A Carbon Footprint Problem

Let's assume that you take this global warming issue seriously.

You decide that you are going to reduce your carbon footprint. You purchase an electric car. You make sure that your own energy comes from renewable resources - solar panels on the roof, you sign up to purchase wind power from the energy company, you walk or ride your bike a lot. You purchase locally grown foods (which require less transportation). You go all out, and so you are using much less carbon-based fuels.

What happens?

Well, the demand for carbon-based fuels drop. Somebody else, who cares more about price (and there will always be a lot of people who care only about price) buys the carbon-based fuels you would have used, uses them, and put the carbon into the atmosphere. And - for all of your sacrifice - you have accomplished . . . nothing.

Your decision not to consume carbon fuels does not keep those carbon fuels in the ground - unused. It simply makes them available for somebody else to use. So, your efforts to cut back on consumption isn't actually doing anything to prevent global warming. The best that you can tell your children is that you are not one of those who created the problem. Somebody else is responsible.

Benjamin Hale discussed this problem in "Nonrenewable Resources and the Inevitability of Outcomes” The Monist, vol. 94, no. 3, pp. 369–390.

He also mentioned another, similar problem. Assume that you are an executive for an oil company with a few tens of billions of barrels in reserve that you intend to sell for the highest price possible. You read in the paper that researchers may come up with a breakthrough that will increase the efficiency of solar cells. You should realize that it would not be wise for you to sit on those reserves while the price gets undercut. Your best move is to cut the price immediately. You will still get more than the anticipated future price. Plus, you will be undercutting the demand for this new product since you have made it much less cost effective (relative to your new price). Again, carbon extraction goes up.

It would seem that we can't win.

There is an argument that we can't win so far as it is the case that there is carbon in the ground that can be sold for a price that is higher than the cost of extraction. As long as this is true, there is a profit to be made. The final consequences is: All of the carbon-based fuels that can be extracted and sold at a profit, will be extracted and sold at a profit. All of it. As long as it is legal to do so.

As the price drops, there will likely be some reserves that are too expensive to harvest at those prices. That carbon will stay in the ground - for a while. However, even if it is consumed at a slower rate, the less costly reserves will get used up, and the price will eventually rise, opening up those reserves that are more costly to extract. Eventually, it will all get used. It will all end up in the atmosphere (causing warning) or in the oceans (causing acidification).

Hale argues that insofar as individual action is ineffective when it comes to climate change, we cannot rely on getting people to take action based on the good that they will do. We need to convince them to act on some other type of reason - a reason that does not depend on the good we will do. We refrain from lying, theft, and other types of wrongs even when they have a chance of doing some good. We would find it odd if somebody were to tell us, "Go ahead and lie. It won't hurt anybody."

Perhaps, given the effects of carbon emissions, we can convince people to give up activities that produce carbon emissions for the same type of reason - because it is wrong in itself, rather than because it will do some good.

Yet, this reduction in demand will still be ineffective, whether it is done from a false belief that it will be effective or from an attitude that it is wrong in itself. if somebody is looking for something to do that would be effective, they would need to look elsewhere.