Important Questions In Environmental Ethics

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Introduction to Environmental Ethics Key
questions regarding diagnoses prescriptions
Bron Taylor The University of Florida www.brontayl
or.com
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Key Questions In Environmental Ethics

• 1) Diagnosis What is/are the cause/s of
  environmental decline (diagnosis).
• 2) Prescription How to slow, halt, and reverse
  these trends?
• 3) Which environmental ethics are best?
  Individualistic/holistic?
• 4) Who/what has standing? Humans? Sentient
  creatures? Plants? Ecosystems?
• 5) What trumps what? (see above)

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Types of diagnoses (sometimes seen as related and
mutually reinforcing)

• Transformations in technology and livelihoods /
  modes of production.
• E.g. Agriculture/domestication.
  Capitalism/Industrialization. Population growth
  related.
• Maladaptive human-social relations precipitate
  decline.
• E.g. injustice, hierarchy, patriarchy
• Maladaptive (bad) ideas and corresponding
  practices.
• E.g. religious, philosophical, economic,
  ethical, scientific
• Population dynamics (boom/bust), perhaps
  exacerbated by the above.
• E.g. carrying capacity and biology-focused
  explanations

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Key Questions In Environmental Ethics on ideas

• What role (if any) does religion, and especially
  religious ideas, play in environmental decline?
• Can religion be part of the solution?

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Is western religion the culprit?

• Critics cite 4 anti-nature tendencies in western
  religions

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1) Domination of Nature

• Genesis God commands humans to "fill the earth
  and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of
  the sea and over the birds of the air and over
  every living thing...

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2) Rejection of animism and pantheism

• Animists believe that every part of the
  environment, living and non-living, has
  consciousness or spirit. Therefore, all beings
  deserve reverence.
• Pantheists believe the world (or cosmos) as a
  whole is divine. Therefore nature is sacred or
  holy and people should have reverence for it.

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3) Wilderness is cursed Pastoral, agricultural,
and City landscapes are Holy, Promised Lands
4) The sacred is beyond the world - earth is
devalued in favor of heavenly hopes
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Lynn White (1973)
Yet a man-nature dualism is deep-rooted in us. .
. . Until it is eradicated not only from our
minds but also from our emotions, we shall
doubtless be unable to make fundamental changes
in our attitudes and actions affecting ecology.
The religious problem is to find a viable
equivalent to animism (White 1973 62).
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Christians Jews respond

• Our traditions promote a care-giving stewardship
  not domination of nature. (Noah story)
• Some admit the general destructive tendency, but
  say
• Minority "traditions within the wider tradition"
  are nature-beneficent.
• But these religions are currently mutating. Some
  new forms have emerged that are concerned about
  the environment. Will they prove to be adaptive
  and survive?

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Is western philosophy -another culprit?

• Critics blame its dualism, viewing humans as
  separate from and superior to nature.

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Rene Descartes is often blamed

• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) believed that animals
  have no minds and cannot suffer
• Humans have minds and souls, they are different
  from animals

• So for Descartes, HUMANS are separate from nature
  and superior to it.
• And the natural world became an objectified
  "thing."
• Some critics say this objectification of nature
  is a key to science and progress

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Francis Bacon is also blamed

• Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the father of the
  Scientific method.
• Critics say he promoted a view of nature as a
  machine.

• Many passages reveal that he likened nature to
  women and slaves, and implied all should be bound
  into the service of men
• Many scholars think such thinking shaped the
  anti-nature views of Judaism and Christianity,
  and thus warped human-nature relations in the
  west

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The main divide in both religious and secular
environmental ethics

• Individualism
• v.
• Holism

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Both holistic and individualistic environmental
ethics address --

• Whose interests count?
• Whose interests must we consider?

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I.e. Who has standing? Human Individuals?

• Anthropocentrism The environment is valuable to
  the extent is useful or necessary for human well
  being
• Usually "rationality" or some "intellectual"
  criterion is critical in the West for moral
  standing
• Not much new here in the overall approach

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Who has standing?
Sentient animals?

• Sentient animals are those who can experience
  pleasure and/or pain
• Jeremy Bentham early utilitarian theorist,
  provided a basis for extending moral standing
  beyond humans
• Peter Singer "Animal Liberation" theory
  provided a utilitarian argument pro-Animal
  Liberation

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Who has Standing?Entities with Interests

• Living entities that have "interests" -- a good
  that can be harmed -- have moral standing
• Wm Blackstone Humans do, and have a right to a
  liveable environment, upon which all other rights
  depend
• Joel Feinberg (1974) Those with conscious
  wishes, desires, hopes (etc.) have interests, and
  HBs have duties to them. Animals and unborn
  humans have such interests.
• Christopher Stone (1972/74) Individual natural
  objects, including trees, can have standing
• Conservator/trustee notion analogous to mentally
  deficient humans
• Tom Regan Animals who are "subjects of a life"
  have a "right" to that life.

