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In terms of supply and demand curves, the measure should move the demand curve for airfare to the left by one ticket at the relevant price. Depending on the steepness of the supply curve, that reduces the expected value of the quantity produced by perhaps between .5 and 1 tickets. Of course the actual effect will be either 0 tickets or 100 (which is an arbitrary number) since you can't fly half of an airplane. But it's the nature of the probabilities involved to cancel that out.
So I think Pogge should have said: "Well, you'll save a few tonnes of carbon, but we burn carbon all the time. Figure out a way to save those few tons elsewhere and go to her wedding, you twerp. She's your SISTER, for crying out loud."
If there are additonal emissions involved it is possible to escape the dilemma by buying carbon credits. That means the question boils down to whether the traveller is prepared to pay the price (ie fare plus cost of carbon credits).
In terms of the broader question of responsibility for CO2 emissions, having ceased to be a skeptic about the influence of CO2 emissions on climate change, I am finding it difficult to weasel my way out of accepting responsiblity for my own CO2 emissions.
I don't think the fact that my own actions in reducing my emissions will have an insignificant effect on the global problem gets me off the hook. I tried that argument in an analogous situation when I was a child and it didn't work. When I was throwing rubbish out of the car window I was told by a responsible adult that it was wrong to litter the roadside. In reply I made the correct observation: "But, my little bit of rubbish isn't going to make much difference". The response I was given was that if everyone thought that way the litter problem would be much worse. That still seems to me to be a powerful moral argument.
It is logically defensible but kind of antisocial to say "since my actions can't make a difference, I will ignore the broader picture." Game theory says this leads to various tragedies of the commons. It is perfectly appropriate to combat the tragedy of the commons by getting angry at people for acting selfishly. So, it is morally appropriate (or defensible, anyway) to get pissed at someone who uses the "you can't make a difference so do whatever you want" rule.
As an aside, it doesn't matter that a single individual's decision can't make the difference between the plane flying/not-flying. I agree with the rule of thumb that each individual should shoulder an equal share of the blame for a collective failure. If nobody gets any blame, nothing changes.
A decent rule of thumb might be: If we instituted a carbon tax, what would I pay to make this decision? OK, that's how much "carbon blame" I take on by doing this. (Think of moral opprobrium as a way of "taxing" someone for doing something bad).
So I wouldn't say "If you care AT ALL about not being a dick of a brother..." I'd rather say "If you care significantly about not being a dick of a brother..." But the final recommendation would be the same. Go to your freaking sister's wedding, you nincompoop!
[One shortcoming here is that taxing every individual for their share of the collective failure doesn't solve a coordination problem, game-theoretically. Think of a two-person prisoner's dilemma. But it's not a bad start. If anything, it suggests that moral opprobrium should be VERY HIGH on the first person to break a rule in a coordination game.]
Suppose I live in a place where wild looting has broken out. I have the opportunity to grab a few pricey items for myself with zero risk of legal consequence. Even if I don't participate in the looting, everything is going to be stolen anyway because the entire neighborhood is up for grabs. It's only a matter of who will steal rather than what will be stolen. On a practical level, it matters not a whit whether or not I grab a color TV and a few other attractive items. If I don’t, someone else will. Do I steal?
Now, my girlfriend would really like a diamond engagement ring for her upcoming birthday. She really has her heart set on a ring and it just so happens that there is a gorgeous antique diamond ring for the taking in that smashed window I'm standing beside. People are grabbing everything fast so I have to act if I’m to give her the ring. My girlfriend will be extremely disappointed if I don't give her a diamond engagement ring for her birthday, but I just can't afford to buy one for her. I could give it to her and she'll just assume I bought it somehow. The truth she doesn’t know is of no measurable consequence to her. So, do I have a morally acceptable backdrop for stealing the ring? It's only going to get stolen anyway. You might say "yes, take the ring," but I won't assume I know that to be your answer.
But, if I make this argument to myself every day, and wind up never exercising, that will have a severe effect on my expected health and happiness.
So, I don't think that I should make this argument (with a one day time horizon) to myself every day.
What I think I should do is to cultivate good habits that will have good aggregate effects (i.e. the aggregate benefits exceed the aggregate costs), but remain open to violating them on an exceptional basis when the opportunity cost is significant. Perhaps, I should make up for these exceptions by doing more exercise (or buying carbon offsets if you're into that sort of thing, etc.). That might make it easier to adhere to the good policies.
I don't buy the "What if everybody did what you're doing?" moral argument, though. My actions don't cause everybody to follow my lead; so, the question seems irrelevant.
If I should do (or not do) something, I think it should be because I have internalized a good estimate of the total costs and benefits of my marginal action towards things that I value, and choose based on which is higher.
And, that's what everybody should do (after they've chosen good things to value, of course!).
Sure he buys indulgencesXXX carbon offsets. That doesn't scale, and he must know that it doesn't.
