Is it morally selfish to be an environmentalist?

Ethics
21

Now the question is whether his widow Natasha has the right to some form of compensation from me, and if so, on what basis?

Since you meant to keep this a simple example, I’m assuming that you think wrongful death would be a proper theory of recovery here.

This sounds like straight up, simple negligence to me, and thus all the questions that arise in negligence issues would arise here. Did you know about the downwind? Would a reasonable person have known? Was the death a reasonably foreseeable consequence of your action? What alternative means of disposing of the squirrels were available? Should you have known about them? Would you have been able to obtain them? And so on . . . (Any gripes you have with negligence as it stands would apply to all negligence issues, not just this one.)

The right violated is the same as it is elsewhere. Don’t touch my body, so to speak. I don’t think you have to “invent” any new right. Something came into contact with Boris’ body without his permission, and you made it happen. Your facts don’t suggest in any way that Boris expressly consented to your use of the chemicals. And I think implied consent in this case isn’t there either. You didn’t notify Boris or anything.

I think pollution presents interesting issues only because of proof problems. If you can’t show a direct harm, I say no recovery. If you can (like in Boomer v. Atlantic Cement IIRC), then recovery. Air is only the medium through which you commit the act. Whether it’s a bullet or toxic chemicals, the harmful object has to travel through something. Are you not responsible for a bullet that you fire because it has to travel through air to do its dirty work?

22

The right violated is the same as it is elsewhere. Don’t touch my body, so to speak. I don’t think you have to “invent” any new right.  Something came into contact with Boris’ body without his permission, and you made it happen.

…

I think pollution presents interesting issues only because of proof problems.  If you can’t show a direct harm, I say no recovery.

Well, once you put it that way, it’s pretty straightforward.

23

It amounts to the right to dictate what other users can do with their property.  I am not at all certain it’s feasible to apply private-property rights to air, either.  It’s even difficult with water as far as I understand.  Do you know anything about how property rights are applied to water that could help us better understand the idea?

A similar issue, which is fairly common is noise. If I start blasting heavy metal music at 4am, as long as it’s on my property, should I be allowed to do it? As my neighbor, do you have a right to peace and quiet on your property?

Legally, as far as I understand it, the noise issue is handled as follows: If I’ve owned my property for 20 years and someone decides to build a bar next door, I would likely win the court case because I purchased that land, expecting there to not be any sources of loud noise. However, if I buy a house right next to a bar, then try to have it shut down for noise, I have no case. When I purchased the house, I saw the bar, I knew bars were loud, so I consented to the noise by making that purchase.

The same goes for pollution: If I buy a house next door to an oil refinery, or if I move to a big city, I’ve accepted the condition that the property was in when I bought it. However, if I live up in the mountains and some company decides to build an oil refinery right next to me, then I have a case against them.

24

The butterfly across the world is actually at fault in the Boris case, since it was the final straw which set a trans-global chain of environmental events in motion which resulted in the death. Some well-meaning person in Japan set the butterfly free in his back yard, the same butterfly which, the same day, his grade-school child caught and brought home. The child should have known better. She should have known catching butterflies can often have these kinds of drastic consequences.

To counter Groovenstein’s point, the universe comes into contact with Boris’ body every second of the day, whether by his permission or not. Boris does not have the right to his own perfect universe. You have the right to act to better your condition. As part of this general right, you have the right to appropriate any previously unappropriated property you come accross, and if you do not wish to appropriate it, you nevertheless have the right to use it as you wish until someone else appropriates it.

Pollution presents interesting issues because it is today’s capitalistic profit or exploitation of labor, which presented interesting issues in its day. There is no such thing, at least under a non-contradictory, capitalistic, rational, private-ownership society. Pollution arises as a consequence of the contradiction that is public or otherwise unownable property, or, in other words, as a consequence of the contradiction that is socialism (in its present incarnation, environmentalism).

The question of full ownership of land, sea, and air is a question for advanced study in the fields of philosophy and law, not really one for this board: I have no answer, nor do I know how to come up with one. However, I do know the principles involved.

25

As a special case, everybody should be able to blast heavy metal music whenever and wherever he wants, and to demand payment for doing so. The same is not true of any other kind of music.