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Problems with individualistic approaches

• (3) Why base moral standing of non-human beings
  on human traits? (Why do animals matter only if
  they are like us in some way we think is
  important?)

• (1) Animal Liberation How can you measure
  pleasure/suffering
• a perennial problem with utilitarianism
• (2) Animal Rights boundary of moral
  considerability is very restrictive

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Problems with individualistic approaches

• (4) How can we determine what the "interests" of
  a living thing are?
• who should decide?

• (5) Individualistic approaches provide no basis
  for prioritizing concern for endangered species

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The trend in environmental ethics seems to be
toward holistic Approaches -- their basic idea

• The whole is greater (and more valuable) than the
  constitutive parts (its the ecosystem stupid!)

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3 Holistic Approaches

• Biocentrism
• life-centered ethics
• Ecocentrism
• ecosystem-centered ethics
• Deep Ecology
• identification and kinship ethics

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Excursus Aldo Leopolds Ecocentric Land Ethic
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Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) This excursus provides
key quotes from Leopold.
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Leopolds Ecocentric Land Ethic

• "All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single
  premise that the individual is a member of a
  community of interdependent parts.

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• The Land ethic enlarges the boundaries of the
  community to include soils, waters, plants, and
  animals, or collectively the land
• Note the land all life, and all that
  constitutes it. Therefore, with a land ethic
• A land-use decision "is right when it tends to
  preserve the biotic community. It is wrong when
  it tends otherwise.

• Precursors
• Baruch Spinoza
• Henry David Thoreau
• John Muir

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• For Leopold
• Ethics evolve, and they involve self-imposed
  limitations on freedom of action derived from the
  above recognition

• Precursors
• Baruch Spinoza
• Henry David Thoreau
• John Muir

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ETHICS CAN AND SHOULD EVOLVE. In Leopolds
words I have purposely presented the land
ethic as a product of social evolution because
nothing so important as an ethic is ever
written. . . . The evolution of a land
ethic is an intellectual as well as emotional
process. AS ETHICS EVOLVE THEY NATURALLY CHANGE
OUR AESTHETHICS (SENSE OF WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL) AND
OUR EMOTIONS (WHAT WE FEEL AFFECTION FOR AND
CONNECTION TO).
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Leopolds promoted humility and feelings of
kinship with non-human organisms. In this, he
was inspired by Charles Darwin. "It is a century
now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the
origin of species. We know now what was unknown
to all the preceding caravan of generations that
men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures
in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge
should have given us . . . a sense of kinship
with fellow-creatures a wish to live and let
live a sense of wonder over the magnitude and
duration of the biotic enterprise.
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FOR LEOPOLD, THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY NATURALLY
FLOWS FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY / ECOLOGICAL
UNDERSTANDING The Land Ethic "changes the role
of Homo Sapiens from conqueror of the
land-community to plain member and citizen of it.
It implies respect for his fellow-members, and
also respect for the land- community as such."
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• For many, Leopold provides compelling ground for
  valuing and defending biological diversity
• "The outstanding scientific discovery of the 20th
  century is . . . . the complexity of the land
  organism. Only those who know the most about it
  can appreciate how little is known about it. The
  last word in ignorance is the man who says of an
  animal or plant 'what good is it?

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• Aldo Leopold articulated an ecological
  metaphysics of complexity, interconnection, and
  mutual dependence.
• This was a part of an all-encompassing
  organicist metaphysics. In A Sand County Almanac
  he spoke of the land as an organism, as alive.

• The land is one organism. . . . and the
  outstanding discovery of the twentieth century is
  . . . its complexity. If we understand the
  whole is good, then every part is good, whether
  we understand it or not.

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Leopolds Round River parable

• Wisconsins Round river flowed into itself "in a
  never-ending circuit" symbolizing "the stream of
  energy which flows out of the soil into plants,
  thence into animals, thence back into the soil in
  a never ending circuit of life.
• The parable reflected Leopolds organicist
  metaphysics even bordering on a Gaia-like
  pantheism
• "The land is one organism. Its parts, like our
  own parts, compete with each other and co-operate
  with each other. The competitions are as much a
  part of the inner workings as the co-operations.
  You can regulate them -- cautiously -- but not
  abolish them.

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• If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then
  every part is good, whether we understand it or
  not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has
  built something we like but do not understand,
  then who but a fool would discard seemingly
  useless parts?
• To keep every cog in the wheel is the first
  precaution of intelligent tinkering.