-dk
So total consumption really doesn't matter in the equation. What matters is if the reduction is "moral" in the first place.
Now the idea of assuming that climate change already causes 150,000 deaths is where the problem lies. What they are really saying is that C02 emissions cause 150,000 deaths, but that's only half the equation. Considering the carrying capacity of the earth without the C02 emmissions is on the order of millions not billions you need to add back in the billions.
So the net lives saved by climate change is in the billions.
Of course, but skipping your sister's wedding while patting yourself on the back for "Saving the Earth" does more to improve one's self esteem and sense of moral superiority than does putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. Takes less effort too.
Also, I'm largely having fun here. The contractarian compliance problem, which this is an instance of, is one of my fortes. As you know, I think the point of moral conventions is precisely to overcome the myopia of rational self-interest. If carbon emissions really are harmful, and new consumption norms that limit emissions would really make people better off, then I'm all for them. But my point, RE: Henry, is that the same reasoning then applies to paying tithes to the government -- if you really happen to think a bigger government budget would improve society. If you think moral conventions are insufficient, you might want coercion as a backup, but it doesn't make sense to discourage the development of the moral norm.
The quote the brought me here, translated with one word substitutions makes something of a point, namely turning 'flying' into 'voting' and 'global warming' into 'fascism' with some creative license:
"THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION Will Wilkinson asks whether it's useful to refrain from voting in order to prevent fascism. Answer: no. Any one voter's demand will not impact the level of punitive instead of productive taxation levels, just as no citizen who recycles will actually cause the amount of food shortages to fall; the random mismatch in the supply and demand in your local market for carbon credits will far exceed the number of chickens you might have eaten for any time frame you choose.
So why vote? To create a cultural norm about democracy, or fascism, says Will. I have a different intuition, which is that if you want everyone to give up limousines, you are morally bound to do it too, even though limousines are all full of tacky 1970s decore and empty bars unless you pre-pay for that sort of thing. I am rethinking that -- but I have a sense that those sorts of illogical bourgeois committments to virtue are precisely what allow us to talk over the heads of normal Americans."
- Nik
P.S. Typewrite alert to computer users: The use of '--' is an old TYPEWRITER trick to make a DASH instead of two hyphens, but if you simply type alt-1050, oh, forget it, wow, I thought it was there, but I used to use the little Macintosh utility called 'keyboard' to copy and paste it: Option-Hyphen – vs. a normal dash -. See the difference?! I don't, but if I make a bunch of them, you'll see some difference –––----–––---––-----–– like Morse Code, but more subtle. But we all know, don't we, why we all use (except for the *one* guy who is going to protest this comment) QWERTY keyboards? Because *early* typewriters were too mechanically prone to jamming that they figured out how to SLOW down the typist as best as possible. How? By putting common characters in very inconvenient locations. Which is the most obvious character? I'd say 'p' since I have to reach way up with my pinky to get it, but also, the DELIBERATE confusion between 'c', 'v', and 'b'. So what letters so our eight (thumb is just the SPACE bar, only, even though HUMANS are defined by having a versatile "opposing thumb"?!) fingers placed upon? My right pinky is on the semicolon; what a travesty. My main finger, my Index Finger is on the lost letter 'j', as in JERK, JUGS or JESUS, which do not rhyme with COLONoscopy. And there's no dash on the keyboard. At all. You must enter code to get one!!!
—
Ha ha!!! Look!!! I'll add a few to my '–––----–––---––-----––':
————————————————–––----–––---––-----––————————————————–––––––––––
You can't see it at the very end, but if you look CLOSELY, the last 11 digits are almost half as long as the ones preceding it, an have no relation to the hyphens or "underscores" available to normal people.
In 1962, computers keyboards got something new, SINCE BEFORE THEN IT WAS ALL LIKE THIS. They got a shift key. Dashes_were-hyphens=were under_scores. But they left out the actual dash.
So...it you'd ever like to use a real dash instead of a hyphen, just go to Wikipedia and copy one for pasting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash
I think you're off on two claims here. First, the chicken case is pretty parallel: My private abstention has no perceptible effect on the aggregate demand for chicken, but the abstention of many people concerned about animal suffering might.
Second, I think you're reading Parfit sort of backwards here: He explicitly wants to argue that each "torturer" acts wrongly even if we think the notion of "imperceptible pain" is a sort of nonsense, and even stipulating that an individual torturer causes nobody any pain at all. Bottom of page 80, if you're following along at home.
Which would be no-one. You get to 4-ish assuming 1.5 tanks per leg (which would be conservative, cos it's probably closer to 2). Next time try reading before mouthing off.
The factual premise, that if you don't affect whether the plane flies then you don't affect emissions, is wrong. Your mass and the mass of your luggage force the plane to expend more fuel to accelerate, decelerate, and to maintain cruising speed on a given route.