Environmental Ethics & Political Theory

Northeastern Political Science Association

Environmental Ethics &Political TheoryAuthor(s): Bob Pepperman TaylorSource: Polity, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), pp. 567-583Published by: Palgrave Macmillan JournalsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3235063 .

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Environmental Ethics & Political Theory*

Bob Pepperman Taylor University of Vermont

This article argues that there are three tendencies in much of contemporary environmental ethics: the reduction of ethical questions to issues of personal consciousness, the almost opposite tendency of extending social and political categories inappropriately to the non- human world, and the view that the fundamental battle is between biocentrism and anthropocentrism. All of these, the author insists, have the effect of deflecting attention from fundamental political issues that originally inspired environmental ethics as a discipline, and he urges that the focus return more to issues in political theory.

Bob Pepperman Taylor is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont. He has previously published articles on John Dewey, and he is currently completing a book, Our Limits Transgressed, on American environmental political thought.

The argument of this essay is that the literature of environmental ethics would do well to shift its attention away from a concern with personal belief and conduct and instead focus more clearly on questions of political theory. To illustrate this argument, I will criticize three tendencies commonly found in contemporary environmentalist writing: (1) the search for new ethical and political traditions which tend to reduce questions of environmental ethics to issues of personal consciousness; (2) the almost opposite tendency of extending existing social and political categories to the non-human world; and (3) the view that the fundamental battle to be fought in environmental ethics is between biocentrism (the view that humans have no superior moral value or status in relationship to other organisms) and anthropocentrism (the more conventional view that humans have qualitatively greater moral significance than other organisms). I will show how each of these positions reflects a lack of interest in, or recognition of, the fundamental political issues raised by ecological and environmental concerns. From this perspective, much of the contemporary debate within environmental ethics, especially that between biocentric and anthropocentric theorists, becomes much less significant than it is currently believed to be.

*The author wishes to thank Christopher Klyza, Patrick Neal, and Fran Pepperman Taylor for help in preparing this article.



568 Environmental Ethics & Political Theory

Although my comments will be relevant only to a certain portion of the environmental ethics literature, the positions I criticize are common and widely held. My conclusion is simply that environmental ethics should focus more directly on an environmental political theory than is often the case at present.'

I.

There is a strain in much of the environmental literature which assumes and often asserts that our inherited ethical and political traditions are grossly inadequate and do not allow us to understand or contend with the environmental problems now facing advanced industrial societies. What is needed, it is claimed, is something radically new, something which breaks dramatically with accepted modes of thought and conventional institutions. Only such a radical break with the past will allow us to ad- just to the environmental crises we face.

This sense that we need to break with the past, that we are on the verge of discovering fundamentally new ways of viewing the world, is not of course unique to the environmentalist literature.2 But it is especially pro- nounced in this literature because of the extremity of our environmental problems and the seeming incompetence of existing societies to solve them. Thus, William Ophuls writes:

In brief, liberal democracy as we know it... is doomed by ecological scarcity; we need a completely new political philosophy and set of political institutions. . . . What is ultimately required by the crisis of ecological scarcity is the invention of a new mode of civilization, for nothing less seems likely to meet the challenge.3

Lester Milbrath writes in much the same vein, insisting that, "No, turn-

1. A significant body of environmental political thought does not exhibit the tendencies I will criticize in this paper. Most recently, for example, see Robert C. Paehlke, Environmen- talism and the Future of Progressive Politics, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), and Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). My purpose is not to discuss the whole body of environmental ethics and environmental political theory, but rather to criticize the arguments made in a significant portion of this literature that I believe sidetrack many writers from addressing the most significant ethical and political questions raised by environmentalism.

2. One contemporary analytic philosopher, for example, exhibits this same tendency when he ends a major study with the claim that moral philosophy as he practices it has only existed since the early 1960s-implying, of course, that contemporary secular philosophers have broken radically with all previous ethical systems. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 453.

3. William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1974), pp. 3 and 9.



Bob Pepperman Taylor 569

ing back to old moral precepts will not solve the problems of modern society."4 These views echo the claim made by Jonathan Schell that the task confronting a world with nuclear weapons is nothing less than to "reinvent politics,"5 a claim quoted with approval by Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra in their book on the Green movement.6

This profound sense of alienation from conventional modes of thought and moral principles has had two significant effects. The first, not surprisingly, is that many authors have been led, because of the im- possibility of actually inventing a political theory or ethical language out of thin air, to revive what they view as alternative moral and political traditions. Thus, Ophuls moves away from liberal democratic thought to Hobbes (not such a dramatic leap after all), and somewhat ambiguously to classical democratic political thinking as well.7 Other environmentalists have been led to study the ideas of pre-modern tribal communities, eastern religions, and other non-western and non-modern ideas in the hope of finding a tradition to latch onto that would provide a ecologi- cally more sound understanding of the appropriate relationship between the human and non-human worlds than modern society generates.

