It's not easy being Green
The Practice of ecophilosophy is an ongoing, comprehensive, deep inquiry into values, the nature of the world and the self.http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/DrengEcophil.html
The link above gives a good introduction to eco philosophy. If you are not familiar with the topic, please do take a look at it, as I am assuming I can talk about what is mentioned there without explanation.
I want this discussion to focus on levels 1 and 2, and not get too involved with policies and action. So here's the first Platform Principle:
1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman Life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent value). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
I imagine the subjectivists would want to change that to "have value to themselves", but so long as we can agree that ethics is a negotiation of values between subjects, then the only shock to the philosophical system is that humans are not the only subjects. But this is quite a shock; probably a greater shock than the acknowledgment that blacks are subjects, and not therefore potential property.
The implication is, if we take other life and ecosystems seriously as having rights and interests, that our relationship to property of all kinds is transformed from a one-sided I - it relation to an I - thou relationship. It is more like one's relationship to one's children. One's children are one's own, only in a provisional, non-absolute sense; they are one's responsibility, not one's assets, and one forfeits one's right to that relationship if one fails in ones responsibilities. 'I can do what I like with my stuff' is no longer sustainable.
On the one hand, this is incredibly politically radical, a total transformation of our relations with the world, and on the other hand radically conservative, but conservative of ecologies rather than societies abstracted from them. The critique of what the article calls 'industrial culture' encompasses both communism and capitalism, and it is my own suggestion that it is this view that is the real enemy of the alt right Trumpist populism so prevalent at the moment, rather than the concocted pomo neomarxist straw man. Which explains why Right wing America finds itself in collusion with Russia.
Industrial culture represents itself as the only acceptable model for progress and development. However, application of this model and its financial and technological systems to all areas of the planet results in destruction of habitat, extinction of species, and destruction of indigenous cultures. The biodiversity crisis is about loss of critical species, populations and processes that perform necessary biological functions, and it is also about loss of multitudes of other values which are good in themselves and depend on preservation of natural diversity and wild evolutionary processes.
There is lots more to be said, but I think that is probably sufficient irritation for an op.
Comments (91)
Firstly, I'm thinking this is going to be a problem. If ethics is just a negotiation between subjects, then how does the non-human (non-speaking) world take part in that negotiation?
If we, instead have to speak for them, then what is that compels us to presume their needs would be anything like ours. What does a bat actually want?
I can't see any way of assigning rights (and therefore contingent duties) to the non-human world on the basis of ethics as negotiation. How would we hold animals to account for failing in their responsibility to us, or is the system just one way?
I'm passionatly in favour of fostering a better relationship between humans and the natural world, but I think talk of 'rights and responsibilities' to it just leaves open too much room for people to simply discard the concept on axiomatic grounds and it ends up preaching to the converted.
It's not a problem with infants. We understand their wants and needs as best we can, and speak and act and legislate for them. Sometimes we do the same for refugees that cannot speak our language We know quite well that bats want insects and cave like roosts and so on. We can see how they flourish.
Nice thought, though.
Now most non-human life has very little negotiation power, and as such there is no moral imperative to ensure non-human life is treated well. Of course there are exceptions, where a police dog will form a mutually beneficial relationship with its trainer, and a horse with it's rider, however in the main this isn't the case as most animals have little to offer us.
I disagree with cruelty to animals, due to an emotional sympathy for the creatures, however I don't believe there is an ethical obligation to them.
Think again. Animals and plants provide numerous and essential services to us (and each other) that we have ignored at our peril. Take bees: Every plant that produces a fruit or a seed (most of our fruits and vegetables) require pollination which is performed by various species of bees and other insects. Rampant insecticide use in agriculture, mono-cropping, widespread herbicide use, urban sprawl, and other factors have reduced the population of various pollinators.
Birds and bats are responsible for poison-free insect control.
Even algae in the ocean are important providers--a good share of the oxygen we breathe comes from these single-celled creatures.
As we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, aggravate global warming, vast ecological changes (like the acidification of the oceans or spread of parasites and diseases into the northern conifer forests), we are endangering ourselves, as well as many other creatures to whom much is owed.
Then ethics is not a negotiation is it? If it is possible to act ethically to someone (or something) whose preferences you have not had a chance to hear, then you're claiming that you can know what other beings want.
Once you've made that claim, you have an ethic without negotiation. How do we deal with the child who insists on that third chocolate, we act not according to their expression of their desire, we act according to what we think they really want.
I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it. Maintaining the acceptable face of moral relativism with other adults, but then implying a paternal 'we know what you really want' with children and the natural world. I had a similar argument on an ethics board discussing a nature conservation project. The conservationists argued moral superiority because they were working for 'nature' restoring a wildflower meadow. I pointed out that the bulk of their proposed work involved bracken clearance. It was clear to me that 'nature' wanted the whole field covered in bracken, and wanted that pretty strongly. It was the humans that wanted the wild flower meadow.
The point is, not all creatures can 'flourish'. Most of them eat each other. Does the gazelle 'want' to to be eaten by the lion? So are we obligated to try and solve the problem? If we could produce cultured meat (a real possibility) are we obliged to feed it to lions. It could be argued that we can see that London don't want to hunt (they only do so when they're hungry), and gazelles don't appear to want to be eaten.
