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sort of thing, you are some massive structural collective to you could withdraw and so you can keep your ethic. but it so quickly t becomes demanding and so overwhelming, especially with my undergrads. -qi about this and i show them where it and we're going to keep talking about where itbecause is uplifting. so we keep about this and very

y my 18 year old students throw up their hands andhis isn't on me. this is not myem. and that way there be dragons because that takes us towards nearly ism. we are constantly implicating ourselves in of these massive structural problems. and so if you think that just because your part is so small it can't be on you because policymakers are the ones you really ought to be doing it. or the top 100 companies are responsible for ke 80 emissions in the world. it must be on them, not me. if you problem, then a whole bunch of. what we do in our lives just doesn't matter all and that's moral. there's nothing better or worse about doing one thing over the so this is the puzzle. ththbout this many many years ago the puzzle that led to me writing this book is i think it's the most reasonable thin person to feel themselves implicated in massive shouldn't part of this. and yet a quick lee becomes

unwieldy and i'm going to suggest to actually withdraw yourself and so we'retuck it feels like my individual actions are just too small to matter, but it kind feels like i should engage in them anyway. and that's the puzzle puzzle of ethics. have you ever thought of this before? has this ever occurred to you? you're at this talk. the answer is probably yes. okay. so i'm used to a screen being behind me. i'm like, guy. no, he's not really. he'er there. this handsome fellow, his name name's walter sanfordphilosopher at unc-chapel hill. and ea20 y now published quite a famous paper like philosophy. you know, called it's not my fault. and the argument was that although it seems many people including to him, that we are morally obligated not to do really bad, like drive a gas guzzler. so here's the example i came up with said, think of the worst car you can imag least efficient car you can imagine. now think of this hobby of just no

in particular it'ab car so that activity he calls joy gosling and on his a joy guzzle emits something like 14 kilograms of co2 now doesn't really hard to understand like what that means we're going to come back to that b' that's feels like 14 kilograms of co2 you did not need to emit so it like you have a duty not to joy guzzle. but here's the thing carbon cycle is incredibly complex in our atmosphere is absolutely massive so we can talk about this more beca people really want to like down on the mathematical weeds here but the basic idea i mean this is a slight update to his argument 20 years ag is the all anthropogenicarbon, which is to say the amount of carbon that we can put out into the atmosphere and maintain a not terrible earth climate system. so the number of people are using for a long time is not warm the planet by two degrees celsius typically. ah that's that's, that's a line we never should have thought about crossing. but if we wa

burn a trillion metric tons of carbon which is 3.7 trillion million metric tons co2. so the joy guzzle is 14 kilograms. this is notround error. this is not a drop in the bucket. this is a drop in an ocean in ocean is not static. it is incredibly and it's moving around.carbon cycle you're emitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. getting up into the ocean which is the big carbon sink or swamplands or peat moss or whatever and the little bit of it stays in the atmosphere and some of it's there for a few years and some of us there for 10,000 years. and then that's not what causes climate change is the heat waves and the drought and the humudslides and the famine and the wars that we fight. diminished resources. and that is not related in a straightforward way, to the mole we're into the atmosphere. so this is incredibly complex chai events that takes us to llion people emitting causes through things likers and mudslides and hurricanes and fires i forgot fires, fire seasons coming right?

so that's system is so big and so complex. it is here. that really important language in sensitive to individual choice. so walter saying armstrong says years ago it feels like obligated not to join us all because you hurt peoplen people, but you don't hurt people when you join and he says it's not my fault. now he's not happy like. joy goes all the way. his point is that this is kind of ae right. he can't understand how could justify how we are obligated do something when it doesn't matter. 'g to argue next is that the puzzle isn't actually just about climate change. so but one of the things i wanted to do in my book is to say, if you're sort of worried about this if it feels like you should do something, but your actions are so tiny, you they could do. we're in so much more trouble than just thinking about climate change, right? because this is ethics. any vegetarian is vegans, any any restricted choice. people in the audience. if you mean an ethics and an ethics talks, i've always got togef them here. right a lot of people who are

