Short Abstract:

Does changing our behavior to be more sustainable make us worse-off? In this paper I provide a conceptual capabilitarian account of "at least as well-off-ness" and how, and under what circumstances, this is compatible with (drastic) changes to high-emitting behavior. I show how unsustainable means can be substituted for sustainable ones and how this need not lead to a capability-loss

Long Abstract:

Reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions quickly enough likely requires people, especially the global upper-, and middle-classes, to change their high-emitting lifestyles. Such changes are often framed as a sacrifice or loss – justified to safeguard the planets habitability, but a loss, nonetheless. By using the capability approach (CA) to evaluate people’s losses and gains, I provide a conceptual account of GHG-reducing lifestyle changes which can leave people just as, if not better-off. I call this goal of reducing emissions while leaving people at least as well-off: ‘sustainable prosperity’.

My paper provides a capabilitarian account of how sustainable prosperity can be conceptualized and under what conditions it is, and is not, possible. I firstly show how it can be robustly defined within the CA, secondly, employ a variation of Sen’s (1985) early formal account of the CA to demonstrate how it is possible since GHG-intensive means can be substituted while preserving (or enhancing) someone’s capabilities. I lastly, show that sustainable prosperity looses most of its strength if we evaluate well-off-ness in terms of ‘general’ capabilities (e.g., being mobile), and I provide an account for why private valuations for ‘specific’ capabilities such as “cooking with natural gas,” or “driving a gas-guzzling car” need not undermine sustainable prosperity.

I firstly show that within the CA, sustainable prosperity – leaving people at least as well-off, while reducing emissions - can take two primary forms*. Either ‘at least as well-off’ is conceptualized on people’s total capability-set. I call this ‘Compensatory Prosperity’ since it allows for the losses of some capabilities to be offset by gains in other. For example, someone might loose capabilities realized by (frequent) long-distance travel, but she could still be at least as well-off, if gains in other valuable capabilities can compensate for the loss. Throughout the paper I use someone switching from an SUV to a bicycle, as an illustration of the framework. Here we can imagine, that even if cycling is worse in allowing one to be mobile, the health benefits might compensate for such losses.

However, ‘Compensatory Prosperity’ requires us to have a (partial) valuation ranking of capabilities – we would, for example, need to know the value of ‘mobility’ viz-a-viz ‘health’. Though not an insurmountable problem I mostly focus on a more stringent, conception of sustainable prosperity ‘Non-Compensatory Prosperity’ where each individual capability (being well-nourished, mobile, well-sheltered, etc.) remains at least as valuable as before. In the SUV-bicycle example we might say that under certain conditions (e.g., for fit cyclists in dense bike-friendly cities) a bicycle might be as good, or better at promoting the capability of ‘being mobile’ than a gas-guzzling SUV.

Both conceptions of sustainable prosperity, but especially the ‘non-compensatory’ kind heavily rely on the possibility of substituting unsustainable means, while sustaining capabilities. This means/ends distinction is what makes the CA a powerful tool for conceptualizing sustainable behaviour and despite being a very plausible claim, so far there has not been any systematic account of substitution within the CA (cf. Robeyns, 2017; Wood & Roelich, 2019). To show how it is conceptually possible I use a modified version of Sen’s (1985) formal capability-framework which relies on: resources (or entitlements), commodity-command, commodity-characteristics, conversion factors, and a conversion function. I show that GHG-emissions should be thought of as a quasi-resource used when one employs some commodity (e.g., a gas-guzzling SUV) and show how commodities that require fewer GHGs can act as substitutes.

Some substitute commodities (e.g., more energy-efficient appliances) can easily be substituted without leading to capability-losses – provided, that is, command over these new commodities did not cost more resources (e.g., money). However, most sustainable commodities – electric vs. gas-stoves, vegan vs. meat-based diets, bicycles vs. SUVs – will have different characteristics than their emission-intensive alternatives. We thus require an account of how such different characteristics can be accommodated without leading to a loss in capabilities. To briefly sketch it here we can say that such as substitution, e.g., of a gas-guzzling SUV for a bicycle might not make someone any less ‘mobile’ (or compromise other capabilities) despite the differing characteristics if we:

(i) alter relevant conversion factors that are mailable to accommodate the new characteristics (build cycling paths, change minor norms)

(ii) expand or change the set of commodities one can command to make up for losses in some characteristics (electric-, or cargo-bicycles, having access to both bicycles and public transport), or

(iii) a coordinated combination of (i) and (ii).

It is under these circumstances that sustainable prosperity (in the more stringent non-compensation condition) is theoretically possible.

The above two sections of the paper show under what circumstances someone could, say, substitute an SUV for a bicycle, and in what way she might thus be said to be as well-off, if not better. However, this account hinges on the assumption that we evaluate her in terms of the capabilities with a general description such as ‘being mobile’. More ‘specific capabilities’, say “driving a Ford-150 at 130km/h” have less ‘multiple realizability’ (Nussbaum, 2001), which means that, prima facie, fewer commodities could act as suitable substitutes. Some people clearly value such specific capabilities if losses in such specific capabilities ‘counts’ it would heavily limit the extent of sustainable prosperity. I firstly defend that people can reasonably value specific capabilities and why this is a problem for CA-scholars, since the standard justifications in the literature for favouring general, as opposed to specific capabilities seem not to apply to the cases relevant to sustainable prosperity. I secondly provide a Scanlonian public reason argument to show how we can still acknowledge people’s private losses of some specific capabilities they value, while at the same time being able to say that, at least from a public or third-person perspective, they have not been made worse-off.

*The paper considers a potential third option: if capabilities, not functionings are valued, voluntarily abstaining from emitting-behaviours technically fulfills the conditions of sustainable prosperity. To save space and because it raises both practical and philosophical problems I omitted this option from the abstract.