These investigations have generated numerous critical responses. J. Donald Moon, for example, points out that the portrait of liberalism found in works such as those by Ophuls is often extremely superficial.' Kathleen Squadrito correctly argues that Locke's view of nature is environmentally more sound than is often appreciated.9 Others have argued that the liberal tradition has much more to offer radical environmentalists than is usually recognized: William Chaloupka claims that environmentalists would do well to study the ideas of John Dewey, America's foremost liberal political theorist, and Anthony Weston also defends a pragmatic environmentalism."'

4. Lester Milbrath, Environmentalists: Vanguardfor a New Society (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984), 12.

5. Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982), p. 226. 6. Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra, Green Politics (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984),

p. 58. 7. Ophuls attempts to temper his Hobbesian authoritarianism with a claim that even

within the context of an authoritarian centralized planetary government, local democratic decentrism is possible. How such a mix of liberty and unfreedom, central authority and local autonomy, can be maintained is quite unclear. See William Ophuls, "Leviathan or Oblivion?" in Toward a Steady State Economy, ed. Herman E. Daley (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1973), p. 226.

8. J. Donald Moon, "Can Liberal Democracy Cope With Scarcity?" International Political Science Review, 4 (1983): 385-400.

9. Kathleen M. Squadrito, "Locke's View of Dominion," Environmental Ethics, 1 (1979): 255-62.

10. William Chaloupka, "John Dewey's Social Aesthetics as a Precedent for Environ- mental Thought," Environmental Ethics, 9 (1987): 243-60; Anthony Weston, "Beyond




It is interesting to note that what began as a political criticism of modern industrial society's destruction of the environment has frequently taken on the character of a dispute within intellectual history. The im- plication seems to be that if we could only find and adopt an environmentally appropriate intellectual tradition, this would be the necessary and perhaps even sufficient step in creating environmentally sound institutions, practices, and habits. Even Ophuls's hard-boiled political analysis ends with a plea for the importance of raising personal environmental consciousness."'

This suggests the second and more significant effect of the attempt to discover new or alternative discourses relevant to environmentalism. For some, it appears that concern for political reform almost falls away altogether in the search for an appropriate individual consciousness and lifestyle; the intellectual quest for an alternative political and moral tradition becomes the quest for a personal transformation. Bill Devall's most recent book on deep ecology, for example, opens with the following:

Why focus on self in an age of ecological crisis? Perceptive writers . . .suggest that there are social and economic reasons for the ecological crisis, but at its root it is not so much a crisis of the environment as a crisis of character and culture. A central thesis of this book is that as long as we think of our self in a narrow, "me first," self-serving way, we will suffer. When we put the vital needs of other beings above our narrowly conceived self-interest, then we discover that our broader and deeper needs are met in the context of meeting the needs of the "other," because we have broadened and deepened our self to include the other into ourself.'2

Given this view, it is not surprising that Devall ends his book by arguing that personal conversion to the principles of deep ecology is an end in itself, quite independent, it appears, from any politically effective environmentalism. "Practicing is the end in itself," he writes. "If through practicing one comes to a kind of deep ecology philosophical position from exploring the broad and deep self, then well and good. If not, then keep practicing."13 While Devall initially seems to promise that the solution to the political and economic aspects of the ecological crisis lies in

Intrinsic Value: Pragmatism in Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics, 7 (Winter 1985): 321-39.

11. Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, p. 244. 12. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends (Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith

Books, 1988), p. 2. 13. Ibid., p. 199.




the development of a more ecological conception of the self, by the end of his discussion his interest lies almost entirely with personal experience and satisfaction. "Practicing" becomes an end in itself, and he no longer finds it necessary to promote such practice as a means to a more generally effective environmentalism. Political reform has been replaced by intellectual reform, and this intellectual reform has become remarkably personal, even private, in character.'4

I do not wish to suggest that Devall speaks for all environmentalists, or that deep ecology is representative of all environmental ethics. My point is simply that it is common for much of the environmentalist literature to take on a radically personal quality that is indicative of the distance it has moved away from the political concerns from which it originally sprang. What began in works like that of Ophuls as a sense of political alienation from contemporary society and its abuse of the environment, has led some to actually depoliticize environmental problems, analysis, and ac- tivism.

