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Responsibilities to the Natural

World: From Anthropocentric

to Nonanthropocentric Ethics

DISCUSSION: Industrial Farming: Mass Producing Animals as Food

Historians sometimes speak of three agri- cultural revolutions. The first occurred when humans first began establishing relatively permanent settlements in which domesticated animals and farming replaced hunting and gathering as the primary food production. The second was fueled by advances in crop rotation, mechanical technology, animal breeding, and land reform and resulted in great increases in productivity that provided food for growing the exploding urban centers of the industrial revolution. In each of the first two agricultural revolu- tions, the amount of land cultivated increased significantly to account for the growth in food production. The third revolution began in the latter half of the twentieth century when chemical fertili- zers increased fertility, pesticides decreased losses, industrial production methods and technology increased efficiency, and genetics created higher yielding varieties of crops.

When thinking about these agricul- tural revolutions, we should recognize that they involved animals as well as plants. The shift from a hunter and gatherer culture included domesticating animals and plants. The second revolu- tion significantly expanded animal production by changing how humans bred, raised, refrigerated, transported, and processed beef, poultry, pork, fish, eggs, and dairy products. The third revolution continues to increase food production through industrialized pro- duction techniques, technology, and genetics.

A wide range of philosophical and ethical questions are raised by the variety of ways in which humans relate to animals as food. A handy way to categorize these questions is to distinguish questions about which animals, if any, are used as food; what restrictions, if any, should be placed on how we treat animals generally; and what restrictions, if any, should be placed

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on how food animals are bred, raised, slaughtered, and eaten.

From the earliest days in which human domesticated animals, some were used as food and some as companions. Humans have developed deep emotional ties with some domesticated animals, not with others. Consider the taboos in many cultures against eating horses, dogs, and cats, yet not against eating cows, pigs, and chickens. A person who will think nothing of spend- ing large sums of money for the medical treatment (and often burial) of a family pet, will think not at all about a dead squirrel on the side of a road. But even among non-domesticated wild animals, some are regularly treated as food and others not. Consider the difference between a salmon and a porpoise, or between a deer and a chimpanzee, or between a pheasant and a rat. Are these distinctions simply a matter of cultural practices that depend only on where one was born and raised?

A range of norms also establish appropriate ways to treat animals. Hunt- ing and shooting animals is allowed vir- tually in every culture, but torturing animals is not. Animals are allowed to be owned, bought, and sold. People regularly euthanize frail and sickly pets because allowing them to die a natural death is seen as cruel. Pet owners are strongly urged to sterilize pets so that they not reproduce, yet pets are regularly bred according to human tastes, even if con- stant inbreeding has harmful effects on the animals themselves.

Perhaps no area has received as much attention among both ethicists and the general public than the ways in which food animals are bred, raised, and pro- cessed. In particular, high-density animal agriculture, often called factory farming, has come under more critical attention than perhaps any other aspect of food production. In the view of many critics, human treatment of animals in food pro- duction has been scandalous. We need only look at how food animals such as calves, pigs, and chickens are raised to see examples of such claims. In the words of philosopher Peter Singer, “It is here, on our dinner table and in our neighborhood supermarket or butcher’s shop, that we are brought into direct touch with the

most extensive exploitation of other species that has ever existed.”1

Singer’s book Animal Liberation did much to publicize the nature of modern factory farming. Singer’s ethical analysis of these practices is examined in some detail in this chapter. Let us review just one well-known example, veal production.

Veal is the flesh of young cows. The dairy industry relies on female cows that are lactating, and this means that the cows must become pregnant. Typically, female calves are raised to become future milk producers, but other than a few select males that are raised for breeding purposes, most male calves are raised for veal. Veal tends to be an expensive cut of meat and, therefore, more likely to be found in expensive restaurants and gour- met cooking than on the dinner tables of middle-class families. Veal is especially prized when it is tender and pink.

Traditionally, calves are taken from their mothers when they are just a few days old. To prevent exercise, which would develop muscles and therefore make the flesh less tender, these young calves are confined in small wooden stalls. The stalls are so small that the calf typi- cally is unable to turn around or even lie down. The calf spends its entire life, per- haps sixteen weeks, confined to this stall.

Normal flesh is red because of the iron in the blood. A cow gets iron from the grass and hay that it eats. Critics have charged that veal calves are systematically deprived of a diet containing iron. They are, in other words, intentionally made anemic. Of course, if they become too anemic they die, so they receive a dietary balance—just enough iron to keep them alive but not enough that their flesh and blood are red. All this is done even though pinkness adds nothing to the taste of veal. To speed up the calves’ growth and con- trol their diet, they typically are fed a liquid diet of powdered milk, vitamins, and growth-producing drugs. This may be all that they eat in their entire lives. To ensure that the calves take in as much of this formula as possible, calves are denied water and kept in warm buildings. Their only alternative is to turn to the formula to quench their thirst. Singer concludes his description of this process as follows. “If the

96 PART II ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AS APPLIED ETHICS

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reader will recall that this whole laborious, wasteful, and painful process of veal raising exists for the sole purpose of pandering to people who insist on pale, soft veal, no further comment should be needed.”2

Of course, veal is not the only animal food product that has been subject to intense public scrutiny. Campaigns have targeted MacDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC (formerly, Kentucky Fried Chicken) for the ways in which their suppliers raised and processed the beef and chicken used by their restaurants. Beef and hog produ- cers have received significant criticism for the environmental damage caused by their feedlots, as well as for the cruel ways in which animals are treated. Egg and chicken producers have likewise been criticized for the inhumane ways in which chickens are treated.

The food industry, both the animal growers and food sellers, have responded by making significant changes in the ways in which they treat animals. A fair assessment is that many of the past practices of animal cruelty have been eliminated, especially in Europe, the United States, and Canada. But a certain irony has not escaped notice. Beef cattle, calves, hogs, and chickens are treated in more humane ways, subjected to less cruelty, better fed and housed, but nev- ertheless led into slaughterhouses where they are killed, less cruelly than previ- ously, but still killed and butchered for human consumption.

More recently, public attention has turned not only to the ways in which animals are treated, but the ways they are, literally, created and bred. Much criticism has been directed at genetically modified food in general, but also at genetically modified animals. Animal breeding by humans has occurred since the first days of domestication. Indeed,

the very process of domesticating an ani- mal species, or “breed,” has involved humans manipulating, unintentionally perhaps, animal genetics. Dogs, cats, horses, and cows have been bred by humans throughout history. But contem- porary genetic science allows breeders not only to choose desired traits from among those naturally occurring within a popu- lation, but also to create new traits that were not otherwise naturally occurring. Desired traits for genetically engineered animals include increasing growth and reproduction rates, resistance to disease, and increased nutritive value.

DISCUSSION TOPICS: 1. Are prohibitions against eating such

animals as dogs and cats based on anything other than cultural practices? Under what conditions would you eat dog?

2. If it is justified to kill an animal for food, why should it matter how the animal is treated prior to slaughter?

3. Is there an ethics to hunting animals? Are there ethically better or worse ways to hunt?

4. Is it reasonable to use words such as “humane,” “inhumane,” “suffering,” and “thinking” when discussing animals?

5. Are there important distinctions between different animal species? Are some animals deserving of greater ethical concern than others? Why or why not?

6. Is there an ethical difference between treatment of domesticated and wild animals?

7. Does genetic modification of food animals raise any ethical concerns? Do you hold similar beliefs about geneti- cally modifying humans?

5 . 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N

As philosophers began to apply various ethical traditions to environmental issues, two fundamental questions guided their work. First, what is the proper ethical relationship between humans and the natural environment? Second, what is the

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philosophical basis for this relationship? In seeking to answer these questions, many philosophers found that the appeal to standard ethical theories was highly ambiguous. Traditional philosophical (and theological) views on the human rela- tionship with nature seemed in many cases to have contributed to environmental destruction and degradation.3

For the most part, the Western philosophical tradition denies that any direct moral relationship exists between humans and the natural environment. According to most ethical theories within this tradition, only human beings have moral standing. In this sense, such ethical theories are anthropocentric, or human centered. Thus, when making an environmental decision, the ethical person needs to ask only how this decision will affect humans. To the degree that it can be said to exist, “environmental ethics” in these views are all anthro- pocentric and consequentialist: Environmental right or wrong depends on the consequences to humans. Although we have responsibilities regarding the natu- ral world, we have no direct responsibility to the natural world. Environmental responsibility is, at bottom, a matter of prudence: We protect the environment for our own interests. (Of course, sometimes this can include such interests as aesthetic enjoyment or symbolic appreciation.) As described in Chapter 4, this perspective has been extended to include responsibility to future generations of humans.

In this chapter we examine a more radical shift in the philosophical perspec- tive. In the late twentieth century, some philosophers began to argue that we have direct ethical responsibilities to nature, responsibilities that do not depend on the consequences to humans. This shift can be characterized as a shift from anthropocentric to nonanthropocentric theories of ethics.

5 . 2 M O R A L S T A N D I N G I N

T H E W E S T E R N T R A D I T I O N

Setting a historical context for these discussions reminds us how far traditional ethics is being extended. Chapter 2 suggests that the natural law tradition pos- sesses resources that could make it particularly relevant to environmental issues. Nevertheless, the two philosophers most closely associated with this tradition defended views that betrayed little sympathy with the moral status of natural objects. Aristotle told us:

Plants exist for the sake of animals … all other animals exist for the sake of man, tame animals for the use he can make of them as well as for the food they provide; and as for wild animals, most though not all of these can be used for food and are useful in other ways; clothing and tools can be made out of them. If then we are right in believing that nature makes nothing without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must be that nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man.4

Sixteen centuries later, Thomas Aquinas picked up this issue and placed it in a theological context.

