Module 8 Environmental Ethics

Learning Outcomes

1.      Recognize the value of environmental ethics especially in the context of the contemporary era;

2.      Show an understanding of the position of animal rights activists and the philosophy behind it;

3.      Trace the philosophical foundations of ecological problems such as climate change; and

4.      Enact change and motivation to care for the Mother Earth and its biotic community including the humanity.

Introduction

The earth has been in existence for around 4.6 billion years. In this short period, we have found and invented ways to
exploit the planet’s resources and have driven our own species to the precipice of extinction. Various global
environmental problems and catastrophes have been popping up all around the world brought about by global warming.
People have caused the extinction of innumerable species of plants and animals. We have polluted the seas and pillaged
the forests and mountains so much that animals have begun to exhibit strange patterns of migration and erratic
behavior.

            In 136 years of monitoring the surface temperature of earth, NASA reveals that 16 of the 17 warmest years
recorded have all occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. Dramatic increases in global temperatures contribute
to the melting of the polar ice caps, which then affects global climate patterns, making it more difficult for climate
scientists to predict the occurrence of natural calamities such as typhoons and hurricanes.

            The human population of the world is expected to nearly triple by the year 2100. As human beings continue to
place their faith in the principles of ideas of progress, the drive to consume simultaneously becomes the primary
motivation for life. The technological era has facilitated the human capacity to extract wealth and resources from nature
and has since allowed human beings to live with far more convenience and comfort than ever before. Technology has
allowed human beings to live longer, but one may ask, what for?

            People seems to want lots of things now without knowing why they want them. Consumption is now done for its
own sake. It is no longer utility that drives people to buy and want more products. It seems that utility has become an
afterthought, secondary to the compulsive need to have and possess. As people accumulate more and more things and
live longer (but with more diseases), corporations continue to supply their demands. As both production and
consumptions increase, the environment is pushed to its limits, forced to provide people more and more of their needs
and wants.

            More often than not, people associate ethics with the study of one’s relationship with other people, exclusively. It
is often overlooked that human existence and his/her bond with others is made possible in the first place with his/her
relationship with the environment. Interpersonal relationships are kept and nurtured against the background of that
which gives and nurtures life in the first place. If one neglects one’s relationship with the environment and does not
value it enough, then one essentially shows neglect and apathy towards the welfare of other persons. When one does
not recognize one’s responsibility in the upkeeps of that which gives and nurtures life, then one also disregards one’s
responsibility for other human beings because everyone needs the natural environment in order to survive.

            This module contemplates the human person’s ethical relationship with the natural environment. Starting from
one’s duty to animals, the issues expand to one’s duty towards all that have life and ultimately to the entire land or
biotic community. As the current generation of humanity faces more natural catastrophes that threaten not only human
life but all that exists on this planet, environmental ethics is now, more than ever, crucial in adopting a way of life that is
less destructive and more in tune with one’s essential place in nature. I leave you with this question,

What are your moral duties towards natural things?

VARIOUS APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Peter Singer and Tom Regan on the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation  (1975), is one of the most influential works with respect to philosophies which
tackle the ethical treatment of animals. Singer advocates equal treatment for all living beings, from animals to human
beings. He argues that in the same way that some people are prejudiced against other people that are different from
them in terms of race, gender, or sexual orientation, they can also be accused of unjust prejudice against animals.

He observes that human beings have been treating non-human animals in a radically different manner as they do human
beings like themselves. Singer names this behavior speciesism – the unjustifiable privileging of one’s own species over
another. People often use the level of intelligence as a measure for discriminating against other animals, presenting
them with a justification to treat animals as merely food or as any form of means to an end. However, Singer argues that
if we use this criterion, there is essentially no valid reason for us to kill pigs for food or use chimpanzees for various
medical experiments unless we include very young children for the same purposes, for it may be argued that they are
less intelligent than adult chimpanzees.

So where then does one draw the line? Should it be considered unethical to eat vegetables in the same way Singer
seems to be hinting at the fact that it is in a speciesist way of thinking that we feel justified in consuming poultry and
meat?

Singer believes that it is a being’s sentience or capacity to suffer that mist serve as the basis for including its interests in
making moral choices. If a being cannot feel, then it has no interests, and therefore, to kick a dog is morally wrong, while
crushing a stone is not. Hence, if a being has the ability to suffer or feel pain, then its species must not get in the way of
its being included in the moral sphere. All beings with the capacity to suffer equally should have an equal standing from
a moral perspective. Here, we see how Singer’s doctrine is consistent with the utilitarian doctrine. The happiness of all
beings that can feel pleasure and pain has equal weight in moral matters.

Singer thus advocates vegetarianism and stands against animal experimentation because these practices tend to inflict
suffering on non-human animals. In other words, if one’s actions causes painful consequences on sentient beings (both
human and non-human), then Singer holds that this act is morally wrong.

Tom Regan, a Kantian deontologist, has a different approach from Singer’s utilitarian perspective. He holds that certain
non-human animals have actual rights, which makes them morally considerable. For him it is a being’s being an
experiencing subject of a life that makes it count as morally considerable. This means that a being’s capacity for having
beliefs and desires, perception, memory and a sense of future, an emotional life with pleasure and pain, and the ability
to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals, among others.