II.

While some environmentalists have been tempted to flee entirely from their ethical and political inheritance, others have made almost the opposite move: using and extending contemporary social or political concepts in appropriate ways. A rather innocuous example of this is found in George Sessions and Devall's discussion of deep ecology when they write: "In a real sense, ecological resistance involves becoming friends with another species or a river or a mountain, for example.""5 They then refer to Aristotle's conception of friendship as support for this view. Pre- sumably the authors intend to argue that we must begin to cultivate a much stronger appreciation and respect and affection for the natural world than we have in the past-a point which is very well taken. But their use of the concept of friendship seems inappropriate and misleading. Friendship, especially in its Aristotelian incarnation, is a peculiarly human phenomenon that requires (at least a limited level of) equality and mutuality between friends.'6 Such a concept is simply not

14. Devall's discussion of his own experience as an environmentalist mirrors this movement. He explains'how his first efforts centered around a specific political battle-protect- ing redwood trees-but how he moved from such narrowly political concerns to more general issues of "self." Ibid., pp. 7-8.

15. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs M. Smith, 1985), p. 197.

16. For Aristotle, perfect friendship is not even available to most people, let alone to non-human entities. It is only "between good men that both love and friendship are chiefly found and in the highest form." Aristotle, Ethics (New York: Penguin, 1978), p. 264.




descriptive of the possible relationship between humans and other species, rivers, or mountains.

This particular example of the inappropriate use of the concept of friendship is not terribly significant from a moral or a theoretical perspective, for little more than accuracy of description is at stake. The theoretical stakes become much higher, however, when political concepts are applied inappropriately to environmental ethics. Here the example of Roderick Frazier Nash is instructive.

A central argument of Nash's recent history of environmental ethics is that although environmental ethics represents a profound, even unprece- dented revolution in ethical thought-"arguably the most dramatic ex- pansion of morality in the course of human thought"-this development is best understood as an extension of liberal categories from the human to the non-human world.17 "The alleged subversiveness of environmental ethics," Nash argues, "should be tempered with the recognition that its goal is the implementation of liberal values as old as the [American] republic." 1 These values are primarily those of individual rights and the value of individual lives. "A biocentric ethical philosophy," he continues, "could be interpreted as extending the esteem in which individual lives were traditionally held to the biophysical matrix that created and sustained those lives. It can be understood, then, as both the end and a new beginning of the American liberal tradition."19 In this view, the environmental ethics literature is engaged in developing a greater and more radical extension of liberal rights to progressively greater portions (and, presumably, eventually to all) of the natural world. Nash's claim is that this development of the environmental movement grew naturally as an extension of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. In fact, the final chapter of the study develops a parallel between the abolition movements of the last century with the environmental movement of our own: "If the abolition of slavery marked the limits of American liberalism in the mid- nineteenth century, perhaps biocentrism and environmental ethics are at the cutting edge of liberal thought in the late twentieth."20

Nash's claim is that progress in environmental ethics simply requires the progressive extension of liberal or other political categories from the human to the non-human world. To attempt such an extension, however, is to confuse human and non-human cateogries in much the way Devall and Sessions do in their use of the concept of friendship. Liberal justice

17. Roderick Frazier Nash, The Rights of Nature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 7.

18. Ibid., p. 12. 19. Ibid., p. 160. 20. Ibid., p. 199.




(e.g., the abolition of slavery and the extension of civil rights to Blacks) requires a relationship of equality among individuals united in a political community for the purposes of protection and the pursuit of common goods and interests. It is difficult to understand how the non-human world can ever be integrated in a meaningful way into such a community.21 This is by no means to argue that we have no duties toward the non-human world-nearly every ethical approach would agree that we do. It is, however, to note that political relationships require the human characteristics and abilities of communication, mutuality, obligation, etc., to give them significance and coherence.

When environmental ethics views itself in the way Nash and others describe their project, it is in danger of becoming either trivial or misleading. To say simply that we will extend rights to all of nature (or some part thereof) or that we will consider nature (or some part thereof) as a part of our community tells us nothing about the character and resolu- tion of the very real conflicts between the human and non-human world that environmental ethics is charged with addressing. What happens is that the theorist is tempted to believe that by having included non- humans in the political community they have provided the framework for resolving environmental and ecological conflicts, or perhaps even eliminating them. What has happened, instead, is that the conflicts have been glossed over, pushed aside, and returned to the realm of unin- formed practice from whence they originally arose in need of theoretical guidance. The theorist has simply defined them out of existence. The extension of political categories in this manner threatens to undermine the ability of environmental ethics to focus clearly and forthrightly on the problems it is asked to study.

