This right tonight

[j4]

I caught part of a bunfight discussion on Radio 2 at lunchtime today, between George Monbiot and somebody from (I think) the Spectator, about the environmental ethics of cheap flights. [BBC News: "UK 'must act' on plane emissions" | Report launched today by the University of Oxford]

You already know what Monbiot's line is; I don't need to rehash that here. But the other chap was putting forward a view that I hadn't heard before; he was arguing that Monbiot's call for fewer cheap flights was part of some kind of middle-class conspiracy to trample all over the "rights" that have recently "been acquired" by "poorer people". He claimed that the rich resented the poor becoming richer, and wanted to "punish" them for this by curtailing their "rights" to cheap flights -- whether they are making these flights for pleasure, work, or "education".

Questions I am not going to attempt to answer include: whether the environmentalists' predictions of the future global warming scenario are as exaggerated as their detractors claim; how many flights Monbiot has made in the last year; whether he is more interested in advertising his book than saving the world; how many of our cheap flights to European holiday destinations (of which I've made a few myself) are "educational"; whether there is a middle-class conspiracy to erode the rights of poorer people; whether the poor are in fact becoming richer, and if so, by what metric.

Questions I would like to find answers to include: where do "rights" come from? Are we born with them? If not, do we accrue them as a function of our passage through time, or are they allocated to us by some external agency? Does the discontinuing of a commodity or service which used to exist automatically constitute riding roughshod over somebody's "rights"? If we have a "right" to something, should we claim it, whatever the cost?

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Without getting into a fundamental debate on rights I think the cheap flights issue does show up how easily people claiming to be arguing for the benefit of humanity fall into a class trap. If plane emissions are a problem then the 'obvious' first thing to do is ban first and business class. First and business class passengers take up more room and so cause more emissions and, we must assume, they have no more intrinsic 'right' to cause emissions than the chap in cattle class. Naturally, private jets should be banned as should dedicated planes for politicians, royalty etc. Oddly, you won't hear the privileged people who are so desperate to save the planet arguing that line.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

where do "rights" come from?

Abroad. Nasty un-English nonsense.

Sorry, that's not the useful philosophical debate you want, but my other answer tends to be "people who feel that 'I want' isn't a strong enough expression of the fact that they want something", which is even less helpful.

Rights come from protected welfare interests which can be expressed in the form of a negative duty on others-in-general, or a positive duty on others-in-particular.

They arise out of either the political process, societal evolution and necessity, or the ability of the rich / powerful to create a consensus that they have a particular right, absent any challenge to it.

Cheap air travel is not a right as far as I can tell. Freedom of movement within particular parameters might be, or at least freedom of egress from the country one is in - though if it's a right to have it at £200 and environmental tax would deny this right to people who can't afford £300, what about people who can only afford £150?

[aldabra]

Rights come from social consensus. They depend on the society you're born into: it makes no sense to talk of a right to life in the absence of enough food to feed everybody. But it becomes very very useful indeed when you have enough food to feed everybody but it's being fed to cattle to make feasts for the rich.

They're used to shore up the welfare of the weak against the strong. Though I see you have a comment already saying they're to protect the privileges of the rich from the masses, which suggests some disambiguation is called for. I suspect it disambiguates along the property rights/personal rights division.

If claiming your right costs more than it's worth without a consequent social benefit then I think it's a "right" that needs looking into.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My take on rights, much summarised and simplified, is that they are things we as civilised humans choose to assert against a universe which cares not and against uncivilised humans; that there are some which come with being born, and some more which come with being a reasonable adult, and defining the boundary of "reasonable adult" is really darned hard.

I do not think cheap air travel is a right. I'd still be very glad to have it available.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Does it have to be either/or? Surely the "obvious" thing to do would be to attack the problem from both ends: banning private jets and making first/business class more efficient, and counteracting the culture of "cheap" flights.

