A DEEPER LOOK

Is Your Existence Evil?

How to make sense of being a human in the days of climate change

Photo by William Bossen on Unsplash

There are not many topics getting more press right now than the issue of climate change. We are getting bombarded daily with worrisome reports, speeches, and protests that extol us to act now or be doomed.

And so I, like many others, am in the predicament of caring about the environment but still having to negatively affect it on a daily basis. Sure, I can reduce my consumption, look for better alternatives for things I buy and ways to travel — but I am still left with many questions. For example:

Am I doing something wrong when I emit green house gases (GHGs) to heat my home or cook my food?

Even if I make a conscious effort to reduce excess consumption or travel, am I never supposed to go on vacation? And if I do, am I doing something wrong?

Should I feel guilty when I take my kids to fun places or do certain activities because of the inevitable carbon footprint associated with them?

Should I not have any hobbies of my own if they contribute to pollution or global warming?

At the end of the day, I want to know how to view my personal choices and perhaps how I should change — and maybe you do too.

What follows is both a diagnosis for how we wound up asking these sorts of questions, well as guidance for answering them.

Environmental causes and morality

The first thing to get clear on is whether simply affecting the environment is a bad or evil thing. It is not, and here’s why.

Let’s start by supposing the opposite. Suppose that we thought that it was immoral to affect the environment.

We would then say that not only would it be better for the environment if I recycle my cans and drive a Prius, but we’d also say it was the morally right thing to do on that basis. Following this reasoning, I should (morally) abstain from having kids, since that would be even better for the environment.

In fact, given that my mere existence will necessarily impact the environment in some way or another, it would be morally better if I had not been born at all — my very existence becomes wrong, immoral or evil (and yours too).

I hope that the reader sees this as an absurd conclusion. I say ‘hope’ because not everyone does. For example, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose motto is “May we live long and die out,” has a stated goal of “Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed” which “will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health.”¹

A world without humans would certainly be pretty. But then again, no one would be around to enjoy it. Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay

The Earth’s biosphere is certainly important (and often beautiful), but it would not be morally better to eliminate or ignore the well-being of the sentient creatures who are part of it in order to preserve it or return it to “good health.”

If I’m right, then we have to reject the claim that merely affecting the environment is morally wrong.

Where we went wrong

If affecting the environment isn’t necessarily bad, then how do we explain the existential guilt laying behind the questions I posed at the start? How did we ever get to this point of questioning whether we are somehow doing something wrong by using resources to meet our needs? It will be useful to understand where we went wrong, so we can better answer all of these questions and more.

I submit that guilt about affecting the environment has arisen from a psychological pattern which occurs when people begin to get too enthusiastic about a cause. As Enlightenment philosophers John Locke² and David Hume³ both point out, enthusiasm (in this negative sense) can sever ties to reason, which can then lead to a sanctification of an object or person. This in turn can lead to a twisting of morality.

To illustrate, consider when a person joins a group because they feel it has morally worthy goals. After investing much time/energy into supporting this group, they may begin to move beyond merely trying to help achieve the group’s mandates.

They may begin to pay more attention to who is attending group meetings, or who is not investing enough in the group, or maybe even defending the group from “outsiders.” After a while, they may consider it morally good to be part of the group itself, at which point the group has become more important than the group’s original purpose.

We’ve probably all encountered this phenomenon at one point in our lives. Something similar, I believe, has happened when it comes to issues of environmental preservation, especially when we look at the recent fervor surrounding climate change. This is not meant to downplay the urgency or importance of those issues, but to merely point out that we need to be very careful about the “why.”

Although many environmental causes started off with the “why” of saving particular species from suffering or extinction, it seems that with the building of excitement, mere preservation has now become the end in itself.

Along with this shift has come the transformation of the environment or the natural into something that is intrinsically good, with all the moral connotations that we might expect to follow. Stopping climate change, for example, has shifted from a means, to an end, and now to something good in a moral (ethical) sense.

Something went wrong somewhere… Image by author.

This shift is subtle, but it can be dangerous. As David Hume pointed out, such enthusiasm for a cause can enable people to justify almost any type of behavior:

… no morality can be forcible enough to bind the enthusiastic zealot. The sacredness of the cause sanctifies every measure which can be made use of to promote it.³

Once something or someone becomes sacred or morally good, we have a tendency to run roughshod over everything and everyone in order to glorify or defend it. Issues become black and white, and divisions begin to form.

John Locke warned us about the dangers of too much enthusiasm. Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In this case, we’ve even begun to question whether meeting our basic needs is evil on the basis that it affects the climate. This question would never arise without a corresponding elevation of the environment to a moral or sacred status above the very creatures that inhabit it.

