LESSON 14:
ETHICS OF CONSERVING DEPLETABLE RESOURCES
Today we will discuss the ethics of conserving depletable
resources.
Points to be covered in this lesson:
• Conservation of resources
• Economic growth vs conservation
What do you mean by the word Conservation?
Conservation refers to the saving or rationing of resources for
future use.
A basic difference between pollution and resource depletion
Pollution
• Most form of pollution affects present generations (with the
notable exception of nuclear waste)
• Polluted resources are for the most part renewable
• Air and water can be renewed by ceasing to pollute
them
• And allowing them time to recover
Resource Depletion
• Resource depletion affects future generations
• Concerned with finite nonrenewable resources
• Since they cannot be renewed
• What will be around for future generations is just
what’s left over from the present
Resource depletion forces two main kinds of questions on us:
1. Why ought we to conserve resources for future generations,
and
2. How much should we conserve?
Rights of Future Generations
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• It might appear that we have an obligation to conserve
resources for future generations because they have an equal
right to the limited resources of this planet.
• Future generations have an equal right to the planet’s
limited resources
• By depleting these resources we are depriving them of
what is rightfully theirs
• So we ought to do our utmost to practice conservation
• To minimize depletion
• To avoid violating the rights of future generations
However, some of the writers claimed that it is a mistake to
think that future generations have rights and there are three
main reasons for that:
1. Future generation do not exist right now and may never
exist. Since there is a possibility that future generation may
never exist, they cannot “possess” rights.
2. If future generations did have rights, then we might be led
to the absurd conclusion that we must sacrifice our entire
civilization for their sake.
3. We can only say that someone has a certain right only if we
know that he or she has a certain interest, which that right
protects. The purpose of a right, after all, is to protect the
interests of the right-holder, but we are virtually ignorant of
what interests future generation will have.
Justice to Future Generations
• John Rawls that while it is unjust to impose
disproportionately heavy burdens on present generations for
the sake of future generations, it is also unjust for present
generations to leave nothing for future generations.
• Two unjust extremes
• To impose disproportionately heavy conservation
burdens on the present generation (unfair to us)
• To leave virtually nothing for future generations
(unfair to them)
Justice requires that we hand over to the next generation a
situation no worse than the one we received from our
ancestors.
• This point is seconded by considerations of care
• We have a fairly direct relationship of care and concern
towards the immediately following generation, and, less
and less towards more and more distant future
generations.
• Ethics of acre imply that we should attempt to see matters
from the perspective of the immediately succeeding
generations which suggests that we should “at least leave
the succeeding generation a world that is not worse than
the one we received”
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• Utilitarian Analysis also favors this theory:
Each generation has a duty to maximize the future beneficial
consequences of its actions and to minimize their future
injurious consequences for succeeding generations, as well as
themselves. However, utilitarians have claimed, these future
consequences should be “discounted” in proportion to their
uncertainty and to their distance in the future.
Unfortunately, we cannot rely on market mechanisms to
ensure that scarce resources are conserved for future
generations. The market registers only the effective demands
of present participants and the actual supplies presently being
made available.
William Shepherd and Clair Wilcox explained six reasons for
the heavy discounting or “live for today” character of markets
Multiple access: If a resource can be used by several different
extractors, then the shared access will inevitably lead the resource to
be depleted too fast
• For example: several people with straws in the same
milkshake, it will be in the private interest of each to suck
faster to get the most for themselves
Time preferences and myopia: Firms generally have short
time horizons
• Under the stresses of competition
• Apt to give insufficient weight to the demands of future
generations
Inadequate forecasting: Present users may simply fail to
foresee future
• Consequences for example: DDT spraying in the 50s no one
foresaw that it would build up in the environment with
harmful effects
Special influences:
• Short run tax breaks and other incentives
• Encourage overly rapid use of resources
External effects:
• Resource depletion like pollution, an external cost, not borne
directly by the firm .So it’s in the economic self interest of the
firm to ignore this cost
Distribution: private market decisions are based on existing
patterns of wealth and income distribution
• Resource users, in effect, vote with their dollars about what to
produce in what amounts so the richer the individual the
more say they have in what the market produces
• Future generations — having as yet no wealth or income —
have as yet no “vote”
The only means of conserving for the future, then, appears to be
voluntary policies of conservation. Rawl’s view implies that while
we should not sacrifice the cultural advances we have made, we
should adopt voluntary or legal measures to conserve those
resources and environmental benefits that we can reasonably
assume our immediate posterity will need if they are to live lives
with a variety of available choices comparable, at least, to ours.
