May 30, 2024 • 48 mins
In this episode of "Talking Environment," host Gevorg Ghazaryan engages with Brian Berkey, Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, to explore the world of environmental ethics. Brian provides a deep dive into the ethical dilemmas that arise from our interactions with the environment.
The discussion covers a range of topics, including the ethical implications of deforestation, species extinction, and the use of gasoline-powered vehicles. Brian and Gevorg also delve into broader concepts such as corporate social responsibility, environmental justice, and climate change ethics. By discussing these issues through the lens of environmental ethics, they highlight the moral responsibilities we have toward future generations and the natural world.
Tune in to "Talking Environment" to gain insights into how ethical frameworks can guide our environmental policies and actions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Talking Environment. I'm your host, Gevorg
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Ghazaryan. Today we are joined by a distinguished guest, Brian Berkey, associate professor of
legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Brian's
research spans moral and political philosophy, including business ethics and environmental
ethics. He has delved into issues such as corporate obligations of justice, climate
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change ethics, and effective altruism. So welcome to the show, Brian.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome. So could you give us like an introduction
of what do you do? What has been your story behind these fields?
Yeah, so I got into kind of working in environmental ethics only after I finished my PhD in philosophy.
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So my first job after I finished my PhD was at the University of Melbourne. I was working
on a project that was funded by the Australian Research Council that was on egalitarianism
and climate justice. So I kind of started reading everything there was to read in kind
of climate ethics at the time. This was 2012. So it was still relatively early in the period
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in which philosophers were thinking seriously about climate change. Say, you know, roughly
like 2004, 2005 was when you started to see more work on climate change by philosophers.
There had been a few people who had been writing about it previously. So it was a good time
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to be kind of starting to think about these issues because there was kind of still a lot
to do philosophically in kind of thinking about this very important kind of real world
issue that we all need to take seriously. And so at the time, I was thinking about issues
that were related to my dissertation work, which was on kind of moral demandingness and
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individual obligations of justice. So I was thinking about questions like, well, how demanding
can our climate related obligations be, right? How much sacrifice might we be morally obligated
to make on behalf of future generations in order to mitigate the threat of climate change?
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And then after that, I worked on some issues having to do with the kind of nature and grounds
of our obligations to future generations. So this kind of takes up a philosophical problem
that has been pretty widely discussed for a while, but that arises in a significant
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way in thinking about climate ethics because our moral obligations to take steps to deal
with the climate threat seem to be primarily obligations directed at people who will exist,
you know, decades or hundreds of years or thousands of years into the future. And our
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actions now have more impact on what will happen, you know, fairly far down the road
as opposed to immediate impacts. And this means that our choices about what to do now
in response to the threat of climate change will impact not only what things are like
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for people, say hundreds of years in the future, but also which people come to exist, right?
Because our actions now kind of shape patterns of behavior in ways that can have effects
on when people procreate, who people procreate with, and that kind of extends into the future
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in a way that makes it the case that, you know, somebody living 200 years from now,
if we don't do much to mitigate the climate threat, won't correctly be able to say, looking
back, oh, if only those people 200 years from 200 years ago had done more about climate
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change, my life would be so much better, because that person who will exist 200 years from
now, if we fail to satisfy our obligations, in fact, wouldn't exist at all if we satisfy
our obligations now. And this raises a difficult ethical question, because it can seem like
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some of the most important reasons that we might initially think we have for taking steps
to mitigate climate change are actually kind of misconceived, right? There are no particular
individuals who will be better off 200 years from now if we take serious steps to mitigate
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climate change, you know, in comparison to if we don't, right? Instead, 200 years from
now, there will either be one group of people who have lives that, you know, are difficult
in certain ways because climate change has gotten really bad, or there will be an entirely
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different set of people in existence who will have lives that are better than the lives
would be in the first scenario. And so one thing that means is that it's not clear how
we can think that our obligations to deal with climate change are like owed to any particular
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individuals. Instead, it seems like, at least this is what I argue, we have to appeal to
some kind of impersonal value to some sort of principle that says something like, when
we are making choices that will determine which people will come into existence in the
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future, there are quite strong moral reasons to ensure that better off people come into
existence rather than worse off people, even if they're entirely different people. And
that's not a view that everyone in philosophy agrees with. There are a lot of people who
want to claim, want to argue that kind of all of our obligations can be understood as,
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in a certain sense, kind of owed to particular people. So that if we, for example, fail to
adequately respond to climate change, we will have wronged the people who come into existence,
even though those people might have lives that are well worth living and wouldn't have
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existed otherwise.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the introduction and explaining more of
the topics that you are going to talk about, Dejre. And yeah, it is definitely a difficult
topic discussing what are the obligations of all the people, what obligations do we
have for the future generations. And there's this popular saying that does it even matter
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for us if we do something, I mean, does it even matter to put, let's say, all this funding,
all this effort, all this time into this if we are not sure what is going to happen in
the future or if it is going to affect the future generations or so on? How would you
comment this saying or what would you say about it?
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Yeah. So this is what in philosophy is sometimes called the kind of problem of inefficacy or
inconsequentialism. So this is the idea that especially at the level of each of us as an
individual, it can seem like our actions won't affect anything in a morally significant way
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when it comes to an issue like climate change. So a way to think about it is something like
this. Imagine that I would like to go for a fun joy ride in an SUV this Sunday afternoon.
It's kind of an example from the philosopher, Walterson at Armstrong. But then I think,
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well, maybe I shouldn't do that because that will involve emitting greenhouse gases. And
this is the kind of thing that we need to reduce at the aggregate level in order to
deal with climate change in an appropriate way. So maybe I'm morally obligated not to
take this joy ride on Sunday afternoon. But then I think, well, look, what matters when
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it comes to climate change is that our actions collectively that involve emissions are going
to make the conditions of life hundreds of years from now quite a bit worse than they would be
if we collectively limited our emissions. But when I think about just my own emissions
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from this one joy ride, and I think, okay, well, what will life be like for people 200
years from now if I take the joy ride? And on the other hand, what will life be like for people
200 years from now if I don't take the joy ride? It seems pretty likely, virtually certain that
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the answer is things will be exactly the same for people 200 years from now whether I take
the joy ride or not. No one will be worse off. In fact, the climate 200 years from now will
probably be exactly the same. Or if there will be differences, it's hard to know. I mean, it might
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be equally likely that they're a little bit better or a little bit worse, depending on whether I
take the joy ride. Even though, of course, in the aggregate, the more people who take these kinds of
joy rides, the worse things will be 200 years from now. But if my own individual action won't make
a difference to what things are like for people in the future, then it's not clear what the moral
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reason could be for me not to do it. And that's counterintuitive because we do tend to think
intuitively that we have obligations to limit our emissions, to not engage in entirely frivolous
emitting activity. We tend to criticize people who go for pointless joy rides in high emitting
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vehicles. And in some sense, that reaction seems entirely appropriate because this is the kind of
thing that when a lot of people do it, it makes things worse with respect to climate change.