Then do we value bacteria as much as elephants? Are we obligated to actually maximise diversity? That would certainly require us to green the deserts, meadows are more diverse than the native woodland here in England.
Bat's may want insects, but do insects want bats?
In the US, there is a common legal mechanism by which trustees are assigned by the government to speak for the environment. Under the Superfund law, various governmental agencies are authorized to act as Natural Resources Trustees.
Another concept, which may not be consistent with the approach @unenlightened is proposing, is the idea of The Commons. There are portions of the world where everyone has a stake and a responsibility. Ownership is not absolute, some is always reserved for the public. That is not consistent with the idea of the environment having separate rights, but it is a approach which shows up in some conservative, even libertarian, views on environmental regulation.
This discussion is a good idea. This kind of thing doesn't get discussed much here. I'm not sure how much I have to offer, but I'll be interested to read.
We have many similar systems here in England. I've had cause to argue with their version of 'what nature wants' on quite a number of occasions.
I wasn't making the case for any particular approach, only that there are mechanisms by which the "rights" of the environment can be protected, negotiated.
I understand. The point I was trying to make is that it's not the 'rights' of the environment that get protected or negotiated, it's still what the humans empowered to speak want of it. Some may want the environment to be nothing but a source of raw materials, others may want to enjoy its aesthetics, its potential for future harvesting, its peace, even knowledge of its mere existence, but all the time its still just humans arguing about what they want from it. No-one is really speaking for it.
The concept of a right is human, so there's no way to separate an environmental right from a human value. I have a deep feeling that I belong in this world. That I have evolved along with all the other organisms that exist here. That's my feeling, not some tree's.
Exactly. This is why I dislike the paternalism of much ecological philosophy. Our very existence is absolutely dependent on our stewardship of the natural world. If we mess up it will spit us out without a second thought. It's neither a negotiation, nor an exchange of rights. It's an absolute imperative to treat the natural world with more respect or else it will destroy us. Our reign has been nothing more than blip in the lifespan of the earth. I don't think it's excessively fanciful to imagine the earth as one living organism, we are a tiny, momentary itch, which will be summarily scratched off if we get too irritating, and we have the audacity to imagine we're part of a negotiation?
Yes, this is all very problematic in practice, which is why I want to really avoid that issue in this thread. Take a couple of steps back. The suggestion is that what humans want, whoever they are, is not the only consideration. At the moment I am more interested in justifying and working out the philosophical implications of this. How we work out in any particular environment, and especially as is usual, one that has been extensively disrupted and degraded by human action, 'what nature wants' which is something that needs some serious philosophical dismantling anyway, is alwaysgoing to be arguable and provisional, but that does not mean we should not do it as best we can.
In this respect, one finds humans in the Amazon, or in Aboriginal Australia or Native Americans, living as a part of an ecology, and it is this very different philosophy that enables them to speak with understanding of the needs of the whole.
Let me put it this way. What is being disputed here, at least in part, is the enlightenment - the doctrine of the rational self-interested individual.
I'm taking this to be undisputed, that our way of life is destructive, and in the long run self- destructive. But what we do comes out of the way we think, so we need to think differently. And that is the business of philosophy to investigate.
Earlier in this discussion, I mentioned the idea of The Commons. Am I correct that you don't find this a satisfactory approach?
Fair enough.
I still think the presumption that we could know what a bat wants is problematic, not just by degree (in that it's hard to be sure but we could make a good guess), but as a matter of autonomy. I'm concerned that the presumption of such knowledge could be used to justify intervention in the autonomy of other creatures where no intervention is warranted.
Also, I'm not sure how this approach helps us to resolve conflict between what different aspects of the ecosystem and wants. How do we consider the wants of both bats and insects when those wants will be contradictory?
The native tribes you mention indeed live as part of an ecosystem, but I don't see any evidence that they know what it needs, nor that they act as custodians in any way beyond their own self interest. I think that truly being part of an ecology means that its needs and yours are inextricably linked. It it our anthropocentric distance that causes the problems we all seem to agree exist. I think what's needed is not further distancing by abstraction, but getting closer to the fact that we need the ecosystems we rely on.
I think too many people have 'communion' with nature in an abstract way and too few have skinned and gutted a rabbit for dinner.
It's not our business to resolve such conflicts at all, if we even need to conceive it as a conflict. Insects have a right to live, (but not in my hair) and bats also have a right to live, and bats eat insects, so they both need insects to thrive.
Quoting Pseudonym
Here is the bite: I agree with your diagnosis, but your remedy continues to be anthropocentric.
Quoting Pseudonym
I think this is backwards if it suggests that our distance from nature causes poor thinking about nature; rather it is an impoverished thinking about nature that has led us to largely divorce ourselves from it. Skinning and gutting a rabbit is very easy; far easier than preparing a mango.
I don't think it is satisfactory, for a number of reasons, but I really don't want to get bogged down in policies and action, which is what almost everyone so far wants to concern themselves with.
