Chapter 16: Environmental Ethics

One scholar of environmentalism, Kevin DeLuca, laments this anthropocentric focus, concluding,

"Abandoning wilderness-centered environmentalism is a disastrous error. The finest moments of environmentalism often involve humans exceeding self-concern and caring for wilderness and other species because of their intrinsic being." This view points us toward the ecocentric or biocentric approach to environmental ethics.

George Sessions argues

"humanity must drastically scale down its industrial activities on Earth, change its consumption lifestyles, stabilize" and "reduce the size of the human population by humane means." It is important to note that Arne Naess, himself, was interested in nonviolence. He wrote extensively about Gandhi's nonviolent methods, and he conceived his commitment to the environment in conjunction with Gandhian ideas about the interconnectedness of life. And he employed nonviolent methods in his own protests—such as chaining himself to a boulder to protest a project aimed at building a dam on a river.

Environmental justice is a mainstream idea, which the EPA defines as

"the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

Others argue that anthropocentrism is a reductionist perspective.

According to this view, all of nature is reduced to the level of "thing-hood." The seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes is sometimes cited as a source of this reductionist point of view because of his belief that the essential element of humanity is the ability to think ("I think, therefore I am," etc.) and his belief that animals are mere biological machines.

Ethical anthropocentrists will advocate wise and judicious use of nature, one that does not destroy the very nature that we value and on which we depend.

But nonanthropocentrists maintain that we must care for and about nature for its own sake and not just in terms of what it can do for us. Ecofeminism and deep ecology both pose a serious challenge to the status quo and its anthropocentric and dominating approach to the natural world.

The term deep ecology was first used by Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher and environmentalist.

Deep ecologists take a holistic view of nature and believe that we should look more deeply to find the root causes of environmental degradation.

Native American views on nature provide a fertile source of biocentric thinking.

For example, Eagle Man, an Oglala Sioux writer, emphasizes the unity of all living things. All come from tiny seeds and so all are brothers and sisters. The seeds come from Mother Earth and depend on her for sustenance. We owe her respect, for she comes from the "Great Spirit Above."

Sometimes, we use monetary valuations, even for such intangibles as human lives or life years.

For example, in insurance and other contexts, people attempt to give some measure of the value of a life. Doing so is sometimes necessary, but it is obviously also problematic.

Something has prima facie value if it has the kind of value that can be overcome by other interests or values.

For example, we might think that a rainforest has some sort of prima facie value but that if the local population needed more land on which to cultivate food, people might be justified in cutting some of the trees to make room for crops.

Cost-benefit analysis to help us think about how to approach any given environmental problem.

If we have a choice between various actions or policies, then we need to assess and compare the various harms (or costs) and benefits that each entails in order to know which is the better action or policy. Using this method, we should choose the option that has the greater net balance of benefits over harms (or costs). This is connected to utilitarian reasoning.

The good life, deep ecologists assert, is not one that stresses the possession of things and the search for satisfaction of wants and desires.

Instead, a good life is one that is lived simply, in communion with one's local ecosystem.

The environmental philosopher Aldo Leopold. In the 1940s, he wrote in his famous essay "The Land Ethic" that we should think about the land as "a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals."

Leopold did not think it amiss to speak about the whole system as being healthy or unhealthy. If the soil is washed away or abnormally flooded, then the whole system suffers or is sick. In this system, individual organisms feed off one another. Some elements come and others go. It is the whole that continues. Leopold also believed that a particular type of ethics follows from this view of nature—a biocentric or ecocentric ethics. He believed that "a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise." The system has a certain integrity because it is a unity of interdependent elements that combine to make a whole with a unique character. It has a certain stability, not in that it does not change, but that it changes only gradually. Finally, it has a particular beauty. Here beauty is a matter of harmony, well-ordered form, or unity in diversity. When envisioned on a larger scale, the entire Earth system may then be regarded as one system with a certain integrity, stability, and beauty. Morality becomes a matter of preserving this system or doing only what befits it.

Another variant of ecocentrism is the deep ecology movement.

Members of this movement wish to distinguish themselves from mainstream environmentalism, which they call "shallow ecology" and criticize as fundamentally anthropocentric.

The transcendentalists influenced John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club. Muir held a similar view of the majesty, sacredness, and spiritual value of nature.

Muir transformed his love of nature into practical action, successfully petitioning Congress for passage of a national parks bill that established Yosemite and Sequoia national parks.