This means that we should preserve wild life and
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endangered species; that we should take steps to ensure that the
rate of consumption of fossil fuels and of minerals does not
continue to rise; that we should cut down our consumption and
production of those goods that depend on nonrenewable
resources; that we should recycle nonrenewable resources; that
we should search for substitutes for materials that we are too
rapidly depleting.
Economic Growth?
However, to many observers conservation measures fall far short
of what is needed. Several writers have argued that if we are to
preserve enough scarce resources so that future genera- tions can
maintain their quality of life at a satisfactory level, we shall have to
change our economies substantially, particu-larly by scaling down
our pursuit of economic growth Others argue
that economic systems will have to abandon their goal of steadily
increasing pro-duction, and put in its place the goal of
decreasing production until it has been scaled down to “a steady
state”- that is, a point at which “the total popula-tion and the
total stock of physical wealth are maintained constant at some
desired levels by a ‘minimal’ rate of maintenance throughout
(that is, by birth and- death rates that are equal at the lowest
feasible level, and by physical pro-duction and consumption
rates that are equal at the lowest feasible level).”The conclusion
that economic growth must be abandoned if society is to be
able to deal with the problems of diminishing resources has
been chal-lenged. It is at least arguable that adherence to
continual economic ‘growth promises to degrade the quality of
life of future generations.
The arguments for this claim are simple, stark, and highly
controversial. If the world’s economies continue to pursue the
goal of economic growth the demand for depletable resources
will continue to rise. But since world resources are finite, at some
point supplies will simply run out. We can expect a collapse of
the major economic institutions (that is, of manufacturing and
financial institutions, communication networks, the service
industries) which in turn will bring down the political and social
institutions (that is, centralized govern- ments, education and
cultural programs, scientific and technological development,
health care). Living standards will then decline precipitously in
the wake of widespread star-vation and political dislocations.
Various scenarios for this sequence of events have been
constructed, all of them more or less specula- tive and necessarily
based on uncertain assumptions.
• Doomsday Scenario
• If the present situation continues
• Explosive population growth will happen because of
• Declining death rates
• Relatively stable birth rates
• World’s economies continue to expand
• Causing depletable resources to run out: deplete to
point they’re insufficient to sustain further growth
• World’s growth-based economies (virtually all of them)
collapse
• Collapse of major economic institutions
• Financial
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 • Manufacturing • Net flow of energy out of these low-consuming
• Communication populations’ regions for the sake of our high-
consuming lifestyle
• Service
• Americans use much of this energy for non- essential
• Collapse of political and social institutions
products and services
• Governments
• Low-consuming populations: most consumption
• Educational institutions goes for essential products and services
• Health-care systems
Overview
• Scientific & cultural institutions & pursuits
• Conservation refers to the saving or rationing of resources
• Precipitous decline in living standards for future use.
• Anarchy and political disorder • Finite resources pose a challenge to future economic growth.
• Somalialization of the world
Activity
• Something like the end the anti-growth argument urges Whether a high-consumption nation is morally justified in
us to pursue will be achieved the hard way continuing to appropriate for its own use the nonrenewable
• Population levels will be drastically and rapidly reduced energy resources of low-consumption nations that are too weak
by skyrocketing death rates economically to use these resources, or too weak militarily to
• Already life-expectancies in Africa have protect them.
precipitously declined due to AIDs Think about this. Ask your faculty to divide the class in two
• Just a bump in the road of progress or a sign of groups and start discussing this point.
things to come
• Resource use will be drastically and rapidly reduced by
economic collapse
• If not the end of civilization forever
• At least the dawn of another dark age
• Criticism of the Doomsday Scenario: According to experts
the estimation of this scenario is based on wrong
assumptions
• About future population growth
• About productivity rates
• About our inability to find substitutes for depleted
resource
• About the ineffectiveness of recycling
Is Americanization of the World a Sustainable
Vision for the Future?
Think about this question and discuss it within groups.
• Example of energy use
• U.S.A.
• Has 5% of the world’s population
• Currently account for 35% of world’s energy
resource consumption
• Least developed nations
• 50% of the world’s population
• Currently account for 8% of the world’s energy
resource consumption
• Per-capita comparisons: each U.S. resident consumes
• 15 times more energy than each South American
• 24 times more energy than each Asian
• 31 times more energy than each African
• Exploitation issue: Are we using up their resources
• U. S. produces only a portion of the energy it
consumes
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