Environmental Ethics for the Long Term

An Introduction

John Nolt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317615880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Umweltschutz

Broad in scope, this introduction to environmental ethics considers both contemporary issues and the extent of humanity's responsibility for distant future life. John Nolt, a logician and environmental ethicist, interweaves contemporary science, logical analysis, and ethical theory into the story of the expansion of ethics beyond the human species and into the far future. Informed by contemporary environmental science, the book deduces concrete policy recommendations from carefully justified ethical principles and ends with speculations concerning the deepest problems of environmental ethics. Pedagogical features include chapter outlines, annotated suggestions for further readings, the explanations of key terms when first mentioned, and an extensive glossary.

1

scientific background

Environmental ethics demands thinking on expansive scales of space and, especially, time. To understand our current ethical situation, we must know the history of life, which stretches back at least 3.5 billion years, and sometimes peer millions of years forward into the future that we are now shaping. At such scales, common sense and ordinary intuitions falter. We have only empirical data, well-confirmed theory, logical inference, and computer modeling, to project our thought beyond the limits of our senses and imaginations. The technical aspects of the environmental and life sciences are, of course, beyond the scope of this book. But a general understanding of some of their findings is a prerequisite for addressing environmental ethical problems. This chapter presents the necessary basics. Ethical issues, though occasionally alluded to, are not discussed in this chapter. The aim is simply to summarize the science presupposed by later chapters—and, on occasion, to explain what it implies for efforts to change the course of events.¹

Chapter Outline: Section 1.1 provides a quick review of evolutionary theory, which is necessary for understanding both the life sciences and environmental ethics. The focus is on how evolution creates value. The chapter’s central section (1.2) summarizes six great issues, all of which will occupy us later in the book: pollution, human health, climate change, natural resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and human population and consumption. All are considered in long-term global perspective. These problems can be disheartening, but they can also be exaggerated, so the chapter concludes (section 1.3) with a brief reflection on what we don’t need to worry about.

1.1 FACT, VALUE AND EVOLUTION

In the sciences and philosophy it has been customary to distinguish sharply between fact and value. Value is seen as a matter of subjective opinion, apt to confuse and mislead seekers of fact. But in the life sciences—which include biology, ecology and medicine—that dichotomy must be rejected, for life itself is fundamentally evaluative.

Value arose long before there was any subjective opinion, eons ago in the process of life’s evolution. The key to an understanding of evolution is the concept of natural selection. The English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was among the first to perceive that natural selection explains the origin of species.

Natural selection is the process by which a population of organisms can, over time, develop into one or more populations of organisms with dissimilar traits. For natural selection to occur, there are two requirements:

1. a varied population of organisms that produce offspring similar to but not always exactly like themselves, and

2. an environment hazardous enough to kill many of the offspring before they reproduce, but not so hazardous as to eliminate the population.

The organisms that succeed in reproducing under these conditions are generally the ones best able to avoid the environmental hazards, and their offspring share most of their traits. But since reproduction is not exact, novel traits arise from time to time. Those that are helpful for exploiting the environment and avoiding hazards tend to be preserved and increased in the population, and those that are not (the majority) tend to be eliminated. Thus, the structure and functions of the organisms that make up the population gradually become better adapted to the environment.

Darwin realized that organisms of a single species placed in different environments would adapt differently—eventually producing, if they survived, wholly distinct species. Extrapolating back over vast spans of time, and consulting the fossil record, he inferred that all earthly species shared common ancestors.

Darwin’s conjectures have since been confirmed by a plethora of biological, geological, ecological, paleontological, and genetic studies. A single, largely coherent account of evolutionary history has emerged. Many details, of course, are missing or poorly understood—and, given the limitations of human knowledge, some always will be—but the truth of the fundamentals is beyond reasonable doubt.

Natural selection requires neither a goal nor intelligent guidance. When the two requirements mentioned above are modeled in computer simulations, evolution results automatically. Of course, we might doubt that such simulations reflect reality. But in fast- reproducing organisms, such as bacteria or fruit flies, scientists routinely observe evolution occurring in real time.

Evolution can produce very different results from similar initial conditions (i.e., similar populations in similar environments). Random variations in the environment, in sexual pairings, or in the mutation of genes may divert it into widely differing courses. Thus, though it tends over time to produce organisms that are exquisitely attuned to their environments, evolution has no predefined goal. It is merely a sum of small adaptations to existing and often changing conditions. In no sense does it “plan” or “look ahead.”

Yet, remarkably, this accumulation of adaptations results in purposeful function. Into the DNA and RNA of each cell of each living organism is encoded a set of tasks that constitute that organism’s biological purposes. In general terms, applicable to all species, these purposes include acquiring nutrients, excreting wastes, and reproduction. The genome peculiar to each species encodes, of course, a host of more specific tasks. If the organism is multicellular, its genome contains the information needed to grow it (given the proper environment) from a single cell. It also contains the organism’s operating instructions, telling it, for example, how to synthesize proteins and metabolize nutrients.