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We refute the error of those who claim that it is a sin for man to kill brute ani- mals. For animals are ordered to man’s use in the natural course of things, according to divine providence. Consequently, man uses them without any injustice, either by killing them or employing them in any other way. For this reason, God said to Noah: “As the green herbs, I have delivered all flesh to you.”5

Aristotle and Aquinas could hold these positions, since they believed that only human beings have moral standing because only human beings possess an intel- lect (or “soul”) capable of thinking and choosing. Because animals lack this capacity, they cannot be considered morally relevant in themselves. Any duties that we have regarding nature are explainable in terms of the needs or interests of human beings.

Kantian deontological theory is only a little less restricted. We have some evidence that Kant was sympathetic to duties to future generations, and the categorical imperative seems relevant to several environmental issues.6 Nonetheless, in his Lectures on Ethics, Kant was quite clear in saying that our duties regarding nature are indirect; that is, they are duties to other humans. More generally, the Kantian analysis—which limits rights and moral standing to “subjects” and “ends,” as distinct from “objects” and “means”—strongly reinforces the view that only humans have moral standing. In this view, only autonomous beings, capable of free and rational action, are moral beings. Again, because eighteenth-century Euro- peans believed that other living things lacked this capacity, they could exclude them from moral consideration. Nonhuman animals and plants were the clearest examples of objects, rather than subjects.

Another view that proved quite influential is traceable to the seventeenth- century philosopher René Descartes. Descartes argued that all reality is reducible to two fundamental types of substances, “minds” and “bodies.” The realm of the mental includes all thinking, sensation, and consciousness. The realm of the body includes all things physical and spatial. This physical realm is the domain of physics, which was seen as purely mechanistic and devoid of consciousness. Although he did not deny that animals and plants are alive, Descartes nonetheless denied that they are anything other than machines or “thoughtless brutes.” In the Cartesian view, therefore, the criterion for moral standing is consciousness. Anything not conscious is a mere physical thing and can be treated without concern for its well-being.

One of the few philosophers who did not unquestioningly exclude animals from moral consideration was the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham. In a passage that is famous because it is such an exception to the mainstream of Western philosophy, Bentham suggested that:

The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that could trace the insuperable line? Is it the

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faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?7

True to his utilitarian views, Bentham expanded the realm of moral considerabil- ity to include all things that have the capacity to feel pleasure and pain. We will see a view similar to Bentham’s developed and defended when we consider the writing of Peter Singer.

To summarize, for most philosophers in the Western tradition, human beings and only human beings have moral standing. Few philosophers ever con- sidered the question of whether other beings have moral standing, and most of those who did denied any moral status to natural objects. Most often, the criteria used to draw the boundaries of the moral realm are in some sense intellectual— for example, the ability to think or reason in some particular way.

As a result, two strategies are available to critics. They can reject the philo- sophical basis for the exclusion of animals by arguing, for example, that rational- ity is an inappropriate criterion for moral standing. They might argue instead, following Bentham’s suggestion, that sensation should be the criterion for moral standing. On the other hand, they can accept the philosophical basis but deny the conclusions drawn from it. With this approach, they can argue that rationality is an appropriate criterion but that animals, at least certain “higher” mammals, do in fact possess this capacity.

Thus, we can make a case that much of the Western philosophical tradition is unsympathetic to the idea of a direct ethical responsibility to the natural world. Indeed, a plausible case can be made that this tradition provides a rationale for the exploitation and dominance of the natural world and, thus, has been partly responsible for our present environmental predicament. But philosophers are not alone here. Some scholars have suggested that the Western religious traditions are equally culpable in this regard. One of the first people to make this claim was the historian Lynn White, Jr.

These religious traditions are represented symbolically by the passage from Genesis, in which the Judeo-Christian God creates all living creatures and says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the cattle, all the wild animals on earth and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.” So God created them in his own image and blessed them and said to them “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”8

The possibility that our Western theological traditions are at the root of our cur- rent environmental crisis is the focus of White’s classic essay “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.”9 White argues that many of our modern scien- tific and technological approaches to nature are an outgrowth of a particular Judeo-Christian perspective. That perspective, developing from biblical sources such as the passage taken from Genesis, is especially anthropocentric. In this

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view, humans occupy a privileged position in all creation. Being created in the “image and likeness of God,” they have a moral and metaphysical uniqueness. Humans are separate from and transcend nature. God has created a moral hierar- chy in which humans are superior to nature and have been commanded by God to subdue and dominate it.

White’s claim is not that this is the only or the most reasonable interpreta- tion of Christian theology. Indeed, he goes on to suggest an “alternative Chris- tian view” that would support a much more harmonious relationship with nature. What is crucial is that this is the interpretation that many Jews and Chris- tians have given to the biblical story of the Creation. Much of contemporary science and technology developed in a context in which this anthropocentric view of nature held sway. This, according to White, lies at the root of our cur- rent ecological crisis.

5 . 3 E A R L Y E N V I R O N M E N T A L E T H I C S

Thus we find in Western philosophical and religious traditions the ideas that encourage viewing humans as superior to nature and therefore justified in domi- nating it. At the same time, these very traditions contribute much to philosophi- cal theories that were being applied to solve environmental problems. In a very real sense, the tension between these two developments of mainstream Western philosophy mounts the biggest challenge to traditional ethical theories. Can the dominant ethical traditions provide the resources to resolve environmental con- troversies? A good example of this ambiguity appeared in one of the first philosophical examinations of environmental issues, John Passmore’s Man’s Responsibility for Nature (1974).

Using an image that characterizes much of applied ethics, Passmore under- stands his own philosophical role in terms first used by John Locke. In identify- ing issues and clarifying and analyzing arguments, the ethicist is “employed as an under-labourer in clearing ground a little and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.” The first role of the philosopher is to dispose of unhelpful, unreasonable, or dangerous alternatives. Passmore places all views that call for the abandonment of the “Western tradition,” including “mysticism,” the “nature-as-sacred” view, and animal rights among the “rubbish” to be removed.

Nevertheless, Passmore recognizes the paradoxical character of his appeal to Western traditions. On the one hand, he acknowledges that the dominant West- ern tradition “denied that man’s relationship with nature is governed by any moral considerations whatsoever.”10 In this tradition, the human being is the “despot,” who rules over nature with arrogance and hubris and treats nature as mere wax to be molded in whatever manner humans desire. On the other hand, Passmore believes that the Western tradition contains the seeds for an ethically appropriate relationship with nature.

The traditional moral teaching of the [W]est, Christian or utilitarian, has always taught men, however, that they ought not so to act as to injure their

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neighbors. And we have now discovered that the disposal of wastes into sea or air, the destruction of ecosystems, the procreation of large families, the depletion of resources, constitute injury to fellow-men, present, and future. To that extent, conventional morality, without any supplementation what- soever, suffices to justify our ecological concern.11

Thus the call for a “new set of moral principles” is “not entirely wrongheaded.” However, what is needed is “not so much a ‘new ethic’ as a more general adher- ence to a perfectly familiar ethic.” For example, Passmore concludes that the ethical problems associated with pollution are not overwhelming but involve applying the generally accepted principle that “nobody ought to poison his neighbor.” He also believes that the primary causes of our ecological disasters are “greed and short-sightedness,” problems that can be overcome with an “old-fashioned procedure, thoughtful action.”12

For the most part, Passmore’s work follows the standard applied ethics model. Careful philosophical analysis has much to offer to environmental controversies. However, one aspect of his analysis calls for an extension of modern Western ethics. Lamenting the materialistic greed of consumerist societies, Passmore calls for a more “sensuous” attitude toward the world. The “puritan attack” on sensuousness, which he traces from Plato through Augustine and the Protestant Church to the modern Western world, leads to a denial of the beauty and love of nature. The “new ethic” that the environmental crisis demands must be one in which aesthetic value plays a prominent role. The denial of sensuousness contributes to the environmental threats caused by the population explosion by “restricting the publicizing of birth control methods and condemning all sexual relationships which do not have procreation as their aim.”13 It also fosters an easy acceptance of environmental degradation.

A more sensuous society could never have endured the desolate towns, the dreary and dirty houses, the uniquely ugly chapels, the slag heaps, the filthy rivers, the junk yards which constitute the “scenery” of the post-industrial West…. Only if men can first learn to look sensuously at the world will they learn to care for it.14

Thus Passmore was willing to criticize much of the Western philosophical and religious traditions for encouraging “man to think of himself as nature’s absolute master, for whom everything that exists was designed.”15 Nevertheless, like much of that tradition, his ethics remains anthropocentric. The natural world has no value in its own right. It is valuable because humans care for it, love it, and find it beautiful. We have responsibilities regarding the natural world, but the basis of these responsibilities lies in human interests.

For many philosophers like Passmore, standard ethical theory does contain the resources for articulating new environmental rights. Another early attempt at extending standard ethical theories was developed by William Blackstone.16

Contrasting those things that we merely desire with those things to which we have rights, Blackstone argues for recognition of a new human right, the “right to a livable environment.” To provide a context for this discussion, return to the framework presented in Chapter 3. One way to look at environmental problems is to view them as involving conflicting interests. One side (for example, the developers of the Pebble Mine) prefers one thing, and another side (for example,

102 PART II ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AS APPLIED ETHICS

the salmon fisheries) prefers something else. The challenge to public policy makers is to resolve these conflicts in fair and impartial ways.