In general, that law is right. It is the same type of case as what we saw in a previous thread, on the topic of “walling in” one person by buying up all the property surrounding his house and then forbidding him passage. However, it only is valid as far as the pollution is pollution of your property, or as far as the new neighbor’s actions adversely affect you on your own property. It should not cover the case of pollution of unowned property.

26

To counter Groovenstein’s point, the universe comes into contact with Boris’ body every second of the day, whether by his permission or not. Boris does not have the right to his own perfect universe.

I don’t see how that’s a counter. You can’t sue Mother Nature, but you can sue a person who assails you. The essential fact of the analysis is that civil actions are taken against people and not the universe, and such action involves the same objectively justified principles as any tort. To do this, you must prove that there was actual harm, that the defendant specifically caused the harm, that he knew or should have known of the resulting harm, and that he could have reasonably acted in some other way that avoided the harm. There are substantial but meetable challenges in terms of the burden of proof, as it should be.

27

The butterfly across the world is actually at fault in the Boris case . . .

I find this paragraph entertaining, but I must note that to the extent it is intended as an argument it is horribly flawed. It is beyond inaccurate to compare the effect on your immediate neighbor of releasing chemicals into the air to the effect on someone on the other side of the world of catching a butterfly. Remember context. Recovery should only be had where, among other things, the consequences were reasonably foreseeable. Do you have any evidence that someone should reasonably foresee that catching a butterfly would have such an effect? I’m not asking for you to prove that it is more likely than not, which is what you would have to prove in court. I’m asking for anything tenable.

As for the rest of your post, I see that David has responded (“I don’t see how that’s a counter . . .”), and I agree with his response in its entirety, so I won’t repeat it.

28

If I affect unowned property in a way in which another person does not like, there is no recourse to be had. I have the right to act in any way I wish as regards unowned property, as does everybody else, but nobody has the right to have that unowned property customized to his desires. Nobody has the right to demand clean water or air that he does not own from another person who also does not own it. The fault you see, that harm may result, lies in the extent to which property rights are recognized. Where the right to property is not recognized, it is implicitly true that the right to life is not recognized, nor is the right to be free from the initiation of physical force by whatever means - pollution, sharp edges, or fraud - nor is any right whatsoever. In order to claim a right to be free from others’ pollution, one must first recognize property rights throughout the entire context. In this case, property rights are not recognized.

29

In this case, property rights are not recognized.

The right recognized is not the right to clean air–it is the right to your body and property. I see no relevant fundamental distinction between a gun and noxious fumes on this point. Air is merely the medium through which the harming agent travels.

A key issue in any case, however, is causation. With a gun, it’s usually going to be simple, because a human pulls the trigger. I’d guess this is probably why you’d have no problem holding someone responsible for the bullet he fires.

With pollution, it’s usually to going to be more difficult on causation. There might be all sorts of intervening acts that make the cause harder to pin down. But the principle still holds, and it’s an objective one: to be responsible one must cause the harm. It is possible to cause harm with noxious fumes, as I think David’s example demonstrated.

There is a distinction between the natural and the man-made. If a flood smacks your house something fierce, too bad. That’s just nature. But where a human act gets involved, you have to ask the tort questions. If you dump piles of filth in some unowned water knowing that it runs through my land and will damage it, I think it’s reasonable to say that you caused the harm, same as if you fired a bullet through some unowned air. If you say that air isn’t owned, and thus a person can do what he wants with it, it seems as though you must say that any harm committed through air is not actionable because it occurred on unowned property.

30

Still, I feel like sticking with this point just to make it clear. I’m not saying that you have a right to an “unpolluted environment” or that you have to give consent: I’m saying that any such putative right has been waived via implied consent.

Oh, I get it; so that even if you do somehow imagine that some of your rights have been violated, it will never even get as far as the courts because the case will be thrown out, as you gave implied consent for whatever “damages” might exist.

I’m thinking we’re way deep into science of law territory here; and as I’ve learned that’s something for the experts to worry about.

31

I think the movie Total Recall makes a good point, in the sense that air was a commodity to be bought and sold.

So say something like that happens on earth. Air is highly caustic from pollution (just for argument’s sake) and is now actually harmful to people who breathe it. Some people can buy filtered air for comfortable living, but other people have to breathe the caustic air. So, since this pollution was caused by industrial companies (not that I advocate environmentalism, just for argument’s sake), does industry have an obligation to maintain the environment so its in a survivable condition as it was when people were born into it?

