» Is Offset Carbon Virtuous or Just Non-Sinful?
Alex says sins of omission (aka not upholding virtues) are no worse than sins of commission; I dispute that even if that is true in theology, our Judeo-Christian culture makes a strong distinction. I’ve talked before about how the distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission divides the environmental movement.
It turns out this aspect of ethical theory is being implemented in certifications for carbon offsets. Some projects remove carbon from the atmosphere after it has been produced, some prevent the carbon-producing activities in the first place. And then there are projects that do actions now that have the potential to reduce carbon, like planting trees…if they don’t burn down.
What’s different about what [we] do, is that what we’re doing is actually good for the environment, it’s not just less bad. Even if we got our doing bad down to zero – and I doubt that will happen – we’ll need some doing good too.
Hmmm. I have to fix those old, broken images. My post you linked to looks all weird.
Jack
18 Apr 09 at 7:17 pm
Also, our “Judeo-Christian culture” does not have Judeo-Christian morality. This has pretty much been true since before the big J.C. was nailed to his tree.
Nietzsche talked about that too: Christ was Übermensch, the interpretations of the sheep are unrelated slave moralities.
Jack
18 Apr 09 at 7:34 pm
I meant “Judeo-Christian morality” in the colloquial sense, not “the morality of Jesus”.
Jared
19 Apr 09 at 11:28 am
Hmm, your post looked fine when I started writing this post a while ago. I’m not sure the archives need to be perfect: the text is still there.
Jared
19 Apr 09 at 11:29 am