vegetarians, vegans, etc. the idea i don't want to i don't want to hurt animals or animals are incredibly environmentally expensive. it's not hard to see why, right? because we could just eat plants, but instead we grow plants to feed them to a really inefficient machine as they grow. and then we eat the machine. so it's like a really inefficient source of calories. so people like, i don't want to hurt animals and don't want to hurt the planet, but walter said it. armstrong was right. the scale of these choices to us, insensitive toculture system is a lot like the climate system. it's not the massive and complex and tyson doesn't notice if i choose not to buy a chicken breast right it's just too big this also this is a snippet from the new york times on how to be a conscious consumer. even if you' i just love this title because it's making clear that a whole bunch people are worried about this. like, it's important to me that. i don't support bad companies right and i get this because i was raised to with my dollar

right? when you buy something y rewarding a company your business and so if you find their terrible stock doing that right used to this just so precise is if you find out if you're a chocolate lover and you find out that your chocolate brand utilizes slave laborin the supply chain, kind of feels like you sho right. it's like you don't need it you could just opt you could choose not to support that. but now you're on hook for not supporting a lot of things. right? so we'r'that. here's the way in to make it clear that you really can't opt out. so there might be some people in the audience who are like everything you've said so far, i can opt out. i can opt out of inhumane farming practices. i go off the grid, i can minimize my energy consumption. i can really out here's here's the show you that it's borderline impossibleere is about

projected use of projected use for lithium ion batteries. so one of the main lithium ion sources we have requires cobalt. so if you look at the names of all these different batteries more than half of them have cobalt in the name. so a book bunch of burke book nerdsat was really influential to me as i was thinking about this is book cobalt read by siddharth kara, who took this picture and. cobalt. from 80% or so of the cobalt we use is mine in the democratic republic of congo. very often, in situations like this. so this picture here is of an open mine. it's incredibly dangerous yes there are cave time, morbidity, high mortality. s se of this book is that the situation in this in these places is form of mining that's called artisanal mining is like the worst euphemism ever, where you just pay pennies per pound or a kilo of cobalt two people to go out pickax in this rock, you end

up paying them a dollar two a day. and these us conditions they have no other options. and so carter says this modern day slavery and i trust him because siddharth kara is literally an expert on modern all his research is on. and what this means is everything that we use as rechargeable in our life. the phones the laptops, the battery in our electric cars. that's a big battery, right? it's stuffed full of cobalt. and it probably came from the congo, which meansll of us in this room are, in fact system of modern day slavery. i told you, this is going be a really uplifting talk. all right. so was really hoping that kara would tell us how to out of this. and one of the things he makes clear, i'm not going to tell you to stop buying your phones and computs, ts not helpful advice. and so he does the thing that so many people does when we're talking about climate change and these other problems as they like policy.

we have to address the sorts mining regulations we get our cobalt out of the ground because you not updating your isn't going to save anyone from these mining conditions. all right. okay. so i have to go really fast to give anything like an indication of what i do in the book. and so i'm going to give you justhat's like it's like a speed dating version of book. and then we can we can chat about it. and so here's my diagnosis of thethis problem that walter sand armstrong gaves that obligated to withdraw from these bad you're not actually making a ff think you're obligated. and then you add to that to the fact that now' t this puzzle is everywhere air, which means there'shave to do to be a decent person if you these bad practices. sotment plan yet, but my diagnosis for problem, i think we're obsessed with duty,

obligation. and so this is a little bit nerdy because i'm a philosopher sorry you were warned, right. so we say things all the time and. i was keyed into this because i read the philosophy or is working on this and they're all like walter stuart armstrong. they're all like, do you have a duty not to joy gosal and then they can't prove doesn't cause any harm. it doesn't have any meaningful. but then i started talking to al people, right? and everybody wants to say like no, you're wrong. like if, update your phone the second you need one and you're participating in cobalt mining practice when you absolutely don't need to because your phone is fine and like that's wrong you're doing the wrong thing you're student who, like totally called meore class because buy one, get one free and there's a starb right across from my. and so i'm like, hey, i'm buy one, get free. is there anything you i and and like very justifiably said no i don't support union busters. i would we were going over so i

could h . right. that was that was the context here. and so the judgment is sharp right. because it does feel like if a company is union busting and union busting is real bad, then maybe you shouldn't support, but shouldn't. them is a lot weaker than the judgment i felt, which is doing the wrong thing here buddy so duty and obligation are our favorites because if i can show that violating your obligation i, i'm like standing in authority oveover you. and you think about our polarized societ the we talk about each other. we think the other side on every issue is it's not that like maybe they should consider not doing that they're wrong. so i think we're obsessed with duty and. i think maybe we should cool it more tools available. e's my spectrum of. should ines and here, who is a philosopher who left academia because she's smarter than me. and she read a