I don't think anybody has a "'right' to cause emissions". I think (as you might have guessed from my post) the question of "rights" in this context is largely if not entirely a red herring. It comes down to a question of whether people/goods (whether it's royalty or Royal Mail) need to be moved from one place to another, and how fast; but questions of "needs" are as slippery as questions of "rights" (do we have a 'hierarchy of rights'?).

[simont]

My general feeling is that rights language is emotive, black-and-white and has no room for complication or subtlety. This is occasionally genuinely useful when fighting against real systematic oppression (denying women the vote, serious back-of-the-bus level racism, that sort of thing) because such issues don't have a whole lot of complex subtlety in the first place and by and large the things advocated by rights talk are actually the right things. But in most cases, I tend to think, rights language is a severe over-simplification and obscures an issue more than it helps.

A good example of this is found in the fact that many people can't even agree on what a given right is. Take the right to free speech. The original point of enshrining that right in (American) law was because it helps prevent a totalitarian government from keeping itself in power by suppressing dissent; so it's specifically about the government not inhibiting citizens' free expression of their honestly felt political views. But there are people who will argue that if a newspaper declines to publish their letter it's infringing on their right of free speech; that truth-in-advertising laws are an intolerable restriction; that merely trying to persuade somebody that they shouldn't say a particular thing constitutes a dangerous move towards violation of that right. My feeling is that this widespread wrongness is a symptom of the fact that rights language is just not expressive enough to handle subtleties.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I like your second answer, but I agree that it's probably not conducive to "useful philosophical debate". On the other hand, I opened the floor to my flist; if what they want is a bunfight, then bring on the buns. ;-)

I also like your more serious answers, however; though I'm not sure I'm clear about what you mean by negative/positive duties on others-in-general/particular (that is, I think I know what you mean, but it's not terminology I'm familiar with).

They arise out of either the political process, societal evolution and necessity, or the ability of the rich / powerful to create a consensus that they have a particular right, absent any challenge to it.

Out of interest, are you identifying these as two different routes by which rights are created/evolved, or two different ways of looking at the same process?

Where would you recommend that I started if I wanted to read a relatively brief and lucid introduction to these issues? (I always fear when I embark on Philosophical Musings that I am reinventing the wheel and making it slightly more elliptical in the process..)

[nja.livejournal.com]

Basically, I agree with Mary Warnock's view (which is derived from Bentham and legal positivism). A right is something the law gives you, and though we may talk of other "rights", that's just a confused way of saying that we feel strongly that something is morally a good thing. She gives the example of the 1972 Education Act, which gave severely disabled children the right to an education. Prior to that, you might say that morally such children ought to be educated, but not that they had a right to an education. After the Act, parents could use the courts to ensure that their children were educated. If you can't enforce it, it isn't a right. Same with cheap flights, though there's not (so far as I know) a law saying that airlines have to offer cheap flights, so it's not even a right in that legalistic sense.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It doesn't, logically, have to be either/or but it is interesting that the 'problem' is seen as 'cheap' flights, not more flights. I don't know what a 'culture of cheap flights' is so I have no idea whether one could or should counteract it. I do think I know what a 'culture of conspicuous consumption' is though and I'm pretty sure that is to be deprecated. But I'll come back to my original point, why is Joe Blow from Preston taking a cheap flight to Prague seen as a 'problem' when Harry Windsor jetting to Mustique in some croney's Lear Jet is sacrosanct? I don't expect to see anyone trying to regulate first class travel or private jets anytime soon but it does appear that there is a vocal lobby for curtailing cheap flights. That's real politics that affects real people in a way that abstract discussion of rights doesn't.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Two different routes. The right to fair pay for your labour, say, and the right to pay people any amount they will accept to work for you, arose in different ways, and are conflicting. Arguably most of the latter category of rights will pre-exist, in that they would require someone to stop them, whereas the former category will require someone to create them.

