant rule, is manifold: it is in part to ensure due accountability, in part to prevent unethical accumulation of power in special classes, and in part for reasons that devolve from the very notion of democracy itself. In modem usage of the motherhood term democracy, two lines are visible: included are not only forms of political organisation where ‘power [is presumed to] reside in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them ... or by officers [selected] by them’, but ‘often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege’37. It is on the basis of this second line that the call for democracy has operated to remove chauvinism and discrimination of a range of forms: against unpropertied minorities, nonconformists, women, blacks, tribals, and so on. Even so pursuit of the line, where successful, has not generally conferred adequate representation and rights on several of these groups; but, more important, pursuit has stopped short at certain humans, such as those granted citizenship — though relevant interests of many other creatures and welfare of many of other items may be affected by what those citizens elect to do. While democratic Most of the key elements are already available from political theory relevant to anarchism. As to putting them together see e.g. Burnheim 85 (where demarchy and much else of relevance is explained) and Sylvan 95. Oxford English Dictionary entry 1, main entry. These two lines are not the only distinctive lines now visible: increasingly conspicuous in calls for “democracy” are Asian calls to freedom and rights: not merely for basic legal freedoms such as free assembly, fair process and so on, but for freedom to access information (the “right to know”). 14 voters can perhaps be entrusted to take some account of those near and dear (within remarkably sharp limits, as the situation of women in many regions still shows), such as those deemed incompetent to vote: the young, deranged, and so on, much evidence reveals that they cannot be relied for what is less near or dear (and indeed are easily herded into casting their votes in accord with a shallow mercantilism). Consider what get left out , outcasts of even perfect democratic control:• spatially distant agents. For example, the interests of many humans outside USA are much affected by practices of the US government, which however is outside their democratic reach. • temporally distant agents. Since the past is past, it is future agents who will be affected, often drastically affected, by present practices, that matter. Some way of taking due account of future agents, their interests and welfare, is required, even under shallow long-term ecology, that is under lighter green positions. Sustainable development has been regularly diverted into - what is part of what it is about - such a way, an indirect and so far utterly ineffectual way.38 Much more of importance is also excluded according to deep-green theory: • creatures with interests, other than present human citizens, and • items with welfare, but perhaps lacking interests. The category includes items with intrinsic value, whose value can be effected, made to fare worse or better. A major problem, little addressed, is how to take due account of such democratically excludes. It is a problem especially for deeper green theories: that deep problem is, so to say, how to obtain satisfactory representation of all that is of value in the natural world? That way of putting it, while a little misleading, does point to a particular type of resolution. Problems special to deep ecopolitical theory, include, that is, issues as to adequacy of representation of items of value outside those humans that are represented, representation of their interests, where they have them, of their welfare otherwise, of favourable conditions for their sustenance, continuation and retention of value. Democracy of discussed modern sorts, whether representative or participative, will not serve these purposes at all satisfactorily. For instance, insofar as party-political representative democracies represent anything (even human “bottom lines” as is sometimes erroneously supposed), they appear to represent primarily interests of certain business-allied elites. Among the issues are of course those as to adequacy of retention and protection of nonhuman items of intrinsic value, tropical forests and their inhabitants and elements for instance. There is no organisational alternative to proceeding with and through agents, preferably well-disposed and quality agents. It is hard to guarantee either politically. As agents are but a subclass of what requires democratic representation and what should have its welfare or interests considered, how are the rest to be taken care of satisfactorily? There are significant older responses to like problems, through totems and taboos, guardians and constraints. Looked at one way the problem repeats, more or less, a familiar problem: namely, how in larger 38 See Sylvan and Bennett 93. 15 <r constituencies do decision-making agents represent the whole mass of agents and others in the constituency? A main democratic answer, designed to avoid many shortcomings of alternatives, was: by representative means—only “representation” was almost never taken seriously or literally enough. The sorts of considerations that made representation a promising resolution make what is to be proposed—where representation has, in any case, to be expanded —also promising. A key principle is this: all relevant items are to be represented. Relevance criteria enter importantly. Steering committees of lower level institutions among the main decision-making bodies should be appropriately representative of all items whose welfare is affected by their decisions (principle of deepened demanarchy). Under more equitable arrangements, then, some decision-engaged agents will have to be selected as representative of relevant classes of excludeds. Electoral arrangements do not so readily allow for such; sortition, well-designed selection by lot, does.39 As already hinted, deepened representation is not the only promising resolution of the problem that might be tried. Another, which could be attempted either separately or concurrently, operates through the directive of ecologically sustainable development, requiring as a constraint, not only intergenerational equity but also preservation of items of ecological value.40 It might be suggested that such a directive be made mandatory, applying to all relevant steering committees. But, as already evident, there are severe obstacles to getting such a directive properly implemented. (In present oligarchical circumstances, even very dilute versions are worth pressing for, as they would offer definite improvements upon what presently happens.) 6. Ecoregional demanarchoid reshaping of Australian political institutions: one beginning. Is such a radical restructuring feasible? Initial investigations hold out the hope that major problems for deep ecopolitical theory can be solved, at least in theory. Investigations accordingly suggest that the project within the Reshaping Australian Institutions project is viable and worth pursuing. A logical next stage offers sketches for a radical political reorganisation of Australia.41 Evidently there would be many designs (thereby removing facile jeers against “the blueprint”, a part of co-optative strategy for persistence with prevailing statist arrangements). Among the many designs, some few, conforming to favoured principles, would be selected for detailed study. If the study were attempted, most appropriately through systems modellings, then flexibility could be built into modellings, so that even though only a few basic designs were examined, many variations would be feasible. Not only is systems modelling particularly well suited to modelling network designs; it also further offers prospects for No doubt there are electoral approximations; e.g. candidates in separate classes for each category to be represented. For elaboration of this option, see Sylvan and Bennett 93. Such design, well accomplished, would help considerably in revealing what is possible, thereby providing a seriously neglected contribution to politics, itself sometimes presented, with undue licence, as the art of the possible. 16 computing simulation and implementation, and even some simulated political experimentation. Furthermore, such modellings begin to give some grasp on the size and complexity of the task (a useful comparison is with World 3 modelling of the on-going “Limits to Growth” project42, or, better, with a regionalized version of it). To get started on such ecoregional design, for Australia, two broad classifications and associated maps and charts are required: • 1. an ecoregional classification, with partitions and overlays, for Australia and its continental shelf. Observe that this classification will be hierarchical, as smaller regions merge into larger regions; but it is a benign hierarchy of levels (it facilitates no accumulation of power or wealth). Observe too that any such classification is far from unique. Plurality has already set in, and a choice of classification (or a few choices) will have to be made, taking due account of political organisational principles and objectives. Fortunately some of the preliminary classificatory work has already been accomplished in Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, where 3 broad classifications are presented and procedures for generating many more given.43 For political purposes further classification attributes (e.g. demographic features) need to be included. Ecoregions provide the basis for spatially linked administrative and community units. (Not all units need be of this sort; many contemporary arrangements are spatially unlinked). At this stage a basic principle of decentralization and distributed and smaller-scale organization can be invoked, namely • subsidiarization: organisational functions should be allowed to fall down to (or to be pushed down to) the lowest level compatible with their satisfactory performance. Thus, for instance, most matters concerning such things as sewerage and primary education would be localized. This subsidiarization principle, drawn from classical anarchism, has been widely adopted in green planning proposals. (It is said to have been applied by the Catholic Church in administration of the Holy Roman Empire, whence the not altogether apt title derives. It is presently being reassessed for use in that successor organisation, united Europe.) No doubt the principle is open to challenge, for instance on grounds of efficiency, that larger size may prove more efficient, of duplication, and so on. But, the objective is not maximization of technological values such as efficiency factors; instead it aims to satisize on a wider framework of values, including holistic social arrangements. Presumably, however, undue duplication of expensive administrative bodies is to be avoided. Coupled with subidiarization is another principle, • direct accountability downwards: units should answer directly to regional constituencies. This contrasts with prevailing accountability (such as it is) upwards, through some indirect and tenuous, centralized circuiting chain. 42 43 Naturally much more gets comprehended under See e.g. Meadows. See Thackway and Cresswell. Rudiments of a politically useful classification begin to emerge on their 30 Group Regionalisation. 17 accountability, for instance openness of environmental accounting. Schematic diagram of organisation structure Structural diagram: (with some sample components indicated, but not all their network interlinkages displayed) statistics bureau upper levels: administrative, executive, research ground level: functional selectoral college Australian region (federal) immigration inflow control materials super­ regions (a to k) interregional transport, etc. (local) regions (1 to n) upper levels arbitration bureau rental entitlements office resources income office ground level water systems sewer systems hospital systems region 1 region n There are also principles interrelating smaller with larger regions, both bottom-up and top-down (or centre down) principles. Among these will be • representation of smaller regions in relevant planning institutions of more comprehensive regions. Representation, appropriately regulated, will often replace anarchistic federation, which as observed appears too weak for requisite environmental control. The point needs no labouring that the classifications and principles are open to challenge at every step; for instance, there is nothing rock-hard about the type of ecoregional classification preferred, nor about social functions to be addressed. At a theoretical stage that is unproblematic: there are other (less preferable) models; elaborate your own if you want to and 18 can. In any case, it is to be hoped that a diversity in theory might be to some extent reflected in some diversity in practice—with different regions and continents trying different arrangements, with much less of the sort of cosmopolitan political monoculture that we are presently being harassed toward, with much more resilient political biodiversity. • 2 a social function classification, of those community matters that require explicit organisation at some level. An initial listing can be compiled by consulting Australian metropolitan telephone directories, especially the government sections that used to feature in the front (until a year ago). What results under redesign and reorganisation will, of course, look very different from what is listed. Parliaments, parties and all their supporting apparatus will vanish; the Australian Bureau of Statistics will assume a new significance and independent role, and so on. But which institutions are retained, which adapted, and so on, will depend on further social organisational features, not yet considered here. The result will be a levelled pyramidal structure, a flat-untopped network, not a power hierarchy. While some requisite research has been undertaken upon how the various functional bodies and decision-making committees can be selected and can operate44, insufficient investigation has been made of the interrelations and adequate fundings of the bodies and institutions involved — whichever they are! For little such detailed anarchoid modelling has apparently been attempted for any region anywhere. Evidently there is much to be done theoretically. Detailed modellings would bring issues down to earth, without concretizing them; no doubt too they would disclose many further problems hidden in the detailing, problems to which anarchoid solutions can reasonably be expected. But comparatively little is likely to be done, unless requisite support is forthcoming, support in the shape of researchers (research volunteers) and research infrastructure (from research gifts). For such support, for investigating its own demise, a state is hardly likely knowingly to supply; nor are its established research institutions. Insofar then as it is done visibly, it will probably have to be accomplished largely outside state-supported and state-supporting infrastructure, such as prominent university projects. Richard Sylvan References. Bookchin, M., Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, South End Press, Boston, 1990. Burnheim, J., Is Democracy Possible?, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985. Burnheim, J., ‘Democracy, nation states and the world system’, New Forms of Democracy, (ed. D. Held and C. Pollitt) London, Sage, 1986, pp.218-239. 