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Why do economists avoid talking about ethics?
Julie Nelson, Real Climate Economics
Following the release of the Stern Review and in discussions of the Kyoto Protocol, a debate has ensued among economists concerning how quickly and drastically societies should move to reduce carbon emissions, an issue with vast intergenerational repercussions. Yet a number of economists have argued that rigorous economic analysis of climate change can be accomplished without recourse to ethical value judgments. Indeed, economists often exhibit strong aversive reactions to any explicit consideration of ethics. Why this passion for dispassion? Feminist reflection on the discipline of economics offers some insights.
In efforts to be scientific and objective, neoclassical economics has tended to model itself on notions of science that go back to the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. Reacting to a medieval world view in which humans were perceived to be embedded in a sacred, living natural world, the rising scientific worldview placed the scientist outside of, and above, nature. The scientist was imagined as autonomous, rational, interested in “hard” knowledge, disinterested, and male. What was left out—human interdependence, embodiment, emotion, “soft” or qualitative aspects of life, uncertainty, value judgments, and interests—feminist scholars of science have pointed out—were coded as feminine, non-scientific, and weaker or of lesser value. Objectivity thus came to be associated with detachment—detachment from social influences, detachment from the object of study, detachment from other researchers, and detachment from practical concerns.
However, instead of objectivity, what strict adherence to narrow methods leads to is a romantic belief in the possibility of connection-free knowledge from an outside-of-nature, perspective-free viewpoint. The reality is that scientists–and economists–are inherently embedded in nature, embedded in society, and hence part of, and inherently interested in, the very phenomena we study. This, however, does not mean that attempts at objectivity need to be abandoned. Instead, it means that objectivity must be arrived at not through purity of logical method, but by holding up the results of research to ever-more-inclusive communities of inquiry. Analyses of the costs and benefits of climate change policies that assume the existing global income distribution, for example, only appear “objective” until voices from the global South speak up to challenge the unspoken ethical judgments that lie beneath them.
…A truly powerful and resilient economic analysis can only be brought about through a balanced valuing of clarity and realism, logical rigor and real-world richness, precision and accuracy, elegance and appropriate complexity, parsimony and applicability, and generality and usefulness. It requires actual dialog among groups with various viewpoints which, by broadening and deepening our understanding, can move towards more adequate knowledge. The lopsided value system that prioritizes the perceived toughness and “masculinity” of an approach over its actual overall quality– including its reliability and its usefulness in addressing critical real-world problems–needs to be abandoned….
(21 July 2010)
Our nature is nurture: Are shifts in child-rearing making modern kids mean?
John Horgan, Scientific American
In journalism you look for one thing and find another that confounds your expectations. It’s what make makes this gig so frustrating and fun. I went looking for reassurance in Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Harvard University Press, 2009) by the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and found something scary.
…In Mothers and Others, Hrdy decried theories of human nature that emphasize “demonic” male aggression. (I slammed the “demonic-males” thesis in a recent post.) The key to our humanity, Hrdy contended, was the emergence of group child-rearing—also called cooperative breeding, or “allocare”—some two million years ago. Among all the ape species—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans—mothers rear offspring without seeking or receiving help. Indeed, ape moms keep infants away from other females and males—with good reason, because others may hurt or kill the infant.
…Child-rearing is radically different in hunter–gatherer societies like the African !Kung, Hadza and Aka, who are thought to live more or less as our ancestors did for 99 percent of our evolutionary history. Mothers in these societies get lots of help from other females, including grandmas, sisters and friends, who may even breast-feed an unrelated child. Dads and other males often hold, feed and play with children, too, which ape males never do.
There is a dark underside to all this group nurturing. A human mother’s care for her infant is more contingent on circumstance than the care of ape moms. If a hunter–gatherer mother feels she’s not getting enough support from others, she may abandon or kill her newborn. Natural selection thus favored babies who excel at “mind-reading”; they can intuit and manipulate the emotions of their mothers and other potential caregivers, to ensure that they get the care they need to survive. Empathetic kids become empathetic adults. In this way cooperative breeding promoted the emergence of our extraordinary “hypersocial” intelligence.
…I find this theory of human nature more plausible—and, yes, palatable—than those emphasizing violent competition. But Hrdy’s book ends on a disturbing note: She pointed out that many modern children—far from growing up surrounded by doting kin—don’t even see much of their busy, working parents. Kids receive much of their care from non-kin, whether babysitters or preschool teachers. Then there are all the children who grow up with only one or no parent or abusive parents. As a result, many kids suffer from “disorganized attachment,” which means they have a hard time understanding and trusting others.
