Environmental Ethics

What are the issues surrounding environmental ethics? This is the second blog leading up to the A level exam where I try to give some guidelines to help student gain that elusive A*. When asked this question, we are often tempted to produce a list: climate change caused by global warming (itself caused by CO2 emissions), the environmental effects of GM crops, business practice of putting profit before principle and so dumping toxic materials, or world poverty leading to environmental degradation of the rainforest or the African plains.

However, I want to suggest one major ethical issue which I think runs a little deeper: the  moral status of the environment itself. It concerns the issue of intrinsic versus instrumental goodness.

Does the environment have intrinsic goodness? And if so where does this intrinsic goodness come from? Remember that intrinsic goodness means “good in itself” irrespective of how we use it or whether it is useful. In ethics people (at least in some theories such as Christian natural law) have intrinsic goodness – we call this the sanctity of life. In utilitarian ethics pleasure has intrinsic goodness (even though the proof of this is weak – Mill argues pleasure is the supreme good because most people pursue it). But what of the environment? (Click to read more below)

Image: Camargue Sunset ©Peter Baron

Unfortunately, no theory we have studied automatically gives the environment intrinsic goodness. Kant stresses rationality, the utilitarians, pleasure, virtue ethics, the goal of flourishing. The concept of eudaimonia, with its strong social emphasis, can of course be adapted for environmental issues. This is indeed what the Roman Catholic Church in the age of environmental issues has been doing with its Papal Encyclicals. For example, Veritatis Splendor (1995) states (rather weakly) we should “refine and develop the riches of the natural world” as an extension of the preservation of life principle. It took till 2009 (Caritas in Veritate) for stronger statement. Pope Benedict wrote:

"The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. In nature, the believer recognizes the wonderful result of God's creative activity, which we may use responsibly to satisfy our legitimate needs, material or otherwise, while respecting the intrinsic balance of creation."

Benedict added: "the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a 'grammar' which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation."

In an important article, the American academic Lynn White accuses Christianity particularly of taking an instrumental line on the environment. The idea of “dominion’ has been interpreted as meaning the resources on earth are here for mankind’s use (instrumental) rather than being seen as intrinsically good because they are made by God who “saw that it (the created world) was very good”. At the curse of Geneis 3 God makes weeds grow, and tells Adam he must cultivate the world and subdue it – and here is the idea that nature is against humankind; we are at war with nature, in extreme, nature is even the realm of Satan, where storms must be calmed, weeds pulled out, diseases fought and healed, and ultimately the great natural fact of death conquered by resurrection to eternal life. Only very recently has the idea of stewardship been introduced to Christian theology rebalancing a rather capitalist interpretation of what we can do with natural resources.

So intrinsic goodness could come from God. It could come from a reinterpretation of the Preservation of Life primary precept. It is difficult to get it directly from Kant’s emphasis on autonomy of the individual, and utilitarianism is notoriously instrumental in its thinking.

That leaves eco-holistic theories such as Gaia theory to remind us of intrinsic goodness. But in what does this goodness consist? The answer is in harmony and balance. Harmony and balance is intrinsically good, disharmony and imbalance intrinsically bad. Gaia (mother earth) keeps the harmony and balance by rebalancing and recycling. So Oxygen remains at 21% of the earth’s atmosphere as the trees and plant life breathe in carbon dioxide during the summer and turn it into Oxygen through the action of photosynthesis. Come autumn, they breathe out CO2, and so the cycle continues. A 100 year old oak tree with 130,000 leaves, their biological cells, binds about 5,000 pounds of carbon dioxide to organic substances such as wood, leaves and bark each year and gives off up to 4,500 kilograms of oxygen, which is the annual requirement of eleven people (click here for more).

If we cut down trees and turn the earth to desert through over-cultivation, we destroy our own lungs so to speak – it is like the smoker saying “I don’t care if I die, there is nothing intrinsically good about lungs” or worse, “I can survive quite happily without lungs, thank you!”. The first position is irrational, the second, arguably, just plain stupid.