If a being possesses these traits, then Regan says that such a subject of a life has inherent value and should be treated as
a rights-holder. Hence, for instance, it is wrong to kill animals for sport, experiment on them or use them in commercial
agriculture once it is proven that they do experience themselves as a subject of a life.

 More than anything, these two authors have shown that human beings should not wantonly exercise their dominion
over other species. At the very least, humans must consider the amount of pain they may eb inflicting on other living
beings no matter what the motivation. One must also try to see other animals as beings of inherent value that deserve
respect. In other words if one is to be ethical in one’s treatment of animals, one must continually come up with ways of
lessening their suffering or view them as beings that have inherent value and, therefore, deserve to be in the sphere of
moral deliberation.
Module 8 Environmental Ethics

VARIOUS APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold, in his A Sand County Almanac,  holds 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 otherwise”. According to this view, the land itself, or what
Leopold calls the biotic community is considered as the locus of intrinsic value. Leopold thinks that it is the very
ecosystem, including sand, rocks, minerals and various natural processes that deserve moral consideration. A concrete
implication of this view is that the welfare of an individual member of an ecosystem is not as valuable as the
preservation of the integrity of the whole biotic community. For example, of an invasive species of rats lays waste to a
vegetable farm which sustains life of human beings and other species of animals, then the land ethic permits the most
humane way of extinguishing the rat population in that area, bearing in mind that the good of the community is
paramount to that of an individual.

            The land ethic places human existence in the context of community as part of an ecological whole. As such,
human beings must not be viewed as conquerors but as members of a life-giving system. In order to establish an ethical
relationship with the land, humans must develop not only their rational but also their emotional intelligence. For him, it
is only when human learn to feel their belongingness to the land that they develop a love for it, a bond that compels
them to respect and admire the beauty and complexity of the biotic community. He proposes that human develop an
“ecological conscience” that extends social conscience from interpersonal relationships to one’s relationship to the land.

            For Leopold, the land is not merely soil, but a fountain of energy flowing through plants, animals, humans and
back. Food chains sustain life; it is a biotic pyramid that systematically produces and distributes energy flows from one
source to the next, thus sustaining all life in the process. Leopold suggests that if human only learn to think not just with
their minds but with their hearts, then they cannot but be grateful and respectful of the community they belong to.
Ecological conscience is the key in appreciating one’s duties towards the environment. Ecological wholes deserve proper
respect, for everything that happens to human beings happen by virtue of the life-sustaining processes inherent to the
land itself.

Climate Change and Sustainable Development

When the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) came out with the Brundtland Report in 1987,
it became clear that the vital planetary resources and processes necessary to sustain life were under strain. The report
declares that it is not equitable for future generations to experience a considerable reduction of options for the sake of
sustaining the needs and wants of the present. It was in this report that the idea of “sustainable development” was first
used.

             Sustainable development means “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This notion outs the issue of human greed in forefront. As
developed countries continue to use up most of the planet’s ecological capital with no regard for the welfare of the
other developing nations with little access to such resources, the very biological existence of future human generations
becomes threatened.

             As most countries continue on this path of unmitigated production and consumption, it becomes clearer that
humanity has become addicted to acquiring and consuming that the idea of “enoughness” becomes an alien concept.
This insatiable drive is what Aristotle named as the vice of pleonexia  or insatiable acquisitiveness. By continuing such
ultra-consumerist way of existence, humanity is shooting itself on the foot., blindly pushing forward without realizing
that we are in auto-destruct mode. It is not only the future of the future generations of human beings that is at stake,
but the existence of the very web of life or the biotic community, which is the primary source of life of all.

Watch the clip below and see how Climate Change came about and its devastating effects to our Mother Earth.
Module 8 Environmental Ethics

One may therefore ask, “how did it come to this?”

             The answer to this is not merely empirical but philosophical in nature. In essence, human beings may be seen as
dwellers that have become tremendously inept in living their lives prudently. Human seems to lack what Aristotle has
called practical wisdom in living in its own home, the Earth. Erazim Kohak believes that it is only by recalling and re-
establishing our essential place in nature as dwellers can we initiate genuine change and reclaim our rightful place in the
biotic community. It is only by dwelling ethically that human beings can begin to live harmoniously with nature once
more.

Conclusion

Ethics is often exclusively understood as the study of moral affairs between human beings. Seldom it is allowed to
extend to diverse beings that seem to have lower levels of consciousness of the very environment that allows for human
beings to think about morality in the first place. This module has shown that the natural environment, understood as the
complex biotic community that serves as the primordial source of life, deserves to be treated ethically, perhaps now,
more than ever. The disastrous effects of climate change can no longer be swept under the rug as “collateral damage”.
Human actions have consequences not only to other human beings but the very fabric of life that shelters and sustains
all beings whether conscious or not, sentient or non-sentient.

            One’s moral duties to the natural environment, therefore, is no mere extension of his/her duties in his/her fellow
human being. The environment deserves respect because it is that which makes every other form of relationship
possible. Environmental ethics may be argued as more primordial than the other strain of ethics.