(12 July 2010)
You can learn more about the book here.
National Post shocker: Global warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause
Joe Romm, Climate Progress
Canada’s conservative National Post has long published anti-science disinformation, as Deep Climate has catalogued and debunked.
But comments editor and Post columnist Jonathan Kay has just published a thermonuclear repudiation of ““Global-warming deniers” (his term). And Kay is no liberal — his bio says he is “a regular contributor to Commentary magazine and the New York Post“!
The column deserves to be read in full:
Have you heard about the “growing number” of eminent scientists who reject the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the earth’s temperature? It’s one of those factoids that, for years, has been casually dropped into the opening paragraphs of conservative manifestos against climate-change treaties and legislation. A web site maintained by the office of a U.S. Senator has for years instructed us that a “growing number of scientists” are becoming climate-change “skeptics.” This year, the chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation gave a speech praising the “growing number of distinguished scientists [who are] challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research.” In this newspaper, a columnist recently described the “growing skepticism about the theory of man-made climate change.” Surely, the conventional wisdom is on the cusp of being overthrown entirely: Another colleague proclaimed that we are approaching “the church of global warming’s Galileo moment.”
Fine-sounding rhetoric — but all of it nonsense. In a new article published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, a group of scholars from Stanford University, the University of Toronto and elsewhere provide a statistical breakdown of the opinions of the world’s most prominent climate experts. Their conclusion: The group that is skeptical of the evidence of man-made global warming “comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers in the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding researchers present in both groups … This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that [about] 97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of [man-made global warming].”
…The appropriate intellectual response to that challenge — finding a way to balance human consumption with responsible environmental stewardship — is complicated and difficult. It will require developing new technologies, balancing carbon-abatement programs against other (more cost-effective) life-saving projects such as disease-prevention, and — yes — possibly increasing the economic cost of carbon-fuel usage through some form of direct or indirect taxation. It is one of the most important debates of our time. Yet many conservatives have made themselves irrelevant in it by simply cupping their hands over their ears and screaming out imprecations against Al Gore…
(17 July 2010)
Clean, Green, Safe and Smart
Michael T. Klare, The Nation
If the ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico tells us anything, it is that we need a new national energy policy—a comprehensive plan for escaping our dangerous reliance on fossil fuels and creating a new energy system based on climate-safe alternatives. Without such a plan, the response to the disaster will be a hodgepodge of regulatory reforms and toughened environmental safeguards but not a fundamental shift in behavior. Because our current energy path leads toward greater reliance on fuels acquired from environmentally and politically hazardous locations, no amount of enhanced oversight or stiffened regulations can avert future disasters like that unfolding in the gulf. Only a dramatic change in course—governed by an entirely new policy framework—can reduce the risk of catastrophe and set the nation on a wise energy trajectory.
By far the most important part of this strategy must be a change in the overarching philosophy that steers decisions on how much energy the United States should seek to produce, of what sorts and under what conditions. It may not seem as if we operate under such a philosophy today, but we do—one that extols growth over all other considerations,
… One way to appreciate the importance of this shift is to consider the guiding policies of other countries. In March, I had the privilege of attending an international energy conference at Fuenlabrada, just outside Madrid. I sat transfixed as one top official after another of Spain’s socialist government spelled out their vision of the future—one in which wind and solar power would provide an ever increasing share of the nation’s energy supply and make Spain a leader in renewable energy technology. Other speakers described strategies for “greening” old cities—adding parks, farms, canals and pedestrian plazas in neglected neighborhoods. Around me were a thousand university students—enthralled by the prospect of creative and rewarding jobs in architecture, engineering, technology and the sciences. This, I thought, is what our own young people need to look forward to.
Instead, we are governed by an obsolete, nihilistic energy philosophy. To fully comprehend the nature of our dilemma, it is important to recognize that the gulf disaster is a direct result of the last governing blueprint adopted by this country: the National Energy Policy of May 17, 2001, better known as the Cheney plan. This framework, of which the former vice president was the lead author, called for increased drilling in wilderness areas, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as well as in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Congress did not permit drilling in ANWR, but it wholeheartedly embraced wider exploitation of the deepwater gulf.
(15 July 2010)
We’ve published and linked to many articles by Michael Klare on the connection between energy resources and international conflict. -BA