But at the level of individual decision making, it's not so obvious on what grounds we might
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conclude that there is an individual obligation not to take the joy ride. So I think that this is a
real challenge. So I mean, there are some people who think, well, look, we can get around this worry
by holding that these obligations have some kind of grounding other than, you know, grounding in
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concern for the effects of our actions on future people. But that seems wrong to me. It seems like
even though there are cases in which it's plausible to think that we have obligations that are not
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explained by effects on the welfare of other people, right? So I'm not just asserting that
every obligation that we have has to be understood in some kind of welfarist consequentialist way.
When it comes to climate change, it really does seem like the most important reason to
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care about the climate related effects of our actions have to do with the effects of our actions
on what life will be like for people in future. And so if we can't explain the idea of climate
change, and so if we can't explain the obligations that we intuitively think that we have by
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reference to something related to the impacts of our actions on the welfare of people in the future,
I think we're not likely to find a plausible basis for these obligations. So another way to go,
which I think a number of philosophers have endorsed, is to think that there really is
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negative expected value to even an individual joyride. So the idea here is roughly that
either there's some small chance, perhaps very small chance, that our individual action will
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be a big difference maker, right? It will be a kind of an action right at a morally important
threshold where some really bad stuff will happen if you take the joyride but wouldn't happen
otherwise. Now the odds that any particular individual action lies right at such a threshold
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are very low, but the idea is when you kind of multiply that low probability by the very high
stakes, you get a significant moral reason not to take the joyride. An alternative is to think,
well, we should assess the expected value of our actions by treating the expected value of
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all similar actions as a relevant fraction of the expected total effects of everyone
in the relevant group taking those actions. So if a billion of us taking joyrides would result in
25,000 expected deaths, then the expected effect of my taking the joyride is going to be
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whatever 25,000 over a billion. So a fraction of one expected death,
but a fraction of one expected death is enough of a reason for me to be obligated not to take the
joyride. So I'm not entirely convinced that these latter strategies work, but I'm inclined to think
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that something in the ballpark of that kind of approach has to work if we're going to be able to
succeed in justifying the view that as individuals we have obviously a certain amount of potential
as individuals we have obligations to refrain from these particular kinds of actions.
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Awesome. Yeah, that's a great example. I've never heard of it, but it's interesting to
listen. Also, I'm more than sure there are many opinions on this. I mean, and I think in my opinion,
we have had a lot of improvements in terms of fighting climate change, let's say in the last
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10 years or what have changed in our society, but we are still not at the point where we can
totally be, let's say, not to do anything, any harm to the climate change or the environment.
And for example, let's say driving to work or driving to other places where we have to do it,
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and there's not that much alternative. Of course, there are more now electrified vehicles, and so
it is becoming easier to, let's say, do less harm for the environment, but still we have not reached
that point where with our everyday actions we can just keep it at the low minimum. And about the
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improvement, I would say, I mean, there has been some improvement. Do you think it is going at a
good pace or the society, the people, individuals are doing their, let's say, the best to fight for
this or to do some improvement in this field? Yeah, it's a great question. And I can't claim
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any profound expertise on whether we should think that we're making sufficient progress or not. I
think climate scientists and others are in a better position than me to make these kinds of
assessments. Although my own take is, on the one hand, there are some reasons for a bit of optimism
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coming from the fact that younger people on the whole seem to care quite a bit about the climate
issue and to be pretty motivated to push our societies in a better direction on these issues.
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On the other hand, it's fairly late in the game at this point. I mean, we were much too slow
for much too long to take some of the steps that really needed to be taken to deal with the threat.
And so it's unclear whether the reasons for optimism that I think there are today are kind
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of sufficient grounds for thinking that we're likely to do enough to meet even, say, the
2-degree threshold, let alone the 1.5-degree threshold that a lot of experts think we really
should have been aiming at all along. You mentioned
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vehicle travel, the increase in electric vehicles. This is sort of a positive development to some
extent. But on the whole, a lot of this in a country like the United States has to do with
things like infrastructure decisions and the way that we set up our cities and the fact that so
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many people live in sprawling suburbs and have to drive fairly long distances to work, don't have
very good public transit in a lot of American cities, so people don't really commute
on public transit in the way that they do in some other countries. And this is kind of another
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dimension of the issue that I think hasn't gotten the attention that it should have in a place like
the U.S. We would be doing much better if we had better public transit and housing policies in
cities so that it was easier for people to live in cities. It would be good if we had some cultural
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changes that made it more appealing for people to live in cities or closer to cities.
As opposed to wanting to live out in the suburbs where they have to commute longer distances, which
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typically requires driving a lot. So this is something that I think would be good for our
society to kind of take on more directly.
Awesome, yeah. Really important things to mention. Going back to the environmental ethics,
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I mean, as we already kind of discussed about the obligations that individuals can have or feel like
they need to do something for the future generations, but I feel like there is not a lot of
set of obligations or there is no set of specific rules that we have to follow to achieve this in
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the future. Let's say if we do this, this, this, we are going to get rid of climate change in 200
years. So saying this, could you, like, let's say we are in our everyday life, we are in the
everyday life, could you give some, let's say, practical tips or practical examples of being,
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what being an environmental ethical person can look like in our everyday lives?