I do not mean to suggest that all attempts to discuss the rights of nature are necessarily self-defeating.22 I do mean to suggest that such theories will do much less work for us than we may hope. A simple extension of liberal (or other political) categories to the non-human world is not necessarily a sign of progress in environmental ethics. At most, such theories can only serve as the starting points for environmental ethical inquiry. But it is not clear that to start at this point gives the theorist a

21. See Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), for another example of the extension of the notion of "community" to all living creatures. Taylor writes that his biocentric view is "that humans are members of the Earth's Community of Life in the same sense and on the same terms in which other living things are members of that Community" (p. 99). It is very hard for me to understand how this claims could have any possible political significance or validity.

22. For example, it may be useful to grant nature certain legal rights, as Stone has sug- gested, so as to allow natural entities "standing" within the legal system. See Christopher D. Stone, Earth and Other Ethics (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), section II.




significant advantage in addressing the problems of environmental ethics. On the one hand, as I suggest above, such an extension actually can serve to obscure these problems. On the other hand, the theorist may maintain a clear view of the conflicts between human and non-human entities, but it is difficult to see that the initial extension of political standing to the natural world is the most satisfactory method for dealing with these conflicts. The question will remain: how are these conflicts to be mediated? We may now use the language of the rights, say, of mammals, which are to be weighed against the rights of humans, but this does nothing more than reformulate the original question. Simply to call the claims of mammals right claims is not to resolve the issue of how mam- mal rights claims compare with human rights claims, or with the rights claims of any other plant, animal, or natural object.23

In fact, as the extensions of rights to non-humans becomes progressively more inclusive, the concept is progressively reduced to meaning- lessness. Bearers of rights have special claims that take precedence over the claims of others. If all things in the natural universe have equal rights, all rights are equally meaningless. Theorists like Nash imply that there is a magical quality to granting rights to nature or in considering humans to be a part of the more general biotic community. What needs to be resisted, however, is the temptation to believe that by reformulating our understanding of the ethical standing of the non-human world we have created a situation in which ethical conflict between the needs and interests of human and non-humans is resolved, or even qualitatively reduced.

At the same time, I do not mean to suggest that all of the literature in which such social or political imagery is used is counterproductive. As poetry or metaphor, the imagery can be quite effective in creating a morally sympathetic disposition toward nature. Aldo Leopold's writings, of course, are full of such imagery. Leopold writes that we must change our view of the land from thinking of it as a commodity to, instead, being a community to which we belong. "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."24 Leopold's claim is not that the work of environmental ethics is done when such a change of perspective occurs, but rather that the

23. John Rodman, in an extended review of the animal rights literature, writes: "In their effort to expand our moral horizons so as to protect nonhuman nature, they extend human principles of morality and legality to interspecies relations and deal with nonhumans as inferior humans." Rodman, "The Liberation of Nature?" Inquiry, 20 (1977): 98.

24. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. x.




possibility for that work (conservation) can begin effectively only once we learn to love, respect, and think ourselves a part of the land. "In short," he continues, "a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."25 In any literal sense, Leopold's use of the concepts of citizenship and community here are not coherent and possibly are counterproductive. As metaphor, it does much to stir us toward a greater appreciation and respect for the land and thus does its work to promote conservation. Leopold's language is poetical, rather than analytic or theoretical, and derives its moral power from this poetical quality. To take the imagery as juridical-a plan for, say, a constitution-is to misunderstand the level at which his writings function.

Contemporary environmental theorists like Nash have appeared to lose sight of this. What Leopold suggests as metaphor, Nash has taken literally, with the result that discussions of the "rights of nature" take on an absurd quality. If taken seriously, Nash's equation of the nineteenth- century abolition of slavery with the twentieth-century extension of rights to be non-human world can be viewed as profoundly insulting to those people who have struggled to gain citizenship, equality, justice, and the rights of participation in our political community. When previously excluded peoples achieve political rights, obligations, and advantages, they rightfully demand recognition as equal participants in our polity. No such recognition can ever be possible for non-humans, and to equate the political emancipation of enslaved peoples with the increased respect and concern we have rightly come to feel for nature is a gross confusion of moral categories.26

What we find, then, in arguments like Nash's, is a process that is not so different from that described in the previous section of this article. Both literatures share a lack of appreciation for the nature, content, and meaning of our inherited political concepts and categories. On the one hand, political concerns, concepts, and values are rejected in favor of intellectual and personal conversion. On the other hand, political concepts are trivialized through their application to inappropriate contexts. Both groups are guilty, that is, of not appreciating sufficiently the need to concentrate more clearly on the political theory of environmentalism.