The economic model resolves the conflict by treating all competing prefer- ences as equally deserving of satisfaction. The goal, therefore, is to satisfy an opti- mal number of these preferences. That is, the resolution of conflict is accomplished on utilitarian and quantitative grounds: More is better.

Traditionally, the concept of a moral right functions to protect certain impor- tant interests from being sacrificed for a net increase in the overall good. As described in Chapter 2, the Kantian ethical tradition holds that our strong moral obligation to respect the dignity of people has meaning only when we protect central human interests by granting them a status ethically superior to mere wants. When my wants conflict with your wants, the market goal of seeking the optimal satisfaction of wants is attractive so long as the conflict does not involve rights. For example, if you want to dump toxic wastes on your property, which is adjacent to my home, we have more than merely a conflict of wants. In this case, what you want conflicts with my rights. In this view, rights trump mere desires and should not be sacrificed, even if doing so would maximize the overall good.

In Passmore’s view, standard ethical theory has the resources to handle such situa- tions. But to other philosophers, the changing environmental conditions of our world make crucially important certain interests that were not previously recognized as such. The interest in clean air and water and the interest in preserving dwindling wilderness areas may be important today in ways that they were not a generation ago. They may have become so important that they now deserve protection as moral rights.

Blackstone’s approach adopts a standard deontological defense of human rights that is similar to the Kantian view described in Chapter 2. Blackstone defends the general view that there are universal and inalienable human rights. These rights entail a “correlative duty or obligation” on the part of other people either to act or to refrain from acting in certain ways. Our moral duties in turn limit our liberties and the exercise of certain other rights. Thus, to use a well- worn example, the liberties that follow from my property rights to a hunting knife are restricted by those duties that I owe to you as a result of your right to live. That is, I cannot stab you with this knife.

The question that arises from this general framework is whether humans have a right to a livable environment. Blackstone argues that they do. In this view, each person possesses human rights for these reasons:

in virtue of the fact that he is human and in virtue of the fact that those rights are essential in permitting him to live a human life (that is, in per- mitting him to fulfil his capacities as rational and free being).17

Blackstone further argues that we can realize none of those basic human rights that follow from our nature as free and rational beings—equality, liberty, happiness, life, and property—without a safe, healthful, and livable environment. Thus a right to a livable environment can be defended as necessary to fulfilling a human life. Because a livable environment is equally necessary to all humans, there is “no relevant grounds for excluding any human the opportunity” to live this life.18

Accordingly, we have a fairly standard philosophical framework. Human rights follow from basic interests that we have by virtue of our nature as free and rational

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agents. They are defended as being necessary for fulfilling our natural human capacities and on the ground that no relevant basis exists for denying these rights to anyone—that is, they can be universalized. But how is this a new human right? Blackstone reasons that “changing environmental conditions” require us to restrict traditional freedoms and rights, especially property rights, in the name of both the public welfare and equality. Thus, “what in the past had been properly regarded as freedoms and rights (given what seemed to be unlimited natural resources and no serious pollution problems) can no longer be so construed.”19 When the traditional ethical and political framework of natural rights is applied to the new environmen- tal reality, some traditional rights must be modified and some new ones created.

Critics can raise several challenges to Blackstone’s position, however. They might argue that talk of a new right is not useful and is true only in a trivial sense. At best, this right to a livable environment is a shorthand way of talking about more fundamental rights, such as life, liberty, and property. If I dump toxic wastes into a river, I have caused harm to or violated the rights of people living downstream from me. Standard property rights would seem sufficient to handle this issue. If I pollute the groundwater you drink or the air you breathe, I have harmed you in fairly standard sorts of ways. The generally accepted princi- ple of which Passmore speaks, that “nobody ought to be allowed to poison his neighbor,” suggests that talk of a right to a livable environment is unnecessary. In fact, this new right might even be detrimental to the environmental cause by creating a new layer of rights that hides the real harms caused by pollution and environmental destruction. An expansion of the number of rights might make it more, rather than less, difficult to specify the ethical and legal harms of pollution.

Another criticism holds that when properly understood, rights entail only neg- ative and not positive duties. My duty that follows from your right to live involves only the negative duty not to kill you. It does not entail the positive duty that I supply you with all that you need to live, for example. From this perspective, the right to a livable environment either is unnecessary or requires too much of others. If it is understood as a negative right (for example, the right not to be harmed by pollution or, more generally, the right not to have my well-being threatened by your environmental actions), then it does nothing ethically or legally that is not already done by standard ethical and legal concepts. If it is understood as a positive right (implying, for example, a duty on the part of others to provide or produce a clean environment), then, like education or health care perhaps, it is a desirable state of affairs but not a right. Serious challenges could be raised about the extent of other people’s duties that would follow from the positive right to a livable envi- ronment. Are my rights violated whenever anyone drives a car and thereby pol- lutes the air, for example? Or whenever anyone uses pesticides to grow vegetables? Or disposes of sewage sludge in the ocean? Surely this would result in a prolifera- tion of rights and duties so great as to paralyze much of modern life.

There are, of course, responses to these concerns. A defender of the right to a livable environment might argue that this right involves only certain minimal and basic duties on the part of others. A parallel might be drawn to education or health care. The right to health care need not imply a universal right to any and all medical procedures, such as cosmetic surgery, but it should include a right to

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emergency care. A right to education need not imply a right to free tuition for a graduate degree at a private university, but it might imply free public education through high school. So, too, a right to a livable environment need not imply a right to pristine and pure air and water, but it would prohibit a laissez-faire pol- icy in regard to dumping toxic wastes, polluting the oceans with municipal gar- bage and sewage, burning high-sulfur coal, and so forth.

5 . 4 M O R A L S T A N D I N G

As we saw in Chapter 4, environmental issues provoked philosophers to extend ethical concepts beyond their traditional boundaries. Developing a philosophi- cally adequate account of energy or population policy, for example, required that philosophers consider the moral status of something other than living human beings. The remainder of this chapter examines further extensions of ethics that require consideration not only of our duties regarding objects in our natural environment, but also of our duties to these objects.

Consider carbon dioxide pollution. In standard ethical views, such pollution would be wrong if it harmed other human beings, perhaps by threatening their health or property. If standard ethical practice does not adequately address the harms caused by pollution, we could argue, as William Blackstone does, for recognition of some new environmental rights. When we learn that some harmful effects of carbon diox- ide pollution might not occur for generations, we extend our ethical concepts, such as duties and rights, to include future generations. This extension gives future generations a moral standing that they do not possess under more traditional ethical theories.

We can identify the practice of extending moral standing to include future humans or to develop new human rights as anthropocentric extensionism. Ethics is extended beyond traditional boundaries, but only human beings continue to possess moral standing. Our duties, such as not to pollute, are duties regarding the environment, but they are not duties to the environment. As this brief survey of representative philosophers suggests, mainstream Western philosophy and the- ology hold an anthropocentric view of moral standing. Human beings and only human beings have moral standing.

We now begin to consider nonanthropocentric extensions of ethics. That is, we will examine attempts to extend ethics and give moral standing to things other than human beings. Candidates for moral standing include animals, plants, and species; natural objects such as mountains, rivers, and wilderness areas; and even the earth itself. Throughout these debates two fundamental positions emerge: the position of those who extend moral standing to include animals and other natu- ral objects and the position of those who believe that these extensions are too outlandish and that traditional ethical concepts are sufficient to address environ- mental concerns.

The general concern in this chapter is with our responsibilities to the natural environment. Much of the discussion will be in terms of the rights of animals, trees, wilderness, and so forth. However, not every philosopher is willing to attri- bute rights in every case in which we have responsibilities. For example, we have

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seen that some philosophers are willing to say that although we have responsibilities to future generations, it makes little sense to say of people who do not exist that they possess rights—or anything else, for that matter. More generally, utilitarians reject talk of rights, although they too are willing to talk about responsibilities.

For this reason, although many philosophers speak in terms of rights, it is preferable to think in terms of moral standing and moral considerability when we examine our responsibilities to the natural environment. These more general terms include, but are not limited to, cases in which animals or trees are said to have rights. The general philosophical question concerns what things have a moral claim on us, such that we have a responsibility to consider them in our moral deliberations. Who and what count morally? On what grounds do we recognize (or attribute) moral standing?

When we phrase the matter this way, we recognize that many other con- temporary moral problems and public policy debates are located at the bound- aries of moral standing. The abortion debate often focuses on the moral status of the fetus: Is a fetus a moral person? Does it have rights? Many debates in medical ethics concern euthanasia and treatment of seriously impaired patients. These issues force us to consider the moral status of patients in irreversible comas, patients who are brain-dead, frozen embryos, and severely impaired infants. We also have seen how concern for future generations further stretches these bound- aries. Thus, in pursuing the question of our duties to the natural environment, it is helpful to begin by examining a more fundamental philosophical issue: Where do we draw the boundaries of moral consideration? Who and what should have moral standing? On what grounds do we make these decisions?

What, then, is the proper relationship between humans and other living things? One of the earliest contemporary discussions of the moral standing of ani- mals and other living beings is Joel Feinberg’s “The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations.”20 Feinberg’s 1974 essay was quite influential, and a brief review of his argument provides a valuable introduction to the more recent debates.

Feinberg begins with a common understanding of rights as involving a claim to some good, against some other person (who would therefore have some duty), that is socially recognized in some way—for example, by legal rules or an “enlightened conscience.” For example, freedom of religion is the right to worship as you choose and it creates a duty for the government not to interfere with your religious wor- ship. Feinberg’s strategy is to begin with clear and unproblematic cases of moral standing and attempt to pull from them a criterion that best explains our intuitions. We then can apply this criterion to more problematic cases.