I want to discuss matters of principle and their possible foundation in whatever world view, religious or secular, Western or Eastern, realist or subjectivist wrt morals. The notion of 'stewardship' for example gives a Judeo-Christian root to the ideas presented here - as though Man is the thinking, directing organ of Nature. However, the mainstream of Western thought has diverged from this to the extent that Nature has been conceived and treated as an enemy to be conquered, and a blind and dumb mechanism to be exploited.
Love is the basis of all morality. Love for oceans and forests flourishes among those who have been emancipated from hunger. There is no evil ideology here. Just Nature itself.
As the song has it, "Where is the love?"
A rhetorical question: Has Mr. Trump not been emancipated from hunger? (a humorous question, I hope … now see that unenlightened got to this roundabout issue before me)
I’m not big on the term “evil” either, but I find that love is far more difficult an obtainment than we’d like to believe. Heck, I’ll even say that we all hold some degree of fear of love, including folks such as Mother Teresa (e.g., if a person has never felt their hart pound when kissing another out of some degree of fear/anxiety that they all the same seek to overcome, than I think one’s been missing out one what first kisses can be). Just that some seek to overcome these fears while others make the most out of love being (to them) a big joke.
Incidentally, in seeing this as a potential rebuttal from someone out there: love of nature does not then mean one wants that all life be physically immortal either. Yet at least some Native Americans, for example, honored the spirits of the animals they killed by burning their whiskers (indicative of care/sympathy even if one takes it to only be symbolic), and such Earth-based religions don’t give thanks to a Creator deity for daily meals but the spirits of those beings/lifeforms who were sacrificed so that life as whole may be sustained. Not advocating for religious/nonreligious preferences, just trying to illustrate that that the issue of love is a complex thing, especially when it is extended more universally … but I fully agree that love is an important emotion/state of mind to strive for and maintain all the same.
Western population is the problem.
Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy. The population is projected to increase by nearly 130 million people - the equivalent of adding another four states the size of California - by the year 2050.
Disconnecting moral concerns from practical ones is like demanding that we hear about Juliet's family and totally ignore Romeo's. It's a pretty meaningless play.
Hunger trumps love. Almost always.
Facts 5: Loss of forests contributes between 12 percent and 17 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. (World Resources Institute)
if we could preserves what we have, and recover what we have lost, there is no amount of CO2 we could throw into the atmosphere that trees could not rebalance.
I'm not wanting to disconnect anything. But my concern here is to change minds, and change the way people think about the issues that the way we think has brought us to. I mention the way things are by way of establishing the problem with the way we think. Let me put it this way we have done what we have done because we think what we think. so in order to do something else we need to think something else. And that is the business of philosophy. Doing something else will follow as politics when we have a new philosophy. but you want to do the politics without having changed the philosophy, and that results in repeating the same errors in a new way.
Yea, I find plenty of self-interest in love—though I don’t know if it can always be properly termed rational self-interest. This from all everyday notions of love to that of universal compassion; it’s not as if Nirvana is not in the Buddhist’s interest to obtain, for example. On a related topic: even haters love—themselves, that is (I don’t think it’s possible to hate in an absence of self-love)—though this at the expense of all else, thereby perverting the term’s commonly understood connotations of it being interpersonal with phrases such as “love for (optimal quantities of) money”. In short, to be alive is to love a set of givens out of self-interest, but what this set of given’s consists of can drastically differ due to differences in that which is intended. And I’ve spoken with enough very educated that take themselves to be rational—such as on issues of economy—that I take to be irrational, such as because infinite growth is irrational when you have finite recourses, me thinks.
Quoting frank
Yes, agreed. Still don’t think Trump suffers from hunger, though. Well, and there are the relatively rare occasions of those in want of basic subsistence which nevertheless exhibit far more communal love than most Wall Street Bankers. Won’t reedit the just said, but come to think of it, isn’t it true that that those who are relatively poor give to the homeless and the like proportionally more than those who are rich? (As in, ten dollars for a poor guy is equivalent to some million dollars for the very rich.) I’ve seen rich Christians come near to kicking the homeless in in the street; whereas those who are poor(er)—and, yes, those who are authentic Christians (as in, follow JC’s mores as best they can earnestly)—will give to those in need … and will be called commies by those who don’t.
Quoting charleton
You mean that whole thing about carbon dioxide being a greenhouse gas? Whose to say? Why, I once heard that there's one scientist somewhere that someone heard about that disagrees. It's all so uncertain. (My compliments to those who don't take me seriously here.)
The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased 0.01-2% in 100 years. The hysterical claims of the green lobby are unable to mobilise physical science to use this fact to explain the Global warming that exists.
I naturally lean more toward trying to understand. That leads me to warn you against trying to make people feel guilty for things they have no control over or that they did to meet basic needs. Look back at the issue of the size of the human population.
Been working on a logical argument, but it may be too convoluted to be taken seriously:
P1: Greenhouse gases keep sunlight-produced warmth from dissipating into outer space. (T/F)
P2: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. (T/F)
P3: Humans require fire in order to comfortably live (such as in the cooking of meat). (T/F)
P4: Fire releases CO2 into the atmosphere. (T/F)
P5: Human populace has grown almost exponentially in the last few hundred years. (T/F)
C: (all other things such as forest depletion and fossil fuel issues aside (these ought not be addressed for the make fat cats rich)) Therefore, humans have contributed to there being more greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, aka to global warming. (T/F)
I take all these to be true. But if I’m missing something here, what would that be?