Negative duty on other-in-general would be for example 'I have a right to walk down the street without being mugged because you have a duty to leave me alone'. Positive duty on others-in-particular would be for example 'You gave birth to me, now I have a right to food and shelter because you have a duty to look after your child or give it to someone who will'. Awaits feminist onslaught due to use of bad example.

Good books about rights. Hmm. Well anyone is going to say that you need to read the "Two concepts of Liberty" lecture, which has the advantage of being short and probably available on the web somewhere, though I find it rather tediously A-Level nowadays. Probably because it's a standard A-Level mock essay, not to malign Berlin himself.

The political and legal philosopher who actually has all this sorted is Joseph Raz (Balliol), so you might read his "The Authority of Law", or "Rights, Culture and the Law" which is about him rather than by him. From a more positive perspective there's Dworkin (Male version), "Taking Rights Seriously".

Neither of those are introductory texts, really though - I'm sure there's a "Rights" in the "Democracy", "Capitalism", "Feminism", etc series. I think it's purple, and quite possibly very acceptable.

[camellia-uk.livejournal.com]

There was a similar debate here recently, as they've stopped doing free NUS cards (at certain places), and now you only get discounts if you pay for a card. My initial thought was that this was horribly unfair, particularly for students who are funding themselves and really *need* those discounts, and shouldn't be forced to pay for the card. But as a friend pointed out, discounts for students aren't a *right*, they're a privilage, and if the NUS decide to take that away, well we can take it up with them (and accuse them of selling out as a union), but we can hardly take it to the court of human rights.
(Another point that's being hotly debated is the issue of whether it's a human right to be able to display religious symbols in the workplace... but I think that's even more fraught with flamebait than the airtravel issue.)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I've not been able to get any answer more satisfactory than "rights arise from the political process"; in particular, that "Human rights arise from the international political process and subscription to the UN declaration".

Rights language is extremely unhelpful in resolving conflicts of interest and social issues. It becomes a game of who can advocate most convincingly that X is a right.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't know what a 'culture of cheap flights' is

Sorry, that was a bit hand-wavy. What I'm saying is that it currently seems to be not just culturally acceptable but practically expected now that one can fly to many European destinations for very low prices. This hasn't always been the case, even in my short lifetime; it's a relatively new phenomenon. EasyJet have always been a particularly visible example, with posters advertising "Nice for £19" (or was it £9?) and so on; and I frequently get spam offering me flights for a tenner or even for "free" (by which I assume they mean no additional cost on top of airport tax etc). If ten years ago you'd asked the man on the street how much it would cost to fly to Prague, chances are he wouldn't have had a clue, except a guess that it was almost certainly more than he could afford. If you asked TMOTS the same question now, chances are he not only has a clue but is going there for his stag night.

What I'm suggesting challenging is the expectation that we will or should always be able to travel abroad cheaply and easily, and the assumption that because we can, we should. Why should we be able to travel abroad? I'm not saying we shouldn't; I suppose what I'm asking is "Who needs to do this / benefits from doing this, and why?" and "Are those needs/benefits more important than the need (if you acknowledge such a need*) to reduce carbon emissions or the benefits from doing so?"

* if you don't, then I suspect the whole discussion is purely academic.

why is Joe Blow from Preston taking a cheap flight to Prague seen as a 'problem' when Harry Windsor jetting to Mustique in some croney's Lear Jet is sacrosanct?

I hope I haven't said anything to indicate that I think it is sacrosanct: for avoidance of doubt, though, I certainly don't think it's sacrosanct, and I'm not sure who does. As I said in my previous comment, I think those with the power to do so should be attacking the problem from both ends.

However, I suspect (though I don't actually have the figures -- please do supply them if you can!) that the increase in official royal/presidential flights (or even Harry Windsor's pleasure trips) since the boom in cheap flights is smaller than the increase in Joe Blows from Preston nipping over to Nice for the weekend. If you're trying to limit the overall growth of something, do you target a) the area of most growth, or b) the area of least growth?

