Can Adding Value Become a Disservice?

On January 28, 2010, there was an article on The Chicago Tribune’s website about a small Alaskan village that is appealing a dismissal of a lawsuit it brought against two dozen oil, power, and coal companies, including Exxon Mobil Corporation and BP PLC. Kivalina, the city that is appealing the dismissal of their lawsuit, is a village of less than 400 people, and is built on an 8-mile barrier reef that is 635 miles northwest of Anchorage. Sea ice, which used to protect the village, is now forming later and melting sooner because of higher temperatures. As a result, Kivalina is unprotected from fall and winter storm waves that now destroy the coast and threaten the livelihood of its people. The village is eroding, and claims that these companies are to blame for the climate change that is now endangering the community. Furthermore, the plaintiffs are seeking damages of 400 million dollars, the cost to relocate the town two miles southeast of its current location. The city of Kivalina filed the suit in federal court in 2008, but it was dismissed on the grounds that the point in question hinged on whether anyone could truly demonstrate the ‘causal effect’ of global warming as an injury. The town is appealing that the decision and dismissal were incorrect, citing official reports by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that have documented the damage to Kivalina because of global warming.

John Locke believes that people achieve ‘the good life’ through labor. This labor, and the industriousness associated with it, benefits all humankind because it adds value to the land. One takes a wasteful thing, cultivates it, and therefore adds productivity and value. The ethical issue in question then, with respect to Locke, seems to be the following: If labor is the measure of a virtuous life because it adds value to what once was waste, and benefits humankind through this increased productivity, what do we say about labor when it also seems to do humanity a disservice - one that could quite possibly negate our ability as a species to survive, let alone live a virtuous life?

Now I have mulled this over, and it is hard to determine what Locke’s stance on this issue would or might be. Given that global warming is a crisis – a very real one – that is probably something he never could have imagined, let alone considered while writing his treatise on economics and private property, I have decided he would have evaluated it from a somewhat utilitarian perspective. In other words, he would weigh both the positive and negative effects of whatever labor was being undertaken, evaluate the ‘net effect’, and determine how to proceed. Now if a better option came along, one that added more net value, this would obviously be a better option for him.

Now I know I have taken some liberties in trying to determine what Locke’s stance on this issue would be. Obviously Locke would not endorse any labor that threatened our existence as a species; which, in all honesty, is almost every activity we humans perform. However, Locke would probably advocate laboring with regard to developing a solution for global warming – labor that would unquestionably provide value for humankind. One of the reasons I came to this conclusion is that there are apparently some very real solutions to global warming because of a discipline called geoengineering, deliberately influencing and manipulating the Earth’s climate to counteract the effects of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. This may sound farfetched, but world leaders are actively investigating this idea and doing more than just considering it as part of a solution. (Some of these ideas were documented in a 2007 British documentary called “Five Ways to Save the World”.)

Yet, it is still a very interesting question with regard to Locke and the ethical disposition that underwrites his economic theory, so at this point I will leave it up for debate…