• Moral incapacity- people behaving immorally on a large scale, for whatever reason. Under utilitarianism, this means ‘deliberately causing unnecessary suffering’. It’s easy to laugh at the banality of the suggestion that immorality is the underlying cause of climate change (and indeed, it’s not the most practical assertion). But it’s true. We run the planet. We have total control over whether or not the planet gets destroyed. And yet, we do nothing to stop it. That’s called lacking moral capacity. In this context, it’s prioritising endless population growth, without ever stopping to think about the effect this has on the environment, wildlife, and future generations. It’s prioritising profit over sustainability. It’s lacking the intelligence or empathy to consider the consequences of our actions; be it littering, mass-producing a pointless disposable product, or failing to agree on or enforce sustainability policies on dogmatic, religious, lazy or cowardly grounds. (It certainly isn’t just the West that does this.) When the law doesn’t equal utilitarianism, why the hell should we expect anyone to be doing right by the environment, or our future? The law simply must change, to better reflect consequentialist ethics…

• Overpopulation. A sticky issue. Granted, World War III seems to be a more pressing nearfield threat than this (underpopulation would be the main concern if that ever happened). But burgeoning populations certainly doesn’t help slow environmental degradation- quite the opposite. More people means more and more resources have to get burned, farmed, eaten, crapped out or converted to houses merely to sustain human life, let alone bring any quality to it. A utilitarian government would place a much greater focus on educating the public around the ramifications of overpopulation and its impact on not only the environment but collective quality-of-life, and work diligently to build an international alliance with the same pragmatic understanding and approach to family planning. 

I’ll leave the last points on the pyramid for my book. But rest assured- if you’re losing sleep over the fact you accidentally bought a non-recyclable bag today or forgot to attend an Extinction Rebellion demonstration, just drop it. It’s futile. Things would need to change on a fundamental level globally for us to forge a healthier relationship with our planet, and stop seeing so many felled forests, sewagey seas and endangered species. You might be surprised to discover that not all of it’s the elites’ fault (some is, of course).

The only sure-fire way to understand both this problem in its entirety and what an effective long-term solution would look like is to read Absolute Justice- A Plan to Save the World…