Yeah, so I mean, I think it's good for us as individuals to just think about all of the things
that we do that tend to contribute to the future generations. So I think it's important to think
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about how we contribute to negative environmental outcomes. And the range of things that ought to be
considered, I think, is quite a bit broader than what we usually discuss in, you know, kind of
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these issues. So, you know, of course, you know, some of the things that come up often in public
discussions are things like, well, how much do you drive? You know, do you drive a big SUV? How much
do you fly? You know, things along these lines. But there are a number of other dimensions of our
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lives that contribute to emissions that don't get nearly as much attention. One of them that gets
some attention in some circles is diet. So a vegan diet produces quite a bit less in the way of
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emissions than any other diet. And, you know, the more animal products one eats, the more emissions
their dietary choices are responsible for. There are a whole lot of reasons to adopt a vegan diet
from health to concerns about animal welfare and so on. But, you know, the environmental reasons
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are important, too. Another one that I think makes a lot of people kind of uncomfortable to discuss,
but that I think is really important, is having children. You know, especially for wealthier people
in developed countries, you know, bringing more people into the world who will likely live typical
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kind of Western affluent lifestyles plausibly makes one responsible, at least to some extent,
for their emissions. And so if we're thinking about choices that we make that are such that had we
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made different choices, there would be fewer greenhouse gas emissions, having a child and
having multiple children especially is top of the list of what has the most significant effect,
right? Much more than flying, much more than driving, much more than almost anything,
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pretty much anything else that an ordinary person does. And this yet kind of remains a largely kind
of taboo topic, even in a lot of environmental circles, right? And, you know, we talked a little
bit earlier about these sort of worries about inefficacy, right? You know, I think there's
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something deeply troubling about environmental concern, you know, coming out of certain quarters
that leads people to, you know, criticize people for, you know, using plastic straws or things like
this, but to not want to talk about our procreative decisions as having this important ethical
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dimension. You mentioned the plastic straws. So a lot of people talk about the plastic straws, like,
okay, we are using plastic straws, but there are some people out there using private jets and flying
out there. And, like, if I just use this plastic straw, it's not going to change much. I mean,
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if even I use millions of plastic straws, it is going to be nothing in front of some of the
flies that are unreasonable, maybe. So what would you say about that? How do you think it will be,
let's say, how do you think it makes people feel like using these small things will make, like,
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let's say, will cause to a greater action, like, will be good for the future, when at the same time,
there are some things going on that are way bigger and that have way bigger impact on the climate?
Yeah. So I think we need to talk about all of these things. So, you know, my interpretation of,
at least a big part of what's going on when people get frustrated by, you know, being criticized
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about using plastic straws and so on, is that they think that there's a certain kind of hypocrisy
coming from certain quarters, right? And this is what I was talking about a minute ago, right?
If our public discussion is kind of all about, you know, plastic straws and, you know,
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how efficient your kind of gasoline engine for your car is, right, like, is it a, you know,
is it a Honda Civic or is it a, you know, a big SUV, right? You know, if we talk about these things
and criticize people who, you know, don't behave ideally in these ways, but, you know, at the same
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time, we don't really talk that much about people's private jet flights or their procreation or their
diet or, you know, these other kinds of things that have at least an equally significant impact,
if not an even greater impact, you know, I think there's kind of a legitimate concern that
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many people who are kind of vocal in these debates are kind of cherry picking examples
of things to focus on that don't affect their lives in a particularly significant way, right? Like,
they're fine not using plastic straws, they're fine, you know, driving a hybrid or something like
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that. But, you know, we don't want to talk about the additional energy use that happens when people
live in, you know, 3000, 4000 square feet homes in the suburbs rather than small apartments in the
city and, you know, drive to work rather than taking the bus or having two or three children
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or not eating a vegan diet or, you know, all of these other kinds of things. So, we've got to
talk about all of it. And we can't be hypocritical and kind of make exceptions for the things that
we want to do and go around criticizing other people for the things that, you know, aren't that
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important to us. We've got to talk about it all. We've got to be frank with not just others, but
with ourselves about, you know, what needs to be done, what we all need to take seriously.
Yeah. Yeah, important, important announcements. So, moving forward, going more like into, we talked
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about how doing everyday things can, may seem that they're not like helping anyhow to the
creative cause. So, talking about that, I also wanted to go around like the corporate side of
the things as of, I mean, there are many things that the governments try to do, like, for example,
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the corporate social responsibility initiatives and so on. And a lot of companies now try to
build their current brand image, try to promote their sustainable production, sustainable
infrastructure. And yeah, but do you think this is also like corporations might also do this to
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maybe just to build the brand image to show the people that they're being green, but actually it
is not changing much. It is nothing in the big picture of what the organization does. What do
you think about that? And how do you think, how effective do you think the initiatives can be?
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For example, like, I don't know, people, some corporations donate some of the money to volunteer
organizations, donating to planting trees and so on, to cleanups, so many examples. Do you think
that they're actually helping or it's just a small step in the ocean? Well, I mean, so some of the
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things are certainly better than nothing, right? So, giving money to plant trees, that counts for
something. That's a good thing to do. I mean, I think it's probably also true that many companies
that do this sort of thing are doing it largely for marketing purposes. But that doesn't take away
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from the fact that it's still a good thing to do. I mean, it's better that they do it than not,
even if they're doing it for not the best of reasons. I do think on the whole, the corporate
response to the climate threat has been pretty inadequate. That's a general statement. I mean,
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you know, at the level of individual companies, some do much better than others and so on. But
another thing to say about this, and this relates to some of the things I was talking about a minute
ago, is that, you know, another thing that we need to think about much more seriously in the context
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of the climate threat is just our general consumption habits. So, you know, companies that
genuinely do, say, reduce the average emissions produced in kind of making their products or
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you know, getting them, you know, to the market through their supply chains and so on, won't
necessarily be doing a lot to mitigate climate change on net if one of the results of these
efforts is that people think, oh, well, now I can buy more of this stuff, right? Because what
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matters with respect to climate change is total emissions. We've got an emissions budget.
And so reducing the average emissions caused by the production of a certain kind of product
doesn't help if we're increasing our consumption of that product because we think, oh, each one
is kind of less environmentally damaging. So reducing consumption more generally,
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I think, really does have to be part of the way that we think about what needs to be done
in response to the climate threat. And, you know, this relates to, you know, are we going to live in,
you know, big houses in the suburbs full of stuff or are we going to live in smaller spaces that
cost less to heat and cool and that will lead us to accumulate less stuff that might be fairly
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emissions intensive to produce. And, you know, taking seriously the idea that we need to reduce
our consumption is not something that corporations are particularly inclined to, you know, want us
to be thinking about because their survival, their ability to produce revenue depends on the
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people continuing to consume at high levels. So, you know, I think it's unsurprising that the kind
of corporate response to the climate threat has not pushed us in that sort of direction. But I
think it's something that we all need to take much more seriously. And like with the vegan diet,
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I mean, there are a lot of overlapping reasons to think very differently about these kinds of
issues. I think it doesn't actually make people's lives go better to, you know, have big living
spaces to have to take care of and have a whole bunch of stuff to keep track of and deal with.