In the familiar cases of rights, the claimant is a competent adult human being…. Normal adult human beings, then, are obviously the sorts of beings of whom rights can meaningfully be predicated…. On the other hand, it is absurd to say that rocks can have rights, not because rocks are morally inferior things unworthy of rights (that statement makes no sense either), but because rocks belong to a category of entities of whom rights cannot be meaningfully predicated…. In between the clear cases of rocks and normal human beings, however, is a spectrum of less obvious cases, including some bewildering borderline ones. Is it meaningful or conceptually possible to ascribe rights to

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our dead ancestors? to individual animals? to whole species of animals? to planets? to idiots and madmen? to fetuses? to generations yet unborn?21

Turning to the case of individual animals, Feinberg recognizes that most people acknowledge that we have a duty not to mistreat or be cruel to animals. Some might argue that this duty derives from a duty to other humans—that is, to those who are offended by the mistreatment of animals. Others might argue that this duty is derived from a duty to ourselves—for example, a duty to avoid situations in which we might develop character traits such as callousness or cruelty. Feinberg argues that these explanations are disingenuous, that surely animals are the direct beneficiaries of this duty. We can owe a duty to animals, according to Feinberg, because animals have interests that can be promoted or harmed by our actions. In order for us to say that something has rights, this thing must have interests or a “sake” or a good of its own to be protected by rights. A mere thing, even a pre- cious thing like the Taj Mahal or a beautiful natural wilderness, cannot be said to have rights because it cannot be said to have any interests of its own.

Feinberg focuses on the question of rights, rather than on the more general question of moral standing. But the point is significant. In order to meaningfully say that we have an obligation to some object, rather than merely an obligation regarding that object, the object of our obligations must have some welfare or good of its own. If I have a duty to something, my fulfilling my duty to this thing must be good for this thing. But to say that something has a “good” or a “bad” is to say that it has interests. For example, it is in a dog’s interest not to be tortured. I can have a duty not to torture animals, if it can be said that it is good for the dog not to be tortured. But what things can have interests? In Feinberg’s view, only things with a “conative life,” with “conscious wishes, desires, hopes; or urges or impulses; or unconscious drives, aims, or goals; or latent tendencies, direction of growth, and natural fulfillments,” can be said to have interests.22

Feinberg then applies this criterion to various objects of environmental con- cern. Individual animals, at least the higher animals, can be said to have rights, although those of lower orders can be treated as mere pests. Plants cannot be said to have rights, because they lack the “rudimentary cognitive equipment” neces- sary to possess interests. Neither can we say that species have rights, although we might attribute rights to individual members of that species. Thus, for example, we might say that an individual dolphin has an interest in not being drowned in fishing nets and, therefore, might be said to have a right not to be killed in a fishing net. But dolphins as a species have no corresponding right to survive. We might have a duty not to kill an individual animal, but we have no duty to a species to protect it from extinction. Our duties can be only to individual beings that possess the appropriate “cognitive equipment.”

Finally, because we can say that future generations will have interests with as much certainty as we can say that they will exist, it makes sense for us to talk about their rights as well.

Feinberg’s essay was groundbreaking in many ways. Read narrowly, it offers merely a conceptual analysis of what can and cannot meaningfully be said about rights. Yet this essay also symbolizes a liberation of sorts for philosophical ethics. Environmental concerns encouraged philosophers to expand greatly the realm of

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moral considerability. Essentially, philosophers for the first time considered the possibility that beings other than humans deserve moral consideration for their own sake, not merely because humans happen to be interested in them.

5 . 5 D O T R E E S H A V E S T A N D I N G ?

Before turning to more systematic attempts to extend ethical consideration to ani- mals, we should examine another early and influential attempt at extending rights to nonhuman natural objects. Law professor Christopher Stone argues to extend legal, if not moral, rights to “forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment—indeed, to the natural environment as a whole.”23

Unlike many defenders of animal rights, Stone bases his claim for standing less on the characteristics of humans and more on the nature of legal rights.

The occasion for Stone’s defense of the rights of natural objects was the legal dispute concerning Mineral King Valley. The Sierra Club had filed suit to pre- vent Walt Disney Enterprises from building a large ski resort in the Sierras. This suit was rejected in California courts because the Sierra Club lacked standing. That is, members of the Sierra Club could not show that they would suffer any legally recognized harm by the development of Mineral King Valley. As this case made its way on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Stone wrote an essay titled “Should Trees Have Standing?” Stone hoped to support the Sierra Club’s case by arguing that the natural objects, such as trees and mountainsides, that would be destroyed in this development should be given legal standing. The Sierra Club could then be seen as a legal guardian of these rights.24

Stone’s analysis begins with an examination of the nature of legal rights. Implicitly rejecting the view that rights are somehow there in nature to be discov- ered, Stone emphasizes the evolutionary development of rights. Rights exist when they are recognized by “some public authoritative body [that] is prepared to give some amount of review” to violations of that right. Citing Darwin’s observation that “the history of man’s moral development has been a continual extension in the objects of his social instincts and sympathies,” Stone shows how the recognition of legal rights is witness to a parallel development.25 Rights function to protect rights- holders from injury, and the list of rights-holders has been continually expanded. He reminds us that at one time only landowning white adult males enjoyed full legal rights. Legal standing now includes people who do not own land, women, blacks, Native Americans, and such things as corporations, trusts, cities, and nations. It is time to extend this protection to natural objects.

Stone argues that recognition by some authoritative body alone is not enough to establish the existence of rights.

As I shall use the term, “holder of legal rights,” each of three additional criteria must be satisfied. All three, one will observe, go towards making a thing count jurally—to have a legally recognized worth and dignity of its own right, and not merely to serve as a means to benefit “us.” They are, first, that the thing can institute legal actions at its behest; second, that in

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determining the granting of legal relief, the court must take injury to it into account; and, third, that relief must run to the benefit of it.26

The proposal to give legal rights to trees and other natural objects satisfies all three criteria. How can natural objects “institute legal actions” on their own behalf? Not- ing that corporations and mentally incompetent humans have legal standing, Stone argues that a guardian or conservator or trustee could be appointed to represent the interests of natural objects. Just as a comatose person has a legal guardian, for exam- ple, or a corporation, a board of trustees, forests, streams, and mountains could be legally represented by humans who are charged with representing their interests.

But do natural objects have interests that (1) we can agree on and (2) can be harmed in a legally recognizable way? Stone thinks that they do. Again noting the parallel with corporations, Stone believes that we can “know” the interests of and acknowledge the injuries to natural objects with at least as much certainty as we do in corporate cases.

The guardian-attorney for a smog-endangered stand of pine could venture with more confidence that his client wants the smog stopped, than the directors of a corporation can assert that “the corporation” wants dividends declared.27

Similarly, Stone believes that we can give meaning to the concept of a legal rem- edy that can provide relief to the injured natural object. As a guiding principle, we could adopt a common legal standard and aim to make the environment whole. Just as when a person is injured in an automobile accident and is com- pensated for medical costs to return that person to health, so we could require the responsible party to compensate the natural object by returning it to health. In this sense, “environmental health” would be the state in which the environ- ment existed before the injury.

Consider how this proposal might work. During the summer of 2010, the British Petroleum (BP) deepwater oil drilling platform, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded sending millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The three month-long oil spill affected coastlines from Florida to Texas, causing extensive damage to fisheries, wetlands, beaches, and wildlife habitats.

Under current legal guidelines, the door is open for injured humans to file for damages against BP, which was responsible for the oil drilling. Landowners along the coast or businesses that depend on tourism and fishing, for example, might argue that they deserve to be compensated for certain losses. Under Stone’s proposal, representatives of the shoreline and of the fish and wildlife killed by the oil could also sue for damages. Thus, not only would humans be compensated for their injuries, but also the coast itself should be “made whole”—that is, returned to its pre-spill state.

There are, of course, challenges for this proposal to overcome. First, despite Stone’s suggestions, it is not at all clear that we can agree on the interests of natural objects. For example, some believe that the Gulf of Mexico should immediately be restocked with fish from hatcheries. Others argue that the Gulf should be allowed to restock itself. Good reasons can be given to support both options. Which is in the best interest of the Gulf?

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A second challenge follows from this. Perhaps Stone’s response would allow the shoreline’s guardians to make that decision in the same way that a legal guardian might decide what is best for an orphaned child. But who should this guardian be? The Wilderness Society would have one view of the shoreline’s interests, and a local fishing industry might have another view. Choosing the guardian would also be to choose the theory of interests that is ascribed to natu- ral objects. Should the Sierra Club represent the interests of Mineral King Valley or the Pebble Mine region? Should a lumber company or mining company?

None of this suggests that Stone’s approach cannot work. But it does suggest that more work needs to be done to articulate and defend a view of nature’s inter- ests. Stone’s proposal essentially relies on society’s reaching a consensus about the extension of legal standing to natural objects. Legal standing is, after all, something that needs to be “recognized” by a public body. But it would seem that this consen- sus can be reached only after the public has already reached a consensus about the nature and value of natural objects. This consensus, regrettably, is still to be achieved.