book and was trying help me think through like yeah there's sopts duty right so of course there are there's a spectrum of shooting is there spectrum of ordinal s although that one's worse. so i want the spectrum of shadiness. and on one end there's duty and gation. these are the heavy of morality. they let youtaority over someone. if someone violates their duty, you get to blame and shame them. you get to call them out. you make them feel it's righteous, not the only tool that we have in our tool on the other end, i want to go. someone else i know my not like duty and obligation like reasons. you've got reasons to do stuff too. okay so my favorite example of how i think about the difference between reasons and duty. i was driving home with my nd she said, now we were turning in my neighborhood off a vwas large, clearly like turtle crossing this busy daddy daddy, you have to save the turtle.

make. i was like, oh god, i'm definitely about to out into traffic to save a turtle. ani. and here's th'm thinking about i pull over in our neighborhood, look back and that turtle is going to like 55 on this road. so like, okay, stay here and i out and i'm like flagging down people making myself as big as possible, like pointing like hold on, i'm walking in traffic, just chill. and i grabbed the turtle and i walked like 100 yards into the weeds and pointed in the opposite direction. and, you know, it probably went back in the road next day but i went back to my car and i. and for me and we save the turtle. here's here's the reason i told you that story because virtuous, but i don' think anyone has a animals. if we do we are in serious trouble. there are a trillion in wild animals made that number up,e a trillion wild animals in of rescue right now. itworse than that. right. because when the lions hunting the gazelle do, we rescued the

gazelle from the lion or do we rescue the lion from hunger? so we have obligations to, rescue wild animals. we're in serious trouble. i don't think we have them. i do think there are good reasons to rescue the turtle. here's a good reason. i would have been smashed in suffering, died, and a living hat sucks. it is objectively bad making for a living creaturesuffer and die. so that's a reason to save it. also, my daughter was watching turtles. so good moral reason feel like it's good to model compassion for my daughter. less moral, but sta ill like look good in front of my daughter and be her hero. right? so we have different reasons. and what these reasons are is they're just considerations that count in favor of doing something. they're lightweight too, believe itr no like philosophy, jargon reasons are considerations that count in something. now, you know what philosophers do all day. in favor of something is just like the the world. the turtle valuable. it's pain and suffering is just valuable. i have a reason to rescue it. this is not to blow the

situation with the turtle out of proportion. but here's one of the things i believe duty and obligation are actuly kind rare in our moral lives. it doesn't mean thappen regularly, but like you punching in the nose. i don't think very often right. the reasons everywhere. and so your to value in the world this softer moral situations tt tellabout you they tell us if you're compassionate if you're the kinu go out of their way to rescue a conscious being right and so they actually important in our moral lives and they're much much more common. but here's the thing we reasons because you have a reason to do something time there's a consideration that counts in favor. and so any time there's an animal risk, right, you have reasons to do it. any time you can make someone happy, you havens to do it. think about all the donations that you can make right now, like you can be charitable organizations right now? and you'd be promoting goodness. we have but also.

now we're getting back ethics. think about all of the ways you can pa and badness, all the ways in which you can participate in justice and, injustice. and i think all of that stuff gives us reasons. so here's the diagnosis. thdiagnosis armstrong. another philosophers went wrong because they're like, you don't have a duty to do an a meaningful impact. and i'm sure that's actually duty not to join us all join us all because joy goes like where you're just spewing emissions for no reason. all is showing a lack of concern, disrespect for the environment for the people have to li's not standing in solidarity with people who are going to lose their homes, to rising tides right. it's not exhibiting all of these different properties, but we 's still a mess. so here's theo of the book, how in the world we organize these reasons? i can't give you the full answer. i mean one my publisher probably wouldn't like two yeah it a while. right? so what going to give you like a

snapshot of the way i've tried to start thinking about the. i think we need rules and oftentimes when we think about rules in the context morality, we're just thinking about duty tnot kill. that's a good rule. follow that one. i endorse that. right but we need non duty rules. we need rules are heuristics, right? these are rules of thumb. they help us organize ize this very, very messy moral world that we live in. and so you're dealing with climate change and you're dealing withing and you're dealing with all of these companies that have slave labor somewhere in their we're dealing with all of these things constantly. we need aour moral response. so i don't think rules are like super new to us. we go back to our dietary right. i think one of the good reasons to be a vegetarians, not you if you eat meat, you're actually hurting animals. gh if understanding armstrong's right and if the animal agriculture think is you actually are hurting animals when you eat meat? it's insensitive to choice, but