44 Thus e.g. Burnheim 85. The present article is not only heavily indebted to Burnheim's work, but overlaps on-going investigations on his part. 19 Fox, W., in Ecopolitics III, Hamilton, New Zealand. Green, G., The New Radicalism: Anarchist or Marxist?, International Publishers, New York, 1971. Jacobs, M., The Green Economy: environment, sustainable development, and the politics of the future., Pluto Press, Concord, Mass, 1991. Mackay, H., Reinventing Australia: the mind and mood of Australia in the 90s, Hugh Mackay, Pymble, NSW, Angus & Robertson, 1993. Macphee, I., ‘A new constitution?' (excerpts from an opening address) NILEFA Newsletter, Griffith University School of Law, June 1993. Marshall, P., Demanding the Impossible: a history of anarchism, London, Harper Collins 1992. Me Laughlin, A., Regarding Nature, SUNY Press, Albany NY., 1993. Meadows D., and others, Beyond the Limits, Chesley Green, Vermont, 1992. Naess, A., Ecology, community and lifestyle (trans, and ed. D. Rothenberg), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. Routley, V. and R., ‘Social theories, self management and environmental problems’, in Environmental Philosophy (ed. D Mannison and others), RSSS, Australian National University, 1980. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., Utopias, Tao and Deep Ecology, Green Series , RSSS, Australian National University, 1990. Sylvan, R. and Bennett, D., The Greening of Ethics, White Horse Press, Cambridge, 1994. Sylvan, R., ‘Anarchism’, in Contemporary Political Theory (ed. R. Goodin and P.Pettit) Blackwell, Oxford, 1993. Sylvan, R., Green Anarchism, to appear, 1995. Sylvan, R., Deep Plurallism, University of Edinburgh Press, 1994. Thackway, R. and Cresswell, I.D., Environmental Regionalisations of Australia, Environmental Resources Information Network, Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1992. Tynan, L., The Institute of Advanced Studies, The Australian National University, May 1993.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Draft of Problems in deeper green political organization: an Australian perspective on radical institutional change Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, undated. Description An account of the resource One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [19] leaves. 15.08 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:aacfac4">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:aacfac4</a> https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/0676c48af777c619b101988ff9a41178.pdf 53eba82362d3d0a5d4703f83b8621f45 PDF Text Text RATIONAL DECISION THEORY WITHOUT PARADOXES The uniform strategy applied to remove paradoxes in several other arenas - implication, confirmation, conditionality, explanation, logic itself — will be adapted to defuse all the usual paradoxes vexing supposedly rational decision theory. That strategy comprises, essentially, changing the underlying logic (which is the source of central rationality principles of logical— type) to a modest relevant logic. It yields two important components: removal of irrelevance, particularly in derivatives of the logical theory, for instance in this case probability and preference theory; and reduction of excessive strength, not merely in the logical theory and its derivatives, but especially in this case in maximization principles. Decision theory hitherto has been, virtually without exception, classical: it has unquestioningly assumed classical principles of consistency and maximality. Well it might be claimed that these principles - which derive from the very classical Great Chain of Being - serve, with but few further impeccable principles, to deliver classical logic, its derivatives such as standard probability theory, and much else. The universality of these formative principles is however a myth, one of the pervasive myths of modem rationality (see MR). 1. Common (i.e. equivalent) consequences arguments, and Allais' paradox. Common consequences arguments depend upon the substitution of common, i.e. equivalent, consequences. It is evident that what substitutions are permitted will depend not merely upon admissible logical substitution principles, but above all upon the underlying notion of equivalence. A basic substitution principle takes the form A<-*B, F(A) / F(B) (S<->). It yields, as derived cases, such further inference principles as A<->B f(A) = n / f(B) = n and A~B / G(A) = G(B), given requisite vocabulary. But critical features of the resulting logics and theories depend upon what the co-implication relation, <-», permits; its strength. Over dinner at a Paris cafe one evening during an international colloquium on risky choice, Allais asked Savage a pair of now very famous questions. First Allais asked Savage to choose between prospects A and B: A complete certainty of a good outcome $lm B 0.10 probability of a very good outcome $5m 0.89 probability of a good outcome 0.01 probability of a bad outcome $lm $0. Savage preferred A to B. Allais next asked him to choose between prospects C and D: C 0.89 probability of bad outcome $0 �D 2 0.11 probability of good outcome $lm 0.90 probability of bad outcome $0 0.10 probability of very good outcome $5m. Savage preferred D to C. Subsequent researchers quickly discovered that most of their seemingly rational subjects responded initially to Allais' pair of questions as Savage had.1 The problem with these responses is that they violate classical expected utility theory, and are accordingly classically irrational, that theory affording necessary conditions for “rationality”. Therein too lies the Allais' paradox, that seemingly rational responses by seemingly rational subjects are ruled irrational by the theory. For conjoint preferences of A over B and D over C contradict the deliverance of the dominant theory, which specifies what is rational here, according to which C over D is equivalent to A over B, and so the conjoint preferences are inconsistent. The situation certainly supplies a paradox in the standard sense, that preanalytic claims (that so and so definitely does not imply, does not confirm, such and such) are contradicted by results of the dominant theory covering those claims. The (too) brief argument to inconsistency of the seemingly rational preference rankings under the dominant theory runs as follows:- Where U symbolizes the relevant utility function (to which probabilities are immaterial in the present context), the preference for A over B can be represented as (1) U($lm) > 0.10U(%5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0), Now it is assumed that an equivalent ranking - sometimes said to be the same ranking - results by either adding common consequences to each side of the inequality (introduction or combination rule) or by deleting common consequences from either side of the inequality (elimination or deletion rule). These procedures are after all distinguishing features of dominant expected utility theory.2 Let us then add the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $0, and delete the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $lm. That is, putting these operations together, let us add to each side of (1) the combination 1 The presentation follows Pope's adjustment of Allais' original account (in his 79 p.354). For detail of subsequent research on initial responses, see also Pope 89. (Note however that Pope tends to conflate acting rationally with acting consistently.) 2 The names given to these features of the expected utility procedure - with the different names linked with their various axiomatic derivations - include Neumann and Morgenstern's rule for equivalent classes, presented in their 47, p.24 and Malinvaud 52, Samuleson's independence axiom, presented in his 53, Luce and Raiffa's substitution principle, presented in their 52, p.26, the “combination” and “cancellation” property in Tversky and Kahneman 86 and the joint result of “ordering” and the “reduction principle” in Fishburn 87. These critical principles, especially their negative (reduction) forms or outputs, will come in for close scrutiny in what follows. �(2) + 0.89U($0) 0.89U($lm). Then the preference for A over B can be equivalently represented by the result of this (monotonic) addition, namely, U($lm) + 0.89 U($0) - 0.89U($lm) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0) + 0.89U($0) - 0.89U($lm), whence follows by utility arithmetic, (3) 0.11U($lm) + 0.89U($0m) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.9U($0). But (3) represents nothing but the preference of C over D. Hence, given adherence to the dominant theory and its procedures, preference for (or choice of) A over B is equivalent to preference for C over D, not D over C. So whoever prefers one and adheres to the procedures is rationally obliged to prefer the other, and is rationally inconsistent in preferring its converse. Short of postponement (Savage's immediate move, in asking for time to think, in response to Allais), these are two main strategies: A. Dominant options, which involve explaining away pre-analytic responses. Savage's further moves went this this theory-saving way, through the “sure-thing” principle. From a logical perspective, the sure-thing principle is applied in transforming cases like assessment of D vis a vis C, which are put out of intuitive bounds, into equivalent canonical forms, which are (intuiively) decidable. The dominant theory is sho3red up, in a typical way, by psychological work; those who do try to assess complex non-canonical cases like C vs. D are subject to “framing illusions”.3 A*. Subversive options, which accept the pre-analytic responses, at more or less face value, and modify the dominant theory. There are various ways modification can take place: B. Reject the formalisation of the argument offered as too simple, because omitting decisive information. Such an approach is taken by Pope, who contends that an occasionally glimpsed but generally omitted time dimension is crucial. On that approach, which certainly does not rule out fuller formalisation, a dynamic theory is regarded as essential. B*. Accept the style of formalisation, as not overly simplistic, but reject specific principles used in establishing equivalence of preferences. Such an approach, though of a fully systematic kind, is of course that course pursued here. A rival relevant static theory is elaborated. Although a static theory is adequate, so it is claimed, to remove paradox, dynamic implementation naturally is not excluded. While it is not essential in the present setting, in other settings it may well be required. We now proceed to what breaks down on the B* approach, namely subtraction principles fail. The result is that we can have both A over B and C over D. To establish the point 3 For one fuller account of those dominant strategies, see Pope. �4 convincingly, we should supply a requisite model, [do model]. The relevant resolution sits very happily with significant empirical material which Kahneman and Tyersky (K & T hereafter) have adduced contrasting combinative or additive procedures with eliminative or substractive procedures, [detail and reference]. Such differences are strikingly exhibited not only in empirical practice (including the arithmetic without zero of earlier human societies), but in logical theory. Two logical examples are these: Gentzen methods, where there may be significant differences between introduction and eliminative procedures, and, nearer to the present issue, relevant arithmetic, where negative operations such as subtraction and division induce difficulties not encountered with corresponding positive operatives. K & T's positive assistance in distinguishing positive and negative diverences at work in choice procedures is however utterly overwhelmed by their predominant (classical theory saving) contentions. These attempt to remove all differences between ways of rectifying classical decision theory. All are equally based on framing illusions, [work through examples, detail this epistemological escape-chute]. Framing is a theory-solving device par excellence. A highly favoured strategy for distancing rational decision theory from empirical information consists in presentation of inconsistent preferences alleged to violate transitivity. The argument runs like this: there can be no rational theory without transitivity, but actual preferences, empirically recorded, may violate transitivity; so rational theory must discount such empirical information. Such information is set aside, for instance as involving “framing” distictions. There have been heroic attempts to slip around the first premiss, to design nontransitive preference theories. No doubt something of this sort can be done; but in order to gain a theory of some strength postulates much less pausible than transitivity are infiltrated. (In any event, the major project of founding economic on aggregated preference theory depends heavily, and approvently essentially on transitivity.) What should have been questioned, however, is the second premiss, that transitivity is violated. Experimenters and other who arrive at such a result have typically assumed consistency of subjects. Without consistency nothing stops both the preferences empiricially found and transitivity. Such subjects have inconsistent preferences. But, to exaggerate a little, nothing is more common than inconsistent preferences or devises. Often, at least, preference sets are overdetermined, rather than, what has highterto been supposed must be the case, logically underdetermined. To allow properly for inconsistent preferences, as it is proposed to do, the underlying logic must be paraconsistent. Otherwise, as with a classical base, the theory will trivialize preferences. But the most satisfactory types of paraconsistent logics are relevant ones. 2. Rational decision theory and rational belief revision. Consider the classical expansion principle - A (A & B) V (A & ~B) and its extensions to further parameters. - This principle is at the core of standard Bayesianism: �5 • Jeffrey's derivability axiom requires it for its generality • causal decision theories require it for building ultimate partitions of outcomes • standard conditional expected utility requires it, e.g. U(A) = U(A & B) + U(A & ~ B), leading to U(A / B) = U(A & B) (on which see Malinas). The same expansion principle is critical in Lewis's triviality proof. Likewise belief revision theory, there are negative results where similar expansion principles play a major part. But expansion is intricated in implicational paradox, indeed it plays a crucial part in C.I. Lewis's “independent” proof of the inevitability of positive paradox in entailment theory. That simple argument proceeds as follows: A-». (A & B) V (A & ~B) (A & B) V (A & ~B) A&(B V ~B) A->. A & (B V ~B) A & (B V ~B) B V ~B A->.B V ~B Expansion Distribution by Rule Transitivity Simplification by Transitivity again That is, positive paradox, and irrelevance since B may have nothing to do with A. For this reason among other, Expansion is rejected in relevant logic (see further RLR). With its rejection a mass of established theory, implausible theory, crumbles. 