People or Penguins William F. Baxter

What is Baxter’s goal in the article? He wants to define the objective – the final end rather than the means used to get there – that should be pursued with respect to the environment. The answer can’t be “clean air” for example, because this isn’t sufficiently clear or final. –We can ask, “How clean?” Or, “What does clean mean?” –We can ask, “Why?”

Baxter states four criteria that he will use in defining this objective. Criterion 1 – “Spheres of freedom.” –“Every person should be free to do whatever he wishes in contexts where his actions do not interfere with the interests of other human beings.” This is the same principle as John Locke’s Law of Nature.

Baxter’s Criterion 2. The dominant feature of human existence is scarcity, and so waste is a bad thing. –This will assure that our resources, labors, and skills will yield the most human satisfaction possible. This has a family resemblance to Utilitarianism with its emphasis on maximizing welfare.

Baxter’s Criterion 3. Kant’s Respect of Persons Principle. –Every human being should be regarded as an end rather than as a means to be used for the betterment of another.

Baxter’s Criterion 4. “Both the incentive and the opportunity to improve his share of satisfactions should be preserved to every individual.” –The “incentive” part → NOT totally egalitarian redistribution of satisfactions. –The “opportunity” part → sufficient redistribution to assure the minimal share of satisfactions that is the prerequisite of the opportunity to improve. Echos Rawls and Kristol’s Capitalist Justice

What do these criteria imply about pollution? Although Baxter does not say this directly, a totally pollution-free environment would not bring humans many satisfactions, because there would be food shortages, absence of manufacturing, no artificial heating, etc. [This is his point of his tale about DDT and penguins.] The only objective acceptable by the criteria is “optimal pollution.”

What is optimal pollution? It is the point at which: The value to us of the next unit of environmental improvement = The value to us of the next good or service we have to give up to get this improvement.

So, what does this mean? You can’t just appeal to factual claims about the environment as though they were ethical imperatives. –For example, “DDT is killing penguins,” while factually true, does NOT imply “Ethics demands that we stop using DDT.” –We first have to ask how the satisfactions we lose by discontinuing DDT compares with the satisfactions we gain from the continued existence of penguins.

Or, one more example: So what if global warming raises the sea level by 20 feet and half of Florida goes underwater? Maybe I like driving my gas- guzzling car a lot, and, after all, there will still be beach left in Florida. This is not Baxter, but he would tell us to find the optimal pollution point with respect to fossil fuel use and global warming.