Involved in such analyses are two distinct elements.

One is an assessment or description of these factual matters as far as they can be known. What exactly are the likely effects of doing this or that? The other is evaluation, or the establishment of relative values. In cost-benefit analyses, the value is generally defined in anthropocentric terms.

Some versions of ecofeminism emphasize the way that women understand their bodies and their reproductive power, maintaining that women have a closer relationship with the body and thus with the natural world.

Others view feminine categories as socially constructed, albeit in a way that emphasizes the female connection with nature (and the male as liberated from, and thus able to dominate, nature).

Ecocentrists are critical of anthropocentrists. Why, they ask, do only humans have intrinsic value while everything else has merely instrumental value for us?

Some fault the Judeo-Christian tradition for this view. In particular, they single out the biblical mandate to "subdue" the earth and "have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and every living thing that moves upon the Earth" as being responsible for this instrumentalist view of nature and other living things.

Cost-benefit analysis example:

Suppose we are considering whether to hold industrial polluters to stricter emissions standards. If emissions were reduced, acid rain and global warming would be curtailed—important benefits. However, this would also create increased costs for the polluting companies, their employees, and those who buy their products or use their services. We should consider whether the benefits would be worth those costs. We would also need to assess the relative costs and benefits of alternative policies designed to address acid rain and global warming.

Deep ecologists and ecofeminists do not necessarily agree.

The deep ecologists may criticize ecofeminists for concentrating insufficiently on the environment, and ecofeminists may accuse deep ecologists of the very male-centered view that they believe is the source of our environmental problems.

The members of the deep ecology movement have been quite politically active.

Their creed contains the belief that people are responsible for Earth. Beliefs such as this often provide a basis for the tactics of groups such as Earth First! Some radicals advocate direct action to protect the environment, including various forms of "ecosabotage"—for example, spiking trees to prevent logging and cutting power lines.

Moderate or Mixed View

Thesis: Balancing human and nonhuman interests. Corollaries and Implications: Recognizes intrinsic and instrumental value of non-human beings; sustainable development and environmental justice balance human needs with respect for nature. Connections with Moral Theory: Deontological concern for nonhuman beings in connection with respect for human interests; consequentialist analysis may balance human and nonhuman concerns. Relevant Authors/Examples: Ramachandra Guha

Non-Anthropocentrism

Thesis: Biocentric or ecocentric focus of deep ecology. Corollaries and Implications: Nonhuman entities (species, ecosystems, etc.) have intrinsic value that cannot be reduced to human interests; focus on wilderness preservation. Connections with Moral Theory: Deontological focus on duties generated by intrinsic value of nature and respect for nature; consequentialist analysis extended to include consequences for nonhuman beings. Relevant Authors/Examples: Bill Devall and George Sessions

Anthropocentrism

Thesis: Environmental issues must be resolved in terms of human interests. Corollaries and Implications: Human profit, health, and happiness are primary; denies intrinsic value of nonhuman beings (they only have instrumental value); environmental justice for humans only. Connections with Moral Theory: Deontological and consequentialist concern is focused only on human beings; duties to nature are indirectly based in respect for human property rights or preventing human suffering. Relevant Authors/Examples: William Baxter

Another version of ecofeminism rejects the dualism often found in the Western philosophical tradition.

They hold that this tradition promotes the devaluing and domination of both women and nature. Rather than divide reality into contrasting elements—the active and passive, the rational and emotional, the dominant and subservient—they encourage us to recognize the diversity within nature and among people. They would similarly support a variety of ways of relating to nature. Thus, they believe that even though science that proceeds from a male-oriented desire to control nature has made advances and continues to do so, its very orientation causes it to miss important aspects of nature.

Some environmentalists believe that trees, for example, have only instrumental and not intrinsic value.

They think that trees are valuable because of their usefulness to us. Other environmentalists believe that plants and ecosystems have value in themselves.

One notorious case that frequently comes up in discussions of environmental justice is the gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984.

This case is remarkable because of the numbers affected and the relatively minor punishments meted out to responsible parties, and because it pushes our understanding of what counts as "the environment." Often we think of environmentalism as focused on wild natural settings. But the air and water of urban landscapes are also part of the environment. The Bhopal case reminds us that pollution can cause death and that it is often poor people who suffer the most from the impacts of industrial accidents.

A variety of ecofeminist views are espoused by diverse groups of feminists. One version celebrates the ways that women differ from men.

