Curry On Ecological Ethics A Critical Introduction

ECO - On Ecological Ethics: An Introduction http://eco.gn.apc.org/pubs/ethics_curry.
html
Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software
http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only.
The Campaign for Political Ecology
On Ecological Ethics: A Critical Introduction

Patrick Curry
Contents:
Summary
Why Does it Matter?
On Ethics
Anthropocentrism/Ecocentrism
Shallow Ecological Ethics
Intermediate Ecological Ethics
Deep Ecological Ethics
Green Ethics as Post-Secular
Moral Pluralism
Getting There
Green Citizenship
An Example: Population
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes
Summary
The purpose of this paper is to consider ethical responses to the ecological crisis, and suggest how we
could and must do better. It begins by reviewing the three principal ethical schools (deontological,
consequentialist and virtue ethics), as well as the historical development of ethics as a whole, both religious
and secular. That reveals the environmental inadequacy of all ethics to date. Then two key concepts -
anthropocentrism (including human chauvinism) and ecocentrism - are examined, and an inclusive
version of the latter defended (ie. one which doesn't try to exclude human beings). Next there is a review of
the three main kinds of ethics regarding the environment: shallow (in which human beings constitute the
sole value), intermediate (in which humans have greater value but efforts are made to extend value to
nature, usually other animals), and deep (which rejects both the preceding assumptions, and values not
only humans and other living beings but also ecosystems). Attention is paid to the different varieties of the
latter: autopoietic theory, ecofeminism, deep ecology (including transpersonal ecology) and finally the
deep green theory of Sylvan and Bennett. This is followed by sections arguing that green ethics should be
post-secular (ie. open to appropriate spirituality), and morally (as well as epistemologically) pluralist (ie.
admitting the reality of different and potentially conflicting perspectives, and thence truths). Then some
strategies for realising an ecocentric ethic are discussed, leading to the importance of green citizenship.
An example, human overpopulation, is examined before some concluding reflections.
1 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
ECO - On Ecological Ethics: An Introduction http://eco.gn.apc.org/pubs/ethics_curry.html
Why Does it Matter?

When ecological crisis is the subject of massive official and professional as well as public denial, it is time
to remind ourselves that not only is there a crisis - or several - but it is worsening.1 Indeed, human
demands on the Earth's ecosystems cannot continue much longer without severe repercussions for both
humans and other species, yet little is being done about it. Consider the present daily changes:
loss of 116 square miles of rainforest;

loss of 72 square miles to encroaching deserts;
loss of perhaps 40-100 species;
increase of human population by a quarter of a million;
increase of chlorofluorocarbons in atmosphere by 2700 tons;
addition of carbon to atmosphere by 15 million tons.2
The human-driven processes causing this destruction are not unethical in the sense that ethics is missing; on
the contrary, they are saturated with a particular kind of ethics which happens to be pathological but which
doesn't get much talked or thought about. That is why ethics matters, ecological ethics in particular; and
why it is urgently important to raise its public profile. And if it seems far-fetched, as Sylvan & Bennett also
point out, "Part of the task of implementing environmental ethics consists in imagining and aiming for what
lies entirely beyond the bounds of present practice, thinking the unthinkable."3
On Ethics
Ethics is a complex and controversial subject, both as a branch of philosophy and in its various
"applications" (such as in medicine, law and now the environment). This essay is meant to provide an
overview and guide, so simplications and assertions which someone somewhere will disagree with are
unavoidable; but I hope they are at least helpful as a starting-point. However, I will also try to go further,
and suggest the form that a real but possible ecological ethic should take.
Ethics means several different things, including (1) systems of value in the customs and practices of human
beings; (2) those aspects that constitute moral behaviour; and (3) the philosophical study of moral
principles. But the fundamental ethical question (as posed by Socrates), and therefore the best
starting-point, is: how should one best live, or what should one best do? At least three points follow. One
is that questions of value - whose study is called axiology - are integral to ethics; ethics concern the
realisation of values, both in the sense of 'realising what they are' and of 'making them real'. Another point
is that questions of right and wrong behaviour - morality - while very important, are only a subset of ethics
as a whole. And insofar as the emphasis is upon behaviour, private morality is less important than public;
indeed, much of ethics concerns constraints on the activities of individuals for the common good of the
community(s). Finally, ethics also overlaps with questions of knowledge, such as how we know what has
value and what is good behaviour, the study of which is called epistemology.
It is also worth noting that ethics is not, and cannot be, an exact science (assuming anything is). As
Hargrove puts it, "a tight, rationally ordered set of rules that can automatically be applied with great
precision" is not an option, as distinct from a set of more or less related general rules-of-thumb. In order to
understand them, people "will have to study the application of these generalizations to specific situations,
as if they are learning to apply rules, but in fact they will be internalizing these rules or generalizations and
in this way learning to see the world aright from the standpoint of environmental ethics".4
Analytically speaking, there are three broad traditions of ethics. (They are neither mutually exclusive nor
exhaustive, so this is a fairly rough-and-ready guide.) Virtue ethics is taken to start with Aristotle, and is
concerned with developing the four ancient virtues - temperance, justice, courage, and (practical) wisdom.
2 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
(The later Christian virtues are faith, hope and charity.) A person who succeeds in doing so will realise and
promote eudaimonia (usually translated as 'happiness', but better as 'well-being'). This emphasis on
character is not as individualistic as it sounds, since for Aristotle and his Greek and Roman successors,
humanity is integrally a social and political animal. Such an approach has recently been re-discovered, after
being largely eclipsed in modern philosophy by two others, both with their origins in the late eighteenth
century, as follows.
Deontological ethics is concerned with not inculcating virtue but developing guides for behaviour: in short,
duties. Its major figure is Immanuel Kant, whose two main ethical rules were to act in such a way that you
would want everyone else to do the same (the "categorical imperative"), and to treat everyone as an end in
him- or herself, never merely as a means (the "practical imperative"). These injunctions were meant to be
universal, to be followed regardless of the consequences. The implication of the first is that good intentions
are everything; from the second follows the idea of universal individual human rights, which some
philosophers, such as Tom Regan, have extended to animals, and others to all living things, including (say)
trees. One problem here is that both rules and rights can conflict with each other.
Consequentialist ethics (sometimes also known as teleological ethics) is the third tradition. It holds, in
contrast, that what really matters are the effects of actions, regardless of their motivations. The dominant
form is utilitarianism, founded by Jeremy Bentham and further developed by John Stuart Mill, according
to which the highest good is the greatest happiness - in terms of absence of unnecessary suffering - of the
greatest number of people. In theory, this is something that it should be possible to calculate. This idea has
also been influentially extended to animals by Peter Singer, following on from Bentham's assertion that
"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?" This point is well-taken,
but a problem with the way it is often developed by utilitarians is that such calculation involves assigning
relative values that are often highly subjective, if not actually arbitrary.
These three positions overlap. For example, maximising the "good of the greatest number" could be taken
as a universal rule; motives for actions (especially insofar as they influence the choice of means) very often
have a significant effect on outcomes; and the successful realisation of rules for realising the good requires,
and results in, a kind of virtue. In fact, all these considerations - motivations for actions as well as their
effects, rules for behaviour but also their inculcation as virtue - are important. But note something crucial
for our purpose here: all three are concerned almost exclusively with human beings and their
interrelationships: "àenvironmentally at least, all established ethics are inadequate".5
Another way of categorising ethics is more socio-historical. In this view, virtually all ethics began, and for
much the greater part of human history have persisted, as religious codes. There is wide variation, of
course, but ethics are derived either from local spirits (animism), various deities (polytheism), the nature of
sacred reality itself (Buddhist nontheism), or most influentially God himself together with His prophets
(Judaic, Christian and Islamic theism). The foundational text for the last kind is in Genesis 1:28: "àand God
said unto them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'"
This dominion thesis has two versions: a despotic one, in which humanity can do anything it likes with and
to the natural world (including animals), and a benevolent one usually known as stewardship, according to
which humanity can use the natural world but with due regard for the fact that God created it (albeit for
us), and regard for the needs of future generations.
With the modern world, however - beginning (for most intents and purposes) in the seventeenth century -
secular ethics became increasingly important. This includes the latter two positions described above. Very
broadly speaking indeed, humanism replaced God with man (and only very recently woman), and replaced
divine revelation with human reason. (Note, however, that the monist logic - only one legitimate source,
with only one legitimate set of interpreters - remains untouched.) Increasingly, reason itself has become
replaced by even narrower scientific reason, which now incarnates ever more powerfully as technology.
The original Renaissance philosophy about the importance of human initiative within divine and natural
limits has thus mutated into an arrogant techno-humanism which recognises none.6 Adherents, sometimes
3 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
called cornucopians, believe that there is no serious problem which does not have a scientific/technological
solution, and no end to human progress and growth, especially economic: hence, economism. So for them,
it is literally a case of business as usual, only more so.
Politically speaking, modern secular ethics divides largely into the individual rights of liberal democracy
(note the affinity with deontology) and the collective rights of social/socialist democracy (note the affinity
with utilitarianism). In both cases, the guarantor of rights is the state, with which individuals and/or groups
supposedly have a contract: they cede the state its power in return for its protection of them and their
rights. (The dominant philosopher of this statism is Hobbes.) Despite the control that democracy is
supposed to exert, however, the state itself is increasingly run by - and its ethics determined by - the power
of capital and its principal representatives, transnational companies, together with the science and
technology with which both states and capital are ever increasingly entangled. Here a distinction between
genuine science and scientism - essentially, science as cult - must be made. The latter, in its contempt for
local and traditional knowledge, is plainly anti-democratic (as well as anti-ecological), but even respecting
the former there is a strong case for greater democratic accountability.7
The best name for this entire process is modernism - not as a school of artistic, architectural or other such
thought, but as the ideology that drives the project of modernity.8
Anthropocentrism/Ecocentrism
There is an ethical spectrum ranging from exclusive concern with human beings (and usually, in effect, only
a subset of them) to what is considerably rarer, exclusive concern with the non-human natural world. The
usual terms for either end of this spectrum are anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, but their proper
meanings are hotly contested, so we will consider them before looking at the range of ethics within the
continuum.
Anthropocentrism - human-centredness - is sometimes taken to mean that all value and/or ethics should or
even must have human beings as its principal or even sole focus. This is an egregious error. In the first
place, human beings are certainly not the only locii of value, need and agency; it takes a particular
arrogance and dogmatism to deny that to other animals, at the very least. Secondly, even if it were true that
values and/or ethics are generated only by human beings, ie. are anthropogenic, it does not follow that
humans must be the main repository or central concern of value. (Of course, that could be argued on other
grounds.) Analogously, recognition of the intrinsic value of the natural world - an important theme in
ecological ethics - may require a human valuer; but that does not mean it has no such value.
Alternatively, anthropocentrism is frequently used to criticise an unjustified privileging of human beings at

