05/03/24

Case: Created by Philosophy Club member Alex Sjullie 

In November of 2022, the United States Environmental Protection Agency released a paper estimating the value of what they called the “social cost of carbon”. Members of the agency analyzed the amount of money that people are generally willing to spend in order to offset enough of the effects of the climate crisis to save a single life across the population. The value they arrived at was approximately $10 million per life on the average. 

Other agencies have taken similar approaches to estimating VSL—the Value of a Statistical Life. For instance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2020 estimated that saving a statistical person’s life cost approximately $7.5 million.

 However, unlike many other studies, the EPA weighted the value of a person’s life with their nation’s GDP per capita. Under this system, for example, one Russian life is worth two Ukrainian lives. One Australian life is worth four Indonesian lives. A Qatari life is worth 118 Burundian lives. 

It is important to emphasize that the VSL is not the measurement of how much a person will pay to save themselves or someone else from certain death, but instead how much they are willing to pay to alter the odds of a death occurring.

To some, this poses ethical concerns about how much a person is worth, why/if that would change, and whether or not it’s acceptable to value a human’s life monetarily.  On its website, the EPA insists “The EPA does not place a dollar value on individual lives. Rather, when conducting a benefit-cost analysis of new environmental policies, the Agency uses estimates of how much people are willing to pay for small reductions in their risks of dying from adverse health conditions that may be caused by environmental pollution.” 

Debate Question:

Considering its benefits as a tool for policy making, as well as the moral implications of the VSL, is the EPA’s system of placing differing and finite values on a person’s life ethical?

Discussion Questions:

1. Is FEMA's VSL more, less, or equally moral when compared to the EPA?

2. Is there a way to alter the EPA’s VSL calculation to make it more ethical? What would that look like?

3. With a VSL or otherwise, how should policy makers use data to inform their decisions in the fight against climate change?