Pale green

Jon Sumby

These environmental questions, and the knowledge we now have, raise fundamental questions. Questions that strike beyond the interests of humans and so lie beyond the scope of shallow environmentalism. Other ethical structures such as ecocentrism, biocentrism, deep ecology and deep-green theory do exist, however, they lie outside the beliefs, understanding and acceptance of the majority of people; even though they hark back to our original and fundamental connectedness with the Earth.

SINCE society began humans have lived within, as part of, the environment. For nearly all of that time humans have seen the environment as a given, as pervading as the air — endless and untouchable.

Within Western culture there has been an acceptance of the endless bounty of nature as a God-given resource, based on the Christian imperative. However, in the late twentieth century all humanity is beginning to feel the first tightening of the limits to growth. Freshwater resources are becoming depleted, the world is measurably polluted from pole to pole and climate is altering.

Large-order events like the ozone hole, or Chernobyl, have brought the environment into people’s lives. One has to ask: To what level of concern must the environmental crisis be considered and if that level removes it from the orbit of orthodox moral theory? Does orthodox moral theory have any original role and, if so, does it have a continuing role? Only then can we consider if moral theory need take account of the interests on non-sentient things. Even then, to what level of organisation is it to be considered — biotic or abiotic — or the two together as ecosystems, large or small.

Humans can be considered as patch disturbance animals (Krebs, 1994), that is, rather than fitting in with the local ecosystem, we effect marked change upon all levels of the surrounding environment. One doesn’t have to look far across the once forested wheat-fields and animal pastures of Australia to realise this. Even hunter-gather communities have this effect, but when the need arose, they moved on (Flannery, 1996). Within Western Industrial society that option no longer exists and it is this Western Industrial society, us, that is the root cause of the current environmental problems.

Origins of Western Industrial Societies Attitude to Nature

Humans have an innate sense of connectedness with the natural world, what E.O. Wilson (1992) calls ‘biophilia’, but it is only in the industrial era that we have come to dominate nature. However, society is still informed by the past, a past where the natural world was seen both as a resource and an enemy. ‘The first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon’, wrote the influential American, Gifford Pinchot, in 1910. ‘What is not useful [for people], is vicious’ proclaimed Cotton Mather in the seventeenth century (Wilson, 1988).

The basis for these ideals is the Christian concept of divinely given dominion over nature (Singer, 1993). However, as Birch and Cobb (1981), Singer (1993), and others point out, there has been an underlying thread of Christian thought that rejects this attitude and inspires a reverence and tenderness for the Earth. This respect is largely ignored by the more common and dominant ‘subdue the Earth’ Christian attitude. However, I think that a greater influence, by far, has been the work of Descartes, Hobbes and others that has supported the Christian imperative and given permission for the moral disregard of the environment.

In the intellectual heat of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the time of the Scientific Revolution, it was the work of Descartes in decoupling animals and the natural world from moral consideration that has had the greatest effect. As Nash (1989) points out this dualism created by Descartes, when he concluded that all animals are, in essence, soulless biomachines, allowed for the objectification of nature as a ‘thing’; morally inconsiderable.

Sketching Out the Moral Framework

We now have three central factors in the Western Tradition: The idea of the ‘bountiful Earth’; the idea that this bountiful Earth is to be used at humanity’s whim or desire; and the idea that this bountiful Earth is morally inconsiderable. These three factors delineate the orthodox moral relationship that Western Industrial society has with nature. This relationship is anthropocentric, as the only dealing with the environment is for the gain of people. It is in turn essentially monistic as only people matter and it is dualistic in that it separates humans from the natural world, denying Wilson’s biophilia. Finally, the legacy of Descartes and the Scientific Revolution is the idea of the mechanistic natural world (Merchant, 1990).

The Environmental Crisis

Given that the current environmental changes derive from the activities of Western Industrial society and this society has an orthodox morality that is anthropocentric and denies the environment moral standing; does a continuing role exist for this morality?

This orthodox morality is generally called ‘shallow environmental ethics’ (Sylvan and Bennet, 1994). Shallow environmentalism is concerned with the impact human activity has upon the environment only in terms of how that impact affects people.

This shallow environmentalism, the most common found in society, stands firmly upon the framework mentioned above. It considers human needs paramount, it does not question societal relationship with the environment and it does not question the use humans make of the environment and sanctions mechanistic consideration and manipulation of the environment. Yet it is precisely this use of nature that is the root cause of the environmental crisis.