the expense of other life-forms, analogous to such prejudices as racism or sexism. The problem with this
usage is that there is nothing wrong with a concern for human beings as such, nor is it necessarily
inconsistent with a concern for non-human nature.9 And the same is true of humanism as such, which is
sometimes used in the same way (eg. by Ehrenfeld). For this reason, a better term for what is commonly
meant by anthropocentrism would be human chauvinism.10 (Other alternatives that have been suggested
are speciesism - a clumsy neologism - and human racism - too narrow an analogy.11) So
"anthropocentrism" can still be used to describe a situation where human interests are central, but "human
chauvinism" is more appropriate where this is meant critically.12
Ecocentrism is at least equally a contentious and delicate matter. It should simply mean an approach (in
this case, to ethics) which foregrounds the natural world; and as such, is fundamental to an ecological
ethic.13 But the crucial question is, does, or should, that include human beings? Critics of ecocentrism have
charged it with a simple inversion of human chauvinism which is not only misanthropic (and strategically
counterproductive) but preserves the radical split between the human and natural worlds that we inherited
4 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
from Judaeo-Christianity: a split which ecologists in general see as an integral part of the problem. And this
accusation is not always without justification, where some populist deep ecologists are concerned. But
ecocentrism does not necessarily exclude humanity, and there are powerful reasons - strategic as well as
ethical - why it should not. Warwick Fox is right that "being opposed to human-centredness is logically
distinct from being opposed to humans per se."14 And misanthropy is as unjustifiable as it is unattractive.
As Robin Eckersley writes, respecting the Earth's bounty, "The principle of common entitlement makes it
clear that humans are not expected to subvert their own basic needs in order to enable other life-forms to
flourish".15
However, humanity poses a conundrum in this respect, being plainly partof the natural world and at the
same time, distinctive from other animals in the extent to which individual reflective consciousness, and its
socialisation as culture, affects to a relatively unique extent how otherwise 'purely' natural factors play
themselves out. Note that this uniqueness does not entail any superiority or special privileges! But it does
mean that ethically, as Jones puts it, "Humankind does have a unique responsibility for the wellbeing of
other creatures and the whole ecosystem, yet is at the same time a dependent and integral part of that
system."16 So neither exclusive anthropocentrism nor exclusive ecocentrism is a defensible option.
What, in that case, is there to choose between them? Simply this: ecocentrism (which from now on I shall
assume is inclusive of humans) includes more, and does so more effectively, than extending through limited
add-ons an anthropocentrism that has already held sway for millennia, and in our unprecedented
circumstances is now in drastic need of radical change. The important thing now is to "set anthropocentric
concerns within ecocentric concerns." And this cannot be done if it is based entirely on self-interest, ie.
chauvinistic reasons - although paradoxically, "if humans do learn to care about what happens to other
species and ecosystems - that is, to treat nature as if it mattered - then the repercussions [of environmental
destruction] to humans will be lessened".17
There is an important political and strategic dimension to this issue, because there is a dangerously naïve
version of ecocentric inclusiveness which is actually quite common. It consists of maintaining that the
"liberation" of nature (a highly patronising idea, by the way) not only can and must proceed together with
that of other oppressed classes, such as women and the poor, but that it necessarily does. Obscuring in this
way the real conflicts and hard choices that do sometimes occur between what are at least perceived as
humans' and nature's interests only makes it harder to evaluate and act on them. (One example, as I write:
the question of banning DDT on environmental grounds, jeopardizing the eradication of malaria in the
Third World.) This is true even within the broad movement to protect the non-human world: clashes
between proponents of animal liberation/ rights (about individual animals) and ecologists/environmentalists
(about species and/or ecosystems) are all too common.18 Alliances between different progressive and
emancipatory movements do not come ready-made; the hard work of forging them is unavoidable. And it
should be added that in some, perhaps many situations, an appeal to anthropocentric self-interest may be an
unavoidable part of the argument for an ecocentric outcome.
This raises the question, is a new ethic required? The answer depends on what is meant by "new".
Something entirely new is simply not a possibility, either conceptually or practically. Passmore is correct
that "A new ethic will arise out of existing attitudes, or not at all".19 But it does not follow (as he goes on
to maintain) that a new ethic - new in effect, even though constructed, like all such things, out of older
materials, and out of some designed for other purposes - is impossible. And since the current unsustainable
and indefensible making over of the world - not ultimately, but well before then - is driven by ideologies
(chief among them that of global consumer capitalism) that embody an ethic according to which this simply
does not matter, a new ecological ethic is not only possible but urgently needed.
Shallow Ecological Ethics
5 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
Before turning to the different kinds, and degrees of "green"ethics,20 a note on my choice of words:
environment (environmental, environmentalism) as a word prejudges the issues in a particularly
unfortunate way, insofar as it implies that the natural world is essentially merely a surround, backdrop, or
setting for the main attraction: us. But that very attitude is integral to the present crisis. For this reason, I
prefer ecology (ecological, and even the rather awkward ecologism21). True, ecology began life as a word
coined in 1866 (from the Greek oikos, meaning home or household) to describe the study of biological
interrelationships and their emergent effects; but there is no reason to allow scientists proprietal rights, and
it is now commonly, and legitimately, also understood to refer to a metaphysical and/or political
philosophy.
Shallow ethics has its roots in the dominion/stewardship thesis mentioned earlier, now secularised. Nature
has only instrumental value (or use value), as a resource to be exploited for human ends. It is the dominant
approach in governmental departments and companies (which is to say, it is dominant overall), represented
by resource management and conservation, human welfare ecology, and much environmentalism. It doesn't
preclude precautionary arguments, but their concern is still human wellbeing, based on what Sylvan and
Bennett call the Sole Value Assumption (SVA). This human chauvinism has recently found new and more
sophisticated expression among techno-optimists,22 who use the ever-increasing impact of humans on
global ecosystems to advocate more of the same, in the form of "managing" the ecosphere more
"efficiently" - or what amounts to a more scientific plundering of resources and further evasion of natural
limits on human ends. Pearce's project to put a price on everything23 is part of the same programme in
which, while there is a provision for abuse of nature as well as use, there is none for non-use. All this finds
its reductio ad absurdum in the idea that having done such a good job with itself and the world to date, the
duty of humanity is now to take charge of all evolution and (through genetic engineering) direct it: a kind
of "intelligent species' burden", as Fox aptly puts it.24
It is necessary to repeat that in some (even many) situations, a connection to human interests may be all
that there is for ecologists to fall back on. As a defence, however, shallow ecological ethics is inherently
inadequate; as Evernden among others has pointed out, with "resourcism" the terms of the debate are
already loaded in favour of human interests - almost always construed in narrow and relatively immediate
economic terms - and the outcome thus predetermined.25 Ecologically speaking, "enlightened self-interest"
is ultimately an oxymoron; in practice, it can take us so far, but not not far enough. (Deep ecologists have a
particular understanding of "self", however, to which I shall return.)
There is a paradox here. Ecologists - by which I mean those who are not only acutely aware of the
ecosystemic natural world but who value its integrity - argue that human beings can and should choose not
to exploit our species dominance by expanding in every way possible. This assumes that we are
significantly different from all other animals, who are presumably incapable of practising quasi-voluntary
restraint. Human chauvinists, on the other hand, frequently argue that (in the words of one defender of
animal experiments), "All animals put their own survival first, and we should do the same".26 This assumes
a human nature that is ethically identical with that of other animals; the only difference lies in the
contingent success of our evolutionary position. The question then becomes, how can one argue for
ecocentrism without thereby encouraging human exceptionalism? The answer is, you can't, and that is all
right - as long as our participation in and dependence upon nature (as discussed earlier) is given its due
weight.
Intermediate Ecological Ethics

