Unit 8 · Ethics, Complexity & Wicked Problems · Lesson 38
AI, Climate & Trade-Offs
Reasoning about the unsolvable
By the end of this lesson
You'll be able to:
- rank options against two goods that pull in opposite directions, and defend the ranking out loud
- name the trade-off in a sentence the other side would agree is fair
- spot when a public argument is smuggling a value choice behind a numbers claim
- hold a ranking without pretending the losers cost nothing
Stage 1
Get Talking
Here's what you'll do
Four current AI-or-climate trade-offs. Which one would you refuse to make?
You produce
You rank the four from 'I would make this call today' to 'I would refuse this call today', with reasons.
- Powering a national AI data centre from a gas plant for five years to accelerate cancer-research models.
- Banning new petrol cars in your city by 2030 knowing the delivery workforce is 90% on gig contracts.
- Allowing AI-generated study summaries in state schools if teacher workload drops but reading time drops with it.
- Rerouting a flood-defence budget from a coastal town to an inland one because the inland fix protects three times as many people per euro.
Your notes
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, one defends their ranking; the other has to identify the two goods being traded off in each case.
Stage 2
Notice the language
Here's what you'll do
Four moves for reasoning openly about trade-offs.
You produce
You label each move in a live-ranked case.
Trade-off reasoning: name the two goods · price the loss · rank on purpose · admit the residue
Bad trade-off talk hides one of the two goods. 'We must act on climate' quietly pretends there is no cost to the people whose livelihoods depend on the transition. 'We must protect jobs' quietly pretends there is no climate cost to protecting them. Good trade-off talk at C2 does the opposite: it puts both goods on the table with their real weight, prices the loss on either side, ranks on purpose, and admits that even the best ranking leaves a residue — a real person who is worse off because of the call you made.
The structure
Examples
- Name the two goods'This is not climate versus jobs. It is a faster transition with a harder five years for one industry, versus a slower one with a longer tail of emissions. That's the actual pair.'
- Price the loss'The faster path costs 3,400 direct jobs in one region over five years. The slower path costs an extra 0.08°C of committed warming by 2050. Those are the numbers.'
- Rank on purpose'I rank the faster path first. Not because the job cost is small — it isn't — but because the warming cost is irreversible in a way the retraining is not.'
- Admit the residue'That ranking still means a 52-year-old refinery technician who has done nothing wrong loses the second half of his career. I will not pretend otherwise. I still rank as I do.'
Try three
1. Name the two goods honestly: 'We must ban delivery bikes on pavements.'
Reveal
Pedestrian safety, especially for elderly and disabled residents, versus the earnings of a mostly-migrant gig workforce whose margins already assume pavement time.
2. Price the loss on both sides for: 'Cutting the university budget by 8%.'
Reveal
Loss side A: roughly 900 taught postgraduate places lost within two years, concentrated in humanities. Loss side B: roughly €120m redirected to primary-school class-size reduction — 400 fewer classes above 30 pupils.
3. Admit the residue for a ranking of your choice.
Reveal
Model answer will vary; must name a specific person or group whose life is worse because of the ranking, without softening the fact.
Stage 3
Vocabulary in action
Here's what you'll do
Ten items for reasoning about the unsolvable.
You produce
You use each in a live ranking of the cases on the table.
a decision in which getting more of one good means accepting less of another
"This isn't a puzzle. It's a trade-off — you don't get both."
to state plainly what is being traded off against what, without loading either side
"Name the two goods first. Everything else is easier once they're on the table."
to attach a concrete cost — number, person, year — to each side of the trade-off
"Price the loss on both sides. Abstractions don't rank."
to commit to an ordering and defend it, rather than 'balancing' as a way to say nothing
"Rank on purpose. 'Balance' is often a refusal to rank."
to name the specific person or group whose life is worse because of your ranking
"Admit the residue. Somebody loses under every ranking, including yours."
the case where one side of a trade-off is undoable and the other isn't, which usually breaks the tie
"This is an irreversibility asymmetry. Retraining is hard. Committed warming is permanent."
a value judgement disguised as a technical or numerical fact
"'The models show we can't afford it' — that's a smuggled value claim."
to treat two positions as equally weighted when the evidence or ethics don't support it
"Don't false-balance. Sometimes the ranking really is 4 : 1."
the worst outcome of a chosen option that you are willing to defend having chosen
"Every ranking has an acceptable worst case. Name yours out loud."
an ordering you are willing to argue for against a serious opponent who ranks differently
"Bring a defended ranking, not a preference."
Guided practice
1. Fill: 'This is an ____ ____ — retraining is hard, warming is permanent.' (2 words)
Reveal
irreversibility asymmetry
2. Fill: 'That's a ____ ____ ____ — dressed as a number.' (3 words)
Reveal
smuggled value claim
3. Fill: 'Every ranking has an ____ ____ ____.' (3 words)
Reveal
acceptable worst case
Stage 4
Speaking Task
Here's what you'll do
The ranking table: four options, one defended ordering, one residue you refuse to hide.
