My View on Environmental Ethics

Philosophers often question what sets humans apart from the rest of the living things. Possibly because of our highly developed brains, we have the ability to make ethically guided decisions; we have a fine-tuned, socialized sense of rationality that animals don’t. My stance on environmental ethics takes this assumption to be true and after introspection, I can conclude that it is the premise upon which all my opinions about environmental ethics seem to stem from. 

Applying this distinction of humanity's rationality into the context of my morals, I believe that the fact that we have set ourselves apart from the animal kingdom means that we have no business meddling in their livelihood. There is a circle of life and death that we have removed ourselves from by creating ways of sustenance that transcend the next meal- meaning we have no necessity to rely on hunting other animals for our survival. We have used science to create food storage, vaccines that ensure a longer life, and we have developed a great understanding of agriculture and can grow our future meals. We are different from a lion in that we don’t have to kill a gazelle to feed ourselves. We are different from the gazelle in that we don't have to live in fear of being killed by a greater predatorily species. We are superior in our capabilities but that often gets conflated as a ticket to reap more benefits from Earth. I believe that humans have as much of an equal claim to the Earth’s resources as a frog or a deer, not more just because we have higher capabilities. 

I grew up in a strictly vegetarian, Tamilian household, and what I have understood about my parents’ and grandparents’ morals (that got inculcated in me), as contrasted with other environmentally conscious people, is that they lived by the rule of not hurting our environment and its ecosystems for the sake of the environment, not solely for the sake of humans or our future generations. I believe that a vegetarian diet, getting produce from small-scale farms that directly support other families’ livelihood is the best way to live. While that is a utopian concept, eating meat isn’t inherently bad, I think the way we are consuming meat today is not sustainable for the earth nor is it kind to the animals. Cows and chickens raised on a small farm that get killed to feed the small surrounding community are morally OK, there isn’t an excessive amount of unnecessary suffering and local business are supported. 

Why am I stating my strong preference for small businesses? The accountability of killing meat is so removed from the individual that there is no element of ethically motivated guilt. A local farmer supplying to about 10 families will never want to expand their operations to provide for most of America (like is happening right now) for the money because of the guilt of slaughtering that many animals are too great for any individual to bear. There is more care when it comes to smaller farms and the farmers are more aware of the environmental repercussions (soil exhaustion, fertilizer runoff, crop slash-and-burn, etc). Just because things are operating the way they are now, doesn’t mean we need to normalize it into morally permissible.

In her writing about Virtue Ethics, Julia Annas touches on the Greek concept of Eudomania and its relation to living virtuously. Annas explains virtues to be character traits with some commitment to an ethical value like generosity or benevolence. While she says that living virtuously is embodying these ethical qualities and trying to exercise them in day-to-day life, I don’t believe think that is enough. To me living virtuously goes above this, one should take into account the respect owed to one’s surroundings and try to strike a balance between one’s goals and the goals of one’s environment. In other words, living virtuously is trying to achieves one eudomania as well as respecting and facilitating the same goal of thriving for the animal kingdom and the environment. She says that Eudomania is the idea that living virtuously is not the end but a means to the real goal of flourishing. Trying to be the best human one can be should involve respecting nature and other animals, while also learning from one's experiences. For example, I think it was immoral for us ( ‘us’ meaning settlers that created Appleton today, not me as in my identity per se) to enter Appleton in the way we did because we wiped out the wolf population, which caused an imbalance in the deer population. We disrupted the system of respect that the Native Americans had with the Wisconsin environment. We cut down trees and set up a factory that continues to pollute the river killing fish and frogs, causing a domino effect of problems. There is an arrogantly misguided sense of superiority that humans have that I think is immoral because, in our venture to achieve Eudomania, in terms of the flourishing of society, we disrupted and even destroyed the right to eudomania that the ecosystem before deserved. The anthropocentric argument for climate-related behavior rectification is that we are doing an injustice by leaving the Earth in a poor state for our future generations. I think this guilt-oriented argument would yield greater change if we looked at the animal and plant kingdom, the balance of nature as moral patients as well to whom we owe the right to a good Earth and an equal claim to Earth’s resources for their future generations as well.