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You know, I try to live as simply as possible. I think it is beneficial to me. It doesn't strike
me as a kind of sacrifice to refrain from kind of accumulating a whole bunch of things that, you
know, generally don't actually contribute to making our lives better anyway. So a shift in
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attitude along these lines, you know, might not be so good for a lot of corporations that depend on
people, you know, constantly buying more and more stuff, but will help us to deal with the climate
threat and also, I would argue, make our own lives better.
Yeah, definitely. And talking about how people make buying decisions based on their
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corporations image and other things, other initiatives that the corporation does, do you
think it is also an ethical obligation to buy more from companies who actually care for the
environment? I mean, there are many applications out there now, for example, to check the barcode
to see how environmentally friendly they are. Do they actually care about the environment?
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How environmentally friendly they are? Do they actually care about it? What kind of initiatives
they do and so on? Do you think we actually should feel obligated to check ourselves to
be aware of which companies we buy from, which companies do we spend money on? And also, one more
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thing, usually more environmentally friendly products can be more expensive. And this is also
a matter of will people want to spend more money just to buy products that are environmentally
friendly or they shouldn't care about it or how should it look like? There were some service
around. I had a look in a couple of them, how people are inclined to, I mean, in more developed
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areas, people are more inclined to pay a little bit more to buy environmentally friendly products.
But let's say in third world countries where people are actually trying to make a living,
do you think it will matter in the big picture and really, let's say, encourage the corporations
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to be environmentally friendly by at the same time, increasing the prices a little bit?
Yeah, it's a hard issue. So, I mean, the argument for doing research and kind of figuring out which
companies are really producing things in more environmentally friendly ways is that this will
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put pressure on companies generally to adopt more environmentally friendly ways of producing
products and doing business more generally. If companies see that this is something that
consumers are demanding, this kind of reflects a consumer preference, then they'll kind of respond
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to those features of demand by seeking to satisfy those preferences. The level of kind of an
individual consumer, again, it's kind of not obvious that our individual choices really
make much of a difference, if any difference. So, I would say a couple of things. I mean, the first is,
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I think, much more important than buying stuff from firms that are more environmentally friendly
is just reducing our consumption. I mean, what we need to ask when we're thinking about purchasing
decisions is not so much, is the company that I want to buy this thing from sufficiently
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environmentally friendly, but something more like, do I actually need this thing at all?
Is this something that I really ought to be buying? And the second thing is, four products that we
really do need to buy, we all need some clothing and food and some other basic things, right?
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Live in the developed world, you've got to buy a computer every now and then, and there are these
products that are just sort of essential to kind of living a life in the world today.
It's still not obvious that the best use of our kind of time and energy is in kind of trying to
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figure out which companies are kind of most environmentally friendly. So, a friend and
colleague of mine named Ewan Kingston has a nice paper in which he argues that, at least in general,
it's better to avoid spending a lot of time trying to figure all of this out.
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Make your purchasing decisions just based on relatively simple factors like, okay, is this
a product that I need? Buy the cheapest version of the thing that they're going to be able to
buy, and then, you know, buy the product that you can find that kind of satisfies your needs.
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But then, donate a significant amount of the money that you save by taking this approach to
purchasing decisions to really effective organizations that do things like contribute to
charity or whatever else we might reasonably think are among the most important causes to
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donate to. And I think there's something right about that line of argument. So, it has some
implications that I think many people might find a little bit counterintuitive, but I think that
on reflection, it does seem like, given what we ought to care about ultimately,
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it's probably kind of a better approach overall, right? If you just adopt this relatively
straightforward approach to purchasing decisions, but then make a large donation
a couple of times a year to organizations that do a lot of good in these relevant areas,
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it seems like that's probably better than painstakingly trying to figure out which companies
are producing things in a little bit more environmentally friendly way.
Yeah, that is an interesting approach to this. And some of the companies may even try to
increase the price way more than they're going to spend to make it environmentally friendly. So,
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it will be better to know that your money is definitely going to the right hands.
Yeah.
So, that's an interesting approach. I never thought of it in that way. So, yeah,
I should be taking that. Awesome. It is great to hear the insights more about this or
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what we can do in our daily life or how to approach things, how to do the basics
from, I don't know, from using the plastic straws to have the kids. Yeah, so, we are approaching
to the end. If you have any final remarks to mention or anything that you want to address or
(44:29):
anything that you want to say more?
Yeah, I mean, I suppose I'll just kind of leave everyone with one more version of the same thought
that I was expressing a bit ago. Climate change is a big problem. It's multi-dimensional. It
(44:53):
is affected by a wide range of the choices that we make in the course of our lives.
And it's something that we all really need to take very seriously and kind of reflect on and
incorporate well-thought-out plans and reflections in our daily lives.
(45:22):
And one thing that means is that we have to be willing to think about kind of all of the ways
in which our actions are relevant to the climate threat that we face. So, we can't
proceed in the way that many people have by kind of cordoning off a few areas of our lives,
(45:49):
and treat those as the ones that we need to really take seriously and think about.
These little fads that come up among people who claim to be environmentally concerned,
like for a while everyone had their reusable coffee cup that they would take to the coffee shop,
(46:11):
and then after a while most people seem to have stopped doing that, and then it was the plastic
straws thing. And when we kind of approach things in this way, it really doesn't
get at the core of what we need to be doing and thinking about if we're going to succeed in
(46:31):
addressing the climate threat. And that's not to say that these things are entirely irrelevant,
or that we shouldn't be trying to do little bits here and there when we can, but if we do that,
but we're not willing to think about adopting a vegan diet or taking our procreative choices
more seriously in relation to climate change, or living in smaller spaces and taking public transit
(46:57):
and all of these kinds of things, then we're just going to kind of invite these kinds of responses
that we talked about earlier where we're basically just going to be kind of facing hostile reactions
that really often are grounded in, I think, some legitimate concerns about hypocrisy.
(47:21):
Awesome. Yeah, great final remarks, and thank you so much, Brian, for coming today and talking
about these really important issues that we have to do in our daily life. So thank you for
having me. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Awesome. And thank you to our listeners. I
mean, I hope you were taking notes. And this was a great way to learn more about what we can do in
(47:49):
our daily life or what obligations we can have to make sure we are preserving our planet for our
future generations. And yeah, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Talking Environment.
Stay informed, stay engaged together. Let's continue for more ethical and sustainable work.
Until next time, take care.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Talking Environment. I'm your host, Gevorg
(00:05):
Ghazaryan. Today we are joined by a distinguished guest, Brian Berkey, associate professor of
legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Brian's
research spans moral and political philosophy, including business ethics and environmental
ethics. He has delved into issues such as corporate obligations of justice, climate
(00:27):
change ethics, and effective altruism. So welcome to the show, Brian.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome. So could you give us like an introduction
of what do you do? What has been your story behind these fields?