Ethical Questions

Given the scope and scale of the impact Western Industrial society has had upon the environment, serious questions have to be raised. Humans have made, and have the capacity to make, extinct many species of life on Earth. Human industrial society is making direct, fundamental, and unpredictable changes to all life on Earth. Western society disturbs the environment fundamentally in a way that decreases biodiversity and weakens the resistance, or resilience, of ecosystems to further perturbations (Erhlich, 1988). Science has given society an understanding of the breadth and complexity of natural systems, as well as an indication of their age and richness. With the impact and power humanity has over all of life on this Earth, it is natural to ask if we have the right to do as we wish with the environment.

The answer for shallow environmentalism is ‘yes’, as long as that impact doesn’t affect humans we can continue to do as we desire.

However, is this a complete answer? Some of the effects that are known to be happening now will bear their greatest damage deep into the future. For example, Antarctic ocean acidification or the salting of the Murray-Darling basin. It is tempting to extend shallow environmental ethics to include these effects, but it is equally apparent that as this ethic only represents matters as the affect humans in the present; and the present must bow to human demands. Profit, employment, lifestyle: The loss, or damage, done to those institutions in the present by any prioritising of the needs of the environment must always outweigh long-term issues. This behaviour, known as temporal myopia, is a social aspect of shallow environmentalism.

Shallow environmentalism has no answer to questions concerning human power over non-human life. A case in point being the ethical questions raised by the proposed destruction of the last cultures of smallpox, meaning the destruction of that species. This question can be extended to any species and any ecosystem at risk. The shallow answer, readily apparent, is increasingly becoming no answer at all.

Conclusion

A short essay like this can only give a broad outline without exploring widely, it is up to the reader to explore further. Humans began living in a strong inter-relationship with the environment. The Scientific Revolution, and the concurrent decoupling of moral regard toward the environment, along with the Industrial Revolution has separated humanity, not only socially, but ethically from the environment. Modern science and understanding has brought us back towards a knowledge of just how reliant humans are upon healthy, diverse and stable ecosystems. We now can see the Earth funtioning as an organic whole, an idea that flies in the face of the mechanistic Western Tradition.

Orthodox ‘pale green’ morality, by denying non-human life moral considerateness, cannot value natural systems beyond their direct utility for human use or profit. Yet the questions are now about our place within the ecology of the Earth, the value ecosystems have to themselves and our right to affect these ecosystems, and how those ecosystems are a part of the Earth and therefore ourselves. These questions come, in part, from a growing appreciation of the depth of time and the rhythms of life on Earth. Whereas shallow environmental thought places emphasis on the immediate present as, in the heart of Western society, there is the underlying belief that humanity’s reward comes in the spiritual hereafter, not on Earth.

These environmental questions, and the knowledge we now have, raise fundamental questions. Questions that strike beyond the interests of humans and so lie beyond the scope of shallow environmentalism. Other ethical structures such as ecocentrism, biocentrism, deep ecology and deep-green theory do exist, however, they lie outside the beliefs, understanding and acceptance of the majority of people; even though they hark back to our original and fundamental connectedness with the Earth.

The final question, given the speed and scope of current change — from climate, to fresh-water, to fisheries — is simply: Can we give up our pale green past, change our moral attitude and live a future with the Earth and not against nature?

References

Birch, C., Cobb, Jr, J.B.(1981) The Liberation of Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. pp 117-122
Krebs, C.J. (1994) Ecology Harper Collins, New York. pp 572-575
Erlich, P. (1988) ‘The loss of diversity: Causes and consquences’. In Wilson, E.O. (Ed) Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington. pp 21-28
Flannery, T. (1994) The Future Eaters. Reed Books, Melbourne. pp 127-130
Merchant, C. (199) The Death of Nature. Harper and Row, San Fransisco.pp 192-201
Nash, R.F. (1989) The Rights of Nature. Primavera Press, Leichardt. pp 13-33
Pinchot, G. (1910) The Fight for Conservation. Doubleday, Page & Co.Washington. p 45.
Singer, P. (1993) Practical Ethics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. pp 264-275
Sylvan, R. Bennet, D. The Greening of Ethics. The White Horse Press, Cambridge. pp 6-30
Wilson, E.O. (1992) The Diversity of Life. The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, Massachusetts. pp 349-351
Wilson, E.O.(1988) ‘The current state of biodiversity’. In Wilson, E.O. (Ed) Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington. pp 3-17

Earlier, first published in The Sunday Tasmanian in 1990: The God of Tall Things