You produce
A live 5-minute ranking of the four warm-up cases with a defended ordering.
Rank the four warm-up cases from ‘I would make this call today’ to ‘I would refuse this call today’. In 5 minutes:
- afor each position in your ranking, name the two goods being traded off
- bprice the loss on both sides in one sentence
- cdefend the ordering — especially the top and the bottom — against teacher's pushback
- dfor your top-ranked call, admit the residue by name. You may not use ‘we need to balance’ anywhere in the round.
Use these
Prompts
- · The four warm-up cases.
- · Optional stress test: teacher swaps two adjacent positions in your ranking and you must decide whether to accept or defend.
- · Optional stress test: teacher adds a fifth case mid-round and you must slot it.
Your speaking notes
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, one ranks; the other adds a new case at the 3-minute mark and forces a re-rank in real time.
Stage 5
Read or listen
Here's what you'll do
Two ministerial briefings on the same trade-off. Read as a decision-maker, not a partisan.
You produce
Five close-reading calls on which briefing does the ranking work honestly.
Reading — Two briefings — same decision, different desks
BRIEFING A (Energy desk, submitted 08:00):
Subject: Proposed 18-month planning fast-track for four inland solar developments.
1. Rationale. Meeting the 2032 grid target requires an additional 4.6 GW of confirmed clean generation by 2029. The four proposed sites contribute 1.1 GW combined and are the only shovel-ready projects at scale.
2. Recommendation. Approve fast-track. Standard planning review remains available for individual site conditions.
3. Trade-offs. Some concerns have been raised locally regarding landscape and biodiversity impact. These are being addressed through standard mitigation processes.
4. Risk. Failure to approve places the 2029 milestone in significant doubt and jeopardises the sector-wide credibility of the target.
BRIEFING B (Rural Affairs desk, submitted 09:15, on the same proposal):
Subject: Proposed 18-month planning fast-track for four inland solar developments — impact assessment.
1. What is being traded off. Two goods: (i) hitting the 2029 clean-generation milestone, worth 1.1 GW / roughly 0.6 million tCO2e/year of avoided emissions; (ii) a full local planning process for 3,200 hectares of farmland across four settlements totalling 4,700 residents. This is the pair. Neither side is nothing.
2. Loss priced — the fast-track path. 3,200 hectares reclassified without the current 12-month objection window; three of the four sites lie inside designated hedgerow-network corridors; local employment loss of approximately 140 farm-adjacent jobs over five years. Political cost: the current Rural Affairs consultative framework has just been used for a smaller decision; using a different framework here will read, correctly, as inconsistent.
3. Loss priced — the standard path. The 2029 milestone slips by 12–18 months on the current pipeline. Sector-wide, roughly 2.4 million tCO2e of additional cumulative emissions between 2029 and 2032. The credibility loss of missing the milestone is real and cannot be recovered by a later announcement.
4. Ranking, on purpose. This desk ranks the standard-path option first, by a narrow margin. The irreversibility asymmetry that would normally break the tie the other way is weaker than it looks in this case: the missed milestone can be recovered by front-loading offshore capacity already in build, whereas the loss of a functioning consultative framework for rural planning is a structural loss with a longer tail.
5. Residue we do not hide. Under our recommended ranking, the 2029 milestone is at risk in a way that will be visible internationally, and this Government will wear that visibility. Under Briefing A's ranking, 4,700 residents across four settlements will correctly conclude that when the planning framework is inconvenient, it is bypassed. Neither residue is small. We rank as we do because the second is, in our judgement, harder to repair than the first.
Comprehension
1. Where does Briefing A HIDE one of the two goods?
Reveal
Paragraph 3. 'Some concerns have been raised locally' names the objection without naming what is actually being traded off — 3,200 hectares of farmland and a consultative framework. The 'standard mitigation processes' line is a decency shortcut inside a briefing.
2. Where does Briefing B PRICE THE LOSS on both sides?
Reveal
Paragraph 2 (fast-track): 3,200 hectares, hedgerow corridors, ~140 jobs, framework inconsistency. Paragraph 3 (standard): 12–18 month slip, ~2.4 Mt CO2e cumulative, international credibility. Both sides get numbers, not adjectives.
3. Where does Briefing B invoke an IRREVERSIBILITY ASYMMETRY — and does it use it to close the case?
Reveal
Paragraph 4: it names the asymmetry openly and argues that in this specific case it doesn't break the way it usually does, because the missed milestone is recoverable via offshore capacity while a bypassed consultative framework is a structural loss with a longer tail. It uses the concept honestly rather than as a rhetorical trump card.
4. Where does Briefing B RANK ON PURPOSE — and how does it admit the residue?
Reveal
Paragraph 4: 'ranks the standard-path option first, by a narrow margin' — commitment, not 'balance'. Paragraph 5: names both residues — international visibility of a missed milestone, and 4,700 residents correctly concluding the planning framework is bypassable. Neither is minimised.