25. Ibid., p. 218. 26. The insensitivity to the history and struggles of blacks in this country that I think is

reflected in Nash's argument might be an example of a general social and racial insensitivity that has kept blacks away from the environmental movement. For an interesting series of articles and interviews addressing this issue, see Green Letter, 5 (Spring 1989).




Neither takes our political inheritance, or even political issues, seriously enough.

III.

It is my suspicion that much of this lack of political sophistication in the environmental ethics literature results from the tendency to treat deep ethical theory as an environmentalist litmus test. This is especially the case in the debate between biocentric and anthropocentric environmental ethics. In my view, much less is at stake politically than many of the participants suspect. Moreover, I do not find the biocentric position to be entirely coherent. The effect of this debate has been to sidetrack the literature from a more astute political perspective which would lead to more productive and consequential debates than those we often find today.

It is a commonplace in the environmentalist literature to find arguments by biocentric theorists that the conventional anthropocentrism of the dominant western ethical systems is in some manner responsible for the ecological problems of contemporary society. Devall and Sessions, for example, write, "the humanistic anthropocentrism of the Western liberal arts orientation has been deeply implicated in the global environmental crisis."27 Most often, however, the view that this issue is of the greatest political importance is simply implied from the nature of the criticism that is offered of the history and structure of anthropocentric ethics. At the same time, many authors do not provide a sustained argument about the advantages of a biocentric environmental ethics. For them, the choice is apparently clear simply from their criticism of anthropocentrism.

Paul Taylor has attempted to give more systematic form to these common assumptions. He speaks directly to this point: "It makes a practical difference in the way we treat the natural environment whether we accept an anthropocentric or a biocentric system."21 He presents a biocentric environmental ethics based upon "respect for nature," arguing that such an ethics will be demonstrably superior in guiding us through the practical problems raised by environmental ethics.

On this point, however, Taylor's analysis is unconvincing. Although it is intuitively appealing to believe that those individuals with a biocentric view of nature will treat nature in a more environmentally sound manner than those who subscribe to some form of anthropocentrism, this position becomes less defensible when one moves beyond initial intuitions.

27. Devall and Sessions, Deep Ecology, p. 182. 28. Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 12.




When we examine Taylor's discussion to see what he understands the most important elements of "respect for nature" to be, we find comments like the following: "Our most fundamental duty toward nature ... is to do no harm to wild living things as far as this lies within our power."29 Similarly, at the conclusion of his study: "The most apt phrase for describing this 'best possible world' in its simplest terms is: a world order on our plant where human civilization is brought into harmony with nature."'3 What is most impressive about these comments is the degree to which almost any environmental ethics could agree with them. It is simply not the case that one has to be a biocentrist to hold these views. One merely has to look at the literature in which liberal anthropocentrism is defended to see that anthropocentrists and biocentrists alike can hold a strong "respect for nature."3' By the time Taylor has formulated the environmental sensibilities that must inform our ethical relationship with nature, it is clear that his initial claim about the practical importance of a biocentric outlook is more of an unsubstantiated in- tuition than a demonstrated, developed, and defended argument.

A similar pattern can be found in J. Baird Callicott's collection of essays, In Defense of the Land Ethic. Callicott obviously believes, like Taylor, that there are practical, political consequences at stake in pro- moting his "land ethic" over other environmental ethics. And as that ethic was initially promoted, in his "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," he is surely correct in this assumption: his championing of misanthropy and the biotic community over human interests would have the effect of resolving all conflicts between the human and non-human world simply in favor of the non-human. "The extent of misanthropy in modern environmentalism thus may be taken as a measure of the degree to which it is biocentric."32 In this extreme version, biocentrism certainly does determine in an uncomplicated manner one's general environmental politics.33

But this was not a view that Callicott was long willing to defend. He has forthrightly and publicly renounced these early opinions34 and has set himself the task, in the essays that follow "Animal Liberation. .. ," of

29. Ibid., p. 133. 30. Ibid., p. 308. 31. See, for example, Bryan G. Norton, "Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthropocen-

trism," Environmental Ethics, 6 (1984): 131-48. 32. Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic, p. 27. 33. Likewise, an equally extreme anthropocentrism that simply denied the interests of

nature would be equally politically predetermining. See, for example, William F. Baxter, People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).

34. Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic, p. 6.




developing the "land ethic" in a less misanthropic manner. His goal is to demonstrate to his critics that the land ethic, properly understood, "is not draconian or fascist. It does not cancel human morality."35 Rather, his holistic approach to environmental ethics has to be understood in the following manner:

So the acknowledgement of a holistic environmental ethic does not entail that we abrogate our familiar moral obligations to family members, to fellow citizens, to all mankind, nor to fellow members, individually, of the mixed community, that is, to domesticate [sic] animals. On the other hand, the outer orbits of our various moral spheres exert a gravitational tug on the inner ones.36

In another essay he uses the following analogy to make the same point:

The biosocial development of morality does not grow in extent like an expanding balloon, leaving no trace of its previous boundaries, so much as like the circumference of a tree. Each emergent, and larger, social unit is layered over the more primitive, and intimate, ones.37

Although Callicott believes his holistic ethics will affect human morality, i.e., morality among humans, it does not displace or negate it.31

At this point in the argument, however, it is hard to see what unique contribution Callicott's biocentrism is making. If his point is that we need to become aware of obligations to nature above and beyond our commonly recognized human obligations, there are few environmental ethics, biocentric or anthropocentric, that would dispute it. In the process of refining his ethical position, Callicott has simply come back to the initial problem: to recognize that we have obligations to both the human and the non-human world, and that sometimes these obligations can conflict and cause ethical dilemmas. Rather than giving a unique solution to these types of conflicts, the land ethic has simply restated the problem. There is nothing here to convince us that the biocentrism of the theory will be particularly more effective than anthropocentrism in solv- ing these problems.

The fact is that anthropocentrism and biocentrism have much less to do with the development of environmental ethics than is usually assumed

35. Ibid., p. 94. 36. Ibid., p. 58. 37. Ibid., p. 93. 38. Ibid., p. 94.




by the parties involved in these debates. It is certainly true that one can find anti-environmentalists among anthropocentrists.39 But it is simply not true that legitimate environmentalists cannot be found who hold anthropocentric moral views or even that classical anthropocentric ethics is necessarily anti- or un-environmental.40 Likewise, although there is an important body of biocentric environmental literature, it is not true that biocentrism necessarily leads to environmentalist sensibilities. Edward Abbey, in Desert Solitaire, for example, tells the story about killing a rabbit more or less for the hell of it, and he defends this senseless act of cruelty with a good deal of nonsense about primal urges-all of which may very well fit into a biocentric understanding of nature, but which certainly may rub our environmentalist sensibilities the wrong way.41

In addition, it is not at all clear that there are any theorists who are willing to actually champion a purely and radically biocentric position. Bill Devall argues that the primary concern of deep ecology is to challenge all anthropocentrism.42 But we have already seen that his appeal is, in the final analysis, to personal human satisfaction and self development.43 We have also seen that J. Baird Callicott backs away from his initial radical biocentric position, in which humans would be given no moral preference to any other living thing, to a moral view which gives preference to human relationships over the relationships between humans and non-humans. Even Paul Taylor, who champions "species-impartiality"44 and argues that from the perspective of biocentrism, "the desirability of human life is a claim that needs rational substantiation,"4' seems to soften his opinions toward the end of his study. His view, quoted above, that the best possible world is one in which human civilization is brought into harmony with nature appears to have smuggled anthropocentrism in through the back door. Because he repeatedly acknowledges that significant conflict inevitably exists between human and non-human interests,46 there is no other reason to sup- pose that the best possible world includes humans at all.47 Biocentrist

39. Radio commentator Paul Harvey comes to mind here. See Stone's discussion in Earth and Other Ethics, pp. 155-56.

40. See notes 8-10 above. 41. Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), p. 34. 42. "Anthropocentrism remains the central concern of deep ecology." Devall, Simple in

Means, Rich in Ends, p. 57. 43. Tim Luke writes, "Given deep ecology's vision of Nature, biocentrism might simply

be a spiritually refreshing or physically rewarding form of anthropocentrism." See "The Dreams of Deep Ecology," Telos, 76 (1988): 81.