Yeah, so I got into kind of working in environmental ethics only after I finished my PhD in philosophy.
(00:50):
So my first job after I finished my PhD was at the University of Melbourne. I was working
on a project that was funded by the Australian Research Council that was on egalitarianism
and climate justice. So I kind of started reading everything there was to read in kind
of climate ethics at the time. This was 2012. So it was still relatively early in the period
(01:17):
in which philosophers were thinking seriously about climate change. Say, you know, roughly
like 2004, 2005 was when you started to see more work on climate change by philosophers.
There had been a few people who had been writing about it previously. So it was a good time
(01:38):
to be kind of starting to think about these issues because there was kind of still a lot
to do philosophically in kind of thinking about this very important kind of real world
issue that we all need to take seriously. And so at the time, I was thinking about issues
that were related to my dissertation work, which was on kind of moral demandingness and
(02:04):
individual obligations of justice. So I was thinking about questions like, well, how demanding
can our climate related obligations be, right? How much sacrifice might we be morally obligated
to make on behalf of future generations in order to mitigate the threat of climate change?
(02:25):
And then after that, I worked on some issues having to do with the kind of nature and grounds
of our obligations to future generations. So this kind of takes up a philosophical problem
that has been pretty widely discussed for a while, but that arises in a significant
(02:47):
way in thinking about climate ethics because our moral obligations to take steps to deal
with the climate threat seem to be primarily obligations directed at people who will exist,
you know, decades or hundreds of years or thousands of years into the future. And our
(03:11):
actions now have more impact on what will happen, you know, fairly far down the road
as opposed to immediate impacts. And this means that our choices about what to do now
in response to the threat of climate change will impact not only what things are like
(03:37):
for people, say hundreds of years in the future, but also which people come to exist, right?
Because our actions now kind of shape patterns of behavior in ways that can have effects
on when people procreate, who people procreate with, and that kind of extends into the future
(04:03):
in a way that makes it the case that, you know, somebody living 200 years from now,
if we don't do much to mitigate the climate threat, won't correctly be able to say, looking
back, oh, if only those people 200 years from 200 years ago had done more about climate
(04:30):
change, my life would be so much better, because that person who will exist 200 years from
now, if we fail to satisfy our obligations, in fact, wouldn't exist at all if we satisfy
our obligations now. And this raises a difficult ethical question, because it can seem like
(04:57):
some of the most important reasons that we might initially think we have for taking steps
to mitigate climate change are actually kind of misconceived, right? There are no particular
individuals who will be better off 200 years from now if we take serious steps to mitigate
(05:17):
climate change, you know, in comparison to if we don't, right? Instead, 200 years from
now, there will either be one group of people who have lives that, you know, are difficult
in certain ways because climate change has gotten really bad, or there will be an entirely
(05:39):
different set of people in existence who will have lives that are better than the lives
would be in the first scenario. And so one thing that means is that it's not clear how
we can think that our obligations to deal with climate change are like owed to any particular
(06:03):
individuals. Instead, it seems like, at least this is what I argue, we have to appeal to
some kind of impersonal value to some sort of principle that says something like, when
we are making choices that will determine which people will come into existence in the
(06:23):
future, there are quite strong moral reasons to ensure that better off people come into
existence rather than worse off people, even if they're entirely different people. And
that's not a view that everyone in philosophy agrees with. There are a lot of people who
want to claim, want to argue that kind of all of our obligations can be understood as,
(06:51):
in a certain sense, kind of owed to particular people. So that if we, for example, fail to
adequately respond to climate change, we will have wronged the people who come into existence,
even though those people might have lives that are well worth living and wouldn't have
(07:13):
existed otherwise.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the introduction and explaining more of
the topics that you are going to talk about, Dejre. And yeah, it is definitely a difficult
topic discussing what are the obligations of all the people, what obligations do we
have for the future generations. And there's this popular saying that does it even matter
(07:41):
for us if we do something, I mean, does it even matter to put, let's say, all this funding,
all this effort, all this time into this if we are not sure what is going to happen in
the future or if it is going to affect the future generations or so on? How would you
comment this saying or what would you say about it?
(08:03):
Yeah. So this is what in philosophy is sometimes called the kind of problem of inefficacy or
inconsequentialism. So this is the idea that especially at the level of each of us as an
individual, it can seem like our actions won't affect anything in a morally significant way
(08:32):
when it comes to an issue like climate change. So a way to think about it is something like
this. Imagine that I would like to go for a fun joy ride in an SUV this Sunday afternoon.
It's kind of an example from the philosopher, Walterson at Armstrong. But then I think,
(08:55):
well, maybe I shouldn't do that because that will involve emitting greenhouse gases. And
this is the kind of thing that we need to reduce at the aggregate level in order to
deal with climate change in an appropriate way. So maybe I'm morally obligated not to
take this joy ride on Sunday afternoon. But then I think, well, look, what matters when
(09:21):
it comes to climate change is that our actions collectively that involve emissions are going
to make the conditions of life hundreds of years from now quite a bit worse than they would be
if we collectively limited our emissions. But when I think about just my own emissions
(09:49):
from this one joy ride, and I think, okay, well, what will life be like for people 200
years from now if I take the joy ride? And on the other hand, what will life be like for people
200 years from now if I don't take the joy ride? It seems pretty likely, virtually certain that
(10:09):
the answer is things will be exactly the same for people 200 years from now whether I take
the joy ride or not. No one will be worse off. In fact, the climate 200 years from now will
probably be exactly the same. Or if there will be differences, it's hard to know. I mean, it might
(10:32):
be equally likely that they're a little bit better or a little bit worse, depending on whether I
take the joy ride. Even though, of course, in the aggregate, the more people who take these kinds of
joy rides, the worse things will be 200 years from now. But if my own individual action won't make
a difference to what things are like for people in the future, then it's not clear what the moral
(10:56):
reason could be for me not to do it. And that's counterintuitive because we do tend to think
intuitively that we have obligations to limit our emissions, to not engage in entirely frivolous
emitting activity. We tend to criticize people who go for pointless joy rides in high emitting
(11:21):
vehicles. And in some sense, that reaction seems entirely appropriate because this is the kind of
thing that when a lot of people do it, it makes things worse with respect to climate change.