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

The veil debate is another example of the problem: "People have a right to wear whatever they want" is advanced as an argument against "I would prefer people not to wear veils".

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

If you're trying to limit the overall growth of something, do you target a) the area of most growth, or b) the area of least growth?

Well, obviously (a). The only reason for going after the tiny amount of executive travel is a solidarity argument: people find it more acceptable if it affects everyone. This reminds me of the Yes, Minister episode about the efficiency drive.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

If you're trying to limit the overall growth of something, do you target a) the area of most growth, or b) the area of least growth?

I think you tackle the area of maximum inequity. By your logic 'we' should be focussing on rising carbon fuels usage in China and India while not worrying too much about the G8.

I'm not sure who does

The government and Parliament? Has a single minister expressed concern over first class travel or private jets?

I do believe carbon emissions need to be reduced but I really doubt the sincerity of people who would start by tackling a relatively low per capita use by a group they don't identify with rather than the higher per capita usage of their privileged friends. To me it looks a whole lot more like a sumptuary law debate given an environmental gloss for PR's sake.

[j4.livejournal.com]

By your logic 'we' should be focussing on rising carbon fuels usage in China and India while not worrying too much about the G8.

Good point. OTOH, "Y is more of a problem than X" is not the same as "X is not a problem and therefore we need do nothing about it".

Has a single minister expressed concern over first class travel or private jets?

Conversely, the absence of anybody saying "X is a big problem" is not the same thing as everybody saying "X is sacrosanct".

I don't have the answers; I'm just raising questions. I think the questions of "Do we have a real need (let alone "right") to travel abroad frequently and easily for leisure reasons?" and "What benefits do we derive from travel?" are useful ones to consider, independently of the other issues. But thank you for raising more and different questions to consider.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I agree that any legally imposed limitations on air travel should be applied irrespective of whether one is a Windsor or Wayne/Waynetta.

I'm not sure about the "solidarity" argument, because it sounds a bit like "we need to be seen to be doing something about X even if the real problem is Y", but I'm also not sure that the "real" problem is Y, for any value of Y. If you see what I mean.

I suspect the reason there's a vocal lobby against cheap flights is that they're the most visible area of growth. For all I know, leisure flights made by the royal family in private jets have increased by 10,000% in the last 10 years (though even if they have, the absolute effect is probably smaller) -- but it's not as visible, and it's not the thing that's creating the culture changes.

But I don't know. As I've just said to chickenfeet, I don't have the answers.

Not familiar with the YM episode you mention, but I can imagine...!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Once again, in terms of formal logic, you are entirely correct. The trouble is politics (and like it or not 'rights' and 'privileges' and their support or curtailment is what politics is about) doesn't work that way. It's true that saying "X is a big problem" does not imply that "(closely related) Y is sacrosanct" but it does mean "we have absolutely no intention of doing anything about Y, otherwise we would have said so".

Do 'we' have a need to travel for pleasure? Who is 'we' and who defines what is 'necessary' vs (presumably unnecessary) 'pleasure' travel? Do 'we' need company X to fly its entire salesforce to Hawaii for the annual sales meeting? Do 'we' need Tony Blair to fly to Washington to kiss up to GWB? Would travel abroad for pleasure be more 'necessary' if it were expensive and unpleasant? Do 'we' need holiday villas in Tuscany?

[j4.livejournal.com]

it does mean "we have absolutely no intention of doing anything about Y, otherwise we would have said so"

What I'm saying is that I'm not convinced that the Royal Family et al will be exempted from restrictions on air travel just because nobody's saying that Prince Harry is the big problem. I agree that they don't seem to think it's the big problem. I'm not convinced it is the big problem. If you're convinced it is, I hope you're making your opinions known in more public fora than my LJ!

Do 'we' have a need to travel for pleasure? Who is 'we' and who defines what is 'necessary' vs (presumably unnecessary) 'pleasure' travel?