Intermediate ethics denies the Sole Value Assumption (SVA) but subscribes to a modified version, the
Greater Value Assumption (GVA), according to which natural items have some intrinsic value, but
wherever they conflict with human interests the latter must take precedence. (There is, however, a range of
opinion regarding whether those interests must be "vital" ones, and what exactly constitutes the latter.)
6 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
Wilderness preservation, for example, is defensible in these terms as the preservation of something which
does indeed have some intrinsic value which also meets some human (aesthetic, etc.) needs; where oil,
minerals and other apparently vital needs are concerned, however, the former must give way.
One version of intermediate ethics is the social ecology developed by Murray Bookchin,27 which holds
(unconvincingly) that human-nature relations depend completely upon human-human relations, so that
improving the former depends on resolving the latter. Bookchin also holds to a mystical/teleological view
in which nature is somehow "completed" in and by human evolution - as if the natural world needed us
more than we need it! Social ecologists do valuable political and social service, both theoretical and
practical, in the form of municipal and community development; but these, while valuable in themselves, do
not go to the heart of the ecological crisis.
There have been important efforts to move intermediate ethics in a more ecological direction, by arguing
that what has been thought of as a solely human value is also true of non-humans: hence what is sometimes
called moral extensionism. One such pioneer was Aldo Leopold, whose land ethic famously asserted 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".28 In arguing that humanity must take its place as "plain member and
citizen" of that greater community - although "peculiar member" might be more apt - Leopold took a major
step in extending ethical consideration to its other members.29 Contrary to some human chauvinists (eg.
Passmore), qualification for such membership does not depend on being a moral agent - unless, as Midgley
has pointed out, one is willing to exclude from ethical consideration children, the senile, the temporarily
and the permanently insane, defectives, embryos (human and otherwise), sentient animals, non-sentient
animals, plants, artefacts, including art, inanimate objects, groups of all kinds, ecosystems, landscapes and
places, countries, the biosphere and oneself - in other words, the majority of beings with whom we have to
deal!30 But extensionism remains human-centred, retaining the assumption that humans come with "rights"
which can in certain rare cases can be extended to honourary humans, but which otherwise trump all other
considerations, even when the rights that are defensible as needs have blatantly transmogrified into
straightforward wants - usually with the help of an economic system whose enormous resources are
dedicated to creating and then exploiting just that process. And another potential problem with this
particular form is that as a result of its holism, individual interests could be unduly overridden in the
interest of (someone's particular version of) the whole; this has invited the somewhat overheated charge of
"environmental fascism" from another moral extensionist, the defender of (individual) animal rights, Tom
Regan.31
Another even more influential extensionist is Peter Singer, the pioneer, in its modern form, of animal
liberation.32 From the starting point provided by Bentham's famous question quoted above, and developing
his associated utlitarianism, Singer has bravely tackled the horrendous suffering - and sheer scale of
suffering (in the USA alone annually, 70 million animals are used in experiments and 5 billion live and die
in factory farms) - for which, especially when combined with the global decimation of wildlife, "holocaust"
is not too strong a word. His arguments have had a significant (if still far too small) effect on animal
welfare, and effectively establish the ethical point that the literally vital interests of nonhuman beings should
not be violated for relatively trivial human reasons. However, as Sylvan and Bennett point out, Singer has
traded human chauvinism for sentient chauvinism.33 That is, only sentient beings are worthy of ethical
consideration; living but nonsentient ones - let alone ecosystems - are not. Another serious problem is
irreducible individualism, which has the same drawback. For its remedy, we need to turn to the next kind
of ecological ethic.
Deep Ecological Ethics

Deep ethics takes several different forms, but all are ecocentric. That is, they virtually all deny the GVA,
hold that nature has intrinsic value (although they differ about exactly what that means), and subscribe to
7 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
the position that "the ecological community forms the ethical community".34 In no particular order, such
schools of thought include The Way of Edward Goldsmith,35 which advocates returning to an ecological
world-view based on the chthonic ("of the Earth") closed system/steady-state cosmologies of indigenous
peoples, and the Gaian ethics that follow from the work of James Lovelock (together with Lynn Margulis)
on the Earth as a super-organism.36 (Both these suffer somewhat from the danger, noted earlier, attendant
upon unreconstructed holism, social and biological respectively.) Another and more promising version is
the ethical dimension of autopoiesis ("self-making") as developed by Maturana and Varela,37 which
emphasises the self-producing and maintaining properties of living systems. Since the latter clearly have
interests, their consideration does not depend on sentience, and takes in whole ecosystems as well as, but
not just, individual beings. (Thus it is not vulnerable to the defects of holism.)
Ecofeminism is difficult to characterise, as it includes some major disagreements, or at least different