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Leopold also spoke in a melancholy way of the
penalty of an ecological education

• One of the penalties of an ecological education
  is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
  Much of the damage inflicted on the land is quite
  invisible to the layman
• Many with such an education know exactly how he
  felt.

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Leopold was also a social/cultural critic . .
. WHILE URGING PRUDENCE HE NOTED, IN CONCERT WITH
MUCH DARK GREEN RELIGION, THAT ABRAHIMIC
RELIGIONS ARE AN OBTACLE TO A LAND ETHIC
Misguided religion and philosophy work against
the emotional ties, felt kinship, and the sense
of loyalty to the land that his ethic demands.
But why? "Conservation is getting nowhere because
it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of
land.
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No important change in human conduct is ever
accomplished without an internal change in our
intellectual emphases, our loyalties, our
affections, and our convictions. The proof that
conservation has not yet touched these
foundations of conduct lies in the fact that
philosophy, ethics, and religion have not yet
heard of it. We abuse land because we regard
it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see
land as a community to which we belong, we may
begin to use it with love and respect.
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Leopolds land ethic practical applications

• "The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs
  that it has lost to the stability necessary to
  build them, were even to turn off the tap.
  Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than
  a little healthy contempt for a plethora of
  material blessings.
• "We have no land ethic yet, but we have at least
  drawn nearer to the point of admitting that birds
  should continue as a matter of biotic right,
  regardless of the presence or absence of economic
  advantage to us.
• A parallel situation exists in respect of
  predatory mammals, reportorial birds, and
  fish-eating birds.
• Leopold continued that the development of a land
  ethic that values predators, is "still in the
  talk stage. In the field the extermination of
  predators goes merrily on.

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THINKING LIKE A MOUNTAIN

• In this, his most famous essay, which sought to
  inspire respect for predators, Leopold began by
  asserting that mountains have a secret opinion
  about wolves, adding, My own conviction on the
  score dates from the day I saw wolf die. Then he
  wrote
• We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the
  foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way.
  We saw what we thought was a doe fording the
  torrent, her breast awash in white water. When
  she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her
  tail, we realized our error it was a wolf. A
  half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang
  from the willows and all joined in a welcoming
  melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What
  was literally a pile of wolves writhed and
  tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot
  of our rimrock.

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THINKING LIKE A MOUNTAIN (cont.)

• In those days we had never heard of passing up a
  chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were
  pumping lead into the pack, but with more
  excitement than accuracy how to aim a steep
  downhill shot is always confusing. When our
  rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a
  pup was dragging a leg into impassable
  side-rocks.
• "We reached the old wolf in time to watch the
  green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then,
  and have known ever sense, that there was
  something new to me in those eyes -- something
  known only to her and to the mountain. I was a
  young then, and full of trigger-itch I thought
  that because fewer wolves meant more deer, than
  no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after
  seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither
  the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a
  view.

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• Leopolds ethic has decisively shaped the
  American conservation movement, and has become
  increasingly influential around the world. The
  next slide shows the land ethic as a panel at a
  large exhibition at the 2002 United Nations World
  Summit on Sustainable Development.

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A thing is right when it tends to preserve the
integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic
community
Aldo Leopolds Land Ethic, present in the
exhibition, Voyage to Antarctica, at the World
Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg
(2002)
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Leopolds wide influence

• is due in part by his ability to write in a way
  that evoked in his readers a sympathy for life
  beyond their own species.
• This ability to empathize was viewed by Darwin as
  an adaptive outgrowth of evolution.
• That this capacity is a part of the human
  repertoire both helps to explain the global
  presence of dark green spirituality, as well as
  its of potential as an eco-political force.

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Back from excursus to Holism more generally . . .
Lovelocks holistic planetary Gaia hypothesis

• Lovelock argued in Gaia A new look at life on
  earth (1979) that the biosphere is a
  self-regulating living system that maintains the
  conditions for the perpetuation of life
• Although not intended as an ethics, a
  biosphere-centered (large-ecocentric) ethics has
  been deduced from it, claiming
• People ought not degrade and imperil this
  wonderful system, upon which all life depends.

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Holistic Approaches -- Key criticism

• Individuals get hurt when you ignore them in
  favor of wholes
• This is the key criticism of all ends-focused
  theories
• In environmental ethics, the common charge is of
  "eco-fascism"!

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Despite all the various points of view, something
new does seem to be evolving in the emergence and
evolution of environmental ethics, both secular
and sacred, involving
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The Gradual Extension of Moral Concern Beyond our
Own Species
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