3. Conditional preference theory (Bayesian style). Therewith much relevant relocationis required. Relevant relocation enables the wholesale removal of much of the surrounding belt of idealisations which shield standard theory from criticism but at the same time prevents its practical application to real-life agents and situations. Examples of idealisation in belief and theory revision normative theory, sharing their disabling extents are as follows: It is assumed that • agents are perfect (classical) reasoners • agents have determinate (real) degrees of belief • agents have determinate conditional degrees of beliefs for every pair of propositions expressible in their language [ - maintenance of probabilistic coherence]. References Allais,M., ‘The so-called Allais paradox and rational decision under uncertainty’, in M. Allais and O. Mazen (eds), Expected Utility and the Alluis Paradox, Reidal, Dordrecht 1979, 437681. Fishbum, P., ‘Reconsiderations in the foundations of decision under uncertainty’, Economic Journal 97(1987) 825-841. Lace, R., and Ruiffa, H. Games and Decisions, John Wiley, New York, 1957. Malinvaud, E., ‘A note on von Neumann - Morgenstern's strong independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 679. von Neumann, J., and Morgenstern, O., Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, Princeton University press, New Jersey, 1947. �Pope, R., ‘The delusion of certainty in Savage's some-thing principle’ typescript Duntroon, 1989. Routley, R., and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, 1982; referred to as RLR. Samuelson, P., ‘Probability, utility and the independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 670678. Sylvan, R., ‘Modem myths concerning rationality’, ; referred to as MR. Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D., ‘Rational choice and the framing of decisions’, Journal of Business 59(1986) s251-s278. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document RATIONAL DECISION THEORY WITHOUT PARADOXES The uniform strategy applied to remove paradoxes in several other arenas - implication, confirmation, conditionality, explanation, logic itself — will be adapted to defuse all the usual paradoxes vexing supposedly rational decision theory. That strategy comprises, essentially, changing the underlying logic (which is the source of central rationality principles of logical— type) to a modest relevant logic. It yields two important components: removal of irrelevance, particularly in derivatives of the logical theory, for instance in this case probability and preference theory; and reduction of excessive strength, not merely in the logical theory and its derivatives, but especially in this case in maximization principles. Decision theory hitherto has been, virtually without exception, classical: it has unquestioningly assumed classical principles of consistency and maximality. Well it might be claimed that these principles - which derive from the very classical Great Chain of Being - serve, with but few further impeccable principles, to deliver classical logic, its derivatives such as standard probability theory, and much else. The universality of these formative principles is however a myth, one of the pervasive myths of modem rationality (see MR). 1. Common (i.e. equivalent) consequences arguments, and Allais' paradox. Common consequences arguments depend upon the substitution of common, i.e. equivalent, consequences. It is evident that what substitutions are permitted will depend not merely upon admissible logical substitution principles, but above all upon the underlying notion of equivalence. A basic substitution principle takes the form A<-*B, F(A) / F(B) (S<->). It yields, as derived cases, such further inference principles as A<->B f(A) = n / f(B) = n and A~B / G(A) = G(B), given requisite vocabulary. But critical features of the resulting logics and theories depend upon what the co-implication relation, <-», permits; its strength. Over dinner at a Paris cafe one evening during an international colloquium on risky choice, Allais asked Savage a pair of now very famous questions. First Allais asked Savage to choose between prospects A and B: A complete certainty of a good outcome $lm B 0.10 probability of a very good outcome $5m 0.89 probability of a good outcome 0.01 probability of a bad outcome $lm $0. Savage preferred A to B. Allais next asked him to choose between prospects C and D: C 0.89 probability of bad outcome $0 D 2 0.11 probability of good outcome $lm 0.90 probability of bad outcome $0 0.10 probability of very good outcome $5m. Savage preferred D to C. Subsequent researchers quickly discovered that most of their seemingly rational subjects responded initially to Allais' pair of questions as Savage had.1 The problem with these responses is that they violate classical expected utility theory, and are accordingly classically irrational, that theory affording necessary conditions for “rationality”. Therein too lies the Allais' paradox, that seemingly rational responses by seemingly rational subjects are ruled irrational by the theory. For conjoint preferences of A over B and D over C contradict the deliverance of the dominant theory, which specifies what is rational here, according to which C over D is equivalent to A over B, and so the conjoint preferences are inconsistent. The situation certainly supplies a paradox in the standard sense, that preanalytic claims (that so and so definitely does not imply, does not confirm, such and such) are contradicted by results of the dominant theory covering those claims. The (too) brief argument to inconsistency of the seemingly rational preference rankings under the dominant theory runs as follows:- Where U symbolizes the relevant utility function (to which probabilities are immaterial in the present context), the preference for A over B can be represented as (1) U($lm) > 0.10U(%5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0), Now it is assumed that an equivalent ranking - sometimes said to be the same ranking - results by either adding common consequences to each side of the inequality (introduction or combination rule) or by deleting common consequences from either side of the inequality (elimination or deletion rule). These procedures are after all distinguishing features of dominant expected utility theory.2 Let us then add the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $0, and delete the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $lm. That is, putting these operations together, let us add to each side of (1) the combination 1 The presentation follows Pope's adjustment of Allais' original account (in his 79 p.354). For detail of subsequent research on initial responses, see also Pope 89. (Note however that Pope tends to conflate acting rationally with acting consistently.) 2 The names given to these features of the expected utility procedure - with the different names linked with their various axiomatic derivations - include Neumann and Morgenstern's rule for equivalent classes, presented in their 47, p.24 and Malinvaud 52, Samuleson's independence axiom, presented in his 53, Luce and Raiffa's substitution principle, presented in their 52, p.26, the “combination” and “cancellation” property in Tversky and Kahneman 86 and the joint result of “ordering” and the “reduction principle” in Fishburn 87. These critical principles, especially their negative (reduction) forms or outputs, will come in for close scrutiny in what follows. (2) + 0.89U($0) 0.89U($lm). Then the preference for A over B can be equivalently represented by the result of this (monotonic) addition, namely, U($lm) + 0.89 U($0) - 0.89U($lm) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0) + 0.89U($0) - 0.89U($lm), whence follows by utility arithmetic, (3) 0.11U($lm) + 0.89U($0m) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.9U($0). But (3) represents nothing but the preference of C over D. Hence, given adherence to the dominant theory and its procedures, preference for (or choice of) A over B is equivalent to preference for C over D, not D over C. So whoever prefers one and adheres to the procedures is rationally obliged to prefer the other, and is rationally inconsistent in preferring its converse. Short of postponement (Savage's immediate move, in asking for time to think, in response to Allais), these are two main strategies: A. Dominant options, which involve explaining away pre-analytic responses. Savage's further moves went this this theory-saving way, through the “sure-thing” principle. From a logical perspective, the sure-thing principle is applied in transforming cases like assessment of D vis a vis C, which are put out of intuitive bounds, into equivalent canonical forms, which are (intuiively) decidable. The dominant theory is sho3red up, in a typical way, by psychological work; those who do try to assess complex non-canonical cases like C vs. D are subject to “framing illusions”.3 A*. Subversive options, which accept the pre-analytic responses, at more or less face value, and modify the dominant theory. There are various ways modification can take place: B. Reject the formalisation of the argument offered as too simple, because omitting decisive information. Such an approach is taken by Pope, who contends that an occasionally glimpsed but generally omitted time dimension is crucial. On that approach, which certainly does not rule out fuller formalisation, a dynamic theory is regarded as essential. B*. Accept the style of formalisation, as not overly simplistic, but reject specific principles used in establishing equivalence of preferences. Such an approach, though of a fully systematic kind, is of course that course pursued here. A rival relevant static theory is elaborated. Although a static theory is adequate, so it is claimed, to remove paradox, dynamic implementation naturally is not excluded. While it is not essential in the present setting, in other settings it may well be required. We now proceed to what breaks down on the B* approach, namely subtraction principles fail. The result is that we can have both A over B and C over D. To establish the point 3 For one fuller account of those dominant strategies, see Pope. 4 convincingly, we should supply a requisite model, [do model]. The relevant resolution sits very happily with significant empirical material which Kahneman and Tyersky (K & T hereafter) have adduced contrasting combinative or additive procedures with eliminative or substractive procedures, [detail and reference]. Such differences are strikingly exhibited not only in empirical practice (including the arithmetic without zero of earlier human societies), but in logical theory. Two logical examples are these: Gentzen methods, where there may be significant differences between introduction and eliminative procedures, and, nearer to the present issue, relevant arithmetic, where negative operations such as subtraction and division induce difficulties not encountered with corresponding positive operatives. K & T's positive assistance in distinguishing positive and negative diverences at work in choice procedures is however utterly overwhelmed by their predominant (classical theory saving) contentions. These attempt to remove all differences between ways of rectifying classical decision theory. All are equally based on framing illusions, [work through examples, detail this epistemological escape-chute]. Framing is a theory-solving device par excellence. A highly favoured strategy for distancing rational decision theory from empirical information consists in presentation of inconsistent preferences alleged to violate transitivity. The argument runs like this: there can be no rational theory without transitivity, but actual preferences, empirically recorded, may violate transitivity; so rational theory must discount such empirical information. Such information is set aside, for instance as involving “framing” distictions. There have been heroic attempts to slip around the first premiss, to design nontransitive preference theories. No doubt something of this sort can be done; but in order to gain a theory of some strength postulates much less pausible than transitivity are infiltrated. (In any event, the major project of founding economic on aggregated preference theory depends heavily, and approvently essentially on transitivity.) What should have been questioned, however, is the second premiss, that transitivity is violated. Experimenters and other who arrive at such a result have typically assumed consistency of subjects. Without consistency nothing stops both the preferences empiricially found and transitivity. Such subjects have inconsistent preferences. But, to exaggerate a little, nothing is more common than inconsistent preferences or devises. Often, at least, preference sets are overdetermined, rather than, what has highterto been supposed must be the case, logically underdetermined. To allow properly for inconsistent preferences, as it is proposed to do, the underlying logic must be paraconsistent. Otherwise, as with a classical base, the theory will trivialize preferences. But the most satisfactory types of paraconsistent logics are relevant ones. 2. Rational decision theory and rational belief revision. Consider the classical expansion principle - A (A & B) V (A & ~B) and its extensions to further parameters. - This principle is at the core of standard Bayesianism: 5 • Jeffrey's derivability axiom requires it for its generality • causal decision theories require it for building ultimate partitions of outcomes • standard conditional expected utility requires it, e.g. U(A) = U(A & B) + U(A & ~ B), leading to U(A / B) = U(A & B) (on which see Malinas). The same expansion principle is critical in Lewis's triviality proof. Likewise belief revision theory, there are negative results where similar expansion principles play a major part. But expansion is intricated in implicational paradox, indeed it plays a crucial part in C.I. Lewis's “independent” proof of the inevitability of positive paradox in entailment theory. That simple argument proceeds as follows: A-». (A & B) V (A & ~B) (A & B) V (A & ~B) A&(B V ~B) A->. A & (B V ~B) A & (B V ~B) B V ~B A->.B V ~B Expansion Distribution by Rule Transitivity Simplification by Transitivity again That is, positive paradox, and irrelevance since B may have nothing to do with A. For this reason among other, Expansion is rejected in relevant logic (see further RLR). With its rejection a mass of established theory, implausible theory, crumbles. 3. Conditional preference theory (Bayesian style). Therewith much relevant relocationis required. Relevant relocation enables the wholesale removal of much of the surrounding belt of idealisations which shield standard theory from criticism but at the same time prevents its practical application to real-life agents and situations. Examples of idealisation in belief and theory revision normative theory, sharing their disabling extents are as follows: It is assumed that • agents are perfect (classical) reasoners • agents have determinate (real) degrees of belief • agents have determinate conditional degrees of beliefs for every pair of propositions expressible in their language [ - maintenance of probabilistic coherence]. References Allais,M., ‘The so-called Allais paradox and rational decision under uncertainty’, in M. Allais and O. Mazen (eds), Expected Utility and the Alluis Paradox, Reidal, Dordrecht 1979, 437681. Fishbum, P., ‘Reconsiderations in the foundations of decision under uncertainty’, Economic Journal 97(1987) 825-841. Lace, R., and Ruiffa, H. Games and Decisions, John Wiley, New York, 1957. Malinvaud, E., ‘A note on von Neumann - Morgenstern's strong independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 679. von Neumann, J., and Morgenstern, O., Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, Princeton University press, New Jersey, 1947. Pope, R., ‘The delusion of certainty in Savage's some-thing principle’ typescript Duntroon, 1989. Routley, R., and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, 1982; referred to as RLR. Samuelson, P., ‘Probability, utility and the independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 670678. Sylvan, R., ‘Modem myths concerning rationality’, ; referred to as MR. Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D., ‘Rational choice and the framing of decisions’, Journal of Business 59(1986) s251-s278.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1225: Draft of Rational decision theory without paradoxes Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, undated. Description An account of the resource One of seven papers digitised from item 1225. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1225 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [6] leaves. 4.2 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:338ec22">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:338ec22</a> Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk Box 18: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/475beee1c933c2e15191dcd1524477cf.pdf 53eba82362d3d0a5d4703f83b8621f45 PDF Text Text RATIONAL DECISION THEORY WITHOUT PARADOXES The uniform strategy applied to remove paradoxes in several other arenas - implication, confirmation, conditionality, explanation, logic itself — will be adapted to defuse all the usual paradoxes vexing supposedly rational decision theory. That strategy comprises, essentially, changing the underlying logic (which is the source of central rationality principles of logical— type) to a modest relevant logic. It yields two important components: removal of irrelevance, particularly in derivatives of the logical theory, for instance in this case probability and preference theory; and reduction of excessive strength, not merely in the logical theory and its derivatives, but especially in this case in maximization principles. Decision theory hitherto has been, virtually without exception, classical: it has unquestioningly assumed classical principles of consistency and maximality. Well it might be claimed that these principles - which derive from the very classical Great Chain of Being - serve, with but few further impeccable principles, to deliver classical logic, its derivatives such as standard probability theory, and much else. The universality of these formative principles is however a myth, one of the pervasive myths of modem rationality (see MR). 1. Common (i.e. equivalent) consequences arguments, and Allais' paradox. Common consequences arguments depend upon the substitution of common, i.e. equivalent, consequences. It is evident that what substitutions are permitted will depend not merely upon admissible logical substitution principles, but above all upon the underlying notion of equivalence. A basic substitution principle takes the form A<-*B, F(A) / F(B) (S<->). It yields, as derived cases, such further inference principles as A<->B f(A) = n / f(B) = n and A~B / G(A) = G(B), given requisite vocabulary. But critical features of the resulting logics and theories depend upon what the co-implication relation, <-», permits; its strength. Over dinner at a Paris cafe one evening during an international colloquium on risky choice, Allais asked Savage a pair of now very famous questions. First Allais asked Savage to choose between prospects A and B: A complete certainty of a good outcome $lm B 0.10 probability of a very good outcome $5m 0.89 probability of a good outcome 0.01 probability of a bad outcome $lm $0. Savage preferred A to B. Allais next asked him to choose between prospects C and D: C 0.89 probability of bad outcome $0 �D 2 0.11 probability of good outcome $lm 0.90 probability of bad outcome $0 0.10 probability of very good outcome $5m. Savage preferred D to C. Subsequent researchers quickly discovered that most of their seemingly rational subjects responded initially to Allais' pair of questions as Savage had.1 The problem with these responses is that they violate classical expected utility theory, and are accordingly classically irrational, that theory affording necessary conditions for “rationality”. Therein too lies the Allais' paradox, that seemingly rational responses by seemingly rational subjects are ruled irrational by the theory. For conjoint preferences of A over B and D over C contradict the deliverance of the dominant theory, which specifies what is rational here, according to which C over D is equivalent to A over B, and so the conjoint preferences are inconsistent. The situation certainly supplies a paradox in the standard sense, that preanalytic claims (that so and so definitely does not imply, does not confirm, such and such) are contradicted by results of the dominant theory covering those claims. The (too) brief argument to inconsistency of the seemingly rational preference rankings under the dominant theory runs as follows:- Where U symbolizes the relevant utility function (to which probabilities are immaterial in the present context), the preference for A over B can be represented as (1) U($lm) > 0.10U(%5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0), Now it is assumed that an equivalent ranking - sometimes said to be the same ranking - results by either adding common consequences to each side of the inequality (introduction or combination rule) or by deleting common consequences from either side of the inequality (elimination or deletion rule). These procedures are after all distinguishing features of dominant expected utility theory.2 Let us then add the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $0, and delete the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $lm. That is, putting these operations together, let us add to each side of (1) the combination 1 The presentation follows Pope's adjustment of Allais' original account (in his 79 p.354). For detail of subsequent research on initial responses, see also Pope 89. (Note however that Pope tends to conflate acting rationally with acting consistently.) 2 The names given to these features of the expected utility procedure - with the different names linked with their various axiomatic derivations - include Neumann and Morgenstern's rule for equivalent classes, presented in their 47, p.24 and Malinvaud 52, Samuleson's independence axiom, presented in his 53, Luce and Raiffa's substitution principle, presented in their 52, p.26, the “combination” and “cancellation” property in Tversky and Kahneman 86 and the joint result of “ordering” and the “reduction principle” in Fishburn 87. These critical principles, especially their negative (reduction) forms or outputs, will come in for close scrutiny in what follows. �(2) + 0.89U($0) 0.89U($lm). Then the preference for A over B can be equivalently represented by the result of this (monotonic) addition, namely, U($lm) + 0.89 U($0) - 0.89U($lm) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0) + 0.89U($0) - 0.89U($lm), whence follows by utility arithmetic, (3) 0.11U($lm) + 0.89U($0m) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.9U($0). But (3) represents nothing but the preference of C over D. Hence, given adherence to the dominant theory and its procedures, preference for (or choice of) A over B is equivalent to preference for C over D, not D over C. So whoever prefers one and adheres to the procedures is rationally obliged to prefer the other, and is rationally inconsistent in preferring its converse. Short of postponement (Savage's immediate move, in asking for time to think, in response to Allais), these are two main strategies: A. Dominant options, which involve explaining away pre-analytic responses. Savage's further moves went this this theory-saving way, through the “sure-thing” principle. From a logical perspective, the sure-thing principle is applied in transforming cases like assessment of D vis a vis C, which are put out of intuitive bounds, into equivalent canonical forms, which are (intuiively) decidable. The dominant theory is sho3red up, in a typical way, by psychological work; those who do try to assess complex non-canonical cases like C vs. D are subject to “framing illusions”.3 A*. Subversive options, which accept the pre-analytic responses, at more or less face value, and modify the dominant theory. There are various ways modification can take place: B. Reject the formalisation of the argument offered as too simple, because omitting decisive information. Such an approach is taken by Pope, who contends that an occasionally glimpsed but generally omitted time dimension is crucial. On that approach, which certainly does not rule out fuller formalisation, a dynamic theory is regarded as essential. B*. Accept the style of formalisation, as not overly simplistic, but reject specific principles used in establishing equivalence of preferences. Such an approach, though of a fully systematic kind, is of course that course pursued here. A rival relevant static theory is elaborated. Although a static theory is adequate, so it is claimed, to remove paradox, dynamic implementation naturally is not excluded. While it is not essential in the present setting, in other settings it may well be required. We now proceed to what breaks down on the B* approach, namely subtraction principles fail. The result is that we can have both A over B and C over D. To establish the point 3 For one fuller account of those dominant strategies, see Pope. �4 convincingly, we should supply a requisite model, [do model]. The relevant resolution sits very happily with significant empirical material which Kahneman and Tyersky (K & T hereafter) have adduced contrasting combinative or additive procedures with eliminative or substractive procedures, [detail and reference]. Such differences are strikingly exhibited not only in empirical practice (including the arithmetic without zero of earlier human societies), but in logical theory. Two logical examples are these: Gentzen methods, where there may be significant differences between introduction and eliminative procedures, and, nearer to the present issue, relevant arithmetic, where negative operations such as subtraction and division induce difficulties not encountered with corresponding positive operatives. K & T's positive assistance in distinguishing positive and negative diverences at work in choice procedures is however utterly overwhelmed by their predominant (classical theory saving) contentions. These attempt to remove all differences between ways of rectifying classical decision theory. All are equally based on framing illusions, [work through examples, detail this epistemological escape-chute]. Framing is a theory-solving device par excellence. A highly favoured strategy for distancing rational decision theory from empirical information consists in presentation of inconsistent preferences alleged to violate transitivity. The argument runs like this: there can be no rational theory without transitivity, but actual preferences, empirically recorded, may violate transitivity; so rational theory must discount such empirical information. Such information is set aside, for instance as involving “framing” distictions. There have been heroic attempts to slip around the first premiss, to design nontransitive preference theories. No doubt something of this sort can be done; but in order to gain a theory of some strength postulates much less pausible than transitivity are infiltrated. (In any event, the major project of founding economic on aggregated preference theory depends heavily, and approvently essentially on transitivity.) What should have been questioned, however, is the second premiss, that transitivity is violated. Experimenters and other who arrive at such a result have typically assumed consistency of subjects. Without consistency nothing stops both the preferences empiricially found and transitivity. Such subjects have inconsistent preferences. But, to exaggerate a little, nothing is more common than inconsistent preferences or devises. Often, at least, preference sets are overdetermined, rather than, what has highterto been supposed must be the case, logically underdetermined. To allow properly for inconsistent preferences, as it is proposed to do, the underlying logic must be paraconsistent. Otherwise, as with a classical base, the theory will trivialize preferences. But the most satisfactory types of paraconsistent logics are relevant ones. 2. Rational decision theory and rational belief revision. Consider the classical expansion principle - A (A & B) V (A & ~B) and its extensions to further parameters. - This principle is at the core of standard Bayesianism: �5 • Jeffrey's derivability axiom requires it for its generality • causal decision theories require it for building ultimate partitions of outcomes • standard conditional expected utility requires it, e.g. U(A) = U(A & B) + U(A & ~ B), leading to U(A / B) = U(A & B) (on which see Malinas). The same expansion principle is critical in Lewis's triviality proof. Likewise belief revision theory, there are negative results where similar expansion principles play a major part. But expansion is intricated in implicational paradox, indeed it plays a crucial part in C.I. Lewis's “independent” proof of the inevitability of positive paradox in entailment theory. That simple argument proceeds as follows: A-». (A & B) V (A & ~B) (A & B) V (A & ~B) A&(B V ~B) A->. A & (B V ~B) A & (B V ~B) B V ~B A->.B V ~B Expansion Distribution by Rule Transitivity Simplification by Transitivity again That is, positive paradox, and irrelevance since B may have nothing to do with A. For this reason among other, Expansion is rejected in relevant logic (see further RLR). With its rejection a mass of established theory, implausible theory, crumbles. 3. Conditional preference theory (Bayesian style). Therewith much relevant relocationis required. Relevant relocation enables the wholesale removal of much of the surrounding belt of idealisations which shield standard theory from criticism but at the same time prevents its practical application to real-life agents and situations. Examples of idealisation in belief and theory revision normative theory, sharing their disabling extents are as follows: It is assumed that • agents are perfect (classical) reasoners • agents have determinate (real) degrees of belief • agents have determinate conditional degrees of beliefs for every pair of propositions expressible in their language [ - maintenance of probabilistic coherence]. References Allais,M., ‘The so-called Allais paradox and rational decision under uncertainty’, in M. Allais and O. Mazen (eds), Expected Utility and the Alluis Paradox, Reidal, Dordrecht 1979, 437681. Fishbum, P., ‘Reconsiderations in the foundations of decision under uncertainty’, Economic Journal 97(1987) 825-841. Lace, R., and Ruiffa, H. Games and Decisions, John Wiley, New York, 1957. Malinvaud, E., ‘A note on von Neumann - Morgenstern's strong independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 679. von Neumann, J., and Morgenstern, O., Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, Princeton University press, New Jersey, 1947. �Pope, R., ‘The delusion of certainty in Savage's some-thing principle’ typescript Duntroon, 1989. Routley, R., and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, 1982; referred to as RLR. Samuelson, P., ‘Probability, utility and the independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 670678. Sylvan, R., ‘Modem myths concerning rationality’, ; referred to as MR. Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D., ‘Rational choice and the framing of decisions’, Journal of Business 59(1986) s251-s278. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document RATIONAL DECISION THEORY WITHOUT PARADOXES The uniform strategy applied to remove paradoxes in several other arenas - implication, confirmation, conditionality, explanation, logic itself — will be adapted to defuse all the usual paradoxes vexing supposedly rational decision theory. That strategy comprises, essentially, changing the underlying logic (which is the source of central rationality principles of logical— type) to a modest relevant logic. It yields two important components: removal of irrelevance, particularly in derivatives of the logical theory, for instance in this case probability and preference theory; and reduction of excessive strength, not merely in the logical theory and its derivatives, but especially in this case in maximization principles. Decision theory hitherto has been, virtually without exception, classical: it has unquestioningly assumed classical principles of consistency and maximality. Well it might be claimed that these principles - which derive from the very classical Great Chain of Being - serve, with but few further impeccable principles, to deliver classical logic, its derivatives such as standard probability theory, and much else. The universality of these formative principles is however a myth, one of the pervasive myths of modem rationality (see MR). 1. Common (i.e. equivalent) consequences arguments, and Allais' paradox. Common consequences arguments depend upon the substitution of common, i.e. equivalent, consequences. It is evident that what substitutions are permitted will depend not merely upon admissible logical substitution principles, but above all upon the underlying notion of equivalence. A basic substitution principle takes the form A<-*B, F(A) / F(B) (S<->). It yields, as derived cases, such further inference principles as A<->B f(A) = n / f(B) = n and A~B / G(A) = G(B), given requisite vocabulary. But critical features of the resulting logics and theories depend upon what the co-implication relation, <-», permits; its strength. Over dinner at a Paris cafe one evening during an international colloquium on risky choice, Allais asked Savage a pair of now very famous questions. First Allais asked Savage to choose between prospects A and B: A complete certainty of a good outcome $lm B 0.10 probability of a very good outcome $5m 0.89 probability of a good outcome 0.01 probability of a bad outcome $lm $0. Savage preferred A to B. Allais next asked him to choose between prospects C and D: C 0.89 probability of bad outcome $0 D 2 0.11 probability of good outcome $lm 0.90 probability of bad outcome $0 0.10 probability of very good outcome $5m. Savage preferred D to C. Subsequent researchers quickly discovered that most of their seemingly rational subjects responded initially to Allais' pair of questions as Savage had.1 The problem with these responses is that they violate classical expected utility theory, and are accordingly classically irrational, that theory affording necessary conditions for “rationality”. Therein too lies the Allais' paradox, that seemingly rational responses by seemingly rational subjects are ruled irrational by the theory. For conjoint preferences of A over B and D over C contradict the deliverance of the dominant theory, which specifies what is rational here, according to which C over D is equivalent to A over B, and so the conjoint preferences are inconsistent. The situation certainly supplies a paradox in the standard sense, that preanalytic claims (that so and so definitely does not imply, does not confirm, such and such) are contradicted by results of the dominant theory covering those claims. The (too) brief argument to inconsistency of the seemingly rational preference rankings under the dominant theory runs as follows:- Where U symbolizes the relevant utility function (to which probabilities are immaterial in the present context), the preference for A over B can be represented as (1) U($lm) > 0.10U(%5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0), Now it is assumed that an equivalent ranking - sometimes said to be the same ranking - results by either adding common consequences to each side of the inequality (introduction or combination rule) or by deleting common consequences from either side of the inequality (elimination or deletion rule). These procedures are after all distinguishing features of dominant expected utility theory.2 Let us then add the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $0, and delete the common consequences of a 0.89 probability of receiving $lm. That is, putting these operations together, let us add to each side of (1) the combination 1 The presentation follows Pope's adjustment of Allais' original account (in his 79 p.354). For detail of subsequent research on initial responses, see also Pope 89. (Note however that Pope tends to conflate acting rationally with acting consistently.) 2 The names given to these features of the expected utility procedure - with the different names linked with their various axiomatic derivations - include Neumann and Morgenstern's rule for equivalent classes, presented in their 47, p.24 and Malinvaud 52, Samuleson's independence axiom, presented in his 53, Luce and Raiffa's substitution principle, presented in their 52, p.26, the “combination” and “cancellation” property in Tversky and Kahneman 86 and the joint result of “ordering” and the “reduction principle” in Fishburn 87. These critical principles, especially their negative (reduction) forms or outputs, will come in for close scrutiny in what follows. (2) + 0.89U($0) 0.89U($lm). Then the preference for A over B can be equivalently represented by the result of this (monotonic) addition, namely, U($lm) + 0.89 U($0) - 0.89U($lm) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.89U($lm) + 0.01U($0) + 0.89U($0) - 0.89U($lm), whence follows by utility arithmetic, (3) 0.11U($lm) + 0.89U($0m) > 0.10U($5m) + 0.9U($0). But (3) represents nothing but the preference of C over D. Hence, given adherence to the dominant theory and its procedures, preference for (or choice of) A over B is equivalent to preference for C over D, not D over C. So whoever prefers one and adheres to the procedures is rationally obliged to prefer the other, and is rationally inconsistent in preferring its converse. Short of postponement (Savage's immediate move, in asking for time to think, in response to Allais), these are two main strategies: A. Dominant options, which involve explaining away pre-analytic responses. Savage's further moves went this this theory-saving way, through the “sure-thing” principle. From a logical perspective, the sure-thing principle is applied in transforming cases like assessment of D vis a vis C, which are put out of intuitive bounds, into equivalent canonical forms, which are (intuiively) decidable. The dominant theory is sho3red up, in a typical way, by psychological work; those who do try to assess complex non-canonical cases like C vs. D are subject to “framing illusions”.3 A*. Subversive options, which accept the pre-analytic responses, at more or less face value, and modify the dominant theory. There are various ways modification can take place: B. Reject the formalisation of the argument offered as too simple, because omitting decisive information. Such an approach is taken by Pope, who contends that an occasionally glimpsed but generally omitted time dimension is crucial. On that approach, which certainly does not rule out fuller formalisation, a dynamic theory is regarded as essential. B*. Accept the style of formalisation, as not overly simplistic, but reject specific principles used in establishing equivalence of preferences. Such an approach, though of a fully systematic kind, is of course that course pursued here. A rival relevant static theory is elaborated. Although a static theory is adequate, so it is claimed, to remove paradox, dynamic implementation naturally is not excluded. While it is not essential in the present setting, in other settings it may well be required. We now proceed to what breaks down on the B* approach, namely subtraction principles fail. The result is that we can have both A over B and C over D. To establish the point 3 For one fuller account of those dominant strategies, see Pope. 4 convincingly, we should supply a requisite model, [do model]. The relevant resolution sits very happily with significant empirical material which Kahneman and Tyersky (K & T hereafter) have adduced contrasting combinative or additive procedures with eliminative or substractive procedures, [detail and reference]. Such differences are strikingly exhibited not only in empirical practice (including the arithmetic without zero of earlier human societies), but in logical theory. Two logical examples are these: Gentzen methods, where there may be significant differences between introduction and eliminative procedures, and, nearer to the present issue, relevant arithmetic, where negative operations such as subtraction and division induce difficulties not encountered with corresponding positive operatives. K & T's positive assistance in distinguishing positive and negative diverences at work in choice procedures is however utterly overwhelmed by their predominant (classical theory saving) contentions. These attempt to remove all differences between ways of rectifying classical decision theory. All are equally based on framing illusions, [work through examples, detail this epistemological escape-chute]. Framing is a theory-solving device par excellence. A highly favoured strategy for distancing rational decision theory from empirical information consists in presentation of inconsistent preferences alleged to violate transitivity. The argument runs like this: there can be no rational theory without transitivity, but actual preferences, empirically recorded, may violate transitivity; so rational theory must discount such empirical information. Such information is set aside, for instance as involving “framing” distictions. There have been heroic attempts to slip around the first premiss, to design nontransitive preference theories. No doubt something of this sort can be done; but in order to gain a theory of some strength postulates much less pausible than transitivity are infiltrated. (In any event, the major project of founding economic on aggregated preference theory depends heavily, and approvently essentially on transitivity.) What should have been questioned, however, is the second premiss, that transitivity is violated. Experimenters and other who arrive at such a result have typically assumed consistency of subjects. Without consistency nothing stops both the preferences empiricially found and transitivity. Such subjects have inconsistent preferences. But, to exaggerate a little, nothing is more common than inconsistent preferences or devises. Often, at least, preference sets are overdetermined, rather than, what has highterto been supposed must be the case, logically underdetermined. To allow properly for inconsistent preferences, as it is proposed to do, the underlying logic must be paraconsistent. Otherwise, as with a classical base, the theory will trivialize preferences. But the most satisfactory types of paraconsistent logics are relevant ones. 2. Rational decision theory and rational belief revision. Consider the classical expansion principle - A (A & B) V (A & ~B) and its extensions to further parameters. - This principle is at the core of standard Bayesianism: 5 • Jeffrey's derivability axiom requires it for its generality • causal decision theories require it for building ultimate partitions of outcomes • standard conditional expected utility requires it, e.g. U(A) = U(A & B) + U(A & ~ B), leading to U(A / B) = U(A & B) (on which see Malinas). The same expansion principle is critical in Lewis's triviality proof. Likewise belief revision theory, there are negative results where similar expansion principles play a major part. But expansion is intricated in implicational paradox, indeed it plays a crucial part in C.I. Lewis's “independent” proof of the inevitability of positive paradox in entailment theory. That simple argument proceeds as follows: A-». (A & B) V (A & ~B) (A & B) V (A & ~B) A&(B V ~B) A->. A & (B V ~B) A & (B V ~B) B V ~B A->.B V ~B Expansion Distribution by Rule Transitivity Simplification by Transitivity again That is, positive paradox, and irrelevance since B may have nothing to do with A. For this reason among other, Expansion is rejected in relevant logic (see further RLR). With its rejection a mass of established theory, implausible theory, crumbles. 3. Conditional preference theory (Bayesian style). Therewith much relevant relocationis required. Relevant relocation enables the wholesale removal of much of the surrounding belt of idealisations which shield standard theory from criticism but at the same time prevents its practical application to real-life agents and situations. Examples of idealisation in belief and theory revision normative theory, sharing their disabling extents are as follows: It is assumed that • agents are perfect (classical) reasoners • agents have determinate (real) degrees of belief • agents have determinate conditional degrees of beliefs for every pair of propositions expressible in their language [ - maintenance of probabilistic coherence]. References Allais,M., ‘The so-called Allais paradox and rational decision under uncertainty’, in M. Allais and O. Mazen (eds), Expected Utility and the Alluis Paradox, Reidal, Dordrecht 1979, 437681. Fishbum, P., ‘Reconsiderations in the foundations of decision under uncertainty’, Economic Journal 97(1987) 825-841. Lace, R., and Ruiffa, H. Games and Decisions, John Wiley, New York, 1957. Malinvaud, E., ‘A note on von Neumann - Morgenstern's strong independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 679. von Neumann, J., and Morgenstern, O., Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, Princeton University press, New Jersey, 1947. Pope, R., ‘The delusion of certainty in Savage's some-thing principle’ typescript Duntroon, 1989. Routley, R., and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Ridgeview, California, 1982; referred to as RLR. Samuelson, P., ‘Probability, utility and the independence axiom’, Econometrica 20(1952) 670678. Sylvan, R., ‘Modem myths concerning rationality’, ; referred to as MR. Tversky, A., and Kahneman, D., ‘Rational choice and the framing of decisions’, Journal of Business 59(1986) s251-s278.  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 18, Item 1235: Draft of Towards green anakrism: eucratic political investigation Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, undated. See also item 948 in collection, Early drafts and finished papers of Anarkism. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 18, Item 1235 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [165] leaves. 129.65 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:72b2588">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:72b2588</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Australian National University - Typing Table at End of Desk Australian National University Office Australian National University Office > Typing Table at End of Desk Box 18: Green Projects in Progress https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/6db9a961bde3d0b17db9e298cfd1671c.pdf 85ed333c9f621698d20f3ac1ca75434a PDF Text Text ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia Description An account of the resource In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid". Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 21, Item 705: Booklets notes Subject The topic of the resource Handwritten notes on scrap paper. Description An account of the resource Verso of leaves not digitised. One of ten papers digitised from item 705. Title in collection finding aid: RS: Booklets - Ms notes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 21, Item 705 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [3] leaves. 