Oh, science is never about absolute proof, most of all because it’s empirical and thereby inescapably inductive. Therefore, in order not to doubt human caused global warming when those with great monetary influence tell us to, what is missing is a demonstrated infallible certainty that all these premises are so. Back to the drawing board of philosophical enquiry as regards infallibity [… unless people don’t need extensive evidencing for that which is obvious: our planet is in big trouble as far as life goes, as in the mass global extinction we’re right now living through].
Ok, I’m all sarcasmed out for the day :meh:
... may anyone feel free to strengthen this argument if you think it might in any way help
thanks. When it comes to taking care of people's basic needs before expecting most to care about other things, I again concur.
Facts 5: Loss of forests contributes between 12 percent and 17 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. (World Resources Institute)
if we could preserves what we have, and recover what we have lost, there is no amount of CO2 we could throw into the atmosphere that trees could not rebalance.
Sadly the same web page that gave you that fact fails to see the moronic irony of their last fact.
Fact 51: Seek knowledge on deforestation and how can you prevent it from happening by reading newspapers, magazines, internet, TV shows. Spread the word and make it go viral.
How about STOP buying newspapers and magazines?
A sense of proportion!!
Co2 has proportionately been 100s times higher in prehistoric times.
These days there is only a trace amount of Co2, and the carrying capacity of 0.041% is not significantly greater than 0.035% as it was 100 years ago.
However. Plants have the ability to respond to higher concentrations of Co2 up to a full 1% by taken in the carbon and making cellulose and lignin. Hence my comment about TREES.
This comes with things such as 6.5 of the global GDP being spent on subsidizing fossil fuels. ... and the rather fight-on-your-own attitude toward renewable energies, in terms of both implementation and research (e.g., turns out Tesla isn't going to make a renewable energy grid in Puerto Rico after all, thought hey offered)
But by all means, I'm all for re-foresting the planet.
It isn't just city dwellers whose senses are tuned to the built environment; a lot of rural agriculturists don't see their land, plant crops, and animals as part of an ecology either. They see it as a means to the end of making a living, or if they are corporate farmers, to making a good deal more money than a mere living.
That the ugly slop in the gutter IS IN the ecology we live in, as is the can of 2,4,D, Roundup, DDT, Diazinon, and old motor oil sinking into the ground where somebody dumped it (certainly not us; it must have been the neighbors) or the plastic bags drifting down the street--all that IS NOT OUTSIDE of ecology is an inconvenient truth.
This is missing the point, I'm not suggesting that it is our business to resolve such conflicts, I'm suggesting that is a logical conclusion that follows from a sense that nature/animals, have rights and that we should speak for them in some sort of negotiation. We cannot consider nature or animals to have rights in the same way humans do because species kill each other for food/territory. If an animal has a categorical right not to be killed by us just for food/territory, then how does it not have a right not to be killed by it's natural predator/competitor for food/territory?
Insects cannot have a right to live (or at least not one that is acknowledged species-wide, otherwise bats would not be allowed to kill them for food. That's what I meant by the analogy of gutting a rabbit which is not met by your reference to mangoes. Nature is not about rights, it's a competition for resources. There are two main paths to survive the competition, be strongest or co-operate. The problems we face in terms of environmental degradation are entirely the result of us presuming there is only the former, in order to undo the damage we must develop the latter. What I find unpleasant about the deep ecology movement is it focusses only on the former. It implies we've won the competition, we've beaten nature and now we have to teach people to love it so that they look after it in a condescending paternal way. But we cannot win this battle we've set ourselves up for, we must either learn to co-operate or die, it doesn't matter if everyone on earth does so through gritted teeth hating every minute of it, it is simply a necessity of the natural world.
Your numbers are off. When the Keeling Curve begins, in 1957, the atmospheric CO2 concentration was about 315ppm and now it is 410ppm. That's a 30% increase in just 61 years. It's likely larger now than it has been over the last several million years, and it's still rising about 1% more every two years.
Quoting charleton
That's an increase of 17.14%.
I'm no statistician, but I'm pretty sure describing the % change in terms of the absolute difference between two figures is misleading.
For example, if 10% of people voted last year and 20% of people voted this year, that's described as an increase of 100%, not 10%.
Humans don't have a right to live. They all die. I think you are strawmannirg Deep Ecology, and perhaps uncharitably reading my own loose comments. where in the principles of Deep Ecology do you find the unpleasant focus you complain of?
Modern measurements whilst they represent modern concentrations are not directly comparable with historical data. comparing your number my figures are accurate.
25-30% increase of nothing is next to nothing.
Since Co2 only accounts for a tiny bit of global temperature in the first place why quibble over this since we our atmosphere did not boil away into space when it was a Jurassic 10,000ppm. GW needs something more sophisticated than Co2 to account for any rises.
