Moral relativity and environmental assessment

Moral relativity is the concept that there is no absolute morality, and it is instead defined by cultural context, or even an individual viewpoint.

There has been a growing acceptance of the application of this concept to scientific endeavours.? Science is however not about setting out absolute rules but the formulation of relationships that are always open to challenge and, are almost always only approximations of the truth.

The application of perspectival relativity to science poses that each individual can choose their own outcome irrespective of the observed result.? If someone thinks the earth is flat, then it is.? If someone thinks the earth is cooling instead of warming, then the view must be absorbed as a reasonable interpretation, into our cultural interpretation of science. ?With this approach to science, the average blog poster has the same weight of authority as a trained specialist.

The view is sometimes justified by reasoning that some experts have been wrong and therefore, all sources of information deserve equal weighting.

It is inevitable that the philosophy has crept into environmental assessment as it is ultimately a moral endeavour.

When an environmental topic is raised such as, what is better for the environment, planted roofs or dedicating roof area to renewable energy, the answer is often returned that the roof should be fully dedicated to both, without a tinge of irony.? It is reasoned that there is no need to resolve the most appropriate arrangement as both solutions have some, and therefore full merit.

It is important to quantify the relatively benefits of various environmental options, but the relativism should be based on quantitative value, not observer perspective.

When evaluating an environmental optimum, sometimes there is an exact answer that can be definitively evaluated.? For example: Is gas fire CHP worse for the environment than using a gas fired boiler and grid electricity??? There is a clear and calculable answer to that question.? When improvements in grid carbon intensities over time resulted in a scenario that gas fired CHP produced a negative environmental impact in many scenarios, a number of odd articles were written to try and over sell the benefits of CHP. This was achieved by carrying out what was officially termed a “counterfactual calculation methodology” (I didn’t make that up!).? It was reasoned that if the technology had something to do with the environment, it must be worthwhile promoting, irrespective of the physics.

Many environmental questions like the optimum size for glazing within a fa?ade are more complex and it is difficult to formulate an exact solution.? The optimum is influenced by the view taken on the relative importance of carbon impact and the health benefits of daylight.

The absence of an exact answer does not however mean that a careful evaluation of the physics can’t place a result very close to an optimum, and certainly within a small range of uncertainty.

Environmental relativists however may argue that because individuals have different opinions on the importance of carbon and health (often depending on what they would like to sell), their opinions should be given equal weight.? This produces two possible methods of dealing with the discrepancy:

1)???? An average should be taken of all opinions.

2)???? We should agree that both answers are equally right.

Neither approach is scientific, and there is merit instead to filtering the quality of opinions based on the standard of calculation applied in reaching each viewpoint.?? ?

When holistic environmental assessment methods were developed there was a difficult question to be answered about what weighting should be applied to each aspect of environmental conservation.? The solution (at least for one popular assessment method) was to approach as many environmental groups as possible and ask them to vote on the relative importance of energy, health etc.? The solution was then to take an average of the responses.? There is often a belief that averaging a very large, poor quality data set will give a better answer than considering a small, accurate data set. ?It is difficult to escape the misassumption that more is better.

The result is that following environmental assessments methods can encourage the use of environmental protection measures in buildings that are far from optimum and are a distant reflection of value for investment.

Environmental assessment methods often also suffer from a discouragement of project specific innovation. ?They set out an expected approach to a project (based on averaged views) and if a design team uses innovation to show that there is a better way to invest funds, they will often be scored down for deviating from the average. In some assessment platforms they will even be offered the option to "purchase" credits where innovations are proposed.

The result is that in many cases, environmental physics, scientific optimisation, and innovation have been replaced by box ticking with a view to obtaining the best score in an agreed, averaged process.

Worse still, it can result in scenarios where everything that is culturally viewed as having environmental merit is considered to be of similar value. The number of boxes ticked becomes the metric of value.

As an example, in a multi storey building with a low water usage, there is unlikely to be a financial or environmental case for the use of rainwater recovery once the embodied energy implications have been correctly assessed. If the cost of installing a rainwater recovery system in such a building were to be applied to alternative solutions, the environmental benefits would often be considerably greater, but the box for water saving would go un-ticked.? Worse still the client could get accused of having a poorly preforming building even though the funds were invested in an alternative, unboxed solution, achieving up to six times the environmental benefit.

It is inevitable that the result is in many cases, average buildings with excellent environmental assessment results and mediocre "real life" perfomance.

Environmental assessments have introduced many important changes to the industry and can be a useful framework for considering all aspects of environmental design if applied as a design tool (not a checking tool) by an experienced team. However, it is important to consider if they always provide a benefit relative to the costs and to also ponder if that cost could be better applied to actually improving environmental outcomes.

Many of the environmental solutions proposed by assessment methods have become part of standard construction practice and the assessment can end up more of challenge of a teams ability to produce documentation than environmental outcomes. In some cases, assessment methodologies respond by increasing the standards required beyond rational limits in order to continue to maintain apparent relevance.

The best way for a team to answer the question of whether an environmental assessment will result in significant environmental benefits is perhaps to consider the last building that an environmental assessment was carried out on. Consider what design changes were made as a direct result (and only as a direct result) of implementing the environmental assessment process, and what the real impact was of those interventions. If the environmental benefits that were gained directly as a result of implementing the assessment were larger than those that could have been achieved through good design and the application of the cost of the assessment to that design, then the assessment was, indeed valuable.

It is important that the relative benefits of environmental approaches are accurately considered so that limited funds can be applied to achieve the largest savings and the target is shifted from the number of boxes ticked to the quantifiable net environmental savings