The upshot

If I’m correct, then merely affecting the environment is not morally wrong, and we also need watch our enthusiasm in order to avoid sanctifying it. This puts us back to where I believe we all started: looking at consequences to sentient beings (including animals), especially suffering.

We thus need to ask, in every case, whether our action is likely to create suffering in its attempt to bring benefits. This of course means we need to get better at looking at the data. Our world is extremely complex; it is a mix of economic forces, politics, physics, geography, biology, psychology and so on. When you mash all these together, the results of our actions are anything but crystal clear.

For example, regardless of what the marketing materials might say, buying a new electric car may or may not actually be better for the environment than keeping your old pickup truck when you look at emissions across the entire lifecycle. And even if it is better for the environment in terms of emissions, it may still be worse in terms of the suffering it creates for people or animals living in specific regions.

Are electric cars better for the environment and its inhabitants? Likely. But it depends on where we get the materials and the power. Photo by Andrew Roberts on Unsplash

Ultimately, we need to determine if one option is better than another in terms of its suffering, which is the primary moral problem we are trying to solve. These are tough scientific questions, and they can only be answered by doing some digging, and taking a holistic view (no NIMBYism!) of the data. (I personally am a fan of Our World in Data as a source for unbiased information.)

Once we have sufficient information, there are many ways to assess our options when facing a decision. I find the following matrix to be helpful:

The Suffering Matrix? Image by author.

The costs and benefits relate to suffering, are relative rather than absolute, and are also agnostic with respect to who is carrying the burden or enjoying the benefits of reduced suffering. This will hopefully ensure that we aren’t privileging our own benefits and downplaying the costs to others.

Relatively harmless necessities are the no-brainers like heating your house and cooking your food (even breathing!). We do them because we have to, and we should not feel guilty about it. However, if there is any harm, no matter how small (e.g., small carbon footprint of heating my food) we should still assess the benefits of moving to better technology as it becomes available. Relatively harmless solutions can still cause problems when scaled up high enough.

Curbing relatively harmless luxuries won’t alleviate any or much suffering — these might be your simple hobbies like book collecting, gardening, etc. Again, don’t feel guilty about it, but be on the lookout for ways to improve where it is warranted.

Harmful luxuries would be the obvious category of activities to substantially curb, or cut out altogether (until we can find a way to make them harmless). I would personally throw gratuitous meat consumption into this bucket (see Stop Calling Yourself a Vegetarian), fashion products that place a heavy toll on animals, or hobbies that make direct and egregious impacts to other people or animals.

Harmful necessities are the tough category. These cannot be cut, but the suffering incurred should still be acknowledged and mitigated (e.g., the suffering of an animal that will keep one’s family from starving). They would be the prime target for replacement with less harmful alternatives as soon as possible.

With this matrix (or something like it), I hope you can answer each of the questions posed at the beginning, using appropriate information for your situation. Remember that different people may come up with different answers depending on the details specific to them.

For example, travelling can range from being a luxury to a near necessity depending on your personal circumstances, and it can likewise range from relatively harmless to quite harmful, depending on where you want to go and what you want to do.

Not the whole story

As you can see, making real-life decisions about personal consumption is messy, just like it should be. In this frame of mind where we look at actual consequences and empirical data, there is no room for black and white thinking, virtue signaling, NIMBYism, kneejerk reactions, or shaming. It is a mindset of gathering and sharing information, along with intelligent, respectful discourse.

Let’s not be horrible people in the name of doing good

This mindset also includes leaving existential guilt behind, and holds that humans are not a disease that needs to be eradicated. This is important, because we need to love ourselves and others in order to care about alleviating or avoiding suffering in the first place.

Although personal consumption decisions are important, they are certainly not the whole story when it comes to climate change. For example, we have a population explosion right now that will negate the benefits of us curbing our consumption (and then some). So while we do our best to be good global citizens, we need to push for our nations to also do their best at tackling these very large issues.

The same rules apply, however. We must not get carried away by our passion to the point of severing our opinions from reason, distracting us from the real goal, or leading us to hate humanity. The consequences of this can be dire. As 17th century French mathematician and Catholic theologian Blaise Pascal warned, “We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.”⁴

So let’s not do horrible things, or be horrible people, in the name of doing good. There is no enemy here but us. And if we can keep our eye on the prize, and continually work for better information and better solutions, we may just get out of this conundrum.

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Notes:

¹ The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. (2017, 10 27). The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Retrieved from The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: http://www.vhemt.org/

² Locke, J. (1959). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Vol. II). New York: Dover Publications, Inc., p. 434

³ Hume, D. (2008). Principal Writings on Religion including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. (J. C. Gaskin, Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 124–125

⁴ Pascal, B. (1995). Pensees. London: The Folio Society Ltd., p. 257