5 . 6 P E T E R S I N G E R A N D T H E A N I M A L

L I B E R A T I O N M O V E M E N T

Reviewing the discussion case that opened this chapter, we could discuss many different arguments on why it is wrong to torture and kill animals for reasons of satisfying gourmet tastes. We can find many anthropocentric reasons to defend the position that we have ethical responsibilities regarding animals. After all, many people own animals and thus have property rights over them. Many peo- ple care about animals and thus would be affected by the mistreatment of them. Further, mistreating animals can have an adverse effect on the person doing the mistreating. Such actions make us callous and insensitive to suffering.

In short, people value animals for a variety of reasons. But can we say that we owe any moral consideration directly to the animals themselves? Do animals have moral standing? Do they deserve moral consideration? These questions are among the first ethical issues raised in connection with environmental concerns to have received close and developed philosophical attention.

Perhaps the person most closely associated with the extension of philosophi- cal ethics to animals is Peter Singer. Since the 1970s, Singer has argued that our exclusion of animals from moral considerability is on a par with the earlier exclu- sions of blacks and women. Singer popularized the term speciesism to draw a par- allel with racism and sexism.28 Singer argues that just as it is morally wrong to deny equal moral standing on the basis of race or sex, it is wrong to deny equal moral standing on the basis of species membership.

Singer begins his argument with a “fundamental presupposition” of moral theory, the “basic moral principle” that all interests should receive equal consid- eration. Essentially, this is the formal principle that any being that qualifies for moral standing “counts for one and none for more than one.” Even racists and sexists can accept this principle, although they would deny that blacks or women

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have equal moral standing. Singer must therefore explain the criterion for inclu- sion. What characteristic qualifies a being for equal moral standing? Here Singer cites the passage from Bentham referred to earlier: The question is not can they reason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer? Singer goes on to say,

The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to say that a being has interests—at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suf- fering. A mouse, for example, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road because it will suffer if it is.29

Like Joel Feinberg and Christopher Stone, Singer focuses on the concept of interests to explain moral standing. Unlike Feinberg and Stone, however, Singer is not concerned with using interests as a basis for attributing rights to animals. He is sympathetic to Bentham’s dismissal of rights as nonsense or at least as only a shorthand way of speaking about moral protections. Nor does he turn to cogni- tive elements as the essential aspect of interests. In Singer’s view, the capacity for suffering (and enjoyment) is all that is needed to establish that a being has inter- ests. Singer uses the term sentience to refer to the capacity to suffer and/or expe- rience enjoyment. Sentience is necessary for having interests, in that an object without sentience—a rock, for example—cannot be said to have interests. But Singer also believes that sentience is sufficient for having interests. A being that is sentient has at least minimal interests—that is, the interest in not suffering.

Because any and only sentient beings have interests, any and only sentient beings have moral standing. We are required to treat all sentient beings with equal moral consideration. This does not mean that we are required to make no distinc- tions between humans and other animals. Humans are different from other animals. They have different interests. A “hard slap across the rump” of a horse will cause relatively little pain and therefore is not particularly unethical. But this does not mean that the principle of equal consideration would justify an equally hard slap across the face of a child. A horse’s rump is solid and broad, usually muscled or fat, whereas a child’s face is bony and small. Certain human mental capacities might cause humans to suffer more from certain actions and in different ways than other animals. Beings with sophisticated mental capabilities and the capacity for complex emotional and affective states have a greater range of interests, and thus a different moral standing, than creatures with simple cognitive and emotional capacities. But the essential point is that the capacity to suffer and the amount of suffering are what determine specific moral requirements. Because all animals above a certain neuro- logical threshold are sentient, all such animals deserve direct moral consideration.

What are the implications of these views? Singer acknowledges that making comparisons of sufferings can be difficult, especially when these comparisons are made between species. Nevertheless, even if we were to restrict ourselves to those

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cases in which severe animal suffering was condoned for the sake of mere human convenience, we would be forced to make radical changes in our treatment of animals that would involve our diet; the farming methods we use; experimental procedures in many fields of science; our approach to wildlife and to hunting, trapping, and the wearing of furs; and areas of entertainment such as circuses, rodeos, and zoos. As a result, a vast amount of suffering would be avoided.30

As the references to Bentham and the emphasis on minimizing suffering sug- gest, Singer’s approach is utilitarian. He provides an account of intrinsic good (enjoyment and the absence of suffering) and says that our ethical responsibility is to minimize the overall amount of suffering. Before examining the implications of Singer’s views, let us turn to an alternative, nonutilitarian defense of animal rights.

5 . 7 T O M R E G A N A N D A N I M A L R I G H T S

Whereas Peter Singer has defended the moral standing of animals on utilitarian grounds, Tom Regan has developed a rights-based defense of animals. Regan explicitly argues that some animals have rights and that these rights imply strong moral obligations on our part. Like Singer, Regan condemns on ethical grounds a wide variety of human activities that affect animals. These activities include the use of animals in scientific and commercial research, the use of animals as food, and recreational uses of animals that include sport hunting, zoos, and pets. Regan believes that these practices are wrong in principle, but not because of the pain and suffering they cause. They violate animal rights by denying the intrinsic eth- ical value that some animals possess.

Imagine that Singer’s criticisms convince veal producers to change their methods so as to minimize suffering (as, in fact, has happened). The calves get some exercise, fresh air, and a balanced diet, and perhaps they are even groomed regularly. Like the cows in the old advertisements, these are contented calves. Imagine also that human taste for veal increases so that many consumers have a real desire for veal. Consumers suffer (no one suffers much, but many do suffer) when they are denied veal. In such a situation, we could argue that Singer’s util- itarian position allows veal production to continue. With these imagined changes in the farming practices of the veal industry, the calves suffer minimally while human enjoyment increases notably.

A defender of Singer’s position could dispute this example, of course. How- ever, the dispute would probably involve specific calculations of relative suffer- ing, pain, and enjoyments. That is, we would need to measure and dispute the consequences of the alternative practices. In this view, raising, slaughtering, and eating the calf for food is not wrong in principle. It is wrong only when the suffering that it causes outweighs the resultant enjoyment. Note how different Regan’s point of view is:

The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching…. But the fun- damental wrong isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering, isn’t the deprivation. These compound what’s wrong. Sometimes, often, they make it much worse. But they are not the fundamental wrong. The fundamental wrong is the system

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that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us, to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or put in our cross hairs for sport or money.31

How does Regan explain the principle that underlies this view? To understand this, we should consider why it would be wrong to subject humans to similar treat- ment. Suppose someone were to follow Jonathan Swift’s satirical “Modest Pro- posal” and treat disadvantaged young children as food. These children would be raised in a manner that kept them content and relatively free from suffering. How- ever, at a certain point in their lives (Swift proposed a well-nursed one-year-old), these humans were slaughtered, albeit painlessly, and “stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.” Presumably, we would all acknowledge the moral evil of these activities even if the overall balance of enjoyment over suffering were increased. Why?

Regan argues that the answer lies in our belief that humans possess what he calls “inherent value.” We have seen this concept before in our discussion of ethical the- ories. Essentially, to have inherent value is to have value independent of the interests, needs, or uses of anyone else. Inherent value is to have value in and of oneself. It is to be contrasted with instrumental value, in which a thing’s value is a function of how it might be used by others or what it might mean to others. Objects with inherent value are ends in themselves, not merely means to some other end. It is wrong to treat humans (and, as it will turn out, some animals) as mere means to other ends, even if this includes as an end maximizing the net amount of enjoyment over suffer- ing, because to do so denies to these humans the inherent value that they possess.

So far, this approach sounds similar to the Kantian tradition in ethics, and clearly it is greatly influenced by that tradition. But Regan denies that the basis for inherent value lies in the capacity for autonomous action. To see why, we need to introduce a distinction between moral agents and moral patients. Thus far in our discussion of moral standing, we have taken competent adult human beings as the clearest example of things with standing. As we have noted, philosophers have disagreed about the criterion used to establish standing, but they all agree that competent adult humans meet it. These adults are full moral agents because they are free and rational. As such, they can understand their duties, can choose whether to act on them, and can be held responsible for those choices.

This characterization raises familiar problems with incompetent or immature humans, however. Infants and mentally incapacitated or comatose individuals lack the ability to understand and choose. Therefore, they cannot be said to be moral agents. They have no duties and cannot be held responsible for what they do or fail to do. Indeed, they are moral patients. This means that they have moral standing—we cannot do just anything to or with them—even though they are not full moral agents. They cannot act morally or otherwise, but they can be acted on morally or immorally.

When we understand this distinction and recognize that many things that are not full moral agents still have moral standing, we can figure out what is missing from much of the standard discussion of moral standing. Too many philosophers have focused exclusively on moral agents in establishing the criterion of moral standing. The class of all things with moral standing includes both agents and patients. We need to ask what it is about moral agents and moral patients that explains their inherent value. Why is it wrong, in principle, to treat either agents or patients as food, targets, entertainment, or slaves?

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Regan’s answer is that they are subjects-of-a-life. Having a life, as opposed to merely being alive, involves a fairly complex set of characteristics.

To be the subject-of-a-life … involves more than merely being alive and more than merely being conscious. To be the subject-of-a-life is to … have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an indi- vidual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, independently of their utility for others.32

Regan argues that justice demands that we treat all individuals with inherent value in ways that respect that value. This “respect principle” identifies Regan’s views as reflecting an egalitarian theory of justice. Justice demands that we treat individuals with respect. Because inherent value is not reducible to any other type of value, we fail to treat individuals who have inherent value with the respect they deserve when we treat them as though they were valuable only as a means to some other end. Individuals with inherent value thus have the right to be treated with the same respect due to all individuals with inherent value.