Good questions, and ones that I think people in general (that's all I mean by "we") should be asking themselves. Do I need to take this flight? Do I need to go abroad? What will I learn from it? Who will it benefit? I ask myself those questions because I believe it's a good thing to examine my personal choice. I also believe that it's a good thing for other people to examine their personal choices.

(Yes, the term "good thing" begs all sorts of questions. I can elaborate if you really want me to!)

Do 'we' need company X to fly its entire salesforce to Hawaii for the annual sales meeting?

Company X should ask itself that question.

Would travel abroad for pleasure be more 'necessary' if it were expensive and unpleasant?

No, of course not. But if travel abroad was more expensive, people might well recalibrate their idea of how "necessary" it is to them. For instance, I might have very different views on how necessary caviar was to my personal health and happiness if it was within sniffing distance of being something I could afford.

Are you trying to make the point that it's wrong (and/or simply not effective) for governments to try to use the free market as a tool for enforcing moral beliefs?

Do 'we' need holiday villas in Tuscany?

I can't speak for you, and wouldn't want to try; but I certainly wouldn't need a holiday villa in Tuscany, and I and wouldn't think it was a financially or environmentally responsible action on my part to buy one, even if I could afford one.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Actually I think markets are one of the least bad ways of dealing with these kinds of issues as long as the approach is consistent but I do not get that sense at all about this particular issue. If the government were to increase taxes on all hydrocarbon fuels in a logical way I might be convinced but that doesn't seem to be the intent. The intent appears to be to dissuade one class of consumer from using one kind of (public) transport for one kind of purpose; one, ironically, that seems to be quite fuel efficient otherwise it wouldn't be so cheap. It's hard not to see some agenda other than emissions reduction at work. There are lots of silly uses of hydrocarbon fuels that I think are somewhere between mad and bad besides going to Prague for a stag night. I think people who choose to commute fifty miles to work are just as crazy and irresponsible. Arguably so are people who'd drive from London to North Wales for the weekend. They probably consume as much fuel but it's not (as) foreign, so that's OK? How about people people who run big SUVs for no real reason? I'm content to let people choose for themselves within the context of a logical system of (dis)incentives but, I reiterate, that isn't what the anti-cheap flight lobby are driving at.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I have no respect for those who witter about rights without considering that they come with responsibilities; yes, we have a right to travel freely - 'free' in the sense that can have it if we pay the cost, rather than imposing it on others.

Which is, of course, the point with cheap flights, gas-guzzling Chelsea Tractors, electrical goods, cigarettes and snack food: the full environmental and social costs costs are 'externalised' - dumped in landfill, picked up by the NHS, left for future generations - all the costs which don't turn up on our credit card bills.

It follows that a mature democracy would seek ways to correct this by taxation, legislation, or coercion through public campaigning... And it follows that a society of warring baronies will reward whoever is powerful or clever and deceitful by giving them whatever they claim as a 'right' while imposing the costs on some subclass of losers in an unending dance of evasion, blame, and self-congratulation.

Where do I place George Monbiot in all this? In amongst the rentiers of revolutionary France, confident that they can seize power from an unjust King, mature enough to avoid the self-interested power-grabbing of tose English Barons on Runnymede, half-believing and half-hoping that their dimly-understood new credo of 'principles' and 'rights' and constitutional law is enough to inspire others to respect the new order and work together... And fearful of 'The Mob', the volatile and violent underclass who are might in theory share in the Rights of Man, but are best kept under control and better kept out of sight altogether.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

That's just shifting the debate back a bit to what we mean by 'morally a good thing,' which probably ends up right back with something approximating JDC's definition (the first one) of rights.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

We need to be investigating biofuels (and Monbiot is shockingly way off kilter there), ways of extracting hydrogen from water using non-petroleum sourced energy and developing air-speed capable engines that will run on these fuels.

Oh, and I agree with jdc.

[fanf]

Do you thing that talking in terms of duties instead of rights is less prone to self-righteousness?