emphases (which is not necessarily a weakness). They share a perception of the fundamental - if not, I
think, necessarily always dominant - role of patriarchy in the exploitation of both women and nature; but
positing an essential or necessary connection between the latter two (as is held by some ecofeminists, on
either mystical or biological grounds) is problematic, for two reasons. First, that is the very argument long
used by male chauvinists to justify dominating women; and second, by merely inverting the dominant
values attached to male/female essentialism, it preserves the same destructive logic, when the point is to
subvert it. The trick is to maintain that women are closer to nature - and therefore best-placed to lead its
"liberation" - without subscribing to an essentialist determinism which would, for example, deny men the
ability to change their ways or share in such a process. Analogous to human beings as a whole in relation
to nature, women's experience and insights are best understood as special or even unique without being
therefore superior. That experience/insight includes reasserting, against modernist abstract universalism,
the profound value of life as embodied, situated and engaged, local and particular; and, against a
hypertrophic rationalism, the value of intuition and what cannot be calculated, economically or
otherwise.38
Probably the best-known kind of deep ecological ethics, however, is Deep Ecology (DE). Its principal
architects are Arne Naess together with Devall and Sessions in North America, where its popularity is
greatest.39 To oversimplify, but hopefully not caricature, DE affirms the intrinsic (non-instrumental) value
of human and non-human life, whose flourishing forms humans have no right to reduce except to satisfy
vital needs; it argues that present human interference with the non-human world is excessive and
worsening, and therefore policies must be changed; and that this will come about mainly through changes
in attitude (appreciating quality of life more than standard of living).40
So far, perhaps - except for the last point, which is naïve - so good. The genuine ecocentrism here is
undeniable, and important. The problems that remain, however, are quite severe. (1) The DE version of
intrinsic value - known as biospheric egalitarianism - holds that all beings have equal intrinsic value. This
is intellectually and metaphysically implausible (why should value in nature be distributed equally?) and
hopelessly impractical as a guide to action (besides advising us to treat, say, a lethal virus as having equal
value to anything else, it allows no way to resolve conflicts). (2) Another problem - which is a major part
of the Deep Ecological programme, particularly in America - is its emphasis on Self-realisation as our "real
work" and also the goal of other beings (with which we shouldn't interfere). This results in another kind of
chauvinism in favour of beings evidently capable of Self-realisation (ie. higher life-forms); it also opens the
door wide to "an enlargement and extension of egoism",41 New Age versions of which have proven so
amenable to symbiosis with market and corporate capitalism. Not surprisingly, with such an emphasis on
states of consciousness/being, actual ("consequentialist") effects are down-played. (3) In particular, DE is
critical of ("deontological") approaches in which ethical rules are central. Instead, it argues that people will
naturally "do the right thing(s)" when their apprehension of the natural world is correct - a process that
supposedly comes about through ever-wider identification of oneself with that world and its fellow
inhabitants (hence, Self-realisation).
8 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
This approach has been especially developed by Warwick Fox under the term transpersonal ecology.42 It
also has a strong affinity with Rodman's "ecological sensibility".43 Fox presents it as a way of bypassing the
("axiological") issue of value-in-nature. And it is true that positing intrinsic value as either objectively
present (like Rolston) or only subjectively present (like Callicott) is highly problematic.44 But these,
fortunately, are not the only two alternatives.45 Furthermore, axiology, although not enough in itself to
accomplish anything, is essential; we might say (adapting Kant) that ethics without value is blind, while
value without ethics is lame. It is also easy to see why deep/transpersonal ecologists are suspicious of rules
and duties; but they in turn are vulnerable to Gandhi's remark (perhaps apocryphal, but pointed
nonetheless) about trying to devise "a system so perfect that no-one will have to be good." It could be
asked, will a sufficient number of people, to a sufficient extent, really partake of this process of
enlightenment? Because consequences, unlike intentions, motives or states of Being, are literally what
matter.46 Finally, deep/transpersonal ecologists confuse morality with moralism, and fail to see that deep
ecological rules can succeed to the extent that, like any other successful kind, they become an integral part
of the political, social and cultural processes of active - and in this case, green - citizenship.47
Stan Rowe's recent reformulation of the "Deep Ecology platform", which avoids many of these drawbacks,
is probably as good as it gets:
1. The well-being and flourishing of the living Earth and its many organic/inorganic parts have value in
themselvesà.These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human
purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of Earth's ecosystems, as well as the organic forms that they nurture and
support, contribute to the realisation of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce the diversity of Earth's ecosystems and their vital constituents,
organic and inorganic.
4. The flourishing of human life and culture is compatible with a substantial decrease of human
population. The creative flourishing of Earth and its multitudinous parts, organic and inorganic,
requires such a decrease.48
Richard Sylvan (né Routley), together with David Bennett, has developed an alternative to DE called deep
green theory (DGT), which to my mind is the most promising one yet. (In what I hope is a mere
coincidence, it is also so far one of the least-known.) DGT shares the import of ecocentrism as already
discussed, and much of that of the 4 reformulated points of Deep Ecology quoted above, which I shall
therefore not repeat. It also shares the benign holism of autopoietic ethics (above), with its emphasis on the
common good of communities that includes that of individuals up to the point where the latter threatens
the former. In addition, however, it is an ethical theory in which (1) the human chauvinism of both the
SVA and the GVA is rejected, ie. the intrinsic value of natural items can override human-based value. (2)
The human/non-human distinction is not ethically significant; in fact, (3) no single species, class or
characteristic (sentience, life, etc.) serves to justify special ethical treatment, or to deny it. This
eco-impartiality, however, does not entail trying to adhere to equal value or treatment in specific situations;
nor does it preclude human use of the environment - "only too much use and use of too much".49 It
follows, for example, that sustainable indigenous habitation and use of remaining wildernesses is perfectly
acceptable; but indigenous industrial development and/or commerical exploitation is not. As a corollary,
"What is required now is that reasons be given for interfering with the environment, rather than reasons for
not doing so".50
The last points have specific and important economic implications, such as replacing profit maximisation
with profit satisization (ie. sufficiency) and "free" markets with fair markets. Sylvan and Bennett provide
considerable detail (for which there is no space here) about the political, cultural and educational ways in
which DGT could - and to become influential, must - be realised, as part of encouraging the ethical virtue
of green citizenship. They also point out that as I have already implied, there are circumstances in which
arguments of a shallow and intermediate type may well be appropriate to invoke; deep green ethics are not
9 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
meant to cancel these out or replace them, but to reach the places they cannot. The same applies to
individual and rights-based approaches. Conversely, however, the absence of deep green ethics makes the
current vogue for largely cosmetic measures like "environmental modernisation" - what Rudolph Bahro
aptly called "cleaning the teeth of the dragon" - all too easy.
Green Ethics as Post-Secular