It remains for Regan to conclude that animals can be subjects-of-a-life. At least some mammals possess the characteristics required for “having a life.” These animals therefore have inherent value, and justice demands that we treat them with respect. Minimally, this means that we have a strong prima facie obligation not to harm them. (Regan acknowledges that this obligation can sometimes be overridden. But it can be overridden only in the same sorts of cases in which we would override the rights of an innocent human being.)

5 . 8 E T H I C A L I M P L I C A T I O N S O F A N I M A L W E L F A R E

Both Singer and Regan have written extensively on the ethical implications of their views. Although each has addressed a variety of specific issues, we will limit ourselves to four topics that have received wide attention among environmental- ists.33 First, both would argue that we have a responsibility as a society to end most commercial animal farming. None of the considerations that might be used to defend animal farming—taste, nutrition, convenience, efficiency, and property rights—can justify treating animals as food. Similar arguments would not suffice to justify eating humans, and they cannot suffice to defend eating animals. Indi- vidually, we have an ethical responsibility to be vegetarians. As citizens, we should outlaw these practices.

Likewise, sport hunting and trapping are unjust. Killing and often torturing animals for sport and entertainment is more than cruel. It is a serious injustice. Similarly, abusing and mistreating animals for any form of human entertainment is wrong. Just as it was cruel and vicious for Romans to use Christians for a partic- ularly brutal form of entertainment, it is wrong for us to use animals in zoos, rodeos, and the like. A third issue concerns the use of animals in science and

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research. Experimentation on animal subjects can be especially harsh. We ordinarily would conclude that experimenting on human subjects who have not given their consent is unjust at best and barbarous at worst. People have been convicted as war criminals for such behavior. So, too, should we judge experimentation on animals.

Finally, like Feinberg, Regan and Singer do not support moral standing for species. Regan’s view protects individual animals from harm but does not recog- nize species as having rights. An individual animal can be a subject-of-a life, but a species cannot. Likewise, for Singer, although individual animals can suffer pain, a species cannot. Thus, although these views support efforts to save endangered spe- cies, they do so only because the remaining members of that species, as individuals, have a moral standing that we must respect. In this context, Regan raises an issue that will become the focus of important discussions later in this textbook. Let us introduce this issue within a general review of philosophical challenges to the views of Singer and Regan.

5 . 9 C R I T I C A L C H A L L E N G E S

Let us step back at this point and consider some criticisms raised against the animal liberation/animal rights view. The work of Singer and Regan generated a signifi- cant response among philosophers, much of it critical. Many of these criticisms followed familiar lines. For example, some philosophers, including Regan, chal- lenge the utilitarian basis of Singer’s program. Singer, after all, makes no in principle case against causing animals to suffer. Other philosophers develop the debate about attributing rights to nonhumans. Some argue that the concept of interests is so vague that it would allow tractors and buildings to have moral standing.34

Although a complete review of these debates would take us too far afield, looking at several challenges will help us make the transition to later chapters.

One type of criticism directed against Singer calls to mind the measurement problems discussed in the introduction to utilitarianism. On one level, the “equal consideration of interests” principle defended by Singer does suggest a helpful decision process. It directs us to take all suffering into consideration when decid- ing among alternative policies. However, any effort to apply this directive soon encounters enormous complexity in application. As Singer acknowledges, humans are different from animals, so equal consideration does not entail equal (or identical) treatment. Further, interests and suffering are not all alike. Not all interests deserve to be treated equally, and not all suffering is created equal. For example, some philosophers distinguish between basic and peripheral interests.35

Life, food, water, clothing, and freedom from intense pain might be thought of as basic interests. Indoor plumbing, automobiles, fur coats, air conditioning, and gourmet cooking might be considered peripheral interests.

But how are we to sift through these diverse and competing interests? Would a human’s interest in fencing off prairie for agricultural purposes (some- thing that might be necessary if we follow Singer’s and Regan’s advice and become vegetarians) override a wild animal’s interest in unobstructed habitat? How does the spotted owl’s interest in old-growth forests in the Pacific

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Northwest compare with human interest in lumber? Would the lumber’s use make a difference? As moral agents, do we have a responsibility to interfere with the life of animals in the wild? Should we protect predators or prey?36

Are the interests of a starving wolf equal to the interests of a single member of a large herd of caribou? Are the interests of pets equal to the interests of farm animals? Of wild animals? Do we really want to give the interests of a rat any consideration when they conflict with the interests of a child that it might bite?37

These questions suggest problems for any view that gives the interests of individual animals serious moral weight. The relationships among humans and animals, animals of different species, animals and their habitat, and humans, ani- mals, and the land are many and diverse. Establishing equal moral standing for individual animals is really only the beginning of the debate. Indeed, it frames the debate as a conflict, as fundamentally adversarial. Without a clear and deter- minate decision procedure, the question that began this entire debate—What is the proper relation between humans and other animals?—remains unanswered, if not unanswerable. Although “minimizing suffering” seems clear and simple, it does not seem to be a practical guide in light of complex realities.

Other challenges, usually aimed at Regan, suggest that the boundary of moral considerability is too restrictive—that is, it omits too many animals. (Simi- lar criticisms of Singer, who has suggested that the boundary of considerability be drawn somewhere “between shrimp and oysters,” charge that he includes too many animals). Although Regan most often speaks in general terms of “animals,” the subject-of-a-life criterion most clearly applies to “mentally normal mammals of a year or more.”38 According to many environmentalists, this interpretation neglects important members of the ecological community.

The influence of ecology underlies other important criticisms of the animal welfare movement. For example, Regan acknowledges that his rights-based ethics, like most traditional ethical theories, is individualistic. That is, ethics is concerned with protecting and promoting the well-being of individuals, not communities or societies or some one “common good.” This puts him at odds with much envi- ronmental and ecological thinking, which is holistic. Many environmentalists emphasize “biotic communities” or “ecosystems” rather than individual members (including humans) of those communities. Alluding to a parallel issue in political philosophy, Regan warns us of “environmental fascism” in which individual rights are willingly sacrificed to the greater good of the whole. “Environmental fascism and the rights view are like oil and water: they don’t mix.”39

Further, as we noted earlier, Regan is unwilling to attribute rights to species. He acknowledges that his view is individualistic. Only individual animals can be said to have moral standing or, more specifically, to have rights. This is a contro- versial claim even within the ethical tradition of which Regan is a part. Corpora- tions and nations are but two examples of collections of individuals that are taken to have rights (albeit legal rights) that are not reducible to the rights of individual members. But beyond this issue, the individualistic bias of both Regan and Singer seems to imply other consequences that many environmentalists find unacceptable.

In Regan’s view, an animal that is a member of an endangered species has no special moral status. The last remaining pair of bald eagles or spotted owls

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have less of a moral claim on us than a single mammal such as a whitetail deer. Preservation of the endangered blue whales is ethically no more important than preserving cows. We have no greater duty to mountain gorillas and black rhinos than to a stray cat, and we certainly have no direct ethical obligation to the mil- lions of species of plants and animals that are not subjects-of-a-life.

Singer’s views would also suggest conclusions counterintuitive to many environmentalists. Given the amount of suffering that can take place with inten- sive farming techniques, any one of literally billions of chickens would have a stronger moral claim against us (to relieve its suffering) than would the last remaining members of a plant or invertebrate species. Thus, according to critics, whatever else it might be, the animal welfare movement is not a central part of the environmental movement.

The emphasis on individuals also leads to controversial suggestions for wildlife management. Singer, for example, recognizes that it is conceivable that human interference could improve the conditions of wild animals. Nevertheless, judging in part on the basis of past failures, he recommends a policy of leaving wild animals alone as much as possible. We do enough, he tells us, “if we eliminate our own unnecessary killing and cruelty toward other animals.”40 This is consistent with a standard utilitarian belief that we have a greater responsibility to reduce suffering than to increase happiness. Regan apparently endorses a similar laissez-faire atti- tude. So long as we protect the rights of animals (or again, at least of mammals), other ecological concerns will take care of themselves. In his rights view:

assuming this could be successfully extended to inanimate natural objects [which he thinks is unlikely at best], our general policy regarding wilderness would be precisely what the preservationists want—namely, let it be! … Were we to show proper respect for the rights of the individuals who make up the biotic community, would not the community be preserved?41

But there are problems with this laissez-faire approach. First, we would need to reverse the long history of destruction and habitat loss before we could preserve biotic communities. Next, complete noninterference with the environment is impossible. The idea that some “untamed wilderness,” untouched by human activ- ity, can exist is a mirage. No place on earth, no animal on earth, and no period on earth has escaped human influence for quite some time. If only through the pol- lutants that we dump into the air and water (and our influence is much greater than that), humans affect every corner of the earth. The question is not whether we should actively influence the wilderness but how we should do so.

Second, the answer to Regan’s question would seem, in many cases, to be no. Showing proper respect for the rights of deer, for example, can have disastrous con- sequences for its ecological community.42 As is the case in many areas, the population of these deer can often overwhelm the carrying capacity of their habitat. With abun- dant food, protective hunting laws, and loss of natural predators, deer populations wreak havoc on their habitat and with many other species that populate that habitat. The result is destruction of many other life-forms in that ecological community.

