Consequentialism And Climate Change Essay

Consequences of Climate Change: Consequentialism and Environmental Ethics A somewhat commonly held concern is that consequentialism is an inadequate moral theory for tackling the issue of climate change. In this paper I will argue that consequentialism can successfully respond to climate change by, at times, evaluating the morality of character traits instead of actions. First, I will provide a couple major objections that consequentialism must overcome if it is to be successful in addressing the issue of climate change. Next, I will outline what a response to these objections would require. Then, I will show how evaluating character traits or virtues would allow consequentialism to respond to climate change without compromising its identity
Climate change is an issue on a massive scale, and one implication of this is that any individual’s actions, even the actions of a single company or even a single nation, will have a negligible impact on the environment as a whole. An example of this issue is as follows: Say I own a company and am deciding on whether or not I should reduce emissions, given that reducing emissions would require increasing costs. I will take it for granted that an increase in costs is a negative consequence and a decrease in emissions is a positive consequence. So what remains to be seen is if the “bad” from increasing costs outweighs the “good” from reducing pollution. However, if it is true that my company on its own can only have a miniscule impact on the environment, then it would seem that the action that would bring about the best consequences might be to continue to pollute (as the environmental damage caused by my polluting would also be miniscule), which is at best a dubious answer. The flaw with this answer is somewhat readily apparent, as while it may be true that no single company can affect the climate to any noticeable degree, if everyone followed this logic and nobody made any attempt to reduce pollution the environmental results could be disastrous. As such I believe it fair to ask that any method used by consequentialism to respond to climate change be able to resolve issues like
When it is problematic to evaluate the morality of a set of possible actions one can take, one could instead evaluate the morality of the character traits, or virtues, those actions would follow. The process for evaluating the morality of these virtues would be no different than for evaluating acts. The virtues to uphold would be the ones that, when upheld consistently, would bring about the best consequences. Now, one might object VC, claiming it is merely a rehashed version of virtue ethics. However, in virtue ethics, it is the virtues themselves that are the core of the moral philosophy, while with this idea, we would be accepting and rejecting virtues based on the consequences they would bring about, through a purely consequentialist thought process. This idea would also address most of the objections I have outlined above. It would address the calculation objection by allowing the consequentialist direct his attention away from the numerous consequences of numerous actions that could all be taken in a situation and instead focus on the general consequences brought about by upholding specific character traits or virtues. In this way, evaluating virtues instead of actions would reduce calculations. In addition, due to the general nature of virtues or character traits, their use could also overcome the second objection I raised. The morality of a