44. Taylor, Respect for Nature, p. 45. 45. Ibid., p. 52. 46. For example, see ibid., pp. 257-60. 47. Taylor, of course, believes that we have an obligation to respect all persons as persons

in addition to our obligation to respect nature. Taylor's biocentrism, however, which holds




theorists necessarily make concessions to anthropocentric values simply by virtue of having to make their views palatable to a human audience (presumably including themselves). At some point, all acceptable environmental ethics lapse (correctly) into anthropocentrism. W. H. Murdy appears to speak not only for himself when he observes, "I may affirm that every species has intrinsic value, but I will behave as though I value my own survival and that of my species more highly than the survival of other animals or plants."41

The argument between biocentrist and anthropocentrist theorists is not one between qualitatively different positions, as the current structure of the debate seems to suggest, but rather between relative positions concerning the moral weight we should give to the natural environment in re- lation to human interests. Seen from this perspective the debate is a vital one, for it is true that self-proclaimed biocentric theorists have played an important role in developing a more radical environmentalism than have their anthropocentric adversaries. But the current formulation of the debate into biocentric and anthropocentric camps is misleading and draws attention away from the essentially political issues at stake.

If I am right in my argument that the practical ethical significance of these debates has been grossly inflated in the minds of the participants (and that, as formulated, the debate looks suspiciously like a moot issue), they also have served to deflect attention away from more vital political issues in environmental ethics. In fact, this belief in the importance of the debate between biocentrists and anthropocentrists is at least indicative of, if not significantly responsible for, the lack of political attention and sophistication described in the previous sections of this paper. The environmental ethics literature has become cluttered with these very abstract disputes, bordering on arguments about doctrinal purity, at the expense of environmental political theory and the moral evaluations of environmental policy.

that there is no reason to view human interests as superior to the interests of other living things, would seem to suggest that respect for nature must take precedence over respect for persons-if only on the simple utilitarian grounds of the vastly greater number of non- human lives. But as we see, this is not the conclusion he draws. Taylor squarely addresses this problem in the final section of his book and proposes five "priority principles" for resolving conflicts between persons and nature. Although he believes he has designed these principles in such a way that they are "species impartial," it seems to me that they cannot help but function anthropocentrically. Taylor is correct to point out that his priority principles, such as the right to self defense, are formally species impartial because they apply equally to all species. Yet what he has done is to give us a reason to accept anthropocentrism within a more generally biocentric theoretical framework. The result is the same: we are allowed, in the final analysis, to prefer persons to non-persons. See ibid., pp. 256-313; for the specific discussion of self defense, see pp. 264-96.

48. W. H. Murdy, "Anthropocentrism: A Modern Version," Science, 187 (1975): 1169.




IV.

It is not terribly surprising that environmentalist writings sometimes have a strikingly unpolitical, individualistic quality, given that some of the most heroic images of the movement include Thoreau at Walden, John Muir in Yosemite, and Aldo Leopold on his farm-relatively solitary figures communing with nature. These writings sometimes suggest that the cultivation of personal environmentalist consciousness is the central concern of environmentalist ethics, thus reflecting the degree to which the love of nature is simply a self-evident good for many environmentalists. The lack of an appreciation for nature is therefore an obvious sign of alienation and "false consciousness," to be corrected through a program of heightened personal awareness.

The central problems raised by environmental crises, however, are political, not individual, in character. The central message of modern ecology is that the ecology of the earth is immensely complex and integrated, and that human intervention inevitably produces unanticipated and frequently undesirable consequences-in Muir's formulation, "everything is connected to everything else."49 It is a commonplace of the environmentalist literature that this increasingly obvious truth necessarily suggests that humans must learn to live with more humility and restraint and limitations in their relationship with nature. On a personal level, it may be possible to live "simple in means, rich in ends" within the limitations provided by nature, although it is by no means clear that all free, unalienated individuals would choose such a life, as is often assumed by environmentalists.50 On a political level, however, the ecological facts of life threaten to challenge our most dearly held political values: justice, freedom, and democracy.

Distributive justice in advanced Western industrial societies generally requires, for better or worse, an expanding economy. Such economies have historically generated serious environmental problems and are now threatened by the very resource and environmental constraints exacer-

49. Cited in David Oats, Earth Rising (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1989), p. 35.

50. David Oats writes, "Ecological Man and Woman cherish the diversity of the natural world, and enjoy their participation in it. They enjoy its very limitations, as disciplines that enrich their total life." Ibid., p. 76. Although Oats's claim is rhetorically attractive, it is not true that all individuals would find his image of "ecological Man and Woman" either very convincing or appealing. It is, for example, hard to imagine parents, given their natural concern and affection for their children, always viewing the "limitations" of nature, such as disease, as enriching to "their total life" if the health of their child is at stake. Nor would we necessarily think it appropriate for them to view these limitations in such a way. We rightly expect responsible parents to view disease as a threat to their children that should be avoided whenever possible and battled whenever necessary.