we still have good reason to become vegetarian because here's rule, a rule that respects value of trying to minimize your impact on the environment, on animal welfare have this great benefit you set it and forget it. and now you never have to think a duty, maybe vegetarianism is too flexitarian and this is still a good organizing role. so like you know when you have good vegetarian options and good meat options. choose vegetarian more. here's a helpful rule flexitarian. put yourself down on the a little bit pescatarian. some people are pescatarian. i think it's because they don' thin animals but like. sure right. they're more less envinmentally harmful. so kind of eating low on the food all right. so is like one way to show the offshore of my book i want is to start thinking about rules. i'm going to give you a few tools for dealing with this is this looks complicated. them.when first look at it, i'm going to talk through it. so here' matrix. we actually have different kinds catastrophes. so just sticking with climate

change. so here's a set of rules to help us respond to climate change. now, i'm not going to tell you that should do all of them. i mean, precisely are going to tell you that you can't. right. so hang on. but the purity, social and structural going down along the vertical axis, right. this is calling us calling our attention different kinds of rules. and what this is that the purity response to withdraw yourself from only one way to address a problem like climate change. so sure you could try to not be a part of it, but you could also try to be a positive part in the solution. so you could you could then follow what i think of as reasons instead of negative. so social and structural reasons try to be a voice, try to be an advocate try to change policy. you're still just doing a tiny part like us politics is probably insensitive to most of our individual choices, but you can be part of the group that to make a change and that gives us reasons, too. all right. so those are t kinds. and then going left to right you can organize reasons based on sort of how demanding they

are or organize rules based on how demanding they are. and the reason is valuable is because it can show really easy to follow. so in the left column these are rules thatconsiderations right don't be wasteful. so my favorite becauseay about 19 times a day. don't be wasteful. because it's actually good for everyone. and if you don't chain. that's myersonal sort of like food heuristic. it's actually hard because we eat a lot and. you're in different situations and etiquette calls for different and you travel and etc's not easy and. then there are the people who want to minimize their carbon fowhat i want to draw attention to, if that's goal you're going to spend your entire life trying to do it. it's going to take all your time, all your energy, all yo resources. it's not to say you shouldn't do it. it means that it's making a ving us. it's taking opportunities to do other things that are good moral responses. so people who try to minimize their carbon footprint are, not paying as much attention to cobalt. they're also probably giving as much to charity because takes a lot of resources to do this.

they're also probably not thinking as much about animal agriculture, aside from the environmental impacts, right? so there are a lot of can let any of these rules take over our lives. all right. so what i'm going to do is going to point the finger rather than you. so here's matrix. and what i've done is i've used a gray scale to show how well or how i live up to the heuristics. so the darker the gray, the better live up to the rule. he my goal is whenever i find a good, reasonable rule that faces no competing considerations adopt, it there's no reason not to then if we're morally itive, feel steady pressure to push cannot do everything, you can't do right so how do we do notice the middle column is s the social column about we live with one another. it's about speaking to other ing wii'm a publico do i don't think i suck at itabilitportunity to come to gaithersburg book festival? so you get to exploit what you in way that is you and i do wish so notice thene is movement which is all way down in the right ate movement, but i have year old.

like that's not in the don't. i think i'll retire someday. you know, here's hoping social security. hang in there. and if i do, then my life will shift. i may have more time than money. right. and then. volunteering is the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense. about tailoring moral responses to contexts here. some concluding lessons. i know, i didn't give yike asorry. as a moral philosopher, it kind of like, hurts me deeply that i didn't give you a knock down argument. but here's what we got in 30 minutes. there is no one thing that you must do in response to catastrophe i think we should do something. we have overwhelming reason to do lots of things, but there is no one thing. and so when someoneou mx, i think they're probably always more and it would be great if you tradeoff you don't have duties so you kind of get of obligation. but that means you can't just satisfy the obligation and be done for the day. you could always kind of push rightward on that matrix.

