The Mongol Empire

It is often believed that the conquests of Genghis Khan killed so many people that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere temporarily declined as abandoned farmland returned to forest. If true, the environmental outcome was beneficial. The human cost, however, was catastrophic.

Genghis Khan did not wage war to protect the environment. He did not even know what carbon dioxide was. Yet his actions may have produced a result that modern societies would consider desirable.

This raises a difficult question: can an action be considered morally acceptable simply because it produces a beneficial outcome?

The question is far older than Genghis Khan. Philosophers have debated for centuries whether an action should be judged by its consequences or by the action itself.

Utilitarianism evaluates actions according to their consequences. The morally correct action is the one that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Under a purely utilitarian analysis, a beneficial outcome carries significant moral weight. If an action produces widespread benefits, those benefits must be considered when assessing its morality.

But can environmental benefits, economic growth, or future prosperity ever outweigh the suffering of millions?

Deontology judges actions according to moral duties and principles rather than outcomes.

From a deontological perspective, murder, conquest, and mass violence remain morally wrong regardless of any positive consequences they may accidentally produce. The environmental impact becomes irrelevant because the act itself violated fundamental moral duties.

The forests may have grown back. Carbon emissions may have fallen. Yet few people would argue that these consequences transformed conquest into virtue.

The case of Genghis Khan forces us to confront a difficult question: should morality be measured by what we achieve, or by what we are willing to do in order to achieve it?

“We become just by performing just actions.”

— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (W.D. Ross trans, Oxford University Press 2009) Book II, Chapter 1

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