Co2 is a political tool. The real issues are extinction, drop in species diversity, deforestation, the pollution of the oceans and lack of conservation of natural environments.
If 10 people had voted for Trump in the year before the election, and only 100 in the election year, Trump would not be President, despite getting an increase of 1000%.
The reason the absolute numbers are important is that we do not know what role a trace chemical can play in the temperature.
Can you all please go and discuss global warming somewhere else. My topic is Ecophilosophy, and you are getting in the way.
It's this bit
That there is a 'value' to non-human life beyond its utility to us I find deeply problematic.
1. It is an assertion that itself goes against the very nature it is attempting to protect which I find uncomfortably anthropocentric. Utility is at the heart of all natural ecosystems, it is how they evolved and the reason for their existence, it is not something to be given second place to some esoteric, deeply human cultural attitude.
2. It is technically impossible for two competing life forms to both 'flourish'. Natural selection ensures that varieties which do not flourish of their own accord die out. If the well-being and flourishing of all life forms has an intrinsic value then nature does not respect that value. Again humans are set up as being somehow above nature in that we can care for it in a way that it does not for itself.
3. It is an appeal to emotion which is unlikely to work. Where action is needed right now, we cannot afford to persue such routes. The natural environment is worth trillions if properly costed, without its proper functioning we will be wiped out as a species. These are languages which the current social zeitgeist already understands, by talk of human superiority undermines the message.
Basically, utility is not a bad thing, it's what nature is built on, it's the reason why ecosystems are so beautifully efficient, it should be celebrated and taught. Deep ecology seems to want to do the opposite.
Good. I think Deep Ecology is deeply problematic for the current world view, as I indicated in the op. So we are in the right snake pit at last.
Quoting Pseudonym
I don't think I have to disagree much with this. Wheat has utilitarian value for humans, and insects for bats. But to have utility is already to have second place to the purpose for which they are used, which you would probably call survival. And wheat and insects have their own needs for their own survival too. So to say that bats need insects, and their survival (can I use flourishing?) is dependent on the survival of insects, and therefore is endangered by the excessive use of insecticides is not to indulge in anthropocentric, esoteric human cultural attitudes. It is the way it is.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well if this is true, then bats are not competing with insects, and in general, predators are not competing with prey. It sets a very tight limit on competition and directs evolution towards specialisation that avoids competition. It suggests that for humans to set themselves up as in competition with nature is a very dangerous thing to do for our own survival. If Dutch Elm disease, in utilising Elms destroys them, it cannot itself survive.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well this is anthropocentric to an extreme. "Trillions of insects?", asks the bat. If the zeitgeist understands and 'properly costs' the environment, then how is it that insect populations are in steep decline, bird populations are in steep decline, the oceans are full of plastic, fish stocks are in steep decline, and so on and on and on.
Yes, but what of the insects? Do they need bats? Maybe you could argue that they need bats to control their numbers so that they don't succumb to disease, but then do the diseases need bats? Either the insects or the diseases are going to be better off (flourish) without the bats. Nature abhors a vacuum. What about the bacteria currently evolving to live off our pollutants, do they not deserve to flourish?
Quoting unenlightened
I'm referring here to the constant process of extinction by which natural selection acts, not the predator prey relationship. Predators and prey do not actually compete with one another in an ecological sense. Two identical predators hunting the same prey compete. One slight variation in one organism and one of them must either find a new niche or die out.
Quoting unenlightened
The problem is the zeitgeist does not understand the value of the ecosystem it's in. That's the point I'm trying to make. It's not that we treat nature as 'just' what is useful to us, it's that we don't treat it enough that way. We falsely presume nature's utility is as an inexhaustible supply of raw materials and forget that it is neither inexhaustible nor limited to supplying us with raw materials.
I'm not sure what your point is. There is a hierarchy of dependency such that the top predators are the most dependent. On the other hand, I compete directly with the slugs for my lettuces. Diseases are dependent on their host, predators on their prey, plants on soil and sunlight and rainfall. Dependency is opposed to competition, and everything has dependency. An ecosystem consisting of bacteria and pollutants is an impoverished ecosystem; a flourishing ecosystem is complex, diverse, resilient adaptable. You seem to be arguing that everything is natural by definition and therefore anything is of equal value?
Quoting Pseudonym
Again, I find little to dis agree with, except that "...nor limited to supplying us with raw materials." seems to contradict "It's not that we treat nature as 'just' what is useful to us, it's that we don't treat it enough that way." The former seems to imply that much of what nature is doing is sustaining itself as a complex system and that if those needs, which are not apparently our needs are not fulfilled then it will become apparent that they were after all indirectly our needs. Rather as leopards are not much concerned about grass, but depend on gazelles that depend on grass. It is fortunate for leopards that they do not have access to herbicides, and unfortunate for humans that they do not understand their own dependencies.
The point is not everything can flourish. Potential new species are evolving all the time and if cannot find a niche to exploit (or outcompete a species already there) then they will die out. Expressing our relationship with nature as a duty towards the flourishing of all species we would become obliged to stop evolution by natural selection. Your still only looking at ecosystems as static things and they're not, components naturally come and go in response to environmental changes, we can't become obliged to step in and prevent this.