32

I don’t think that this is a special issue. If you can prove in court that somebody else’s property caused damage to your health or property, then you have the right to sue the person. In most cases, this would of course be a very difficult thing to do. I’ve lived in the second most polluted city in the nation for most of my life and I have no noticeable health damages.

33

Im afraid the line between were my resperatory system ends and the air starts is far too blurry. A company owning my (everyones) air, sounds like a company owning my nose.

Skap, you say that by living in a city I automatically give up my rights to perfectly clean air? Why then do objectivists have so much trouble understanding that by living in a city/ society you automatically have to give up part of your income (tax)

:smiley: :frowning:

34

Im afraid the line between were my resperatory system ends and the air starts is far too blurry. A company owning my (everyones) air, sounds like a company owning my nose.

I don’t think it’s reasonable for a company or anyone to own the air. Air is one of the few things that is a given in life, i.e. you don’t have to work to earn it. Keeping the air clean is part of the so called problem of the commons, exactly because it’s hard to place under ownership. I don’t know that you can or should place it under ownership either, any more than the sun can be.

Skap, you say that by living in a city I automatically give up my rights to perfectly clean air? Why then do objectivists have so much trouble understanding that by living in a city/ society you automatically have to give up part of your income (tax)

Actually, you can’t initiate force against another and by fouling up the air too badly you are doing so. That is, you are poisoning your neighbors, which is a violation of their rights. You’d need some objective standard for how much you can foul up the air, so that people can then work within that. This is a highly technical question as to how this would be done.

Income tax is theft, so it would also would be the initiation of force and a violation of ones rights.

35

Im afraid the line between were my resperatory system ends and the air starts is far too blurry. A company owning my (everyones) air, sounds like a company owning my nose.

Skap, you say that by living in a city I automatically give up my rights to perfectly clean air? Why then do objectivists have so much trouble understanding that by living in a city/ society you automatically have to give up part of your income (tax)

:smiley: :frowning:

The problem lies in applying the proper definition of property… I seem to have misplaced my favorite reference, The Ayn Rand Lexicon, so I might have some trouble with this one.

If I remember correctly, property is a physical value that one has acted to gain. Technically speaking, one usually only owns the air that is in one’s lungs. But one can own air. People use oxygen tanks for industrial, medical and recreational purposes. In the strictest sense, air is only protected as one’s property if it has been contained.

Please recognize that you not only have certain rights to your property; you have responsibilities. Thus, if you leave your poisonous gas to drift, and someone else breathed it in not knowing it was there, you should be held liable for whatever damages it causes.

There is really no conflict here with how Objectivists view income tax versus air pollution. My money is a monetary value that I have acted to gain. Air is a chemical value that is so abundant I can obtain it by simply breathing, so I rarely bottle it up in compressed tanks. But if I did contain it, and someone stole it or corrupted it with a poisonous chemical, they would have violated my rights.

Nobody should act to undercut my life by taking my property or income, and nobody should neglect the responsibility they have to ensure their own property does not damage me. Whether we’re talking guns, gas or animals, the principles remain the same.

-edit for clarity. Also, I believe the worst kind of air pollution is indoor air pollution.

36

Why then do objectivists have so much trouble understanding that by living in a city/ society you automatically have to give up part of your income (tax)

Ah, automatically, like an axiom, a law of nature, eh? Guess what, Objectivists do not see the initiation of force, and existence of parasites, as an unquestionable axiom - try again. Incidentally, income tax was unconstitutional in the U.S. until 1913. Are you suggesting that the U.S. did nothing and did not exist until 1913? Or were you just ignorant of the fact that people actually create human laws, and that they can be repealed if necessary, they are not like E=mc^2?

Out of curiosity, what is it that you claim to have read by Ayn Rand?

37

Listen Dude,

You misanderstood me…

I dont believe tax is an axiom…or a part of nature.

sKAP SUGGESTED that by living in a city its like ive agreed to have poison pumped down my lungs. I merely asked what the difference is between this unspoken “agreement”, and the unspoken agreement of tax paying being the RIGHT thing…

Atlas

FountainHead

Virtue of Selfishness

Phil, who needs it

38

Green Capitalist, check out this thread if you want a good discussion on pollution.

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p…04&hl=pollution