This view is espoused by those who hold that women—because of their female experience or nature—tend to value organic, non-oppressive relationships. They stress caring and emotion, and they seek to replace conflict and assertion of rights with cooperation and community. From this perspective, a feminine ethic should guide our relationship to nature. Rather than use nature in an instrumentalist fashion, they urge, we should cooperate with nature. We should manifest a caring and benevolent regard for nature, just as we do for other human beings. One version of this view would have us think of nature, itself, as in some way divine. Rather than think of God as a distant creator who transcends nature, these religiously oriented ecofeminists think of God as a being within nature. Some also refer to this God as "Mother Nature" or "Gaia," after the name of a Greek goddess.

According to an anthropocentric perspective, the environment or nature has no value in itself. Instead, its value is measured by how it affects human beings.

Thus, for example, some people believe that animals are valuable only insofar as they promote the interests of humans or are useful to us in one or more of a variety of ways. For example, animals provide nutritional, medical, protective, emotional, and aesthetic benefits for us. People who hold an anthropocentric view also may believe that it is bad to cause animals needless pain, but if their pain is necessary to ensure some important human good, then it is justified.

Consider the value of 2,000-year-old sequoia trees.

Touching one of these giants today connects us to the beginning of the Common Era. We can imagine all of the major events in history that have occurred during the life of this tree and, in doing so, gain a greater appreciation of the reality of those events and their connection to us and the world as we experience it. How would the value of this experience compare with the value of the tree's wood on the lumber market? Cost-benefit analyses present one method for making such comparisons.

Certain forms of European and American Romanticism imbue nature with spiritual value. The transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau fall into this category.

Transcendentalism was a movement of romantic idealism that arose in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Rather than regarding nature as foreign or alien, Emerson and Thoreau thought of it as a friend or kindred spirit.

The idea is that our environmental problems are deeply rooted in the Western psyche, and radical changes of viewpoint are necessary if we are to solve these problems.

Western reductionism, individualism, and consumerism are said to be the causes of our environmental problems. The solution is to rethink and reformulate certain metaphysical beliefs about whether all reality is reducible to atoms in motion. It is also to rethink what it is to be an individual.

Moral agents

a being who is able to express ethical concern and take responsibility for behaviors, attitudes, and actions (versus moral patient)

Moral patient

an object of ethical concern, a recipient of moral concern, or a being that is viewed as having value (versus moral agent). A moral patient is any being toward whom we can have direct duties, rather than simply indirect duties. If a tree is a moral patient, then we ought to behave in a certain way toward the tree for its sake, and not just indirectly for the sake of how it will eventually affect us.

Anthropocentrism/Anthropocentric

approach to environmental ethics (and animal welfare) that maintains that human interests alone are the proper focal point (versus biocentrism and ecocentrism).

Biocentrism

approach to environmental ethics that is focused on the value of biotic systems and all life (versus anthropocentrism); see also ecocentrism.

Ecocentrism

approach to environmental ethics that is focused on the value of the ecosystem as a whole and not merely on its relation to human beings (versus anthropocentrism); see also biocentrism.

According to Karen Warren, a philosopher and environmental activist,

ecofeminism is "the position that there are important connections ... between the domination of women and the domination of nature, an understanding of which is crucial to both feminism and environmental ethics." Ecofeminists believe that the problem lies in a male-centered view of nature—that is, one of human domination over nature.

Social ecology

holds that we should look to particular social patterns and structures to discover what is wrong with our relationship to the environment.

There are a variety of issues that come under the rubric of environmental justice,

including where waste dumps are located, whether farm workers and farming communities are properly protected from the effects of fertilizers and pesticides, how uranium is mined, how hunting and fishing is regulated and enforced, who pays for environmental remediation efforts, and who guarantees that polluters are punished. These concerns are connected to other social justice concerns and are entirely anthropocentric.

Prima facie value.

prima facie means "at first glance" or "at first sight."

Instrumental value

things that are useful or good as tools or as means toward some other good (versus intrinsic goods).

Intrinsic value

things that have value in themselves and not merely as tools or means (versus instrumental goods); see also inherent worth.

Inherent value

value residing by nature in something and without reference to any other value or good; see also intrinsic value.

Such a system is organized in the form of a biotic pyramid,

with myriad smaller organisms at the bottom and gradually fewer and more complex organisms at the top. Plants depend on the earth, insects depend on the plants, and other animals depend on the insects.