DGT is specified as a philosophical theory which involves "respect" but not "reverence" for nature, not (as
with DE) a philosophical/religious mixture. Given the obvious and serious problems with the established
religions - and their poor ecological record - one can see why, but in my view actually excluding a sacred
dimension is an unnecessary weakness. Secularism obscures something that badly needs to be illuminated,
namely what is for many of its highly influential adherents a crypto-religion of Progress, especially
economic neo-liberalism. Listen to the leaders of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, for
example, and it is quite clear that they are fueled by a faith. Conversely, when people value nature strongly
enough to act to protect it, they do so in a way that is in effect religious; and the effect is stronger than
mere respect - which it has to be, in order to resist the all-too-available blandishments of utilitarian appeals
to "rational" self-interest. That is why acolytes of the latter call the former "sentimental", "nostalgic",
"emotional" and so on: in short, "irrational".
A post-religious spirituality (which the Dalai Lama and Vaclav Havel have advocated) that was ecocentric
and inclusive - ie. which recognised intrinsic value in the nature humans and non-humans share - would be
a great asset in the fight against the modern megamachine, whose militant secularism is no coincidence:
disenchanting the world is one of the prerequisites to exploiting it.51 Or as Bateson succinctly put it, if you
see the world as simply yours to exploit "and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of
survival will be that of a snowball in hell".52 It is true that the ancient world included some ecological
devastation (despite being hampered by the lack of modern technology), and the same is true of indigenous
tribes in recent times. Nonetheless, indigenous peoples have managed, on balance, to coexist sustainably
with the natural world considerably better than have moderns; and a key to their relative success has been
an Earth-oriented spirituality with practico-ethical implications which at least restrain unduly destructive
practices.53 (It must be added, however, that another reason for their success was simply much lower
numbers; see the section on population, below.)
I am not suggesting that contemporary versions of that sensibility are The Answer, but I think they are an
important part of one; and there is no reason to think that they would necessarily prove reactionary.
Ecofeminism in particular has a vital contribution to make here to a pluralist, materialist and
locally-engaged ecological spirituality, as opposed to the universalist and disembodied off-planet religiosity
with which we are all too familiar - or any "green" equivalent.54 At the same time, such a spirituality, in
order to be effective, must be collective and social, not the privatised kind of the New Age consumer.
Moral Pluralism
The kind of post-secularism just advocated is closely related to another vital issue for deep ecological
ethics, and that is monism vs. pluralism. The kind of ethics we know best in the West - both
Judaeo-Christian and its modernist/humanist heir - is profoundly monist. That is, its fundamental premise is
that there is a single reference point - whether spiritual (God) or material (scientific truth) - whereby "one
can, in principle, master all things by calculation".55 (Such monism is necessarily also universalist, since if
there is only one such principle it must, by definition, apply everywhere without exception.) Of course, to
ensure that the one truth is correctly perceived and promulgated, a caste of approved interpreters must also
existà
10 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
This modus operandi is closely related to the ecological crisis, insofar as it is what makes the
disenchantment of the world, followed by its desecration, possible. It is also virtually impossible to
subscribe to a monist universalism without rejecting limits (since the latter by definition is without any) -
another key element of anti-ecological modernity. Yet ecological fundamentalism would merely replace the
one true and universal God with Nature - leaving the logic untouched, and thereby becoming the enemy,
and of the worst, because most disingenuous, kind. (It matters not whether the Nature here is mystical or
scientific.) It follows that the only way to resist and ultimately replace this inherently anti-ecological logic
is through a pluralism of the kind I have already mentioned: in this context, a moral as well as
epistemological pluralism.56 This is vitally important. The important point is to recognise not only that
different considerations can apply in different cases, but that each case can properly be viewed in different
ways.57 Connections must then be made, and decisions taken, on grounds to be argued and established
contingently in each case - which is to say, politically - and for which responsibility cannot be shirked in the
name of supposed transcendental abstract truth.58
Getting There
I began this essay by noting the gravity of the current ecological crisis. I have also come out in favour of
consequentialism. So what necessarily follows from the crisis as such? The short answer is that nothing
necessarily follows from it, no matter how serious it is or may become. The reason is that any perception,
assertion, valuation and meaning of it is unavoidably only one among many others, none of which are
self-evidently true, let alone their implications. And all of them are unavoidably contingent (partial, local,
unstable) - which is not to say subjective - and competing in a complex economy of counter-claims,
including counter-values, all with actual or potential winners and losers (relatively speaking, as always). As
Smith puts it, "There is no way to give a final reckoning that is simultaneously total and final. There is no
Judgement Day. There is no bottom line anywhere, for anyone or for 'man'".59
However frustrating this may be for ecocentric ethicists - "Everything - human rights, health, the lot -
depends on ecosystems! No ecology, no nothing!" - it at least helps relieve them of three burdens they are
better off without: (1) a tendency to self-righteousness which is self-defeating in its effect on others whom
they are trying to influence; (2) a tendency to despair when they fail to do so; and (3) any involvement in a
green version of the dominant mainstream programme, namely "intellectual/political totalitarianism (the
effort to identify the presumptively universally compelling Truth and Way and to compel it
universally)..."60 True, it also leaves them a great deal of hard work to do; but that was there anyway, and
illusions of transcendental guarantees or so-called objective truths only make it even harder.
There is a corollary here. Paradoxical as it may be, the "intrinsic value" of nature is something that must be
established. And to proceed as if it was already obvious (ie. to everyone who isn't a fool or knave)is not
the most promising way to do so. On the contrary, its being valued is just what cannot be taken for
granted. So influencing that outcome means, for example, involvement in and at least some influence on
the institutions (eg. all the media, universities, etc.) that in turn tend to control how natural goods are
perceived.61
What does that work consist of? It is to "create and maintain structures and procedures that give as much
scope as possible to the laborious working out, individually and in concert, of courses of action that are the
'best' (all things considered...) for each, and each set, of us".62 Slightly less abstractly, there are
educational, political, economic, social and cultural dimensions, all of which are important. And in all
cases, deep ecological ethics must be brought to the attention of both the relevant authorities and the
public - not always in the same way, of course. The former must be helped to reconceptualize their
perceived political and economic remits in relation to the ecological dimension; the latter, to imagine
plausible cultural and social life-narratives which include that dimension.
11 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
For many people and organisations directly involved with ecological ethics, the primary task is to get
ecocentric ideas and values into the "collective mindstream" of the policy community - NGO's, think-tanks,
quasi-academic institutes and the media - who tend to determine what are "issues" and how they are
treated, and who are themselves trying to influence state/government policy regarding these issues. This
can be more productive and important than lobbying the government (up one 'level') directly, although of
course that too is often necessary. Doing so will often involve articulating and construing the concerns and
fears of so-called ordinary people (down one 'level'), though again, not just doing that. In the words of a
friend, "Getting an idea 'onto the table' is a prerequisite for getting it to influence action - whether action by
the state or in some grass-roots way."
One of the problems here is that to the extent an ethic remains fundamentally conventional
(anthropocentric) it will tend to be persuasive but effect little change; whereas to the extent it is radical
(ecocentric) it will tend, for that very reason, to be easily marginalised.63 In a related point, an appeal
purely to what seems like (ecocentric) altruism seems in general almost certainly bound to fail; yet an
appeal to "enlightened" self-interest is highly vulnerable to people's selfishness, short sense of time-scale,
and narrow interpretations of "self" (eg. myself and my family, now and maybe for the next few years) - all
of which invites more over-development. For the great majority of people, it must be said, the survival of
biodiversity, or even the human species as such, is so abstract as to be virtually meaningless. But this is just
the sort of thing that requires cultural - artistic as much as intellectual or political - work enabling it to
become real in our collective imagination.
So a compromise must, as usual, be sought, with reference to each different context and problem. And if
an ecocentrically radical politics is sufficiently pragmatic, and an anthropocentrically reformist politics is
sufficiently extensive, they meet, rendering the distinction irrelevant. It is also true that "we do not in all
cases need to await agreement on principles (much less on social solutions in which they are applied)
before particular problems can be recognised as such".64However, an ecocentric ethic as a regulative
"horizon", an ideal which may never be reached but nonetheless indicates the right direction, is
indispensable; otherwise, only degrees of co-option are left.65 And changing conditions can change
receptivity to ideas quite quickly.
As Sylvan and Bennett (among others) have remarked, real change can come about in two basic ways - and
there are serious problems with both. One is slowly, through reform. But "the overwhelming evidence is
that not nearly enough will happen in time for anything but a grossly impoverished natural environment to
emergeà. For much of the world's remaining wildernesses, for most of its remaining species, it is going to
be all over in the next 20 years or so." Reform virtually never happens with that sort of speed, especially
when the initial odds are so heavily against it. The alternative is revolution, at least in a few key states. But
"were the styles of historic revolutions emulated, it would be a problematic and likely nasty medicine."
Such a revolution - for which there is hardly much public support anyway - is very hard to achieve
satisfactorily, and there is always the possibility that a state could "fall the wrong way, for instance to a
totalitarian far right".66 Of course, public opinion and political conditions could change if something goes
badly wrong. And as Herman Daly says, it may well take "a Great Ecological Spasm to convince people
that something is wrong with an economic theory that denies the very possibility of an economy exceeding
its optimal scale. But even in that unhappy event, it is still necessary to have an alternative vision ready to
present when crisis conditions provide a receptive public".67
As things stand, would there be, ready and available, sufficiently well-thought-out and detailed ecocentric
alternatives? Sylvan and Bennett wisely conclude that "Requisite organisation, well-thought-through
directions, plans for action, and restructuring: such features are critical. Deep environmental groups should
begin to prepare, carefully and thoroughly, for revolutionary action".68 But equally valuable is the attitude
suggested by Jones (1993:190), to be a practical idealist: "one who is accepting of her fear (and there is
plenty to be afraid of) without being possessed by it. Living beyond optimism and pessimism, she is a
patient and clear-sighted possibilist."
12 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
Green Citizenship
In the meantime - and in any case - there is much painstaking work awaiting us between doing nothing and
revolution. In addition to responding to specific issues and situations that simply won't wait -
biotechnology, global warming, overpopulation, deforestation, extinctions and all too many others - much
of it has to do with encouraging practices embodying the ethical virtue of green citizenship, already
mentioned. It could be said, without much exaggeration, that it is only in the light of such an ecocentric
value that these things can be perceived as crimes; and it is only by its public expression through active
citizenship - given that transnational companies are unlikely to forego huge profits unbidden, any more than
governments are to vote themselves out of office for a poor environmental record - that anything will be
done about them. "A steady-state economy," as Jones points out, "cannot exist without a whole
steady-state culture to support ità"69 I have already mentioned some of the ways this work can at least be
started, politically, culturally, economically and educationally. (Further to the last, for example, there is an
urgent need for "ecoliteracy"70; it should, and could, be a fundamental part of every child's education to
learn where his or her water, energy, food, etc. comes from (and wastes go to), and with what other