bated by their rapaciousness. A common criticism of environmentalism, however, is that the distrust it has expressed toward such expanding economies reflects the social privilege of environmentalists as a group and their insensitivity to the needs of the poor, not only in the West but even more importantly in the developing nations of the Third World. H. J. McCloskey, for example, charges, "Exponents of the no-growth doc- trine show an incredible insensitivity to the needs and rights of such [Third World] nations and their citizens."51 Environmentalists must ad- dress these distributive issues more directly and elaborately than they have thus far. The questions raised are not just technical ones about the hypothetical productivity of a steady state economy or appropriate tech- nologies. They concern the priority relationships between environmental protection and human justice."

Many human freedoms, likewise, are threatened by ecological restraints. Of all the individual freedoms valued by American citizens, freedom of mobility is perhaps the most highly prized-witness the importance of the private automobile, not only to the economic and mun- dane aspects of American life, but to our very imagery of freedom.53 Yet, as we know, the private automobile has caused significant environmental problems. Environmentalists need to examine more closely the appropriate relationship between human freedoms and environmental respect.

Finally, to what degree will it be necessary, or will we be willing, to sacrifice democratic decision making for the sake of environmental protection? Will other forms of democracy (more localist, more par- ticipatory) generate more or less environmentally sound decisions? The environmentalist literature on this subject is remarkably diverse. It ranges from the anti-democratic authoritarianism of Ophuls or Heil- broner4' to the democratic decentralism of the Green movement, and it is fair to suggest that there is still a great deal of confusion and lack of con- sensus over this issue within these works.

There is already an important literature concerning all of these issues,

51. H. J. McCloskey, Ecological Ethics and Politics (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Little- field, 1983), p. 133. McCloskey also charges that, in effect, environmentalists defend the current international maldistribution of wealth and resources: "Although the ecological crisis movement advances radical proposals regarding resource use, population control, pollution, and protections of the environment, it is essentially conservative in the sense of seeking to sustain the [world-wide resource] status quo." Ibid., p. 25.

52. See Charles Taylor, "The Politics of the Steady State," in Beyond Industrial Growth, ed. Abraham Rostein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), pp. 47-70, for a good introductory discussion of this issue.

53. Dean Moriarity in Jack Kerouac's On the Road and the "monkey wrenchers' " jeep and pick-up in Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang come to mind here.

54. Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: Norton, 1980).




and I do not mean to underemphasize its importance." My argument is that in addition to this work there are influential strains of environmentalist thinking that serve to deflect our attention away from these political issues and concerns. Consider the impact of Lynn White's influential essay, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," on the development of environmental ethics. In the concluding pages of the essay, White writes: "Hence we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man."I6 This part of White's argument, that it is the anthropocentrism of Christianity which is in large part responsible for our problems, has shaped the discourse of environmental ethics perhaps more than any other single observation. It is interesting to note, however, that at the beginning of the essay, there is another comment of tremendous significance which has attracted very little notice indeed: "Our ecological crisis is the product of an emerging, entirely novel, democratic culture. The issue is whether a democratized world can sur- vive its own implications.""7 Ever since White's essay appeared in 1967, the discussion of this political thesis has been greatly overshadowed by the attention granted to the search for an alternative to the Christian anthropocentrism White describes and the subsequent debates this has generated.

In fact, White himself concludes his essay with the call for a new religion, rather than the call for the defense and development of an environmentally sound democracy.5 His conviction, like that of many others who have written since, is that the problem is primarily one of ideology and personal consciousness. But if I am correct in the argument of this essay, such an approach to the problems of ecology and environmental ethics tempts us to depoliticize and personalize our investigation of these issues. What begins for White as a political observation of the greatest significance ends with the appeal to St. Francis as the patron saint for ecologists-an appeal, that is, to a personal role model and alternative system of beliefs."9 Environmental ethics would do well to resist this temptation and to concentrate more directly and consistently on the political concerns which gave rise to the discipline in the first place.

55. See note 1 above. 56. Lynn White, Machina Ex Deo (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), p. 93. 57. Ibid., p. 79. 58. "Since the roots of our troubles are so largely religious, the remedy must also be

essentially religious, whether we call it that or not." Ibid., p. 93. 59. Ibid., p. 94.



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Environmental Ethics & Political Theory