Because organisms have biological purposes, some conditions (roughly, those that help them to fulfill their purposes and thus to survive) are good for them and some (roughly, those that interfere with their purposes, such as injury or disease) are bad for them. (A more precise account of goodness and badness for an organism can be found in sections 6.1 and 6.4.2.) Such biological values are independent of us and our opinions—though, of course, the language in which we describe them is not. Indeed, such values existed for several billions of years before humans evolved. During the entire reign of life on Earth, in other words, things happened to organisms that were good or bad for them, and that is a matter of fact.

Notions of what is good or bad for an organism are inescapable in the life sciences, especially those engaged in the practical tasks of healing. Medical doctors, for example, are concerned with conditions or treatments that are good or bad for humans, veterinarians with those that are good or bad for animals, and conservation biologists with those that are good or bad for biological systems. It is in this sense that values in the life sciences are matters of fact.

1.2 THE GREAT ISSUES

Section Outline: Section 1.2 introduces some of the scientific basics of six great issues in environmental ethics: pollution (section 1.2.1), threats to human health (section 1.2.2), climate change (section 1.2.3), natural resource depletion (section 1.2.4), biodiversity loss (section 1.2.5) and human population and consumption (section 1.2.6).

There is no attempt at completeness here. This book is about ethics, not environmental science. But to understand what is at stake in environmental ethics, one must be familiar with certain aspects of environmental science. The aim of these sections is to review just as much of the science as is needed for an understanding of the remainder of the book.

Because environmental science advances very quickly, I have tried to cite the best and most recent research. But even that may be superseded by the time you read this. A clear understanding of current science can be obtained only by consulting the scientific literature for yourself. This requires discrimination. The media are rife with financially or ideologically motivated propaganda masquerading as science, or as the debunking of science. Choose sources carefully. The best science is done by people who devote their lives to it; who conduct field observations, do experiments, or construct models informed by data; whose research is painstaking and thoroughly documented; and who publish in expertly reviewed professional journals.

1.2.1 Pollution

Pollution is just about any form of matter or energy that has been introduced into the environment in amounts sufficient to harm humans or other life forms. Contamination of air, water or soil by toxic chemicals of industrial origin is perhaps the most familiar example. Other examples are less familiar. Some pollutants, such as the radioactive radon gas that seeps from the ground in certain places, are of natural origin. Some, such as sewage and the fecal wastes of livestock, are pollutants in part because they harbor disease-causing micro-organisms. And some, such as excessive heat, noise, light or ionizing radiation, are not substances at all, but forms of energy.

Because pollution is by definition harmful, facts about pollution are also facts about disvalue. Yet pollution is not a matter of human subjective opinion. There was natural pollution (from volcanoes, for example) before there were human beings to have any opinion about it. Because we are not responsible for naturally-occurring pollution, however, it falls outside the scope of environmental ethics. Here we are concerned with anthropogenic (humanly generated) pollution.

Most pollutants occur naturally, but at concentrations low enough to do little or no harm. We live, for example, with a certain “background” level of ionizing radiation that is mostly emitted by natural sources. Natural selection has adjusted life to this background level. But higher levels are dangerous, and extremely high levels are lethal to all life. Yet ionizing radiation and other forms of matter or energy that are pollutants in high concentrations are not pollutants at background levels. They become pollutants only when they become hazardous. It is sometimes argued that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is not a pollutant because it occurs naturally in the atmosphere. But this is a mistake. In the recent past it was not a pollutant. But since we have made its atmospheric concentration high enough to cause harmful climate change and ocean acidification (both of which are discussed below) it has become one.

Section Outline: Section 1.2.1 begins with a brief review of the history of pollution (section 1.2.1.1), then considers some of the most important contemporary forms and sources of air and water pollution globally (sections 1.2.1.2 and 1.2.1.3).

1.2.1.1 History of Pollution

Anthropogenic pollution had little environmental significance before the development of cities. From very early times, however, the concentration in cities of fires for cooking, heating and industry undoubtedly polluted the air locally, and metal smelting introduced toxic chemicals into soil, air and water. More harmful, however, were human and animal wastes that contaminated soil and water and transmitted infectious diseases. Among the earliest, and most effective, antipollution efforts was the development of sanitary waste-disposal practices. Increases in human life expectancy over the last two centuries have been due more to improvements in sanitation than to anything else.

In the developed nations during the twentieth century, and especially during the economic expansion following World War II, heavy industry, coal-fired power generation, chemical agriculture, above-ground nuclear weapons testing, and petroleum-powered transportation systems became significant sources of pollution. Smog blanketed industrialized cities in Europe and the U.S. In December o...