effects.)
While on the subject of the demos, however, let us also dispense with the absurd notions, which some
greens have inherited from anarchism, that left to themselves, human beings will naturally "do the right
thing"; or indeed that human life is possible without social and political structures. Nor can such structures
ever be purely emancipatory: that about them which enables is also, in different ways and/or for different
people, what unavoidably constrains. As Oldfield remarks, "The moral character which is appropriate for
genuine citizenship does not generate itself; it has to be authoritatively inculcated".71 Certainly
'authoritative' should not be 'authoritarian', but liberal sensitivities nothwithstanding, it need not be; and to
expect it to work without duties as well as rights, punishments as well as rewards, losers as well as winners
is indefensibly naïve; these will inavoidably figure strongly in any green citizenship worth the name. (They
do now, of course, in its absence; but for very different ends.) In some cases, they may well take the form,
in Hardin's words, of "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of people affected"72 -
although if so agreed, does it then remain "coercion"? (Again, it is absurd to pretend that we are presently
not subjected to any coercion, whether directly or indirectly.) In any case, there is much to learn here from
the tradition of civic republicanism73 - more than from its modern, somewhat ersatz cousin,
communitarianism.74 (On liberal concerns about such a project, see the next section below.) It is also
significant that virtue ethics is closely related to - and probably inseparable from - that tradition.75 And
central to both is the concept, and value, that has been trampled underfoot in the modernist stampede for
Progress: the common good. Only now, it must be an ecological common good, that of all the communities
that make up the republic of life.76
I have no illusions about establishing a green utopia. As Callicott says, "An ethic is never realised on a
collective social scale and only very rarely on an individual scaleà. An ethic constitutes, rather, an ideal of
human behaviourà. [but] it nonetheless exerts a very real force on practice."77 A powerfully ecocentric
version of such an ethic, where there is now effectively almost none, would be very heaven on Earth -
which is where we most need it.
An Example: Population
The widely-accepted equation of environmental impact is I = P x C x T: population size x consumption
(resource use) x technology (impact). There seems no good reason to doubt its general veracity, nor the
indispensability of any of its three components, although David Willey has wisely suggested adding O for
13 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
effects resulting from the way human societies, from micro- to macro-, are organised.78
Now it is true that given the last point, no single one of the three offers a complete solution to ecological
crisis. Nor are all ecological problems the result of overpopulation; in particular, if overdevelopment
powered by global corporate capitalism continues unabated, its disastrous effects will need no help from
other quarters. Nonetheless, one does not have to be a genius to work out that if population continues to
grow at a sufficient rate for long enough, then no amount of technological tweaking (always assuming it is
politically feasible) nor reduction of consumption (which we already know is not politically feasible) will
suffice to bring about what we also know must be done for ecosystemic human well-being - and a fortiori
the survival of most other species along with any remaining wilderness - which is to control and then
reduce our environmental impact.In addition, overpopulation has the peculiarly vicious result that simply
by force of numbers, the most natural human activities - ie., those most directly related to survival and the
continuation of the species, such as finding fuel, growing food, procreation, excretion and so on -
themselves become direct threats to personal survival, and that of the species.
This is the context in which world population has now reached six billion people, and is still rising fast.
Despite much recent publicity about a trend "reversed", what has started to decline (and with no
guarantees that it will continue) is the rate of increase; but population itself is still growing, and it is
already far too high.79 Yet any attempt even to raise this as an issue to be aired, let alone tackled, is
vociferously overruled by an unholy alliance of political left and right. For the right, when religious, to do
so is an intolerable threat to dogma about the sanctity of individual human life, no matter in what
conditions; when non-religious, the threat is to the secular cult of humanism, according to which if one
human being is good (indeed, literally the only good), as many more as possible are simply that much
better. For the left, which shares a great deal of ground with the last position, to raise the issue of
over-population is itself irrefutable evidence of misanthropy, and in particular of racism. The latter
suspicion seems in no way assuaged by geographical even-handedness. (Indeed, given that a child born in
Britain, say, will put 30-40 times more strain on global resources than one born in Bangladesh, population
control in the overdeveloped world is considerably more urgent.) Even NGO's - let alone elected leaders of
governments - are too frightened to address this issue honestly; when they do so at all, it is by cautious
indirection (eg. greater prosperity, women's control of reproductive health, improved education, access to
health care, etc.) - not to say subterfuge, given that although these are vital concerns, research seems to
show that they have no effect on fertility at best.80 Even the annual deaths in pregnancy and childbirth of
600,000 women - roughly the equivalent of four fully-loaded jumbo jets crashing every day, and
overwhelmingly preventable81 - are apparently an untouchable issue: too close to the P-word.
In short, any programme aimed at population control as such - through widespread access to birth-control,
removing government subsidies for children after the second, and perhaps recovering the social and
ecological costs of such further children through taxation (see below) - seems out of the question. It is hard
enough to raise even the obvious questions, such as: How many people do we arguably need, as opposed
to how many can we squeeze onto the planet? (Cultural high-points in the past, such as the Renaissance,
only involved a tiny percentage of our population.) What is the global population optimum, especially in
relation to the planet's carrying capacity? Is collective human good really a quantitative, indeed additive,
phenomenon, with the more people the better? And what about the places and species that are already the
victims of mass-extinction as a direct result of human beings continually taking over and remaking new
territory?82
I don't propose to discuss the above-mentioned right-wing concerns, the pathology of which I hope is
already reasonably clear to most readers. Left/liberal discourse, however, is different. Its combination of
apparent political common-sense and a direly inhibiting effect on the population (non-)debate requires
some straight talking: namely that it is time to call time on individual human rights as the sole or
fundamental (and I emphasise, sole) real value, trumping all others. Both its individualism and its restriction
to humanity can be highly problematic in an ecocentric context, and so too is its common emphasis on
"rights" divorced from responsibilities: both to other human beings (in terms of their quality of life) and to
14 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
the natural world (in terms of its survival tout court). By all means, let us pursue individual human rights,
including when they cohere with ecocentric concerns; but there will inevitably be cases where they clash,
and DGT [deep green theory] states unequivocally that in some of such cases, the former should give way.
Population is one such case.
Actually, the case is strongly arguable on anthropocentric grounds alone. As is well-known, two children
per couple more or less amounts to current population replacement. Yet most governments in the
developed world still subsidise further children. Norman Myers is worth quoting at some length:
Of course two children are every couple's right. It is their right too to have a third child without asking
anybody's approval. But everybody else has a right to ask the couple to pay the additional costs entrained
for everybody else by that third child. These are costs the child will impose upon everybody's environment
and hence on everybody's economy. There are all manner of spillover costsàsuch as pollution, depletion of
vital resources, road congestion, and so forth - that are charged to others than the parents, allowing the
parents a free dip into everybody's wallet. Of mega-course that is not what the parents intend - they just
don't think about it. But effectively and increasingly, that is what it amounts to.
These costs amount to at least £1000 per person per year of life. Directing them back to source through
taxation (which discourages a third or more child but does not actually prohibit it) is perfectly possible - in
principle. But as Myers remarks, "Perish the thought of somehow restricting parents' right to procreate as
they please, even though they restrict everybody else's right to live as they please."83
This is a key (liberal) idea: the "right" to have children - any number (and now apparently at any age, with
elaborate and expensive biotechnical assistance). And as I have noted, advocates of measures to control
population - and I mean humane and sensible measures, not forced sterilisations or eugenics - are often
accused of misanthropy, while those who make the charge thus implicitly lay claim to compassion (within a
strictly human context) for themselves. But what if some restraint, self-denial and even deprivation now for
some people means a better quality of life for more people in the not-so-distant future? And what if
indulgence today means drastically greater hardship and suffering tomorrow? What if so-called
"authoritarianism" results in more future liberty, whereas the actions (and non-action) of "liberals" now
ends in greater repression? If, as Parsons points out, explosive population growth is itself a major threat to
individual freedom, then population control is needed to preserve it: "Population planning is not an
invasion of liberty but a safeguard of liberty".84
This argument - and that of Myers, since not all effects on the environment are costable economically -
implicitly includes the profoundly important ecological dimension to this issue; but that must be made much
more central. Particularly urgent is incorporating the concept of "ecological footprints" (and relatedly that
of carrying capacity) into our thinking and planning.85 An ecological footprint is the amount of
ecologically productive land (wherever it may be) that any nation uses - which immediately raises the
question of fair shares, not only among human beings but with the rest of nature as well! And regarding
that, it is already the case that global ecosystems are strained, some to breaking-point, and the current
obliteration of irreplacable biodiversity crucially driven, by unsustainable human numbers. In fact, there are
good reasons of all three types for a decent, but urgent, reduction as soon as possible86: shallow, because
ecosystemic health is obviously in our own interest; intermediate, because of the death and suffering we
are causing for other life-forms by taking over their habitats; and deep, because what is being lost has
(literally) immeasurable value in itself, the destruction of which is not remotely justified by its
transformation into more telephone directories, plywood shuttering, sales catalogues, carrier bags and road
surfacing.
Conclusion
This paper has reviewed, briefly but comprehensively and critically, the various ethical responses to
15 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
ecological crisis. At the same time, believing that it is dishonest to pretend that one can stand wholly
outside either ethics or ecology (by their very nature, and ours), I have also taken a particular position in
those debates. After considering ethics as a subject, and finding that earlier kinds, both religious and
secular, all fell short of ecological adequacy, I explored the distinction between anthropocentrism and
ecocentrism, and defended the latter. I then recapped the varieties of shallow (anthropocentric),
intermediate (mixed) and deep ecological ethics before arguing that an ecocentric ethic, while not the only
defensible option, is an indispensable part of any hopeful and realistic attempt to heal the Earth and its
creatures - including human beings. However, in addition to being (by definition) deep green, such
ecocentrism must be inclusive, pluralist and post-secular. It also has a special affinity with the project of
creating and maintaining practices of green citizenship. Finally, I touched on the difficult but unavoidable
example of human population.
I have also suggested various ways of realising such a project. Underlying them all is the point that it faces
many difficulties, which will require political as well as emotional intelligence. It also has many enemies,
both in high and low places, and as Machiavelli pointed out, "The fact is that a man who wants to act
virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous".87 It is also a fact
of living in a pluralist world that values sometimes conflict, with no ideal resolution.88 Taking these points
together, then, it follows that although it is both ethically and stragically important for ecocentric activists
to accommodate as many different virtuous ideals as possible, it will not always be possible to
accommodate them all, nor all their adherents.
There is no blueprint for how to act in this situation, no set of infallible rules or guidelines; but act we
must. Yet although the kind and extent of our present crisis is unprecedented, such uncertainty is not, and
negotiating it is inherent in being alive. Hence, Christ advised us to be not only harmless as doves, but wise