But at the level of individual decision making, it's not so obvious on what grounds we might
(11:42):
conclude that there is an individual obligation not to take the joy ride. So I think that this is a
real challenge. So I mean, there are some people who think, well, look, we can get around this worry
by holding that these obligations have some kind of grounding other than, you know, grounding in
(12:14):
concern for the effects of our actions on future people. But that seems wrong to me. It seems like
even though there are cases in which it's plausible to think that we have obligations that are not
(12:34):
explained by effects on the welfare of other people, right? So I'm not just asserting that
every obligation that we have has to be understood in some kind of welfarist consequentialist way.
When it comes to climate change, it really does seem like the most important reason to
(12:58):
care about the climate related effects of our actions have to do with the effects of our actions
on what life will be like for people in future. And so if we can't explain the idea of climate
change, and so if we can't explain the obligations that we intuitively think that we have by
(13:22):
reference to something related to the impacts of our actions on the welfare of people in the future,
I think we're not likely to find a plausible basis for these obligations. So another way to go,
which I think a number of philosophers have endorsed, is to think that there really is
(13:51):
negative expected value to even an individual joyride. So the idea here is roughly that
either there's some small chance, perhaps very small chance, that our individual action will
(14:14):
be a big difference maker, right? It will be a kind of an action right at a morally important
threshold where some really bad stuff will happen if you take the joyride but wouldn't happen
otherwise. Now the odds that any particular individual action lies right at such a threshold
(14:38):
are very low, but the idea is when you kind of multiply that low probability by the very high
stakes, you get a significant moral reason not to take the joyride. An alternative is to think,
well, we should assess the expected value of our actions by treating the expected value of
(15:09):
all similar actions as a relevant fraction of the expected total effects of everyone
in the relevant group taking those actions. So if a billion of us taking joyrides would result in
25,000 expected deaths, then the expected effect of my taking the joyride is going to be
(15:42):
whatever 25,000 over a billion. So a fraction of one expected death,
but a fraction of one expected death is enough of a reason for me to be obligated not to take the
joyride. So I'm not entirely convinced that these latter strategies work, but I'm inclined to think
(16:13):
that something in the ballpark of that kind of approach has to work if we're going to be able to
succeed in justifying the view that as individuals we have obviously a certain amount of potential
as individuals we have obligations to refrain from these particular kinds of actions.
(16:34):
Awesome. Yeah, that's a great example. I've never heard of it, but it's interesting to
listen. Also, I'm more than sure there are many opinions on this. I mean, and I think in my opinion,
we have had a lot of improvements in terms of fighting climate change, let's say in the last
(16:55):
10 years or what have changed in our society, but we are still not at the point where we can
totally be, let's say, not to do anything, any harm to the climate change or the environment.
And for example, let's say driving to work or driving to other places where we have to do it,
(17:20):
and there's not that much alternative. Of course, there are more now electrified vehicles, and so
it is becoming easier to, let's say, do less harm for the environment, but still we have not reached
that point where with our everyday actions we can just keep it at the low minimum. And about the
(17:47):
improvement, I would say, I mean, there has been some improvement. Do you think it is going at a
good pace or the society, the people, individuals are doing their, let's say, the best to fight for
this or to do some improvement in this field? Yeah, it's a great question. And I can't claim
(18:12):
any profound expertise on whether we should think that we're making sufficient progress or not. I
think climate scientists and others are in a better position than me to make these kinds of
assessments. Although my own take is, on the one hand, there are some reasons for a bit of optimism
(18:37):
coming from the fact that younger people on the whole seem to care quite a bit about the climate
issue and to be pretty motivated to push our societies in a better direction on these issues.
(18:59):
On the other hand, it's fairly late in the game at this point. I mean, we were much too slow
for much too long to take some of the steps that really needed to be taken to deal with the threat.
And so it's unclear whether the reasons for optimism that I think there are today are kind
(19:27):
of sufficient grounds for thinking that we're likely to do enough to meet even, say, the
2-degree threshold, let alone the 1.5-degree threshold that a lot of experts think we really
should have been aiming at all along. You mentioned
(19:51):
vehicle travel, the increase in electric vehicles. This is sort of a positive development to some
extent. But on the whole, a lot of this in a country like the United States has to do with
things like infrastructure decisions and the way that we set up our cities and the fact that so
(20:16):
many people live in sprawling suburbs and have to drive fairly long distances to work, don't have
very good public transit in a lot of American cities, so people don't really commute
on public transit in the way that they do in some other countries. And this is kind of another
(20:41):
dimension of the issue that I think hasn't gotten the attention that it should have in a place like
the U.S. We would be doing much better if we had better public transit and housing policies in
cities so that it was easier for people to live in cities. It would be good if we had some cultural
(21:05):
changes that made it more appealing for people to live in cities or closer to cities.
As opposed to wanting to live out in the suburbs where they have to commute longer distances, which
(21:26):
typically requires driving a lot. So this is something that I think would be good for our
society to kind of take on more directly.
Awesome, yeah. Really important things to mention. Going back to the environmental ethics,
(21:48):
I mean, as we already kind of discussed about the obligations that individuals can have or feel like
they need to do something for the future generations, but I feel like there is not a lot of
set of obligations or there is no set of specific rules that we have to follow to achieve this in
(22:11):
the future. Let's say if we do this, this, this, we are going to get rid of climate change in 200
years. So saying this, could you, like, let's say we are in our everyday life, we are in the
everyday life, could you give some, let's say, practical tips or practical examples of being,
(22:34):
what being an environmental ethical person can look like in our everyday lives?
