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1. I begin with an assumption that few would deny, but about which many are in denial: human beings are transforming earth in ways that are devastating for other forms of life, future human beings, and many of our human contemporaries. The epidemic of extinction now under way is an expression of this. So is the changing climate. Ozone depletion, which continues at a very high rate, is potentially the most lethal expression of these transformations, for without an ozone layer, no life on earth could exist. Call anthropogenic mass extinctions, climate change, and ozone depletion “the problem of global environmental change” (or “the problem” for short). 2. Philosophers in their professional roles have by and large remained silent about the problem. There are many reasons for this. I believe that one reason is that it is hard to know what to say from the perspective of the reigning moral theories: Kantianism, contractarianism, and commonsense pluralism. While I cannot fully justify this claim here, some background remarks may help to motivate my interest in exploring utilitarian approaches to the problem. 3. Consider first Kantianism. Christine Korsgaard writes that it is “nonaccidental” that utilitarians are “obsessed” with “population control” and “the preservation of the environment.” For “a basic feature of the consequentialist outlook still pervades and distorts our thinking: the view that the business of morality is to bring something about.” Korsgaard leaves the impression that a properly conceived moral theory would have little to say about the environment, for such a theory would reject this false picture of the “business of morality.” This impression is reinforced by the fact that her remark about the environmental obsessions of utilitarians is the only mention of the environment in a book of more than 400 pages. It is not surprising that a view that renounces as “the business of morality” the question of what we should bring about would be disabled when it comes to thinking about how to respond to global environmental change.

There has been speculation about the possibility of anthropogenic global warming since at least the late nineteenth century (Arrhenius 1896, 1908). At times the prospect of such a warming has been welcomed, for it has been thought that it would increase agricultural productivity and delay the onset of the next Ice Age (Callendar 1938). Other times, and more recently, the prospect of global warming has been the stuff of “doomsday narratives,” as various writers have focused on the possibility of widespread drought, flood, famine, and economic and political dislocations that might result from a “greenhouse warming”-induced climate change (Flavin 1989). Although high-level meetings have been convened to discuss the greenhouse effect since at least 1963 (see Conservation Foundation 1963), the emergence of a rough, international consensus about the likelihood and extent of anthropogenic global warming began with a National Academy Report in 1983 (National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council 1983) and meetings in Villach, Austria, and Bellagio, Italy, in 1985 (World Climate Program 1985) and in Toronto, Canada, in 1988 (Conference Statement 1988). The most recent influential statement of the consensus holds that although there are uncertainties, a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from its preindustrial baseline is likely to lead to a 2.5 °C increase in the earth’s mean surface temperature by the middle of the twenty-first century (IPCC 1990). (Interestingly, this estimate is within the range predicted by Arrhenius 1896.) This increase is expected to have a profound impact on climate and therefore on plants, animals, and human activities of all kinds. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that without policy interventions, atmospheric carbon dioxide will stabilize at twice preindustrial levels. According to the IPCC (1990), we would need immediate 60 percent reductions in net emissions in order to stabilize at a carbon dioxide doubling by the end of the twenty-first century. Since these reductions are very unlikely to occur, we may well see increases of 4 °C by the end of the twenty-first century.