1. Why does Baxter believe that we should have clear goals in mind in order to answer moral questions about the environment and about pollution in particular?
2. What are the four criteria or goals that he suggests? In what ways are these people-oriented criteria?
3. Does he believe that people-oriented criteria will necessarily be bad for the penguins or other elements of our environment? Why or why not?
4. What are his objections to valuing penguins, for example, for their own sake, beyond their usefulness to human beings?
5. What problem does he raise for the belief that we ought to “respect the balance of nature”?
6. Why does he believe that there is no right level of pollution?
7. What is the difference, according to Baxter, between resources and costs? How are they related? Why does the cost of building a dam or controlling pollution involve trade-offs?
SOLUTION
Baxter believes that we should have clear goals in mind because unless we know what we want to achieve, we will not know what means we should use to get there.
Baxter proposes these four criteria, each of which is directed to benefiting people:
a. Every person should be free to do whatever he or she desires so long as his or her actions do not interfere with the interests of other human beings.
b. Waste is bad so we should not waste resources.
c. Every human being should be treated with dignity.
d. Every person should have the incentive and opportunity to improve his or her share of life satisfaction.
He believes that these criteria will not necessarily be bad for animals or the environment because harm to these will often not be good for people.
Baxter argues that we ought not to value penguins for their own sake because this is not the view most generally held by people and because we can do a good job at environmental protection by concentrating on people. It is also because there is no objective ways to know how to value them for people differ in their appreciation of penguins.
Baxter has problems with the notion of respecting or restoring the balance of nature because he does not know what nature ought to be restored to. There is no state of nature that can be shown in itself to be a right state.
He believes that there is no right level of pollution in relation to some right state of nature. Rather he holds that that level of materials in the air is best which best serves human needs.
According to Baxter, resources are the labor, skills, capital goods, and natural resources of a nation that can be used to serve human needs. Various projects will incur costs in so far as they use labor, capital goods, and natural resources. Thus if we have a certain amount of money and we use it to build a dam, then we will not have it to devote to other projects that also serve human needs. Thus we have to decide what level of pollution we will accept so as also to have other things that we value and need.