Yeah, so I mean, I think it's good for us as individuals to just think about all of the things
that we do that tend to contribute to the future generations. So I think it's important to think
(22:55):
about how we contribute to negative environmental outcomes. And the range of things that ought to be
considered, I think, is quite a bit broader than what we usually discuss in, you know, kind of
(23:19):
these issues. So, you know, of course, you know, some of the things that come up often in public
discussions are things like, well, how much do you drive? You know, do you drive a big SUV? How much
do you fly? You know, things along these lines. But there are a number of other dimensions of our
(23:45):
lives that contribute to emissions that don't get nearly as much attention. One of them that gets
some attention in some circles is diet. So a vegan diet produces quite a bit less in the way of
(24:12):
emissions than any other diet. And, you know, the more animal products one eats, the more emissions
their dietary choices are responsible for. There are a whole lot of reasons to adopt a vegan diet
from health to concerns about animal welfare and so on. But, you know, the environmental reasons
(24:37):
are important, too. Another one that I think makes a lot of people kind of uncomfortable to discuss,
but that I think is really important, is having children. You know, especially for wealthier people
in developed countries, you know, bringing more people into the world who will likely live typical
(25:02):
kind of Western affluent lifestyles plausibly makes one responsible, at least to some extent,
for their emissions. And so if we're thinking about choices that we make that are such that had we
(25:23):
made different choices, there would be fewer greenhouse gas emissions, having a child and
having multiple children especially is top of the list of what has the most significant effect,
right? Much more than flying, much more than driving, much more than almost anything,
(25:43):
pretty much anything else that an ordinary person does. And this yet kind of remains a largely kind
of taboo topic, even in a lot of environmental circles, right? And, you know, we talked a little
bit earlier about these sort of worries about inefficacy, right? You know, I think there's
(26:07):
something deeply troubling about environmental concern, you know, coming out of certain quarters
that leads people to, you know, criticize people for, you know, using plastic straws or things like
this, but to not want to talk about our procreative decisions as having this important ethical
(26:32):
dimension. You mentioned the plastic straws. So a lot of people talk about the plastic straws, like,
okay, we are using plastic straws, but there are some people out there using private jets and flying
out there. And, like, if I just use this plastic straw, it's not going to change much. I mean,
(26:53):
if even I use millions of plastic straws, it is going to be nothing in front of some of the
flies that are unreasonable, maybe. So what would you say about that? How do you think it will be,
let's say, how do you think it makes people feel like using these small things will make, like,
(27:17):
let's say, will cause to a greater action, like, will be good for the future, when at the same time,
there are some things going on that are way bigger and that have way bigger impact on the climate?
Yeah. So I think we need to talk about all of these things. So, you know, my interpretation of,
at least a big part of what's going on when people get frustrated by, you know, being criticized
(27:44):
about using plastic straws and so on, is that they think that there's a certain kind of hypocrisy
coming from certain quarters, right? And this is what I was talking about a minute ago, right?
If our public discussion is kind of all about, you know, plastic straws and, you know,
(28:08):
how efficient your kind of gasoline engine for your car is, right, like, is it a, you know,
is it a Honda Civic or is it a, you know, a big SUV, right? You know, if we talk about these things
and criticize people who, you know, don't behave ideally in these ways, but, you know, at the same
(28:30):
time, we don't really talk that much about people's private jet flights or their procreation or their
diet or, you know, these other kinds of things that have at least an equally significant impact,
if not an even greater impact, you know, I think there's kind of a legitimate concern that
(28:56):
many people who are kind of vocal in these debates are kind of cherry picking examples
of things to focus on that don't affect their lives in a particularly significant way, right? Like,
they're fine not using plastic straws, they're fine, you know, driving a hybrid or something like
(29:23):
that. But, you know, we don't want to talk about the additional energy use that happens when people
live in, you know, 3000, 4000 square feet homes in the suburbs rather than small apartments in the
city and, you know, drive to work rather than taking the bus or having two or three children
(29:45):
or not eating a vegan diet or, you know, all of these other kinds of things. So, we've got to
talk about all of it. And we can't be hypocritical and kind of make exceptions for the things that
we want to do and go around criticizing other people for the things that, you know, aren't that
(30:06):
important to us. We've got to talk about it all. We've got to be frank with not just others, but
with ourselves about, you know, what needs to be done, what we all need to take seriously.
Yeah. Yeah, important, important announcements. So, moving forward, going more like into, we talked
(30:32):
about how doing everyday things can, may seem that they're not like helping anyhow to the
creative cause. So, talking about that, I also wanted to go around like the corporate side of
the things as of, I mean, there are many things that the governments try to do, like, for example,
(30:57):
the corporate social responsibility initiatives and so on. And a lot of companies now try to
build their current brand image, try to promote their sustainable production, sustainable
infrastructure. And yeah, but do you think this is also like corporations might also do this to
(31:22):
maybe just to build the brand image to show the people that they're being green, but actually it
is not changing much. It is nothing in the big picture of what the organization does. What do
you think about that? And how do you think, how effective do you think the initiatives can be?
(31:46):
For example, like, I don't know, people, some corporations donate some of the money to volunteer
organizations, donating to planting trees and so on, to cleanups, so many examples. Do you think
that they're actually helping or it's just a small step in the ocean? Well, I mean, so some of the
(32:09):
things are certainly better than nothing, right? So, giving money to plant trees, that counts for
something. That's a good thing to do. I mean, I think it's probably also true that many companies
that do this sort of thing are doing it largely for marketing purposes. But that doesn't take away
(32:30):
from the fact that it's still a good thing to do. I mean, it's better that they do it than not,
even if they're doing it for not the best of reasons. I do think on the whole, the corporate
response to the climate threat has been pretty inadequate. That's a general statement. I mean,
(32:54):
you know, at the level of individual companies, some do much better than others and so on. But
another thing to say about this, and this relates to some of the things I was talking about a minute
ago, is that, you know, another thing that we need to think about much more seriously in the context
(33:16):
of the climate threat is just our general consumption habits. So, you know, companies that
genuinely do, say, reduce the average emissions produced in kind of making their products or
(33:44):
you know, getting them, you know, to the market through their supply chains and so on, won't
necessarily be doing a lot to mitigate climate change on net if one of the results of these
efforts is that people think, oh, well, now I can buy more of this stuff, right? Because what
(34:10):
matters with respect to climate change is total emissions. We've got an emissions budget.
And so reducing the average emissions caused by the production of a certain kind of product
doesn't help if we're increasing our consumption of that product because we think, oh, each one
is kind of less environmentally damaging. So reducing consumption more generally,
(34:37):
I think, really does have to be part of the way that we think about what needs to be done
in response to the climate threat. And, you know, this relates to, you know, are we going to live in,
you know, big houses in the suburbs full of stuff or are we going to live in smaller spaces that
cost less to heat and cool and that will lead us to accumulate less stuff that might be fairly
(35:01):
emissions intensive to produce. And, you know, taking seriously the idea that we need to reduce
our consumption is not something that corporations are particularly inclined to, you know, want us
to be thinking about because their survival, their ability to produce revenue depends on the
(35:30):
people continuing to consume at high levels. So, you know, I think it's unsurprising that the kind
of corporate response to the climate threat has not pushed us in that sort of direction. But I
think it's something that we all need to take much more seriously. And like with the vegan diet,
(35:53):
I mean, there are a lot of overlapping reasons to think very differently about these kinds of
issues. I think it doesn't actually make people's lives go better to, you know, have big living
spaces to have to take care of and have a whole bunch of stuff to keep track of and deal with.