5. Which briefing would you rather have on a minister's desk, and why?
Reveal
Briefing B, regardless of which option you personally prefer. B lets the minister make a defended ranking rather than a rubber-stamp; A collapses the two goods into one and hides the second. Even a minister who ends up ranking with A's recommendation is served better by B's paper.
Stage 6
Look closer
Here's what you'll do
Rewrite Briefing A's paragraph 3 to Briefing B's standard, without switching sides.
You produce
A rewritten paragraph 3 that keeps the recommendation but does the trade-off honestly.
Rewrite paragraph 3 of Briefing A so it names the two goods, prices the loss on both sides and admits the residue — WITHOUT changing the recommendation (still fast-track). The point is that a briefing can honestly do the trade-off work and still land on the opposite ranking from Briefing B. Then, in 60 words, name what your rewrite has cost the political case for fast-track — and why it's still the stronger version of Briefing A.
- · Which single sentence in Briefing A tells you the writer wanted to avoid the trade-off work?
- · Which sentence in Briefing B would a hostile minister use against the desk that wrote it?
- · What does Briefing B's paragraph 4 model about how to invoke an irreversibility argument without hiding behind it?
Your analysis
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, swap rewrites. Each un-priced loss and each un-admitted residue costs a point.
Stage 7
Communication Challenge
Here's what you'll do
The 20-minute trade-off table: your case, four options, one defended ranking.
You produce
A 15-minute chaired ranking session plus a one-page decision memo drafted live in the last 5.
Bring the real trade-off you prepared for homework. Frame it as FOUR options (from most ambitious to most cautious). In 15 minutes:
- aname the two goods for the trade-off as a whole
- bprice the loss for each of the four options
- crank the four on purpose
- ddefend your top choice against teacher, who plays the option ranked second
- eadmit the residue for your top choice by name. In the final 5 minutes, draft a one-page decision memo in the format of Briefing B — recommendation, priced losses, ranking, residue.
Timing
3 minutes to brief the trade-off; 12 minutes chaired discussion; 5 minutes to draft the memo.
Use these
Deliverable
The one-page Briefing-B-style memo: two goods · four priced options · ranking · residue.
Your deliverable / notes
Group extension (optional)
In groups of 3, one chairs, one plays the option-2 defender, one is a silent scorer counting every un-priced loss and every 'balance'.
Stage 8
Exam Connection
Here's what you'll do
C2 Proficiency Speaking Part 3 — the ranking / decision task.
You produce
A 60-second Part 3 opening that names the two goods and prices the loss on one option.
C2 Proficiency — Speaking Part 3 (collaborative decision task with visual prompts)
Task
Examiners at Band 5 reward candidates who structure the ranking rather than list preferences. Naming the two goods aloud and pricing the loss on at least one option lifts a competent discussion into a visibly organised C2 performance.
Strategy
Open Part 3 with a two-good statement, not with a preference. ‘Before we rank, I think what we’re actually trading off here is X against Y — that‘s the pair. Let me start by pricing the loss on option one.’ That framing anchors the whole conversation and gives the examiner immediate evidence of structured reasoning.
Mini-task
Take a Part 3-style prompt board (real or invented — ‘How should a city best support families with young children?’). Deliver a 60-second opening that names the two goods and prices the loss on ONE of the prompts, before you commit to any ranking.
Your mini-task answer
Stage 9
Writing
Here's what you'll do
One 280-word decision memo on the trade-off you brought today.
You produce
The memo handed in with a 40-word residue note.
Write a 280-word decision memo in the Briefing B register. It MUST:
- aname the two goods being traded off in the first paragraph
- bpresent at least three options
- cprice the loss on each option in specific terms (number, person, year — no adjectives)
- drank the options on purpose and defend the top rank
- eclose with an ADMIT-THE-RESIDUE paragraph naming the specific group whose life is worse under your recommendation. Alongside the 280 words, submit a 40-word RESIDUE NOTE that a person from that group would recognise as an honest description of what the memo costs them. Use at least SEVEN target items naturally.
Word count: 280 words + 40-word residue note
Must use
Your writing (autosaved draft)
Stage 10
Reflect & take home
Here's what you'll do
End of L38. Two questions, one prep.
You produce
Spoken 30-second reflection + prep for L39.
Reflection
- · Which trade-off in your own life or work are you currently refusing to name as a trade-off?
- · When did you last watch a public decision get defended as 'balanced' when what it actually needed was a ranking on purpose?
Homework
For L39 (Holding Complexity): pick ONE current question where you genuinely hold two views that pull in opposite directions and neither is going to win. Bring:
- athe question in one line
- bthe strongest sentence you would write from each of your two positions
- cthe specific moment you would need to actually resolve it (a vote, a hire, a public statement) — and why you haven't yet.
Your reflection
How confident do you feel with this?
Homework response
Need more practice with this language?
Extra Practice