as serpents.89 The Buddhist tradition emphasises the inseparability of compassion for suffering on the one
hand and wisdom, or what is also called "skilful means", on the other. Aristotle stressed the value of
phronesis, or practical (as distinct from theoretical) wisdom, and the still more ancient Greek term metis
implies the same as Chinese zhi, namely wisdom as cunning.90
Another unlikely agreement may also be significant: both the Chinese Neo-Confucians and Montaigne,
(roughly) their contemporary and perhaps the most influential European humanist, concurred that one
cannot be fully human if one's concern is only for humans; in other words, without being humane.91 Be
that as it may, without compassion - for fellow human beings, certainly, but for the rest of life no less - we
would not care about the ecological holocaust, and there would be nothing more to discuss. But without
intelligence, wisdom and sometimes even cunning, we shall not get very far in stopping it, nor in bringing
about something better.
Bibliography
Works that were consulted and/or are referred to include the following. (Sometimes only one work -
arguably the most important or relevent - of an author is cited.)
Abernethy, Virginia, Population Politics: The Choices that Shape our Future (New York: Plenum
Press, 1993).
Anderson, E.N., Ecologies of the Heart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Attfield, Robin, The Ethics of Environmental Concern (Oxford: Blackwell: 1983).
Barry, John, Rethinking Green Politics (London: Sage, 1999).
Bateson, Gregory, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972).
Berlin, Isaiah, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).
Bookchin, Murray, The Ecology of Freedom (Palo Alto: Chesire Books, 1982).
Bookchin, Murray, The Modern Crisis (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986).
16 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
Botkin, Daniel, Discordant Harmonies: New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (NY: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
Botzler, Richard G., and Susan J. Armstrong (Eds.), Environmental Ethics: Divergence and
Convergence (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998 [1993]).
Brennan, Andrew, "Moral Pluralism and the Environment", Environmental Values 1 (1992) 15-33.
Budiansky, Stephen, Nature's Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1995).
Callicott, J. Baird, Companion to a Sand County Almanac (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1987).
Callicott, J. Baird, In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).
Callicott, J. Baird, Earth's Insights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
Capra, Fritjof, The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter (London: HarperCollins,
1997).
Craig, Edward (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998).
Curry, Patrick, "Magic vs. Enchantment", The Journal of Contemporary Religion 14:3 (1999)
401-12.
Curry, Patrick, "Redefining Community: Towards an Ecological Republicanism", forthcoming in
Biodiversity and Conservation (2000).
Devall, Bill and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City:
Gibbs Smith, 1985).
Dobson, Andrew, Green Political Thought (London: Routledge, 1992 [1990]).
Drengson, Alan and Yuichi Inoue (Eds.), The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology
(Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1995): pp. 3-66.
Easterbrook, Gregg, A Moment on the Earth (NY: Viking, 1995).
Eckersley, Robyn, Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
Eckersley, Robyn, "Beyond Human Racism", Environmental Values 7 (1998) 165-82.
Ehrenfeld, David, The Arrogance of Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981 [1978]).
Ekins, Paul, A New World Order: Grassroots Movements for Global Change (London: Routledge,
1992).
Elliott, Robert (Ed.), Environmental Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1995).
Evernden, Neil, The Natural Alien (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985).
Feyerabend, Paul, Farewell to Reason (London: Verso, 1987).
Fox, Warwick Toward A Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for
Environmentalism (Foxhole: Green Books Ltd., 1995).
Fox, Warwick, "Notes on Approaching Deep Ecology: A Response to Richard Sylvan's Critique of
Deep Ecology" (University of Tasmania: Environmental Studies Occasional Paper 20, 1986).
Frasz, Geoffrey B., "Environmental Virtue Ethics: AA New Direction for Environmental Ethics",
Environmental Ethics 15 (1993) 259-74.
Goldsmith, Edward, The Way: An Ecological World-View (Foxhole: Themis Books, 1996 [1992]).
Hamblin, Terry, quoted in The Guardian (8.4.98, G2, p. 20).
Hardin, Garrett, "Tragedy of the Commons", Science 162 (1968), 1243-1248; reprinted in Botzler
and Armstrong, pp. 520-23.
Hardin, Garrett, Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle (NY:
Viking, 1972).
Hardin, Garrett, Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics & Population Taboos (Oxford: Oxford
Hargrove, Eugene C., Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Denton: Environmental Ethics Books,
1989).
Hargrove, Eugene C. (ed.), The Animal Rights/Environmental ethics Debate: The Environmental
Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
Hayward, Tim, "Anthropocentrism: A Misunderstood Problem", Environmental Values 6:1 (1997)
49-64.
Hayward, Tim, Ecological Thought: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
17 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
Holbrook, Daniel, "The Consequentialist Side of Environmental Ethics", Environmental Values 6:1
(1997) 87-96.
Honderich, Ted (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995).
Irvine, Sandy, "Missing Numbers", forthcoming from ECO (2000).
Jones, Ken, Beyond Optimism: A Buddhist Political Ecology (Oxford: Jon Carpenter, 1993).
Kontos, Alkis, "The World Disenchanted, and the Return of Gods and Demons". In Asher Horowitz
and Terry Maley (eds.), The Barbarism of Reason: Max Weber and the Twilight of Reason
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 223-47.
Kupperman, Joel, Valueàand What Follows (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical and
Plural Democracy (London: Verso, 1985).
Leopold, Aldo, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968 [1949]).
Lovelock, James E., Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, transl. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1981),.
Margulis, Lynn, The Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
1999).
McLaughlin, Andrew, Regarding Nature: Industrialism and Deep Ecology (Albany: SUNY Press,
1993).
Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980).
Midgley, Mary, "Duties Concerning Islands", in Elliott, 89-103.
Mies, Maria, and Vandana Shiva, "Introduction to Ecofeminism", pp. 481-89 in Botzler and
Armstrong.
Montaigne, Michel de, The Complete Essays, transl. M.A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1991).
Myers, Norman, "Population: Some Overlooked Issues." The Environmentalist 18 (1998) 135-38.
Naess, Arne, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
Norton, Bryan, Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Oldfield, Adrian, Citizenship and Community: Civil Republicanism and the Modern World
(London: Routledge, 1990).
Parsons, Jack, Population vs. Liberty (London: Pemberton Books, 1971).
Parsons, Jack, Population Fallacies (London: Elek/Pemberton Books, 1977).
Passmore, John, Man's Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems & Western Traditions, 2nd
edn. (London: Duckworth, 1980).
Pearce, David, et al., Blueprint for a Green Economy (London: Earthscan, 1989).
Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997).
Plumwood, Val, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993).
Plumwood, Val, "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy and the Critique of
Rationalism", in Elliott, 155-64.
Plumwood, Val, "Anthrocentrism and Androcentrism: Parallels and Politics", Ethics and the
Environment 1:2 (1996) 119-52.
Plumwood, Val, "Wilderness Dualism and Wilderness Skepticism", pp. 652-90 in J.B. Callicott and
M.Nelson (eds.), The Great New Wilderness Debate (Athens GA: University of Georgia Press,
1998).
Preston, Christopher J., "Epistemology and Intrinsic Values: Norton and Callicott's Critiques of
Rolston", Environmental Ethics 20:4 (1998) 409-428.
Raphals, Lisa, Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and
Greece (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
Regan, Tom, The Case for Animal Rights (London: Routledge, 1988 [1984]).
Rodman, John, "Four Forms of Ecological Consciousness Reconsidered" in Donald Schere &
Thomas Attig (eds.), Ethics & the Environment (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983), 82-92;
18 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
reprinted in Drengson and Inoue, 242-56.
Rolston III, Holmes, "Is there an Ecological Ethic?" Ethics 85 (1975) 93-109.
Rolston III, Holmes, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the World (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1988).
Routley, Richard and Val, "Against the Inevitability of Human Chauvinism", in K.E. Goodpaster and
K.M. Sayre (eds.), Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
Press, 1979).
Rowe, J. Stan, "From Reductionism to Holism in Ecology and Deep Ecology", The Ecologist 27:4
(July/August 1997) 147-51.
Ryder, Richard, Speciesism: The Ethics of Vivisection (Edinburgh: Scottish Society for the
Prevention of Vivisection, 1974).
Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation (London: Thorsons, 1990 [1975]).
Smail, J. Kenneth, et al., "Beyond Population Stabilization: The Case for Dramatically Reducing
Global Human Numbers", Politics and the Life Sciences 16:2 (1997) 183-236.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, Contingencies of Value. Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual
Controversy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Stone, Christopher D., "Moral Pluralism and the Course of Environmental Ethics", Environmental
Ethics 10 (1988) 139-54.
Sylvan, Richard and Bennett, David, The Greening of Ethics: From Human Chauvinism to
Deep-GreenTheory (Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 1994).
Tam, Henry, Communitarianism: A New Agenda for Politics and Citizenship (Basingstone:
Macmillan, 1998).
Taylor, C.C.W. (ed.), Ethics and the Environment (Oxford: Corpus Christi College, 1992).
Taylor, Paul, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton
Toulmin, Stephen, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1990).
Tucker, Mary Evelyn & John Berthrong (eds.), Confucianism and Ecology (Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998).
United Nations Environment Programme, Global Environment Outlook 2000 (London Earthscan,
1999).
Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice. A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1983).
Warren, Karen, Ecological Feminism (London: Routledge, 1994).
Watson, Richard A., "Self-Consciousness and the Rights of Nonhuman Animals and Nature",
Environmental Ethics 1 (1979) 95-129.
Willey, David, "Ethics and Population", Optimum Population Trust (1997).
Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985).
Wackernagel, mathis, with William E. Rees, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on
the Earth (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society, 1997).
Notes
1. See the U.N.Environment Programme's recent report Global Environmental Outlook 2000.
2. From Sylvan & Bennett 1994: 57.
3. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 182.
19 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
4. Hargrove 1989:8.
6. Ehrenfeld 1981.
7. See Feyerabend 1987.
8. See Toulmin 1990; Ekins 1992; Scott 1998.
9. Hayward 1994, 1997.
10. As first suggested by Routley & Routley 1979.
11. Ryder 1974; Eckersley 1998.
12. See also Plumwood 1996.
13. Eckersley 1992.
14. 1995:19.
15. 1998:177.
16. 1993:97.
17. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 90, 6.
18. Hargrove 1992.
19. 1980: 56.
20. The following discussion borrows from Sylvan and Bennett (1994), Fox (1995), and Rodman
(1995), in roughly that order.
21. Dobson 1992.
22. Such as Botkin 1992, Budiansky 1995 and Easterbrook 1995.
23. 1989.
24. 1995:195.
25. 1985.
26. Hamblin 1999.
27. Eg. 1992.
28. 1968:224-25.
29. 1968:204.
20 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
30. 1995.
31. 1984:362.
32. 1990.
33. 1994:87.
35. 1996.
36. Lovelock (eg.) 1979; Margulis 1999.
37. 1988; and see Capra 1997.
38. See Warren 1994 and Plumwood 1993.
39. Naess 1989; Devall & Sessions 1985.
40. Drengson and Inoue, 1995:49-50.
41. Plumwood 1995:160.
42. 1995.
43. 1995.
44. Rolston 1975; Callicott 1989.
45. See Smith 1988 for an exemplary "relativist" resolution.
46. Holbrook 1997.
47. See Barry 1999.
48. 1997:151.
51. See Merchant 1980 and Curry 1999.
52. 1972:462; italics in original.
53. Anderson 1996.
54. See Plumwood 1998; Mies and Shiva
55. Kontos 1994, 242.
56. Stone 1988, and cf. Berlin 1969, Walzer 1983 and Smith 1988; on epistemological pluralism see
Smith 1997 and Feyerabend 1987.
21 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
57. Brennan 1992.
58. Brennan 1992; Laclau and Mouffe 1985.
59. 1988:149.
60. Smith 1988:179.
61. See Smith 1988:132.
62. Smith 1988:179.
63. McLaughlin 1993:170-71.
64. Attfield 1983:7; cf. Norton 1991.
65. Eg. Barry 1999.
66. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 218-19.
67. McLaughlin 1993:218.
68. 1994:120.
69. 1993:115.
70. Capra 1997:289-95.
71. Oldfield 1990:164; cf. Barry 1999:233.
72. Hardin 1998:522.
73. See Pettit 1997, and Curry 2000.
74. Although see Tam 1998 for a more muscular (albeit nonecological) version.
75. See Frasz 1993.
76. See Curry 2000.
77. 1994:2-3.
78. Personal communication.
79. Parsons 1977, Smail 1997, Irvine 2000.
80. Abernathy 1993.
81. Willey 1997.
82. See Willey 1997, Parsons 1974.
83. 1998.
22 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13
84. 1971.
85. Wackernagel 1997.
86. Smail 1997.
87. Machiavelli 1981:91; my italics.
88. Berlin 1969.
89. Matthew 10:16.
90. Raphals 1992.
91. Tucker and Berthrong 1998; Montaigne 1991.
ECO Publications
ECO Homepage
Copyright © Patrick Curry 1999
This page was last updated on 16-March-2003
23 di 23 27/03/2008 14.13

