Ethics

1
Ethics EconomicsManaging Public Lands
2
Development versus Preservation

• 600 million acres across US are public land
• Primary Managers
• Bureau of Land Management
• U.S. Forest Service
• Values Underlying Management seen in
• decisions made by management agencies
• process used to reach these decisions

3
Mineral King Valley

• Classic environmental controversy
• Forest Service accepted bids to develop MKV

4
Mineral King ValleyPositions

• Pro-Economic-Development Position
• U.S. Forest Service Walt Disney Enterprises
• Pro-Preservation Position
• Sierra Club
• Non-economic factors carried less weight than
  economic factors
• Well-being of animals, plants, rivers, and
  mountain ignored
• Forest Service Position
• Public servants should follow public opinion, not
  decide for the public
• Net Result
• government would be allowing market to decide
  what the people really want

5
Purpose of Chapter

• In environmental controversies,
• What role does economic analysis play?
• What are the problems with uncritically using
  economic principles?

6
Ethics in Environmental Controversies

• Hetch Hetchy Valley c. early 1900s

7
Water demand led a plan to build a damand
reservoir in the Hetch Hetchy Valley

• Provoked 7-year environmental struggle between
  the US Government (Gifford Pinchot) and the
  Sierra club (John Muir)
• Federal government ended dispute in 1913

8
O'Shaughnessy Dam Hetch Hetchy Reservoir
finished in 1923

• Tuolumne River fills reservoir
• Water serves 2.4 mil. Californians
• Generates electricity for San Francisco

9
ApproachesConservationU.S. Forest Service
Gifford Pinchot

• Born 1865
• Died 1946
• Education Yale studied forestry in Europe
• Best Known as
• First professional U.S. forester (1892)
• Chief of the U.S. Forest Service (18981910)
• Helped form progressive party with Theodore
  Roosevelt (1912)
• Governor of Pennsylvania (192327, 193135)

10
Pinchots Conservationist Approach

• Position
• Dam the Hetch Hetchy to provide much needed water
• Public lands exist to serve the needs of the
  public
• Public policy should serve the greatest good of
  the greatest number for the longest time
• use experts to calculate consequences of policy
  options
• Ethical Justification
• Straightforward application of Utilitarianism
• Natural resources have only instrumental value

11
ApproachesPreservationThe Sierra Club John
Muir

• Born 21 April 1838
• Died 1914
• Birthplace Dunbar, Scotland
• Education University of Wisconsin (1859-1863)
• Best Known As Naturalist and co-founder of the
  Sierra Club
• Also Noted for Establishing Sequoia and
  Yosemite national parks (1890).
• Quarter Featured on the California state
  quarter released by the U.S. Mint in 2005

12
Muirs Preservationist Approach

• Position
• Preserve the Hetch Hetchy
• Wilderness has religious, spiritual and aesthetic
  value
• Against instrumental view natural world has
  inherent worth
• Ethical Justification
• Utilitarian
• Deontological

13
Economic AnalysisManaging the National Forests

• Allocating scarce resources
• open, free markets, with minimal government
  regulation
• Running a Business
• Manage resources as a private property owner
  would
• Timber rights should be sold to the highest
  bidder
• Equilibrium
• competing interests will achieve equilibrium

14
Economic AnalysisManaging Air Water Pollution

• William Baxters People or Penguins The Case
  for Optimal Pollution
• Reduces environmental pollution to an economic
  problem
• Baxters Assumptions
• The principle of noninterference is good
• Waste is bad
• Underutilized resources are wasted resources
• Only humans have moral standing
• Economic management of pollution
• Costs of reducing pollution are goods given up
• Optimal level of pollution?

15
Analysis of Economic ApproachesValue Assumptions

• Preference Utilitarianism
• The Market is Ethical
• Individual freedom
• Private property rights
• People are inherently self-interested
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Cost-benefit analysis vs. cost effectiveness
• Comparing various means to the same end
• Comparing various ends in light of their costs

16
Analysis of Economic ApproachesGeneral Criticism

• Not all values and goals are properly expressed
  in economic terms
• Unclear method for determining costs of benefits
  not already traded
• Determining costs will require experts, not
  markets
• Not all environmental concerns should be reduced
  to economic concerns
• Cost-benefit analysis too narrow
  anthropocentric
• Future generations
• Trees
• Animals
• The biosphere

17
Analysis of Economic ApproachesSagoffs The
Economy of the Earth

• Economic analysis reduces beliefs to wants
• Difference between wants and beliefs
• Wants
• Beliefs
• The Confusion
• Only wants and preferences get expressed in an
  economic market
• Markets cannot evaluate our beliefs
• Economic analysis is beside the point
• Criticism
• People are thinking and reasoning beings, not
  just consumers
• People are active thinkers, not merely passive
  "wanters"
• Not all desires equally deserve to be satisfied

18
Analysis of Economic ApproachesSagoffs The
Economy of the Earth

• Market analysis threatens democracy
• Ignores democracys participatory nature
• Representatives dont just passively follow
  electorate demands
• People are also committed to a system where we
  pursue the good life
• Economic analysis has no ethical support
• We should NOT take the satisfaction of individual
  preferences as our overriding goal
• Many individual preferences are silly, foolish,
  dangerous, immoral, and criminal