Is there anything different about environmental ethics which is not included in the ethical theories we have studied? The answer is “yes”!

1. A different view of intrinisic goodness. This comes from the view of the world as essentially interdependent. So, to misquote John Donne, the extinction of any species diminishes me, because humankind is not apart from nature – we belong to nature. The intrinsic goodness comes from the observation of interdependency and dependency – we form part of a complex system of interdependent life-forms (and non-life forms), and each depends on the other. Incidentally, only the eco-holists (James Lovelock and Gaia) and the deep ecologists (Ernie Naess, Aldo Leopold, George Sessions)argue for intrinsic goodness of nature.

2. A different view of consequentialism. Traditional utilitarian ethics has difficulty calculating consequences for people who do not yet exist (who cannot experience pleasure or pain or make choices). Environmental ethics asks a different question. What is the probability that as a race, rather than a set of hedonic units, we are committing collective suicide irrespective of how many people are left alive?

3. A different view of altruism. Altruism is the concern felt for another which Richard Dawkins argues we have evolved as a survival strategy – the lust to be nice. However, it is only triggered when we see, for example, an old lady fall over in the street and we rush to save a stranger (even though there is no reciprocal benefit for us in so doing). Environmental ethicists are asking us to rush to save a different set of strangers – those who do not yet exist. They are asking us to use that distinctive human feature – imagination, and combine it with that key virtue – sympathy, in order to change our own behaviour in a sacrificial way now. For example, even today a sceptical Daily Mail article was putting the cost of various green proposals (such as windfarms) at £13bn a year in lost economic growth.

4. A different view of the common good. The common good or social good is something philosophers define in different ways. For Kant it was something only attained by dutifully obeying the categorical imperative.  It will finally be known in the presence of the essence of all goodness – God himself (who knows things-in-themselves or noumena as they really are), in the afterlife. Aristotle develops the idea of eudaimonia, personal and social flourishing as an organic process as we grow into excellence through right judgement. Mill saw rules as important to establish rights and sympathy for fellow human beings as the key social virtue that will cause me to care about others’ interests. Environmentalists see the common good as identical with the environmental good – a maintenance of biodiversity, sustainability and zero man-made carbon footprint (we can’t avoid the “natural” carbon emitted from rotting vegetation etc).  “Common” here means “planetary”.

5. A new metaphysics. For God read ideas like Gaia – an earth goddess who is “alive” and has ends (at least in Lovelock’s first version). This metaphysical idea gets transformed in later Lovelock to a metaphor – but it remains true that Gaia (our earth mother who gave birth to us and who sustains us and nurtures us) may “take revenge” so that it is already too late (he argues more recently) and massive depopulation will occur from 6 billion to around 1 billion (thought to be the level which the sun’s energy in one year can sustain in food production- not using the oil and coal generated by previous energy years).

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