(36:16):
You know, I try to live as simply as possible. I think it is beneficial to me. It doesn't strike
me as a kind of sacrifice to refrain from kind of accumulating a whole bunch of things that, you
know, generally don't actually contribute to making our lives better anyway. So a shift in
(36:42):
attitude along these lines, you know, might not be so good for a lot of corporations that depend on
people, you know, constantly buying more and more stuff, but will help us to deal with the climate
threat and also, I would argue, make our own lives better.
Yeah, definitely. And talking about how people make buying decisions based on their
(37:08):
corporations image and other things, other initiatives that the corporation does, do you
think it is also an ethical obligation to buy more from companies who actually care for the
environment? I mean, there are many applications out there now, for example, to check the barcode
to see how environmentally friendly they are. Do they actually care about the environment?
(37:34):
How environmentally friendly they are? Do they actually care about it? What kind of initiatives
they do and so on? Do you think we actually should feel obligated to check ourselves to
be aware of which companies we buy from, which companies do we spend money on? And also, one more
(37:58):
thing, usually more environmentally friendly products can be more expensive. And this is also
a matter of will people want to spend more money just to buy products that are environmentally
friendly or they shouldn't care about it or how should it look like? There were some service
around. I had a look in a couple of them, how people are inclined to, I mean, in more developed
(38:25):
areas, people are more inclined to pay a little bit more to buy environmentally friendly products.
But let's say in third world countries where people are actually trying to make a living,
do you think it will matter in the big picture and really, let's say, encourage the corporations
(38:47):
to be environmentally friendly by at the same time, increasing the prices a little bit?
Yeah, it's a hard issue. So, I mean, the argument for doing research and kind of figuring out which
companies are really producing things in more environmentally friendly ways is that this will
(39:12):
put pressure on companies generally to adopt more environmentally friendly ways of producing
products and doing business more generally. If companies see that this is something that
consumers are demanding, this kind of reflects a consumer preference, then they'll kind of respond
(39:34):
to those features of demand by seeking to satisfy those preferences. The level of kind of an
individual consumer, again, it's kind of not obvious that our individual choices really
make much of a difference, if any difference. So, I would say a couple of things. I mean, the first is,
(40:00):
I think, much more important than buying stuff from firms that are more environmentally friendly
is just reducing our consumption. I mean, what we need to ask when we're thinking about purchasing
decisions is not so much, is the company that I want to buy this thing from sufficiently
(40:24):
environmentally friendly, but something more like, do I actually need this thing at all?
Is this something that I really ought to be buying? And the second thing is, four products that we
really do need to buy, we all need some clothing and food and some other basic things, right?
(40:50):
Live in the developed world, you've got to buy a computer every now and then, and there are these
products that are just sort of essential to kind of living a life in the world today.
It's still not obvious that the best use of our kind of time and energy is in kind of trying to
(41:12):
figure out which companies are kind of most environmentally friendly. So, a friend and
colleague of mine named Ewan Kingston has a nice paper in which he argues that, at least in general,
it's better to avoid spending a lot of time trying to figure all of this out.
(41:39):
Make your purchasing decisions just based on relatively simple factors like, okay, is this
a product that I need? Buy the cheapest version of the thing that they're going to be able to
buy, and then, you know, buy the product that you can find that kind of satisfies your needs.
(42:05):
But then, donate a significant amount of the money that you save by taking this approach to
purchasing decisions to really effective organizations that do things like contribute to
charity or whatever else we might reasonably think are among the most important causes to
(42:29):
donate to. And I think there's something right about that line of argument. So, it has some
implications that I think many people might find a little bit counterintuitive, but I think that
on reflection, it does seem like, given what we ought to care about ultimately,
(42:53):
it's probably kind of a better approach overall, right? If you just adopt this relatively
straightforward approach to purchasing decisions, but then make a large donation
a couple of times a year to organizations that do a lot of good in these relevant areas,
(43:18):
it seems like that's probably better than painstakingly trying to figure out which companies
are producing things in a little bit more environmentally friendly way.
Yeah, that is an interesting approach to this. And some of the companies may even try to
increase the price way more than they're going to spend to make it environmentally friendly. So,
(43:38):
it will be better to know that your money is definitely going to the right hands.
Yeah.
So, that's an interesting approach. I never thought of it in that way. So, yeah,
I should be taking that. Awesome. It is great to hear the insights more about this or
(44:04):
what we can do in our daily life or how to approach things, how to do the basics
from, I don't know, from using the plastic straws to have the kids. Yeah, so, we are approaching
to the end. If you have any final remarks to mention or anything that you want to address or
(44:29):
anything that you want to say more?
Yeah, I mean, I suppose I'll just kind of leave everyone with one more version of the same thought
that I was expressing a bit ago. Climate change is a big problem. It's multi-dimensional. It
(44:53):
is affected by a wide range of the choices that we make in the course of our lives.
And it's something that we all really need to take very seriously and kind of reflect on and
incorporate well-thought-out plans and reflections in our daily lives.
(45:22):
And one thing that means is that we have to be willing to think about kind of all of the ways
in which our actions are relevant to the climate threat that we face. So, we can't
proceed in the way that many people have by kind of cordoning off a few areas of our lives,
(45:49):
and treat those as the ones that we need to really take seriously and think about.
These little fads that come up among people who claim to be environmentally concerned,
like for a while everyone had their reusable coffee cup that they would take to the coffee shop,
(46:11):
and then after a while most people seem to have stopped doing that, and then it was the plastic
straws thing. And when we kind of approach things in this way, it really doesn't
get at the core of what we need to be doing and thinking about if we're going to succeed in
(46:31):
addressing the climate threat. And that's not to say that these things are entirely irrelevant,
or that we shouldn't be trying to do little bits here and there when we can, but if we do that,
but we're not willing to think about adopting a vegan diet or taking our procreative choices
more seriously in relation to climate change, or living in smaller spaces and taking public transit
(46:57):
and all of these kinds of things, then we're just going to kind of invite these kinds of responses
that we talked about earlier where we're basically just going to be kind of facing hostile reactions
that really often are grounded in, I think, some legitimate concerns about hypocrisy.
(47:21):
Awesome. Yeah, great final remarks, and thank you so much, Brian, for coming today and talking
about these really important issues that we have to do in our daily life. So thank you for
having me. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Awesome. And thank you to our listeners. I
mean, I hope you were taking notes. And this was a great way to learn more about what we can do in
(47:49):
our daily life or what obligations we can have to make sure we are preserving our planet for our
future generations. And yeah, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Talking Environment.
Stay informed, stay engaged together. Let's continue for more ethical and sustainable work.
Until next time, take care.
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