Similar consequences face wildlife managers in parts of Africa. In some pro- tected refuges in East Africa, the elephant population grew so large that it

CHAPTER 5 RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE NATURAL WORLD 117

threatened to outpace its food supply. Left alone, many elephants would die a slow death of starvation, but not before destroying much of the surrounding vegetation. One alternative seems to be selective killing (“thinning the herd” or “culling the herd,” in less offensive terms).43

The point of these examples is that animals, like humans, are part of a com- plex ecological community. Although it is constantly changing, this community seems to involve a delicate balance of interdependencies. For many environmen- talists, the equilibrium of natural ecosystems should be the goal of an environ- mental ethics. Giving special ethical protection to individual animals threatens to upset that balance and cause damage elsewhere in that system. A laissez-faire atti- tude in conjunction with animal rights may well lead to serious ecological harms. There simply is no guarantee that a species—or, more generally, an ecological community—would be preserved if only we “show proper respect for the rights of the individuals who make up the biotic community.”44

Many challenges to animal welfare ethics arise from the individualistic approach characteristic of Regan and Singer. Defending individual animals may not be the most appropriate environmental strategy. Other criticisms suggest that the extension of moral standing to animals has remained, in a peculiar sort of way and despite its intentions, anthropocentric.

How could moral standing for animals remain anthropocentric? Consider the philosophical method used by Feinberg, Singer, and Regan. They all begin by taking human beings as the paradigm of beings with moral standing. They all then ask what is it about humans that gives them moral standing? Feinberg answers with interests, Singer answers with the capacity to suffer, and Regan answers with being a subject-of-a-life. But why draw the line here? In effect, Feinberg, Singer, and Regan all seem to say that the paradigms of holders of moral value are human beings. Thus, only animals that are enough like us can have (or acquire because we “give it to them”) moral standing. Moral standing seems a benefit that is derived from human nature and that living beings receive only if they are enough like humans.

Consider the case of invertebrates, the “little things that run the world,” in the words of biologist Edward O. Wilson.45 In the view of many environmen- talists, preservation of invertebrates (animals that lack a backbone, such as insects, jellyfish, and mollusks) should be an ethical concern. Yet in the most obvious reading of Singer and Regan, these animals lack the necessary criteria for moral standing. Singer suggests that sentience is both necessary and sufficient for moral standing. That is, without sentience, a being does not have moral standing (the necessary condition), and sentience alone is enough (sufficient) to qualify for moral standing. Regan argues that moral standing derives from the inherent value found in subjects-of-a-life. But although it may be plausible to say that sentience and subjectivity are sufficient, why must we say that they are necessary? Why restrict inherent value to pleasure/pain or subjectivity?

One early challenge to this view was developed by philosopher Kenneth Goodpaster. Goodpaster argues:

Neither rationality nor the capacity to experience pleasure and pain seem to me necessary (even though they may be sufficient) conditions on moral

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considerability. And only our hedonistic and concentric forms of ethical reflection keep us from acknowledging this fact. Nothing short of the condi- tion of being alive seems to me to be a plausible and nonarbitrary criterion.46

Further, Goodpaster reasons that sentience seems to be an adaptive characteristic that contributes to the survival of the organism. Presumably, the same could be said for subjectivity. This, according to Goodpaster, “at least suggests, though of course it does not prove, that the capacities to suffer and to enjoy are ancillary to something more important rather than tickets to considerability in their own right.”47

This “something more important” is life itself. When we restrict the range of moral standing among all living things to those sentient or conscious beings, we are, in fact if not logically, restricting moral standing to those beings most like us. Without further argument (and, in fairness, both Singer and Regan have answers), this would be an arbitrary restriction with significant environmental costs.

Thus some critics have come to believe that the animal welfare movement is not an adequate environmental philosophy. At best, it addresses only some environ- mental issues. In these critics’ view, an adequate environmental ethics must reject both the individualism and the narrowness of philosophers such as Singer and Regan.

5 . 1 0 S U M M A R Y A N D C O N C L U S I O N S

Whether or not Singer or Regan falls victim to these challenges, an important point has been established. Environmental ethics requires more than a simple concern for individual animals of a certain type. At a minimum, we need to consider questions about the moral status of a diversity of plant and animal life, about ecological communities, and about our role in those communities. A shift to such holistic and truly nonanthropocentric ethics, however, would require a radical break from tradition.

Toward the end of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer tells us:

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy worthwhile. Regrettably, philosophy does not always live up to its historic role.48

In the view of many environmentalists, Singer himself, along with Tom Regan, is guilty of exactly this failure. All of what follows in this textbook implicitly takes up this challenge to “question the basic assumptions of the age.”

N O T E S

1. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2d ed. (New York: New York Review of Books Press, 1990), p. 95; the emphasis is Singer’s.

2. Ibid., 136.

3. Later in this chapter we see this claim developed at more length by Lynn White.

4. Aristotle, The Politics, book 1, ch. 8, p. 1256b, in Basic Works of Aristotle,

CHAPTER 5 RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE NATURAL WORLD 119

ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941).

5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, ed. English Dominion Friars (London: Burns and Oates, 1924), book 3, pt. 2. See Gen. 9:2–3, for the command to Noah. See also John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature (New York: Scribner’s, 1974), p. 6, for a brief discussion of Aquinas’s views on this passage from Genesis. Passmore remains an excellent source for understanding the philosophical roots of the “man-as-despot” view.

6. See Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, ch. 4, for a discussion of Kant’s concern for future generations, and Annette Baier, “For the Sake of Future Generations,” in Earthbound: New Introductory Essays in Environmental Ethics, ed. Tom Regan (New York: Random House, 1984), pp. 214–46, for further discussion of this issue.

7. The italics are Bentham’s. This pas- sage appears in The Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1907), ch. 17, sec. 1, footnote to paragraph 4.

8. Gen. 1:26–29.

9. Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (March 10, 1967): 1203–1207.

10. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, pp. 186–87.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., 189.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 13.

16. William Blackstone, ed., Philosophy and Environmental Crisis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). See Blackstone’s contribution, “Ethics and Ecology,” pp. 16–42.

17. Ibid., 31.

18. Ibid., 32.

19. Ibid.

20. Joel Feinberg, “The Rights of Ani- mals and Unborn Generations,” in Blackstone, ed., Philosophy and Envi- ronmental Crisis, pp. 43–68.

21. Ibid., 44.

22. Ibid., 49.

23. Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Nat- ural Objects (Los Altos, Calif.: William Kaufmann, 1974), p. 9.

24. For a brief account of this history, see Roderick Nash, The Rights of Nature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 128–31.

25. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?, p. 11.

26. Ibid.; the emphasis is Stone’s.

27. Ibid., 24.

28. Singer attributes the term “species- ism” to Richard Ryder’s essay “Vic- tims of Science,” in Animals, Men, and Morals, eds. Stanley Godlovitch, Roslind Godlovitch, and John Harris (New York: Grove Press, 1973). This book was the subject of a 1973 review by Singer, “Animal Liberation,” New York Review of Books, April 1973, pp. 17–21.

29. Singer, Animal Liberation, pp. 7–8; the emphasis is Singer’s.

30. Ibid., 16–17.

31. Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 13; the emphasis is Regan’s.

32. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 243.

33. These are the four that Regan con- siders in The Case for Animal Rights. For other discussions, see especially Tom Regan, All That Dwell Therein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Singer’s Animal

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Liberation remains the best single source for his views.

34. See, for example, R. G. Frey, “Rights, Interests, Desires, and Beliefs,” American Philosophical Quar- terly 16 (July 1979): 233–39.

35. See Donald VanDeVeer, “Interspe- cific Justice,” Inquiry 22 (Summer 1979): 55–70.

36. For a detailed response to some of these questions, see S. F. Sapontzis, Morals, Reason, and Animals (Phila- delphia: Temple University Press, 1989), especially ch. 13, “Saving the Rabbit from the Fox,” pp. 229–48.

37. This example is from Singer’s New York Review essay “Animal Libera- tion,” p. 21.

38. See Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, especially pp. 77–78. Regan later expands this a bit, suggesting that although it is always difficult to draw such lines, it would not be unrea- sonable to give the benefit of the doubt to any animal that shares the “relevant anatomical and physiologi- cal properties” with mammals. His example of such a relevant property is the central nervous system.

39. Ibid., 361–62.

40. Singer, Animal Liberation, p. 226.

41. Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, p. 363; the emphasis is Regan’s.

42. For a review of these and similar challenges, see J. Baird Callicott’s “Review of Tom Regan’s The Case

for Animal Rights,” Environmental Ethics 7 (Winter 1985): 365–72. Cal- licott also cites Mark Sagoff, “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 22 (1984): 306, as a reference for this particular point.

43. For a good discussion of the Tsavo National Park dispute, see Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), ch. 2.

44. For development of this claim, see Mark Sagoff, “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics,” p. 26; J. Baird Callicott, “Review of Tom Regan”; and “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair,” Environmental Ethics 2 (1980): 311–28.

45. E. O. Wilson, “The Little Things That Run the World,” Conservation Biology 1 (December 1987): 344–46. Wilson gave this as an address at the opening of the invertebrate exhibit at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., in 1987; it is reprinted in The Environ- mental Ethics and Policy Book, eds. Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1994), pp. 84–86.

46. Kenneth Goodpaster, “On Being Morally Considerable,” Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978): 308–25.

47. Ibid., 31.

48. Singer, Animal Liberation, p. 236.

D I S C U S S I O N Q U E S T I O N S

1. Throughout the world, many laws prohibit abuse of animals. List as many reasons for these prohi- bitions as you can. Do any of these reasons commit you to holding that animals have a moral standing in their own right?

2. Can natural objects be said to have interests? What are the interests of the Gulf of Mexico? Can certain things be said to be good for rivers, mountains, and forests? Is this the same meaning of “good” that we use when we

CHAPTER 5 RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE NATURAL WORLD 121

talk about the moral good for humans?