Quoting unenlightened
Desert ecosystems are impoverished compared to tropical rainforest, native woodland is impoverished compared to meadows; are we obliged then to turn one into the other?
Quoting unenlightened
An ecosystem is resilient and adaptable mainly by natural selection killing off those components which no longer suit the new conditions, this is a process directly opposed to the 'flourishing' of individual species.
Quoting unenlightened
I simply mean that raw materials are not the only assets nature can supply us. There's tranquility, beauty, a sense of place, the satisfaction of million year old instinct. But it must be as we expect it to be to supply these things. A polluted lake full of oil-consuming bacteria won't do the job, no matter how much the bacteria are 'flourishing'.
Obviously they are completely unconnected.
Ok.
Quoting Pseudonym
Ok.
Quoting Pseudonym
I don't think we are obliged, but a bit of desert irrigation and amelioration of desertification might be a reasonable policy in some places, and not in others.
Quoting Pseudonym
Right, I misunderstood, and this is the dispute we have; that you take man as the 'measure of all things' (at least all things ethical and aesthetic). I'm not sure if this is the place to go further on this; we seem to have traced the difficulty back to level 1 in Naess's scheme. Perhaps we should pause for breath at least, before I try and convert you to a 'more religious' view.
They are accurate enough. I am going to abide by @unenlightened's request, though. So, if you want to know why CO2 is important, you can post this again in this thread. I'll then reply over-there.
Historical data is gathered by completely different means.
The scandal of the hockey stick was due to this problem. Estimated as the probably Co2 concentrations of ancient atmospheres were gleaned through ice-core analysis, and put on the same graph as direct measurements with modern equipment of actual atmospheric air.
Date gained 150 years ago used completely different methods of estimation. Since Co2 fluctuates wildly depending on where on the earth you gather it, the tiny differnce you picked me up on it absurdly insignificant.
Being patronising will not help your (ahem!) "argument" I knew Co2 was a greenhouse gas when you were in your nappies.
But at least I have the sketch of the book ready. I've written it many years ago. It goes like this, from memory:
1. Natural resources (bear with me for a while here, this sketch is quite old, and it takes for granted some terminology that fell out of favor since) are very often mismanaged.
2. Their mismanagement has terrible consequences (both short run and long run).
3. The consequences can be fairly understood as the "externalization of costs and benefits". (Insert longish explanation here if this is not clear -- it is an economics concept).
3.1. (As regards the OP): the externalization is usually conceived as pertaining to human subjects, but there is no intrinsic obstacle to extending the notion to non-human subjects.
4. The general framework that fosters these externalizations is the "Tragedy of the Commons" (Hardin, 1968; google it if you haven't heard about it).
So far this has all been more descriptive than prescriptive. But the prescription starts here:
5. We have, now (this was in 1998, more or less -- of course the situation is much improved since then), the technical means to enable valuation and to produce accurate estimates of the externalized costs and benefits in many commonplace situations. My example back then (in tune with my career specialization) was water use issues. It is child's play (theoretically) to estimate the cost of (a) cleaning up a polluted water body on an on-going basis and (b) prevention of pollution in the first place (e.g., by sewage treatment facilities). It is then easy to compare the two costs; and if reality is following the more expensive cost, it is, obviously, because some parties, without a say in the decision-making process, are bearing the brunt of these costs.
5.1. The situation is not so easy in other contexts. How much is a species of insect worth? What kind of ecosystem services is it involved with, and what is the value derived from them? Etc. (Note that here I was skipping the ethical problem of "who are we to put a price tag on another species", but this can be dealt with separately).
6. So, the strategy for better dealings with the environment becomes clear:
a. Reduce, as much as possible, externalizations. In other words, people who are responsible for X must pay the costs for X; people who benefit from X must be responsible for X.
b. When externalisation is (still) inevitable due to technical shortcomings of our engineering and scientific practices, act as if it could be reduced by the individual. This is an ethical imperative. People must increase their awareness of costs and benefits derived from their surroundings. Costs and benefits are not solely (or even mostly) economical in nature; the pleasure from a waterfall, the feeling of wellbeing from a well-preserved urban forest, etc. If you are aware of some benefit accruing to you, take responsibility for it. If you are aware of some cost imposed by your activities, try to pay for it. Summing up, if you are an agent (negative or positive) of externalization, be aware of it, and adjust your behavior so as to minimize externalization.
6b may sound utopic, but I don't think it is (and I strive to practice it in my own life). It is more a matter of awareness than of calculus or anything more utilitarian in nature.
Nice to have you aboard. Allow me to jump down your throat from the get go. Is there inevitably a potential management that is not mis-management? Or is it possible that there are places and resources that we should leave alone - that do not belong to us in the first place? Places that belong to the wild.
It turns out that there is nowhere on the planet that does not suffer from the externalised costs of our mismanagement, to use your language; nowhere that is not already polluted with our waste. And there is nowhere where we do not claim the right to roam, and the right to manage and mis-manage.
Nowhere, including ourselves. We cannot manage ourselves, though we are the first and most accessible natural resource. But we quite rightly do not wish to consider ourselves in that frame at all, though some of us are willing to treat others as resources. It's not that I disagree with your diagnosis and remedy, so much as I think it is - that word again - symptom management, rather than a cure.