Curry On Ecological Ethics A Critical Introduction

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Curry On Ecological Ethics A Critical Introduction

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ECO - On Ecological Ethics: An Introduction http://eco.gn.apc.org/pubs/ethics_curry.

The Campaign for Political Ecology

On Ecological Ethics: A Critical Introduction

Why Does it Matter?

loss of 116 square miles of rainforest;

Alternatively, anthropocentrism is frequently used to criticise an unjustified privileging of human beings at

Shallow Ecological Ethics

Intermediate Ecological Ethics

Deep Ecological Ethics

Ecofeminism is difficult to characterise, as it includes some major disagreements, or at least different

Green Ethics as Post-Secular

2. From Sylvan & Bennett 1994: 57.

3. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 182.

5. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 26.

7. See Feyerabend 1987.

8. See Toulmin 1990; Ekins 1992; Scott 1998.

9. Hayward 1994, 1997.

10. As first suggested by Routley & Routley 1979.

11. Ryder 1974; Eckersley 1998.

12. See also Plumwood 1996.

13. Eckersley 1992.

17. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 90, 6.

18. Hargrove 1992.

19. 1980: 56.

21. Dobson 1992.

22. Such as Botkin 1992, Budiansky 1995 and Easterbrook 1995.

26. Hamblin 1999.

27. Eg. 1992.

34. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 91.

36. Lovelock (eg.) 1979; Margulis 1999.

37. 1988; and see Capra 1997.

38. See Warren 1994 and Plumwood 1993.

39. Naess 1989; Devall & Sessions 1985.

40. Drengson and Inoue, 1995:49-50.

41. Plumwood 1995:160.

44. Rolston 1975; Callicott 1989.

45. See Smith 1988 for an exemplary "relativist" resolution.

46. Holbrook 1997.

47. See Barry 1999.

49. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 147.

50. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 147.

51. See Merchant 1980 and Curry 1999.

52. 1972:462; italics in original.

53. Anderson 1996.

54. See Plumwood 1998; Mies and Shiva

55. Kontos 1994, 242.

57. Brennan 1992.

58. Brennan 1992; Laclau and Mouffe 1985.

60. Smith 1988:179.

61. See Smith 1988:132.

62. Smith 1988:179.

63. McLaughlin 1993:170-71.

64. Attfield 1983:7; cf. Norton 1991.

65. Eg. Barry 1999.

66. Sylvan and Bennett 1994: 218-19.

67. McLaughlin 1993:218.

70. Capra 1997:289-95.

71. Oldfield 1990:164; cf. Barry 1999:233.

72. Hardin 1998:522.

73. See Pettit 1997, and Curry 2000.

75. See Frasz 1993.

76. See Curry 2000.