4.83 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:fac1e9d">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:fac1e9d</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Como - Shelves - Top - Pile 3 Box 21: More Green Como House Como House > Shelves > Top > Pile 3 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/a189ced358b1393afef9f7d826542628.pdf d0af317565a9d9f36d50faacc679c810 PDF Text Text /^H^'J;^/ /%37%H/ /W^ ___ C^—/^rn/^ /^K'/lr-^,^ /c/tL<y^C^^ ! �J <^> 7c7^,^,U-.V y^/V^o, />-l.X /p.y . /t/CC °^7" , �/ 7T* /zv /v y ^77J /f/7/^^' ^7 /Zy Z7+9(.. , ) 77Z t f � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia Description An account of the resource In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid". Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document /^H^'J;^/ /%37%H/ /W^ ___ C^—/^rn/^ /^K'/lr-^,^ /c/tL<y^C^^ ! J <^> 7c7^,^,U-.V y^/V^o, />-l.X /p.y . /t/CC °^7" , / 7T* /zv /v y ^77J /f/7/^^' ^7 /Zy Z7+9(.. , ) 77Z t f  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 21, Item 705: Green book structure notes Subject The topic of the resource Green book structure notes Description An account of the resource Verso of leaves not digitised. One of ten papers digitised from item 705. Title in collection finding aid: RS: Green Book/Structure ms notes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 21, Item 705 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [3] leaves. 4.25 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:64d7a14">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:64d7a14</a> Box 21: More Green Como House Como House > Shelves > Top > Pile 3 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/0f964b943768a0b550c989048b28bcf7.pdf bf3a54c81853242a2b1e5c72b5d37d2f PDF Text Text 7 ^**---------- — X <- 7/ r/ / * * /e^<9 '^c � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Notes, Correspondences and Marginalia Description An account of the resource In one obituary, Sylvan's handwriting was said to have "looked like the oscilloscope for a patient in intensive care", and thus "not for the timid". Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 7 ^**---------- — X <- 7/ r/ / * * /e^<9 '^c  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 21, Item 705: Environmental ethics essays notes on tables of contents Subject The topic of the resource Handwritten notes. Description An account of the resource One of ten papers digitised from item 705. Title in collection finding aid: RS: Env Essays - tables of contents. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 21, Item 705 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [1] leaf. 1.62 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7e4ad6c">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7e4ad6c</a> Box 21: More Green Como House Como House > Shelves > Top > Pile 3 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/2eda98db09164dd828449f4feb143531.pdf 4bd02eb1ecb56a9392c4cdbd4272e853 PDF Text Text PARADIGMATIC ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not be adequately addressed. Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade, impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more satisfactory answer can be broached. Background busy work includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems, and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers, fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the present investigation. A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking: philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. —— --------- ------------------ 1------ CL .A. — Tgqg-- / ----- L—------------------------------------- cr/ 1 z/ � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document PARADIGMATIC ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Abstract. Virtually all diagnoses of the roots, and sources, of environmental problems are defective. While defective diagnoses persist, problems will not be adequately addressed. Focal questions ask why human communities so frequently degrade, impoverish or even destroy their own environments, and more generally why the whole earth is now in jeopardy through human enterprise. More immediate answers, sometimes correct so far as they go (which is not deep enough), look to components of environmental impact equations. More thorough-going answers fall into two classes: first those that do not question entrenched paradigms, but seek (unsuccessfully) to explain widespread problems simply through defective practice, and secondly those that, rightly recognising that defective practice is no adequate answer, look to deeper paradigmatic sources of problems. A fatal flaw in most of the latter answers lies in their monistic concentration on a single paradigm, or single narrow band of paradigms. These flaws are exposed, whence a wider, more satisfactory answer can be broached. Background busy work includes firstly, explaining problems and relevant paradigms and how paradigms operate regarding environmental problems, and secondly, detailed disentangling of proposed and alleged sources of the problems. With this done, it is argued that none of these answers, fashionable or other, to the focal questions is satisfactory. Here lies the important hard, but very negative and decidedly incomplete, work of the present investigation. A different more complex investigation is accordingly instigated. An initial answer is located through broader classes of paradigms : environmentally friendly and unfriendly. Further effort is expended, profitably, in trying to characterize these classes. Among significant corollaries, one is striking: philosophy as portrayed through its standard history is dismal environmental news. —— --------- ------------------ 1------ CL .A. — Tgqg-- / ----- L—------------------------------------- cr/ 1 z/  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 21, Item 705: Draft abstract of Paradigmatic roots of environmental problems Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, dated 24 May 1995. Trimmed paper pasted on leaf with annotations. Handwritten top of printout: Run new copy. Description An account of the resource One of ten papers digitised from item 705. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 21, Item 705 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-05-24 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [1] leaf. 2.6 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7a8f99b">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:7a8f99b</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Como - Shelves - Top - Pile 3 Box 21: More Green Como House Como House > Shelves > Top > Pile 3 https://www.antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/c6afa206de867f56284fb042bf1e4d96.pdf 560deaadb6ccc8955f96eb21f7a78881 PDF Text Text 9/5/95 IMPACT OF ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT There is a recent debate, arising out of older debates, concerning logic, rationality, truth, science and, more sweepingly, the Enlightenment Project. It is a debate where the concentrated intellectual superpower formed from those substantially committed to the Project is matched against dispersed anti- or counter-Enlightenment forces, and so confronted with protracted guerilla activity. Historically furthermore, the scattered and diverse counter-movement has taken various different forms at different times. In the main respects the recent debate has crystallised into one between definite realism and an egalitarian relativism (as revealed in a useful working example, the debate in Z Papery Oct-Dec 1992). Let's call these sides rea/^m and re/af/VLym for short, though the divisions are more complex than that (for one reason, because "realism" comprehends an idealist "anti-realism", and "relativism" includes "constructive" forms). The contrast is invariably presented (as in the debate in Z Papery) as between f/te ane correct theory, that ultimately delivered by Science, on the one side, and many stories, many points of view perhaps equally good, on the other.i But, presented thus, it is almost obvious that what is offered affords a/a/.ye contrast. For omitted are alternatives with more than one correct account (some of these accounts perhaps better than others), but with many other stories faulted. For instance, neglected is my own preferred /mJiPe way, which recognises many correct accounts, none absolute, and many defective stories.2 Such further plurallistic alternatives are not glimpsed for several reasons: one is a false underlying absolute (one) verytAy relative (many) dichotomy^; another is a false (also absolute) character accredited to received 1 See Albert's Editorial, p.2, and the clearly stated position of 'the three defendents', namely Albert, Chomsky and Ehrenreich. It is both curious and revealing that the debate should have taken f/?A polarized course, given the question addressed to 'the six critics' (of the Enlightenment Project). Namely, 'Do we need to reject/transcend/escape an old way of thinking variously called Western Rationality/Science/Logic if we are to attain a better world? (quoted p.17). Put differently, what is role of received "enlightenment" in a/! Amelioration Project? Because of these <%/erenf issues there is much (loose) arguing at cross-purposes in Z Papers 2 Such a way is elaborated in DP. �2 logic and scientific methodology. Thus a longer subtitle for the present exercise might well run: the concerning logic, rationality, science, truth and all that: the Enlightenment Project and its Enemies, a pluralistic resolution. Realists take their stand on the basis of received logic and scientific methodology, typically as if that were an indisputable given, in great intellectual shape. A couple of statements will confirm this: ... we do not have to transcend science or rationality as a prerequisite to developing worthy vision and strategy... logic and the roles of evidence are here to stay. Moreover, they're on our side.4 Even some small criticism of science is justified; for instance 'science is sometimes narrow, mechanical, colonizing or hypocritical'.$ What lie beyond such critical reach are rationality, reason and logic; '... to critique reason or logic as being at the root of sciences many ills is wrong' 'and has no role in making the world better'. Despite extensive left political activity, 'I have not once criticized rationality or logic, and anti-intellectualism has always been anathema to me'.6 Others appear fractionally more cautious about reason and logic (not Science!): ...in a discussion...there are certain familiar ground rules: those of rational inquiry, ... what seems to be under discussion here is whether we should abide by these ground rules at all (trying to improve them as we proceed?). If the answer is that we are to abide by them, then the discussion is over: we've implicitly accepted the legitimacy of rational inquiry. If they are to be abandoned, then we cannot proceed until we learn what replaces the commitment to consistency, responsibility to fact, and other out-dated notions.^ Before a final quoted sentence rounding off this passage notice the equations made: procedures in a discussion (ground rules) = methods of rational inquiry = commitment to consistency, responsibility to fact, etc. 3 Conspicuous in Albert's own efforts. Albert attempts to recast the multi-faceted debate in these elementary white and black terms: rationality and science 'real science' which is one and unified) versus anti-rationalism, which is utterly relativist. Anti-rationalism he can then jammer as abandoning truth as well as science, as giving away rational and intelligent (and effective) methods, and as accordingly self-defeating in arguing for ameliorating social change (see p.51). 4 Albert, Z Papery, p.51. 5 One sample from half a page of 'balancing criticism' in Albert, p.50. 6 Albert, p.56. 7 Like Neurath in his boat, a favourite image of the American intellectual establishment. 8 Chomsky, Z papery. �3 The last are variants upon (Albert's) methods of standard logic (consistency-based) and rules of evidence. Discussion or debate has accordingly been narrowed (in broad form): 1. by a rationality constraint 2. by explication of rationality through a standard system (by consistency, maximum expected utility, etc.). Pictorially: rational inquiry standard rational inquiry discussion/ inquiry Short of some instruction on this matter... new procedures or ideas to replace the old...we are reduced to primal screams.^ That is hardly so. Almost everyone is familiar with inquiries, debates, arguments and generally procedures that do not proceed rationally, by any means or standards, but which do not reduce to screams (though some no doubt do). Regrettably few, by contrast, are familiar with aZ^rnaf/ve systems of rationality and logic by which inquiry and so forth can proceed, quite rationally. These alternatives confound and upset realism and the Enlightenment Project.^ That impact of alternatives on the Enlightenment Project—an impact not recognised or acknowledged by realists—is a main topic to be pursued. But first the uniform, definite realist Project. The Project itself which persists. The Enlightenment Project can be drawn out of standard accounts of the Enlightenment and the world discerned under it. The Project involved proceeding in accord with Enlightenment practices and in bringing its vision to fruition. First, then, a revealing picture ot 9 Chomsky continuing Z Papery, p.52. 10 The useful term Project coalesces in the course of the debate. In the course of trying to shame and chastise left intellectuals and left counterparts for their neglect of human concerns, of emancipation, removal of oppresion and similar, Chomsky assigns a central place to the "project of the Enlightenment" in serving emancipation, in displacing oppressors, removing monopolies of the powerful, and supplying liberating information and technology. That expression which he has drawn from essays he is commenting upon, quickly contracts to "the Enlightenment project (same page, p.57). My own opinion is that Chomsky has grossly overestimated the positive role of the Enlightenment Project in achieving emancipation and social amelioration. Patently too, he similarly underrates environmental negativities and externalities of implementations of the Project. �4 the world discerned by the Enlightenment and the associated ideology (drawn from Berlin), and secondly the sort of accompanying Project which that yields. The world discerned was a rational scientific world conforming to 'materialism, utilitarianism, ethical naturalism and atheism': Whatever the differences that divided the French /z/zzZagop/z^g and their disciples in other countries...there existed nevertheless a wide ca/zg^zzgzzg: it rested on an acceptance of what was in effect, a secular version of the old natural law doctrine according to which the nature of things possessed a permanent unalterable structure, differences and changes in the world being subject to universal and immutable laws. These laws were discoverable in principle by the use of r^agozz and controlled observation, of which the methods of the natural gcz^zzc^g constituted the most successful application. The most powerful instrument in the acquisition of knowledge was held to be mathematics... f/ze /zaf/z fo ^nawZ^g^ wag f/zaf q/V/z^ na/araZ gcz^zzc^g; that is to say, all statements with claims to truth must be public, communicable, testable—capable of verification or falsification by methods open to and accepted by any rational investigator. From this it followed that aZZ ar/z^r %?