3. Christopher Stone argues that trees should be granted legal standing. If this happens, how should their interests be represented? In the well-known Dr. Seuss book The Lorax, it is the Lorax who “speaks for the trees.” Can anyone truly speak for the trees?

4. Try the following mental experi- ment concerning what objects have moral standing. Assume that com- petent adult human beings are placed at one end of a continuum and a rock at the other. Where along that continuum would you place the following: a child, a brain-dead adult, a fetus, a dolphin, a dog, an insect, an alien, a bird, a species, and a tree? Have you used a single cri- terion either implicitly or explicitly?

5. How exactly would you distin- guish between the actions satirically advocated in Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and the modern factory farming of veal, cows, chickens, and pigs? What are the relevant similarities, if any? What, if any, are the relevant differences?

6. Do you see any morally relevant differences between domesticated

and wild animals? Would Singer? Would Regan? Do you see any morally relevant differences be- tween animals that are threatened with extinction and those that are not?

7. What kinds of arguments can you give for vegetarianism? Which are moral arguments? Are you con- vinced by any of them? Why or why not?

8. Recently, during a particularly harsh winter, the state of Minnesota delivered tons of feed to wild deer faced with starvation. Do humans have such responsibilities to wild animals, particularly those that are in no danger of extinction? Does it matter to you that this state’s action was supported mainly by hunters who feared a dwindling deer population?

9. Does hunting or fishing raise any moral issues? If people eat the animals they kill, does that make a difference? In many areas, deer are overpopulating local habitats. Destruction of the habitat as well as mass starvation can occur in such circumstances. Would you favor selective hunting to thin overpopulated herds?

G L O B A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L E T H I C S W A T C H

For more information on Responsibilities to the Natural World, please see the Global Environmental Ethics Watch. Updated sev- eral times a day, Global Environmental Ethics Watch is a focused portal into GREENR—our Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources—an ideal one-stop site for cur- rent events and research. You will have

access to the latest information from trusted academic journals, news outlets, and maga- zines as well as access to statistics, primary sources, case studies, videos, podcasts, and much more.

To gain access please use the access code that accompanies your book. If you do not have an access code, visit cengagebrain.com to purchase one.

122 PART II ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS AS APPLIED ETHICS

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To meet the learning objectives for this topic, you will complete these activities. Print this page and use it as a checklist.

Review the Introduction and Objectives page. Read the lesson, Bioregionalism. Participate in the Critical Thinking Discussion 8. Take online Test 8.

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Yes, we have no bananas

In the 1950s, two scholars, who did not know one another or think of their work as overlapping, produced books which have become the dual scriptures of the bioregional movement. Leopold Kohr's book The Breakdown of Nations argued that conflict is not the result of opposing "isms" but stems from the fact that nations are simply too large and powerful. He recommended the breakup of almost all countries into very small entities which would be truly democratic and peaceful because their populations would be small enough to take a direct part in governance, and too small to threaten one another with war and aggression. E. F. Schumacher's book (that's him in the photo; he died in 1994) was called Small Is Beautiful: Economic as if People Mattered. His work spawned a whole school of radical economic thought: again, the trouble with today's economies is not that they are capitalist or socialist or whatever, but that they are too big. Individuals have little control over fiscal and trade policy, over what is available to buy in the marketplace, or even over their own jobs and professions. Small, locallybased economies could return economic power to the people, where it belongs and, incidentally, go a long ways toward saving the environment. For both men, and for bioregionalists today, the key word is scale.

Click on the following link for a short video documentary.

Bioregionalism is a good deal more radical than it appears at first glance. The idea behind it is that much of the world's ecological woe is due to the fact that both governments and economies are way too big: they allow and encourage people, goods and services to travel over great distances, and this process uses far too many resources and produces environmental damage. The solution is the abolition of all large nations, corporations and other institutions, and the localization of all their current functions. If our jobs, education, governance and resource use all happened on a local level, we could enjoy a strong sense of community, govern ourselves through direct democracy, and do less damage to the planet. "Local" in bioregional talk means "within a more or less selfcontained ecosystem." The drainage basin of the Ohio River, for example, makes a sensible bioregion: climate, flora and fauna are similar throughout the region; it is relatively small but not so small as to be unsustainable as a political and economic entity; and it has sufficient resources to support a stable population. At present it is broken up into six or seven states and many counties, all with their own laws and policies which are often in conflict; and over all is the federal government and the power of vast corporations, neither of which have much interest in or knowledge of the region from a local perspective. A selfgoverning Ohio Valley Bioregion would solve many problems.

One bioregional idea that is already working is local currencies, not tied to the US dollar or any other national currency. Click on the following link to view the Ithaca Hours webpage. This system in upstate New York has been working well since 1991.

Ithaca Hours

Bioregionalism would also present new problems, of course. Diet and lifestyle would have to change radically: if you're in Ohio, plenty of soybeans and corn, but no bananas or Darjeeling tea; travel outside the region would be difficult if not impossible; we would need some kind of "Ohio Valley dollars" that would not be tied to any larger monetary system; we could still get lowtech locallymade

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consumer goods like bicycles and furniture, but where would we get cars and computers? (or would we need them?) Our political allegiances would have to be retooled: there would be no more "United States of America," nor even a "State of Ohio." As you look at the web sites and readings more such issues will occur to you (and you'll write in the Forum about them); but also you will see new opportunities for a better and safer life for everyone.

In this week's discussion we will weigh the pros and cons of a change to bioregionalism think about it as a serious proposal, and consider what arguments might be offered on both sides by politicians, big business and ordinary people. Then, in the forum, I want you to defend some bioregional idea: the elimination of large nationstates; living on locally produced foods; small local industries as opposed to huge corporations; local currencies such as Ithaca Hours; direct as opposed to representative democracy; or anything else in the readings that strikes you as interesting. Even if you disagree completely with the idea, I want you to defend it it will improve your logical and argumentative skills.

Some Research Links

Planet Drum the main bioregional organization. Bioregional Congress official website. E. F. Schumacher Society. Bioregional School in Victoria, British Columbia. First North American Bioregional Congress in 1983, good article. Digger Archives good brief definition. Gaia Economics another good definition. Bioregional Alternative to the corporatist European Union. Great River Earth Institute good description of the basics on the main page. River of Words art and writing contests for kids. CoIntelligence Institute see if you can figure out that name; I couldn't. Gaia Emerging one aspect of bioregionalism. "Left Biocentrism" article with special reference to Canada. Forest Ecology Network Maine. Communitarianism a somewhat rightwing analogy to bioregionalism. New Economics Institute what a bioregional economics might look like.

http://www.planetdrum.org/

http://biocongress.org/

http://www.schumacher.org.uk/

http://oakandorca.ca/bioregional_education.html

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC03/Haenke.htm

http://www.diggers.org/freecitynews/_disc1/00000017.htm

http://www.gaianeconomics.org/bioregionalism.htm

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/which.europe.html

http://www.greatriverinstitute.com/

http://www.riverofwords.org/

http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-bioregionalism.html

http://gaiaemerging.blogspot.com/

http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/lbprimer.htm

http://www.forestecologynetwork.org/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/

http://www.neweconomicsinstitute.org/

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Introduction

Bioregionalism is a very simple idea, but to implement it would mean reconfiguring our entire society from the ground up.

A bioregional world would be one in which nearly all political boundaries we know would be abolished, and replaced with boundaries based on ecosystems: like the Ohio Valley, the Appalachian Mountains, the Danube river basin in eastern Europe, the Highlands of Scotland, and so on. No region would be very large, and would be governed locally. People living in each region would have to survive mostly on

food grown or raised in that region Daytonians would have plenty of corn, soybeans and pork, for example, but no coffee or bananas. Fortunately, we could grow all the ingredients required for beer. Read on to learn about how this idea originated, and what sort of bioregional efforts are being organized today.

This map shows the Cleveland area as a welldefined bioregion consisting of several short watersheds feeding into Lake Erie.

In this lesson I will ask you to defend some aspect of bioregionalism, even if you disagree with it entirely!

Objectives

After completing the learning activities, you will be able to:

Explain the bioregional concept. Defend the merits of bioregionalism.

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Answer the following question:

· Choose some aspect of bioregionalism - whether you agree with it or not - and defend it. Why would it be a good idea, and how could it be implemented? Keep in mind that in this forum, you are expected to defend, not oppose, bioregionalism - it's a good exercise in critical thinking.

· The format of this paper:

· Introduction (3 complete sentences –minimum) Body (10 complete sentences –minimum) Conclusion (5 complete sentences –minimum)

· Instructions:

· 1. When you write your posts, clearly identify each section of the post. Above the sections/paragraphs write INTRODUCTION, BODY or CONCLUSION (all capital letters).

· 2. Your sections/paragraphs must have the minimum number of complete sentences indicated above.

· 3. If you’re required to use or include a website, include it and provide a complete cite (any citing style).

· 4. Write in complete sentences.

· 5. Use correct grammar and spelling.

· 6. In your INTRODUCTION, introduce your topic or theme. DO NOT REPEAT THE ASSIGNMENT'S INSTRUCTIONS.

· 7. In your BODY, write about your topic or theme. Present your analysis in this section. DO NOT REPEAT THE ASSIGNMENT'S INSTRUCTIONS.

· 8. In your CONCLUSION, share your conclusions, reactions, and final comments on the theme or topic. DO NOT REPEAT THE ASSIGNMENT'S INSTRUCTIONS.

· 10. In the INTRODUCTION, do NOT repeat the assignment's instructions. Introduce your theme or topic.