Session 3. Are We Headed for Environmental Catastrophe? What Are the World-Views Concerning How to Understand It and Deal with It? (1) The Survivalist Response: “We’re Headed for Catastrophe If We Don’t Make Radical Changes.” (2) The Promethean Response: “Markets and Human Ingenuity will Take Care of It, So There’s No Genuine Crisis!” (3) The Promethean Argument from Substitutability against Survivalism: Once a Resource Is Depleted, We Can Often Substitute to a Replacement, And We Can Increase the Productivity of Our Remaining Resources through Market Incentives. (4) The Precautionary Principle of Risk Management: "Better Safe than Sorry!" Can the Principle Be Used to Salvage Survivalism? Should We Think That Where an Activity Poses Some Risk of Serious Harm to Society, However Slight, then the Burden of Proving that We Should Continue as Usual Rests with the Risk-Skeptic?
Read in this order:
John S. Dryzek, “Looming Tragedy: Limits, Boundaries, Survival,” The Politics of the Earth, READ pp. 25-43 ONLY
Dryzek, “Growth Unlimited: The Promethean Response,” The Politics of the Earth, READ pp. 52-63 ONLY
Robert M. Solow, "Is The End of the World at Hand?" in The Economic Growth Controversy, ed. A. Weintraub et al (International Arts and Sciences Press, 1973), pp. 39-61, READ pp. 39-55 ONLY. Available on classesV2. Famously challenges the survivalist predictions that prolonged further growth without radical changes will spell catastrophe, on the ground that they falsely assume that natural resources will not become more productive, and that we cannot substitute to other resources once a resource is depleted.
Cass R. Sunstein, “Beyond the Precautionary Principle,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 151 (2003): 1003-1058, READ pp. 1003-1035 ONLY. Available on classesV2.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette, “Review of Cass R. Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge UP, 2005),” Ethics & International Affairs 20 (2006): 123-125. Available on classesV2.
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One view of the concept of substitutability: "We may be able to substitute nuclear power for coal power, and plastics for wood... but for phosphorus there is neither substitute nor replacement." —Isaac Asimov, "Life's Bottleneck", Fact and Fancy
Herman E. Daly, "Economics in a Full World," Scientific American, September 2005, pp. 100-107. Available on classesV2.
Updates Kenneth Boulding's Spaceship-Earth arguments with new data and uses illustrations. Contains a useful counterpoint by economist Partha Dasgupta, who agrees with Daly in rejecting Prometheanism and more-growth-is-always-good, but rejects his commitment to a steady-state in favor of safer and smarter growth.
W. Arthur Lewis, "Is Economic Growth Desirable?" The Theory of Economic Growth (London: Allen and Unwin, ): 420-435. Available on classesV2.
An illuminating survey of the benefits of growth, and the criticisms that point out its costs. Written by one of the great
development economists.
Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn, "Introduction to The Resourceful Earth," in Debating the Earth, ed. Dryzek and Schlosberg, pp. 51-73. Available on classesV2.
Hans Jonas, "[The Duty to Ensure a Future]," The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (UChicago Press, 1984): 25-46. Available on classesV2.
Hans Jonas, "Responsibility Today," The Imperative of Responsibility, pp. 136-142. Available on classesV2.
Ulrich Beck, "On the Logic of Wealth Distribution and Risk Distribution," Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992): 19-51. Available on classesV2.
Roger Scruton, "Radical Precaution," Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet, pp. 104-136. Available on classesV2.
John Lemons, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, and Carl Cranor, "The Precautionary Principle: Scientific Uncertainty and Type I and Type II Errors," Foundations of Science 2 (1997): 207-236. Available on classesV2.