^g q/aza/zarzZy w^re R? and in particular such foundations of faith as sacred texts, divine revelation and the dogmatic pronouncements of its authorised interpreters, tradition, prescription, immemorial wisdom, private intuition and all other forms of non-rational or transcendent sources of putative knowledge. This principle was held to apply to both the human and the non-human world: to abstract disciplines, such as logic or mathematics, to the applied sciences which established the laws of the behaviour of inanimate bodies, plants, animals and human beings, and to the normative disciplines which revealed the true nature of ultimate human goals, and the correct rules of conduct, public and private, social and political, moral and aesthetic. According to this doctrine, aZZ g^KZ/z/ig qz/^gaozzg were zzz qrznczqZe azzgweraZzZe.* rraf/z wag one, error multiple; the true answers must of necessity be universal and immutable, that is, true everywhere, at all times, for all men, and discoverable by the appropriate use of reason, by relevant experience, observation and the methods of experiment, logic, calculation. A logically connected structure of rules, laws, generalisations, susceptible of demonstration or, at least in practice, of a high degree of confirmation (and, where required, of application appropriate to differing circumstances) could, at least in principle, be constructed, and could replace the chaotic amalgam of ignorance, laziness, guesswork, superstition, prejudice, dogma, fantasy, and, above all, what Helvetius called 'interested error', which enabled the cunning and the strong to dominate and exploit the stupid, ignorant and weak, and had throughout human history been largely responsible for the vices, follies and miseries of mankind. Only knowledge, that is, the growth of the sciences, could rescue mankind from these largely self-induced evils. Some believed that certainty in empirical matters was attainable, others that no more than high probability could be achieved; some were pessimistic about progress towards virtue or happiness, others were more sanguine. But the majority of the q/zzZagaq/z^g were agreed that if irrational passions could be controlled, and ignorance, prejudice, fear and greed diminished, an end could be made to the worst confusions in �5 human thought and feelings, which led to blind fanaticism in thought and savage barbarism in practice. ** Though we should contest very many of those claims, it would be foolish to deny that there was that was enlightened, by comparison with what had gone before, in Enlightenment proposals. 12 In many respects, the proposals were socially and otherwise enlightened, though definitely not environmentally so. Proper affords a brief convenient way of alluding to the prime aims and objectives of the Enlightenment, which largely coincide with those of modern secular science broadly construed. Central among emphasized objectives were: pursuit of the truth; exact deployment of rational methods, including logical argumentation; reliance on science and especially rigorous empirical procedures. A suitable mnemonic would be TRASH, (short for truth and reason, and science and (atheistic) humanism). The Project also included these components: * as regards of rational and scientific practice and methods, and of other methods, such as those depending upon closed authority, private or organisational revelation, magic and so on. * bringing to^h/mon.* the intelligent inhabitants of the Earth (humans) in particular in their practice; corollaries are extensive, and include and programs (e.g. humans have to be in a position to use their intelligence, and not ill, disabled, enslaved, etc.); o&raMimg that accessible correct information. For all its apparent merits, the project had, and has, a large downside. For example, the Project underwrites monopolies and elites, namely those who held control of the correct methods, the right procedures. It brings in its train all those strait-jacketing features now so familiar in scientific and intellectual life: experts, technocracy, the peer group process, procedural correctness, scientific accountability, and so on. (Plurallistic criticism will pull the blocks from under all this familiar rigmarole.) What looks even worse (from outside), main oppositional groups assume a similar set of assumptions. Present monopolies and elites are simply mistaken about the truth, which they have no monopoly upon and do not even hold. Nonetheless truth will out (e.g. with enough publicity or disguised propaganda, when the public wake up or become informed, or whatever). Then that opposition, in possession of truth and rationality (or its relevant variants, 11 Berlin pp. 162-4. 12 See DP, final chapter. A critique of both the Enlightenment project and its Anti-Enlightenment alternatives is offered in this work. �6 facts and consistency, etc.) will triumph. These oppositional groups have premissed their opposition upon similar monistic illusions (but nor is pluralistic truth hidden away in the background). 13 Criticism of the Project: trashing TRASH. As a sidelight, the Project was in principle. It implied that there was a set of methods by which any sought piece of knowledge could be obtained. But given the logical systematization the Project presumed (with its consistency requirements, etc.), there are no such methods; there are inevitable limitations to knowledge.^ The problems with the Project are not restricted to knowledge and information. The idea that all genuine questions are in principle answerable is similarly flawed. As there are unknowable truths, so there are unanswerable questions. As a result, the Project has to withdraw, to retract some of its sweeping claims—else it fragments, admitting different logical theories which skirt the limitations, in different ways. Much as with naive set theory, where consistencizing repairs yield many competing alternatives, none intellectually decisive, so it is elsewhere. Paradoxes and puzzles produce a plurality or "solutions". Likewise, and in any case, the Project fragments, or rather plurallizes, so it can be argued. But, most important for present purposes the Project fragmented, and was to fragment. The Project breaks up into a plurality—of projects, frameworks, ideologies, and so forth— because of of one sort or another. Fundamental among these are alternative systems of logic, alternative correct systems, and therewith of alternative frameworks of reason and rationality. As von Wright has contended, "there is not one logic which is But from such a plurality of logics derives a plurality of reasoning and rational procedures, and therewith of all theoretical domains deploying logical methods. From 13 Most of my own experience confirms the contention (defended at the beginning of JB) that truth, even in fairly degenerate forms, win not out. Certainly not on its own; but I grant that we should be working and agitating to force truth (plural) out. Even then truth may not emerge and be recognised in time, before people are hanged, or species or cultures lost. The traditional tag is itself infected with falsity. The erroneous assumption that truth (similarly reason) will win out on its own, without agitation or political activity is also a prime reason, or excuse, for much academic and scientific inactivity and complacency. An associated illusion in that f/7^y have grasped the truth or, if not, have a better grasp upon it (now singular) than any others. It is an illusion shared with—what enjoys significantly less respectable evidence—monistic religion. 14 Details are given in NL. 15 Havas, agreeing with von Wright's thesis (presented in his 'Logic unified ), p.149. �7 these flow, directly or by analogous arguments, alternatives elsewhere, indeed everywhere in sciences and arts.*6 Alternative is intended to take in a wide sweep of alternatives: alternative logics, alternative mathematical systems, alternative theories or theoretical systems more generally, alternative cultural arrangements, and shifting definitely down to a semantical level, alternative actual worlds, alternative realities, and so on. An obvious reaction—had all the alternatives now (beginning to be) appreciated been systematically assembled at once, in an appropriate show of alternative strength—should have been pluralization of the Enlightenment Project. Each viable system of alternatives would have its own project or set of projects. There would be enlightenmenty.^ But, for one thing, the alternatives did not appear historically all at once, but in dribs and drabs; for another, some have not yet been widely appreciated at all (e.g. alternative logics, alternative rules of evidence, alternative rational methods). So alternatives and diversity could be fought off or assimilated.is For yet another, some unwarranted reactions occurred, which both neglected and further information did little to justify These included for instance, outright rejection of the Project, and debilitating relativisation.^ Most philosophers, indeed most intellectuals of scientific disposition, are still caught up in the Enlightenment Project, in what should be a defunct Project. References M. Albert (ed.), I. Berlin, A. Gare, AWZAw?i 1(4), Oct-Dec 1992. , Hogarth Press, London, 1979. , Eco-Logical Press, Bungendore, 1994. K. Havas, "Differences in the unity", AnaZy^ 14(1986) 149-150. R. Routley, "Necessary limits to knowledge: unknowable truths"; referred to as NL. R. Routley, ExpZormg Jt/ngZ^ #7izZ RryonJ, Australian National University 1980; referred to as JB. R. Sylvan, PZ^raZZ/^w, Bungendore, 1994; referred to as DP. 16 Detailed arguments are assembled in DP. 17 It seems a similar plural development should have occurred with oriental religions, such as Buddhism, advocating enlightenment. But religions tend to fossilize. 18 Consider? for instance the search for uniformity and commonality which is often implausible, as at more than a superficial level, in ethics or aesthetics. 19 Rival forms have evolved and developed. Thus what was Anti-Enlightenment became Post­ modernism, including both Nihilism and Egalitarian Relativism (see Gare). [Also "middle way" needs further explanations ] � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Draft Papers Description An account of the resource Sylvan's literary executor encountered an archive in which “all his projects were current", since manuscripts were undated and unattributed. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document 9/5/95 IMPACT OF ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT There is a recent debate, arising out of older debates, concerning logic, rationality, truth, science and, more sweepingly, the Enlightenment Project. It is a debate where the concentrated intellectual superpower formed from those substantially committed to the Project is matched against dispersed anti- or counter-Enlightenment forces, and so confronted with protracted guerilla activity. Historically furthermore, the scattered and diverse counter-movement has taken various different forms at different times. In the main respects the recent debate has crystallised into one between definite realism and an egalitarian relativism (as revealed in a useful working example, the debate in Z Papery Oct-Dec 1992). Let's call these sides rea/^m and re/af/VLym for short, though the divisions are more complex than that (for one reason, because "realism" comprehends an idealist "anti-realism", and "relativism" includes "constructive" forms). The contrast is invariably presented (as in the debate in Z Papery) as between f/te ane correct theory, that ultimately delivered by Science, on the one side, and many stories, many points of view perhaps equally good, on the other.i But, presented thus, it is almost obvious that what is offered affords a/a/.ye contrast. For omitted are alternatives with more than one correct account (some of these accounts perhaps better than others), but with many other stories faulted. For instance, neglected is my own preferred /mJiPe way, which recognises many correct accounts, none absolute, and many defective stories.2 Such further plurallistic alternatives are not glimpsed for several reasons: one is a false underlying absolute (one) verytAy relative (many) dichotomy^; another is a false (also absolute) character accredited to received 1 See Albert's Editorial, p.2, and the clearly stated position of 'the three defendents', namely Albert, Chomsky and Ehrenreich. It is both curious and revealing that the debate should have taken f/?A polarized course, given the question addressed to 'the six critics' (of the Enlightenment Project). Namely, 'Do we need to reject/transcend/escape an old way of thinking variously called Western Rationality/Science/Logic if we are to attain a better world? (quoted p.17). Put differently, what is role of received "enlightenment" in a/! Amelioration Project? Because of these <%/erenf issues there is much (loose) arguing at cross-purposes in Z Papers 2 Such a way is elaborated in DP. 2 logic and scientific methodology. Thus a longer subtitle for the present exercise might well run: the concerning logic, rationality, science, truth and all that: the Enlightenment Project and its Enemies, a pluralistic resolution. Realists take their stand on the basis of received logic and scientific methodology, typically as if that were an indisputable given, in great intellectual shape. A couple of statements will confirm this: ... we do not have to transcend science or rationality as a prerequisite to developing worthy vision and strategy... logic and the roles of evidence are here to stay. Moreover, they're on our side.4 Even some small criticism of science is justified; for instance 'science is sometimes narrow, mechanical, colonizing or hypocritical'.$ What lie beyond such critical reach are rationality, reason and logic; '... to critique reason or logic as being at the root of sciences many ills is wrong' 'and has no role in making the world better'. Despite extensive left political activity, 'I have not once criticized rationality or logic, and anti-intellectualism has always been anathema to me'.6 Others appear fractionally more cautious about reason and logic (not Science!): ...in a discussion...there are certain familiar ground rules: those of rational inquiry, ... what seems to be under discussion here is whether we should abide by these ground rules at all (trying to improve them as we proceed?). If the answer is that we are to abide by them, then the discussion is over: we've implicitly accepted the legitimacy of rational inquiry. If they are to be abandoned, then we cannot proceed until we learn what replaces the commitment to consistency, responsibility to fact, and other out-dated notions.^ Before a final quoted sentence rounding off this passage notice the equations made: procedures in a discussion (ground rules) = methods of rational inquiry = commitment to consistency, responsibility to fact, etc. 3 Conspicuous in Albert's own efforts. Albert attempts to recast the multi-faceted debate in these elementary white and black terms: rationality and science 'real science' which is one and unified) versus anti-rationalism, which is utterly relativist. Anti-rationalism he can then jammer as abandoning truth as well as science, as giving away rational and intelligent (and effective) methods, and as accordingly self-defeating in arguing for ameliorating social change (see p.51). 4 Albert, Z Papery, p.51. 5 One sample from half a page of 'balancing criticism' in Albert, p.50. 6 Albert, p.56. 7 Like Neurath in his boat, a favourite image of the American intellectual establishment. 