Ethical Living in the Real World

photo credit: stoic

Like many people, my awareness of the environmental impact of my activities has increased in recent years. And unlike some others, I can’t just pretend it’s not there and carry on as before. I must take action.

As this awareness has grown, so have the number of resources open to would-be ethical citizens. The number of less environmentally damaging or environmentally beneficial options available has increased significantly.

So what is ethical living? For Christmas I asked for the excellent Rough Guide to Ethical Living¹. It defines ethical living like this:

“adapting our lifestyles and shopping habits with the aim of reducing our negative impact (and increasing our positive impact) on the world’s environments, people and animals.”

Which translates into roughly three things: cut your emissions (loosely defined to include carbon but also the number of chemicals you use), avoid exploited labour and avoid unhappy animal products (or animal products altogether).

Why would someone want to pursue a more ethical lifestyle? In my case, simply because once the awareness of our impact has been raised, I can’t pack it away again. It’s a Pandora’s box of guilt and responsibility. Everybody handles this differently: for a dwindling number in the developed world their awareness has not yet been raised. Others deny the science or deny they have any responsibility. Some feel only governments should take action or that new technology will save us. And a few see living ethically as living expensively, an option not open to them.

Well I follow the precautionary principle. Governments are taking action at their usual slow pace. But that doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility. New technology is being developed and will likely go a long way to saving us from environmental destruction if indeed we are saved. But until then our daily lives continue to aggravate the situation. And as I’ll show later, there are many things the individual can do that are not just inexpensive but actually save money.

Reading the book as one of the already converted I found I was pretty good in most areas. Thanks to my girlfriend I’m a de facto vegetarian. I don’t have a car and I cycle to work. My house is well-insulated. I don’t leave appliances on standby. I use eco-friendly cleaning products at vast expense. I recycle whatever the council will collect.

But despite all this back-slapping, I have problems too. I reckon the benefits of all the above are probably wiped out by one flight. This year I will take at least three short-haul and one long-haul flight. While not a globe-trotting businessman, that’s quite a lot for the leisure traveller. I couldn’t tell you with any degree of confidence whether my clothes and shoes were made by sweatshop labour. And I worry that my home renovations are a senseless environmental burden.

So now it’s time for you and me to take action. There seem to be three categories of actions you can take to live more ethically:

1. Easy things that might even save you money.

2. Easy things that’ll cost you

3. Really difficult things.

Everyone should be doing category one. This is things like insulating your house, turning the heating down in summer, not leaving appliances on standby, using your local kerbside recycling service if you have one, not overfilling the kettle. If you’re not passionate about doing as little damage to the Earth that created you as possible perhaps the fact that many of these little things will also save you money will do the trick. I think two major things stop people here. One is the feeling of outside imposition into their private realm. What I do in my own house is nobody’s business but my own, you might say. If I want to pay to leave my TV on standby I damn well will. For these people the carrot and stick do not provide sufficient incentive.

But this is an easier group to reach than another, those who don’t know the carrot exists and don’t know they’re being beaten with the stick. Their energy bill is what it is and they’re powerless to change it. For this group the solution lies in education. Awareness of the environment is far higher than five years ago. I’m optimistic that this awareness will soon reach a tipping point and it will become normal, even a source of pride, to take everyday action to preserve the environment.

Category two is more difficult. The problems identified in category one apply, but there is a further barrier. Even people who would like to take action here are prevented from doing so by cost. I’m lucky that I can afford to pay the premium for eco-friendly laundry detergent. I know a lot of the extra price I pay has nothing to do with the increased cost of production and everything to do with exploiting my desire to be green. I wince at the price but I buy it nonetheless. Many can’t afford to do so. To take another example, they buy the miserable £2.50 chicken because it’s affordable, not because they expressly desire chicken whose legs show burns from sitting in its own excrement.

But in some areas the situation could be improved. In the past meat was a luxury eaten once or twice a week. Going back to that way of living would make ‘happy’ meat affordable simply by buying it less frequently. Frequently it’s the price signals to consumers that are wrong. If the prices of conventional and ecological cleaning products were reversed you can be sure consumers would switch right away. A tax on conventional cleaners could pay for a subsidy on ecological cleaners. As demand for the ecological versions then increased, the marginal cost of producing them would fall and competition would see the artificial mark ups eliminated, eventually removing the need for the subsidy. No net loss or gain to consumers and an incentive to manufacturers. Why not?

I’ve saved the most difficult category for last, the downright difficult stuff. Transport is the biggest culprit, accounting for 23% of UK domestic CO2 emissions and 15% globally². I live in London so it’s feasible for me to cycle to work and not own a car. The vast majority of London commuters take the train which is relatively green. But elsewhere the car is dominant. It’s simply not an option for people outside major metropolitan areas to get rid of their cars. Public transport physically can’t get you some places and the journey times are often unrealistic. Even mega-investment in public transport would leave some places barely or infrequently connected.

But that’s not to say all hope is lost. Developments in alternative fuels are at an early stage but already bearing fruit. Meanwhile there are changes in behaviour that can make a real difference. 56% of UK car journeys are under five miles and 23% are under two miles². The person who has no choice but to drive to work during the week likely also drives the mile or two to see their parents at the weekend. That’s a great distance to walk or cycle. But the car is just so easy and the monetary cost of such journeys is invisible. You just fill up when the tank’s empty, you don’t know how much each individual journey cost you. But why not make that information obvious?

Many modern cars tell you the miles per gallon figure they’re achieving. Why not a readout that tells you how much your latest journey cost you? And a display showing how much all your recent journeys of less than two miles have cost. Wouldn’t being faced with such information drive behavioural change?

Bigger than cars though, and the area I worry most about, is aviation. In my household we like to travel. We work hard and so we feel we deserve holidays. And we have grand plans: we’ve got enough destinations in mind to keep us in four holidays a year for the next decade. But the most practical, if not only, way to reach these destinations is by air. For all my green convictions, this is where they meet my own brick wall of entitlement. I am not prepared to deny myself something so desirable for the sake of the environment. So what can be done?

Carbon offsetting schemes salve the consciences of some travellers by charging you to plant trees to absorb the equivalent in carbon dioxide as emitted by your flight. But the effectiveness of such schemes is not established, and there are issues such as the potentially harmful land take of these forests in certain parts of the world.

The European Union is pursuing an emissions trading scheme which would see each additional tonne of carbon emitted by aviation above a 2004-06 baseline matched by a tonne saved elsewhere. This would be a start, but would apply only to the EU, is not yet in place and still relies on offsetting.

Hence the quandary. I could hide behind my lack of car and my cycling and the fact many businesspeople fly hundreds of times a year and the wasteful activities of many of my fellow citizens. But having come this far down the road, such weak rationalisations just won’t cut it. So I’m stuck.

The only way out I can see is to use our old friend the price signal. If aviation were much more heavily taxed the number of flights would surely fall. But it would be a brave government who impeded its economy in such a way, upsetting business and frustrating holidaymakers who just want their two weeks in the sun. The problem is that unlike with the cleaning products, there is no real alternative to flying in the majority of cases.

I’m reluctant to leave this post without reaching a conclusion on this point, but I see no way forward except to carry on as I am and hope it all comes right in the end. Bury my head in the sand.

Any suggestions?

¹Please note this is an affiliate link, if you would prefer a non-affiliate link you can also click here

²Source: Department for Transport

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