We have externalised ourselves from the nature we manage and mis-manage, and our management of nature is then always in relation to our (unnatural) selves. To relate it to the conversation above, if man is the measure of all things, there can be no ethics, because ethics is the measure of man. One is left with a pragmatic, managerial, prudential ethic of convenience. And that is how we arrived at this point in the first place.
If it is, I agree, but with a shrug. It is inevitable that we should manage stuff (including ourselves). Given that, we must pick among methods of management (noting, all the time, that we are automatically dominating the objects of our management efforts); and the choice is neither trivial nor disconnected from the consequences of our acts.
(By the way, leaving places and resources alone is still management -- at least, and this is quite difficult, management of the human beings who disagree with this goal).
Note also that while the imagination immediately runs to costs in this discussion, externalization of benefits is also very harmful. Free riders (people who benefit from X without feeling responsible for it) are probably the main obstacle in the way of environmental awareness.
Quoting Mariner
Management of management, all is management! Or should that be vanity?
David Abram
103
The Trumpeter
ISSN: 0832-6193 Volume 30, Number 2 (2014)
Perhaps pagan Nature worship is not to your taste, yet there must be some connection surely or some reflection at least, between God and His creation? I'm surprised your approach is so resolutely mundane.
I shrug at the realization that management assumes a dominating position; not at the task of management itself.
As for the religious aspect, note that management can be replaced with "stewardship", an old Christian notion, with no loss. (That non-written book precedes my conversion ;)).
To use a concrete, relatable example: your excerpt mentions dams. Dams can be big or small. They can be much more eco-friendly than a farm, and also incredibly destructive. No one can be "for dams", but it is also silly to be "against dams". The analysis must consider the costs and benefits of dams and their alternatives.
It is not so sublime to see people dying of easily preventable diseases because they don't have access to clean (or, cleaner) energies; or to see that they lack good quality drinking water at critical periods of the year, for themselves, their livestock, and their farms. Yet these would be predictable results of any absolute "ban on dams".
I wonder about that. I see the connection, for sure, and it is certainly claimed that the idea of stewardship can lead one to the principles of deep ecology. And I can see in the monastic tradition - the little I know of it - that at it's best it is a model of good stewardship and living in harmony with the natural world.
But I see also the rather less edifying connection to my own experience of management that has reverence only for the bottom line. This is perhaps what happens to the steward sometimes when the proprietor is absent for a long time; he comes to think he is the proprietor. There seems to be a vast difference between a steward on behalf of God of His whole creation, and a steward on behalf of the Shareholder (a being quite as dubious of existence), who seems to have little concern for the welfare of his property, but much, curiously, for His stewards.
And this is where I want to take a stand, for human stewardship and against human proprietorship. It's not an argument against management as such, but against management become ownership.
Quoting Mariner
Yes, such absolutes are ridiculous and offensive. I think one can have a principled preference for small interventions over large, but even there, economies of scale may dictate otherwise. There is a proposal locally for a huge tidal lagoon that would provide flooding defence and power generation; a twenty mile dam in the sea. A huge intervention in the environment that wants careful thinking and management on behalf of the marine, coastal, and human environments. Are we doing cost benefit analyses on behalf of the whole, or just on behalf of ourselves? That is the question that sorts the stewards from the mere managers.
I replied over there.
Stewards are a subspecies of managers (one with special responsibilities). The issue is "how should we act"; and the sooner every individual realizes his stewardship and his duty to minimize externalities, the better.
Here's some homework in case anyone's interested.
https://www.aldoleopold.org/post/understanding-land-ethic/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-environmental/
http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/MosqFearfulNotion.html
Lessons wot I have learnt.
There is a prudential environmentalism, based on human needs and human desires that seems to me inadequate, because it is merely reactive to disaster - 'oh, perhaps we shouldn't be killing all the insects, because we need them for pollination of our crops.' - dependencies are discovered only when they are lost, because a radical (moral) separation is presumed between man and nature, even though it is 'scientifically' denied.
A critique of this enlightenment presumption, modified by the subsequent death of God, involves a rethinking of identity, a rethinking of the thinker as embedded rather than disembodied. This means that there is a close connection between environmental politics and identity politics. It's all the white man's fault as usual.
So there is an interplay of religion, identity, and science that needs to run to a depth of the human psyche that is beneath rationality at the same time as reaching beyond the psyche through rationality to deal with, ahem, the facts on the ground. Science likes to remind us that we are just aggressive monkeys at heart, but I would urge caution in taking the word of an aggressive monkey about things like that.
There is some truth in this, but if it was so simple, farmers would behave differently than they do. Remember that it was the industrialisation of farming that fuelled the growth of the city and depopulation of the countryside as much as the reverse.