8 Chomsky, Z papery. 3 The last are variants upon (Albert's) methods of standard logic (consistency-based) and rules of evidence. Discussion or debate has accordingly been narrowed (in broad form): 1. by a rationality constraint 2. by explication of rationality through a standard system (by consistency, maximum expected utility, etc.). Pictorially: rational inquiry standard rational inquiry discussion/ inquiry Short of some instruction on this matter... new procedures or ideas to replace the old...we are reduced to primal screams.^ That is hardly so. Almost everyone is familiar with inquiries, debates, arguments and generally procedures that do not proceed rationally, by any means or standards, but which do not reduce to screams (though some no doubt do). Regrettably few, by contrast, are familiar with aZ^rnaf/ve systems of rationality and logic by which inquiry and so forth can proceed, quite rationally. These alternatives confound and upset realism and the Enlightenment Project.^ That impact of alternatives on the Enlightenment Project—an impact not recognised or acknowledged by realists—is a main topic to be pursued. But first the uniform, definite realist Project. The Project itself which persists. The Enlightenment Project can be drawn out of standard accounts of the Enlightenment and the world discerned under it. The Project involved proceeding in accord with Enlightenment practices and in bringing its vision to fruition. First, then, a revealing picture ot 9 Chomsky continuing Z Papery, p.52. 10 The useful term Project coalesces in the course of the debate. In the course of trying to shame and chastise left intellectuals and left counterparts for their neglect of human concerns, of emancipation, removal of oppresion and similar, Chomsky assigns a central place to the "project of the Enlightenment" in serving emancipation, in displacing oppressors, removing monopolies of the powerful, and supplying liberating information and technology. That expression which he has drawn from essays he is commenting upon, quickly contracts to "the Enlightenment project (same page, p.57). My own opinion is that Chomsky has grossly overestimated the positive role of the Enlightenment Project in achieving emancipation and social amelioration. Patently too, he similarly underrates environmental negativities and externalities of implementations of the Project. 4 the world discerned by the Enlightenment and the associated ideology (drawn from Berlin), and secondly the sort of accompanying Project which that yields. The world discerned was a rational scientific world conforming to 'materialism, utilitarianism, ethical naturalism and atheism': Whatever the differences that divided the French /z/zzZagop/z^g and their disciples in other countries...there existed nevertheless a wide ca/zg^zzgzzg: it rested on an acceptance of what was in effect, a secular version of the old natural law doctrine according to which the nature of things possessed a permanent unalterable structure, differences and changes in the world being subject to universal and immutable laws. These laws were discoverable in principle by the use of r^agozz and controlled observation, of which the methods of the natural gcz^zzc^g constituted the most successful application. The most powerful instrument in the acquisition of knowledge was held to be mathematics... f/ze /zaf/z fo ^nawZ^g^ wag f/zaf q/V/z^ na/araZ gcz^zzc^g; that is to say, all statements with claims to truth must be public, communicable, testable—capable of verification or falsification by methods open to and accepted by any rational investigator. From this it followed that aZZ ar/z^r %?^g q/aza/zarzZy w^re R? and in particular such foundations of faith as sacred texts, divine revelation and the dogmatic pronouncements of its authorised interpreters, tradition, prescription, immemorial wisdom, private intuition and all other forms of non-rational or transcendent sources of putative knowledge. This principle was held to apply to both the human and the non-human world: to abstract disciplines, such as logic or mathematics, to the applied sciences which established the laws of the behaviour of inanimate bodies, plants, animals and human beings, and to the normative disciplines which revealed the true nature of ultimate human goals, and the correct rules of conduct, public and private, social and political, moral and aesthetic. According to this doctrine, aZZ g^KZ/z/ig qz/^gaozzg were zzz qrznczqZe azzgweraZzZe.* rraf/z wag one, error multiple; the true answers must of necessity be universal and immutable, that is, true everywhere, at all times, for all men, and discoverable by the appropriate use of reason, by relevant experience, observation and the methods of experiment, logic, calculation. A logically connected structure of rules, laws, generalisations, susceptible of demonstration or, at least in practice, of a high degree of confirmation (and, where required, of application appropriate to differing circumstances) could, at least in principle, be constructed, and could replace the chaotic amalgam of ignorance, laziness, guesswork, superstition, prejudice, dogma, fantasy, and, above all, what Helvetius called 'interested error', which enabled the cunning and the strong to dominate and exploit the stupid, ignorant and weak, and had throughout human history been largely responsible for the vices, follies and miseries of mankind. Only knowledge, that is, the growth of the sciences, could rescue mankind from these largely self-induced evils. Some believed that certainty in empirical matters was attainable, others that no more than high probability could be achieved; some were pessimistic about progress towards virtue or happiness, others were more sanguine. But the majority of the q/zzZagaq/z^g were agreed that if irrational passions could be controlled, and ignorance, prejudice, fear and greed diminished, an end could be made to the worst confusions in 5 human thought and feelings, which led to blind fanaticism in thought and savage barbarism in practice. ** Though we should contest very many of those claims, it would be foolish to deny that there was that was enlightened, by comparison with what had gone before, in Enlightenment proposals. 12 In many respects, the proposals were socially and otherwise enlightened, though definitely not environmentally so. Proper affords a brief convenient way of alluding to the prime aims and objectives of the Enlightenment, which largely coincide with those of modern secular science broadly construed. Central among emphasized objectives were: pursuit of the truth; exact deployment of rational methods, including logical argumentation; reliance on science and especially rigorous empirical procedures. A suitable mnemonic would be TRASH, (short for truth and reason, and science and (atheistic) humanism). The Project also included these components: * as regards of rational and scientific practice and methods, and of other methods, such as those depending upon closed authority, private or organisational revelation, magic and so on. * bringing to^h/mon.* the intelligent inhabitants of the Earth (humans) in particular in their practice; corollaries are extensive, and include and programs (e.g. humans have to be in a position to use their intelligence, and not ill, disabled, enslaved, etc.); o&raMimg that accessible correct information. For all its apparent merits, the project had, and has, a large downside. For example, the Project underwrites monopolies and elites, namely those who held control of the correct methods, the right procedures. It brings in its train all those strait-jacketing features now so familiar in scientific and intellectual life: experts, technocracy, the peer group process, procedural correctness, scientific accountability, and so on. (Plurallistic criticism will pull the blocks from under all this familiar rigmarole.) What looks even worse (from outside), main oppositional groups assume a similar set of assumptions. Present monopolies and elites are simply mistaken about the truth, which they have no monopoly upon and do not even hold. Nonetheless truth will out (e.g. with enough publicity or disguised propaganda, when the public wake up or become informed, or whatever). Then that opposition, in possession of truth and rationality (or its relevant variants, 11 Berlin pp. 162-4. 12 See DP, final chapter. A critique of both the Enlightenment project and its Anti-Enlightenment alternatives is offered in this work. 6 facts and consistency, etc.) will triumph. These oppositional groups have premissed their opposition upon similar monistic illusions (but nor is pluralistic truth hidden away in the background). 13 Criticism of the Project: trashing TRASH. As a sidelight, the Project was in principle. It implied that there was a set of methods by which any sought piece of knowledge could be obtained. But given the logical systematization the Project presumed (with its consistency requirements, etc.), there are no such methods; there are inevitable limitations to knowledge.^ The problems with the Project are not restricted to knowledge and information. The idea that all genuine questions are in principle answerable is similarly flawed. As there are unknowable truths, so there are unanswerable questions. As a result, the Project has to withdraw, to retract some of its sweeping claims—else it fragments, admitting different logical theories which skirt the limitations, in different ways. Much as with naive set theory, where consistencizing repairs yield many competing alternatives, none intellectually decisive, so it is elsewhere. Paradoxes and puzzles produce a plurality or "solutions". Likewise, and in any case, the Project fragments, or rather plurallizes, so it can be argued. But, most important for present purposes the Project fragmented, and was to fragment. The Project breaks up into a plurality—of projects, frameworks, ideologies, and so forth— because of of one sort or another. Fundamental among these are alternative systems of logic, alternative correct systems, and therewith of alternative frameworks of reason and rationality. As von Wright has contended, "there is not one logic which is But from such a plurality of logics derives a plurality of reasoning and rational procedures, and therewith of all theoretical domains deploying logical methods. From 13 Most of my own experience confirms the contention (defended at the beginning of JB) that truth, even in fairly degenerate forms, win not out. Certainly not on its own; but I grant that we should be working and agitating to force truth (plural) out. Even then truth may not emerge and be recognised in time, before people are hanged, or species or cultures lost. The traditional tag is itself infected with falsity. The erroneous assumption that truth (similarly reason) will win out on its own, without agitation or political activity is also a prime reason, or excuse, for much academic and scientific inactivity and complacency. An associated illusion in that f/7^y have grasped the truth or, if not, have a better grasp upon it (now singular) than any others. It is an illusion shared with—what enjoys significantly less respectable evidence—monistic religion. 14 Details are given in NL. 15 Havas, agreeing with von Wright's thesis (presented in his 'Logic unified ), p.149. 7 these flow, directly or by analogous arguments, alternatives elsewhere, indeed everywhere in sciences and arts.*6 Alternative is intended to take in a wide sweep of alternatives: alternative logics, alternative mathematical systems, alternative theories or theoretical systems more generally, alternative cultural arrangements, and shifting definitely down to a semantical level, alternative actual worlds, alternative realities, and so on. An obvious reaction—had all the alternatives now (beginning to be) appreciated been systematically assembled at once, in an appropriate show of alternative strength—should have been pluralization of the Enlightenment Project. Each viable system of alternatives would have its own project or set of projects. There would be enlightenmenty.^ But, for one thing, the alternatives did not appear historically all at once, but in dribs and drabs; for another, some have not yet been widely appreciated at all (e.g. alternative logics, alternative rules of evidence, alternative rational methods). So alternatives and diversity could be fought off or assimilated.is For yet another, some unwarranted reactions occurred, which both neglected and further information did little to justify These included for instance, outright rejection of the Project, and debilitating relativisation.^ Most philosophers, indeed most intellectuals of scientific disposition, are still caught up in the Enlightenment Project, in what should be a defunct Project. References M. Albert (ed.), I. Berlin, A. Gare, AWZAw?i 1(4), Oct-Dec 1992. , Hogarth Press, London, 1979. , Eco-Logical Press, Bungendore, 1994. K. Havas, "Differences in the unity", AnaZy^ 14(1986) 149-150. R. Routley, "Necessary limits to knowledge: unknowable truths"; referred to as NL. R. Routley, ExpZormg Jt/ngZ^ #7izZ RryonJ, Australian National University 1980; referred to as JB. R. Sylvan, PZ^raZZ/^w, Bungendore, 1994; referred to as DP. 16 Detailed arguments are assembled in DP. 17 It seems a similar plural development should have occurred with oriental religions, such as Buddhism, advocating enlightenment. But religions tend to fossilize. 18 Consider? for instance the search for uniformity and commonality which is often implausible, as at more than a superficial level, in ethics or aesthetics. 19 Rival forms have evolved and developed. Thus what was Anti-Enlightenment became Post­ modernism, including both Nihilism and Egalitarian Relativism (see Gare). [Also "middle way" needs further explanations ]  Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Box 21, Item 705: Draft of Impact of alternative systems on Enlightenment Project Subject The topic of the resource Printout of draft, dated 9 May 1995. Description An account of the resource One of ten papers digitised from item 705. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/browse?search=Richard+Sylvan&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&amp;range=&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;user=&amp;tags=&amp;public=&amp;featured=&amp;exhibit=&amp;geolocation-mapped=&amp;geolocation-address=&amp;geolocation-latitude=&amp;geolocation-longitude=&amp;geolocation-radius=10&amp;submit_search=Search+for+items">Richard Sylvan</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <span class="MuiTypography-root-125 MuiTypography-body2-126">The University of Queensland's <a data-testid="rek-series" href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/records/search?page=1&amp;pageSize=20&amp;sortBy=score&amp;sortDirection=Desc&amp;searchQueryParams%5Brek_series%5D%5Bvalue%5D=Richard+Sylvan+Papers%2C+UQFL291&amp;searchMode=advanced">Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291</a></span>, Box 21, Item 705 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org">Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-05-09 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, <a href="https://najtaylor.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. N.A.J. Taylor</a>. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource [7] leaves. 19.4 MB. Type The nature or genre of the resource Manuscript Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:103a4b1">https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:103a4b1</a> Box 21: More Green Como House Como House > Shelves > Top > Pile 3