sohat means the work is never done. and this can be really op find that this is a is a bit crushing. positive uplifting remember it's a rebuttal to e you to matter. isn't tha's like, way better than not mattering, right? we get to think about what so moral life in the 21st say, is a constant and a creative, because we consta to be deciding for ourselves how to make our responses fit our lifestyle our contexts are gifts. are privileges, our abilities etc. very much. that is my time. happy to take questions questions. i think a mic is coming around. they shout at your own party. love it if you didn't. bringing it to you. thank you so much. so this is appealing more to

p ship, but here's just a societal note that this all speaks to as a professor you're seein' 'n a postmodern postmodernity0metimes seen as a there is capital t truth anymore. that kind of argument that can quickly devolve into curious with you speaki to th you have of these 18 year old students as well as in expandinon this with your book how do you combat nihilism in a postmodern world and culture while still keeping part of your soul? thank you. yeah that's great question. in that last part feels important so i actually have a chapter the book on relativism for exactly this reason because i teach and so i, i sort of h data

for my students on like wre the temperature is what the temperature is where they're feeling. and yeah, i think right now the thing i hear most is sortll, i mean that would be right for me. it's, it's, you know, not necessarily right for you. so who am i to say so i have a chapter and it's very short chapter to be honest. and i say, look, i think i can disprove relativism to you it's not quite this short, but it's close. think can disprove relativism to you. is it wrong to lightre for fun? is it wrong byyes. boom. relativism we found objective moral truth inhis room right. yeah. so it's a chea only one. but it's right and so the goal of that chapter is to understa in the appeal ofcosmopolitanism only doesn't imply incompatible because the

cosmopolitan students that i have say things like, you know, who am i right people elsewhere do it diy want be tolerant. i say, so is tolerance universal value, because if it is is false, so relativism undermines cosmopolitan zionism, it undermines the draw to like respect other people' beliefs. so here's the really uncomfortable way to put that not all beliefs should be respected if your view is that we should light babies on fire fo i do respect that view. i think we're all on the same page with that one, right? so the reason i do that is to try tobecause come back at the end and sayshould be ethics are going to tailor a bit to you and your strengths and weaknesses which sounds not because all of the moralst that the way in which we should respond to them differ. because, look, some of us in this room can put solar panels on ourpp house, some of us, and then we probably have solar panels on house. that cannot be a requirement for everyone because it is not

reasonable, not in the realm of possibility. so there are people for whom with catastrophe are totally accessible and other people who aren't. and that's what we have to make room for. for that. that's a great question. yeah. you mentioned that you think policy is a big thing, which it is. but i in my own life that working at the local level really makes arence do you address that in your book that you really can you talk about while volunteering and advocating but really at the local level vote can make a huge difference that is absolutely true so this is a great point. i probably don't actually do as much in the book as i should. so i have this sort of distinction between, a high level policy very often. so talking about things like climate change y level that would mitigate absolute catastrophe? it's international. all right agreements across and. so what you know, what we can do right make an actual difference. so like we should talk about maryland, but you know

california is so easy because california, a state can make decisions is one of the biggest economies in the world as a states. right it can have genuine influence. and so they're sorts of levels. so maryland is less than that when we make decisions. but way impactful than when i switch. right. so there are steps all great question. yeah. give him one second. i know. i know. the c-span guys would love it. love that. i'm really looking forward to reading your book. you quite a lot of dilemmas that thought about anddn't hear from you today was greta that's for our futures. you al challenging country why don't we act now and why don't we have action that has result quicker results. yeah this is great so a quick about why editors are so important. my first draft of the book did not talk about thunberg. my editor was like what so she's in there now where

she shows up because it could be graph. one second. so we have different strengt weme and tween me but but she's and so she time in a way that i'm going to say a lot of us don't, she probably i don't know her. so but ioney the way some people do. so it be unreasonable to expect hernd the, you know, melinda gates to contribute to this conversation in the sam's young she has this ability to inspire which i can i think can actually be a little offensive. i think young people are kind hey, else stop telling us to save the world that you screwed upt can really shame us, right? when i look at my daughter and ike, this is what we're leaving you during season right? when i can't breathe'm like, we did this to you. the youth not only have and energy, etc. they had this specific place in our population that can be inspiring because it's really important to call us out right in different so her as a youth feels reallyand then i'll just mention there's more in the book but you also talk about bill.

bill as a retiree activist. i mean, he hasn't he launched a site called the third act. and it's' adults in the third act of life, strengths and willingness toe in different ways. right? so yeah, we should think about ll these people can make a dent and then out hours. right. thank you. are we done? i'm being told we're done. thank you so much. we when mayor john asked me, i would like to introduce a book usly said i would. and i ask him, as i have in t choose when i might the romney a rec b prior reading the book, i knew that mitt