It didn't even occur to me that you didn't realize that farms don't count as wilderness. If you spend a lot if time in the wilderness your senses adjust to it. When you come back out things like billboards and roads seem weird. If you go from the desert into Las Vegas its possible to have a visceral reaction of abhorrence to the excesses. You've adjusted to the sparseness of the desert. Shades of Dune. But farms are likewise jarring to wilderness senses. Ciity people are just the furthest away from wildness. Farmers who hunt know about the wild.Quoting unenlightened
We do in the US just because some parks are so huge. Isaac Asimov floated the idea of humans going underground to leave the surface entirely wild. I love that idea, but part of me needs the wild.
Me too, but another part needs the dentist. I do know the difference between farm and forest, I'm just struggling to work out what your point is in relation to eco philosophy.
Ah. That physical separation is a factor in emotional disconnection. One doesn't love and respect what one can't even see.
I really don't know what you are trying to say. I lived for 5 years in the Pyrenees in a community in some isolation and surrounded by mountain and forest. When you have to slaughter the pig that you have brought up for a year and that roamed with the wild boar to have food for the winter, your relationship to nature is different. These days I make it a rule never to eat anyone I haven't been introduced to, and that means I am vegetarian at the moment.
There is understanding, empathy, insight, that one can only gain from close contact. But then,Quoting Mariner
So, whether you are connected or disconnected, how will you act?
How will I act in response to what problem?
As said earlier, with some added emphasis:
a. Reduce, as much as possible, externalizations. In other words, people who are responsible for X must pay the costs for X; people who benefit from X must be responsible for X.
b. When externalisation is (still) inevitable due to technical shortcomings of our engineering and scientific practices, act as if it could be reduced by the individual. This is an ethical imperative. People must increase their awareness of costs and benefits derived from their surroundings. Costs and benefits are not solely (or even mostly) economical in nature; the pleasure from a waterfall, the feeling of wellbeing from a well-preserved urban forest, etc.
If you are aware of some benefit accruing to you, take responsibility for it. If you are aware of some cost imposed by your activities, try to pay for it.
Summing up, if you are an agent (negative or positive) of externalization, be aware of it, and adjust your behavior so as to minimize externalization.
I have no disagreement with you. But everything, from the flush toilet to plastic packaging, to the extraordinary complex of transport system, seems by design to make one unaware. Whether the sewage treatment plant x miles down the road is adequately dealing with my waste or pumping it half treated into the sea, is not only invisible at my end of the pipe, but I am not even competent to judge at the other end, supposing I knew where it was and was permitted to investigate. I put my food waste in one bin and cardboard in another, as I am instructed, and then I have no idea what happens. I rinse out the tins and the bottles, but am unsure whether I am wasting water or saving glass and metal.
Such is the disconnect. And the wind farm out on the horizon, even that is controversial, not just for the view it spoils, but for the resources it consumes in relation to the power it produces. Even the experts disagree. I think I have also a duty to make myself aware, but it ain't easy.
Amen.
One major beef -- rather, the greatest beef -- I have with mainstream "environmentalism" is that it mostly replaces one ideological discourse with another, rather than encouraging awareness. You are supposed to like wind power even though it harms thousands of birds and bats. You are supposed to hate nuclear just because. You are supposed to recycle just because. Etc.
These simple-minded rules dull one's awareness rather than enhance it. And they have a nasty habit of hitting you back in the derriere when someone does the gritty math -- which only devalues the "environmentalist position" in the eyes of Everyman, which is a very, very bad thing in my opinion.
But what else is there? I cannot do the gritty math, and I am myself reduced to ideological aphorisms; to eat local when possible to use public transport and travel less, to consume less, to recycle up down and sideways, to live frugally, to share facilities when reasonably possible, to heat one room rather than the whole house, to insulate. And then to support my best but unsure guess at what policies and industries will externalise the least.
But the situation is rather like the notion of a healthy diet; received wisdom changes its mind from one year to the next about butter, or wine, or carbohydrates, and that's without the cranks and weirdos. Stay off the beef though, it's full of hormones. :wink:
Besides awareness? Humility, I suppose. When we don't know the answers, we look for them; if we can't find them, we still try to minimize externalities (a.k.a., "ecological footprint"), keeping a fairly open and critical mind about the ways we are trying to do that.
But that is not a prescription for environmental issues only, of course. The beauty of environmental issues is that they are so complex that we cannot really pretend that we know all there is to be known -- at least, not if we are remotely honest with ourselves. It is good practice for humility.
[quote=Gus Speth]“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”[/quote]
How do you justify it? Or do you? What action should you be taking?
I don't justify; I have been an explorer of ways to live, to an extent, and what suits a young man in a warm climate is less suitable when bringing up children, and so on. There is no special virtue in living without electricity that I can see; living without the world news for a while certainly sensitises one. If I was justifying, I'd probably go for urban, squatting running a whole food co-op, alternative schooling, and generally undermining society. A bit more getting amongst the problems rather than escaping from them.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/01/argentina-new-river-soya-beans?CMP=fb_gu
It signifies the victory of order over chaos, rationality over irrationality, culture over lawlessness. Might that be a problem if we're looking to religion for an appropriate ethical outlook? Animosity toward nature goes deep?
To the extent that the natural world shows up as a living thing to us, Peterson would seem to say that it's natural that we would want to dominate it. If we countered or tempered that desire, we would be acting against our own nature.
Do you agree with that?