Utilitarian+Anthropocentric+Approach

  **[chinese symbol double happiness]** ** The Utilitarian Tradition ** Preference Utilitarianism: ** well-being consists in the satisfaction of preferences, the stronger the preferences, the greater the increase in well-being.
 * Whose well-being counts?** Preference economics doesn't distinguish between sentient and nonsentient beings. Pleasure is good, pain is bad. Thus utilitarianism extends moral concern to all sentient creatures (Bentheim, 1798). **Peter Singer** developed this position with respect to non-human animals. He said, a being deserves moral consideration if and only if it can meaningfully be said to have interests of its own.


 * Money as the measure:** Environmental economics (not to be confused with Daly's ecological economics) is concerned with measuring the benefits from improvements in, or costs of reductions in environmental quality. This is called "//benefit measurement//" and enables policy-makers to do Cost-Benefit Analyses [CBA].


 * Difficulty converting some environmental "goods" into dollar values:** Because many environmental "goods" are unpriced in actual markets (e.g. air we breathe, existence of whales), the theory allows //monetary measures// to assess the value of goods - that preference can be measured by assessing how much someone would be willing to pay for its satisfaction "at the margin." There are three ways to do a //benefit assessment://

(1) compare property prices in similar environments; (2) "time-cost" measures where cost to travel to nature and wages lost to do so; (3) contingent valuation, e.g. //asking// people how much they would be willing to pay for a good or accept for the loss of such good.


 * Efficiency as substitute measure for well-being:** subjective assessments of preferences makes well-being difficult to measure. However, efficiency can be more easily ascertained using Pareto Optimality. In the case of environmental decision-making, a variation of Pareto Optimality called the "Kaldor-Hicks compensation test" is used, because it measures efficiency in cases where making A better off may leave B worse off.

Critiques This is comparable to Daly talking about the 3% of GNP that agriculture takes up. Yes it's only 3 percent of the physical value, but in terms of being foundational for the rest of GNP it's invaluable. Same with putting monetary value on a rain forest. The implications are further reaching than we realize (forests/trees playing a fundamental in environmental well being). -Kathryn
 * Is money an appropriate measure?** Is it right to place a monetary value, for example, on wood floors and on rain forests, and then weigh the two dollar values off against each other to decide whether to wipe out the forest to create flooring?


 * Is preference satisfaction the right goal?** People's preferences do not always lead to well-being, long- or short-term. Preference for gas guzzlers and high-meat diets have resulted in environmental problems that are not conducive to the long-term well-being of humans or the planet.


 * Sophisticated Preference Satisfaction model:** A more sophisticated version of preference utilitarianims says that preference satisfaction would, in fact, lead to well-being if individuals are fully informed and competent to understand the information. But that's not reality. There were many years between the beginning of the industrial revolution and an understanding of the environmental consequences. There were many years between the introduction of the tobacco cigarette and our understanding of the health consequences.


 * Problem of interpersonal satisfaction:** When trying to aggregate individual preferences to maximize communal well-being, interpersonal comparisons create problems of subjective state of mind, rather than objective measurability, e.g. one person prefers to preserve fishing areas, another hiking trails.


 * Is Needs Satisfaction a better goal?** Needs as a measure of well-being might be a better barometer. Maslow and others have developed needs hierarchies. But since humans require a plurality of needs for well-being (water, food, shelter, companionship, etc), questions of relativity remain.


 * Problems of Distribution:** A utilitarian approach says harms and benefits should be distributed in the way that results in the maximum aggregated good. However, distribution clearly matters when it comes to environmental harms and goods. Harms are distributed unevenly across socio-economic, ethnic and racial groups. They are distributed unevenly across generations, nations and nature. Utilitarianism is insufficiently sensitive to those who bare the costs.

You guys really did a great job with keeping this concise yet informative! -Kathryn