Ian Smith wrote an article titled ‘The Role of Humility and Intrinsic Good in Preserving Endangered Species’ in which he spends a lot of time trying to define a species and debating whether a species has any intrinsic good. To this, I ask: why does that even matter? He claims that some intrinsic goods of species include aesthetics, ecosystem balance, and economic reasons. When it comes to endangered species my stance is relatively simple- if it is endangered because of anthropogenic reasons, we owe a moral duty to try and restore it regardless of the cost. David Benatar points out that not all 'bads are wrong', questioning whether we owe it to save a species endangered by natural disasters. Maybe we didn’t once upon a time but climate change as a repercussion of human activity is starting to be our fault more than random chance. I believe that every anthropogenic act that has led to some imbalance or destruction is not simply a cross for humanity to bear but a purpose of rectification and an important learning moment for the future. Smith gets hung up on whether there is a different, possibly more important intrinsic good of the individual versus the species, to which I ask again, how does it matter? As of last year, the Eastern Puma has been declared extinct- the only real value in defining a species is to determine whether the number remaining is sufficient enough to procreate and sustain a healthy number of that animal in the future. I can’t be the only one that sees a level of hypocrisy in drilling, cutting, extracting, fracking, and mining the Earth’s resources to get rich and turning around and saying that the consequences of our actions are suddenly ‘too expensive to fix’.

In his article titled ‘The Golden Rule- A proper scale for our environmental crisis’, Stephen Gould questions whether environmental ethics should be a consideration for our actions considering that in the grand scheme of Earth’s geological time scale, the lifespan of a species isn’t as significant. While that is a valid question to ask if we are using Earth’s incomprehensibly long history as an argument for not saving a species or eradicating a species, that would result in unwanted repercussions as that argument could be used for anything including killing all animals or even nuking the earth. We would be but a blimp in time anyways. We continue to learn that this balance is very delicate and complex, for all we know, preserving the Gould’s Mount Graham Red Squirrel for longer than it may have survived on its own would help the local pine population because of all the pine cones they dispersed or ate and excreted out. These new trees could be home to a new species down the line that humans have no way of predicting. Towards the end of the article, Gould points out an inevitable point about the future that I choose to seek solace in; if we continue down this path, the Earth will fall even sicker and while it may kill all the living things on Earth, this wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. Earth will heal and rejuvenate eventually and the length of time it takes will be irrelevant since we won’t be here to witness it. Lily-Marlene Russow’s article questions whether endangered species get special treatment- they do. We owe it to them to hold all the forces of nature constant while they recover from our destruction, not for us and not just for them but out of the respect we should have for the complex balance that exists in an ecosystem.

I think that in the broader concept of ethics, I seem to fall under a mix of Deontology and Virtue Ethics. I agree with Traditional Kantians in that all rational beings are moral agents and our ability to rationalize and feel guilty when we act immorally supports my claim that as someone with higher capabilities, we owe it to all living things (who are moral patients) to respect them and let them flourish without human meddling and intervention. I believe that we should act with intentions that are the end in itself (cleaning up the river for its own sake or not overfishing for the fish’s sake) not solely for anthropocentric reasons. Just because outcomes are identical in nature, and everything dies doesn’t give us a ticket to cause that fate. I want to point out that I am not talking about certain tribes that may depend on the animals in that area as a food source or someone being attacked by a bear. I mean killing when there is no reason to kill or killing with the intention of pleasure. By doing so, one is violating the ideology that all living things are equal- killing something for fun means that there is the implicit belief that the animal’s life was not worth living and that is not for us to judge. I think I fall under Virtue Ethics in the way that I think virtues can be learned and must be embodied to become part of one's character. I strongly believe in the concept of Eudomania, and project that Eudomania to my moral patients as well. 

I want to conclude my essay by raising a distinction that Elizabeth Anderson made in her essay Animal Rights and the Value of Non-human life; she talks about which kinds of animals are dependent on humans and which aren’t. Domesticated animals are dependent on us and we treat them with a relatively high sense of decency. Vermin like house rats cannot live without humans hence we are in a state of war with them-we don't want them in the house but removing them would kill them. I do not think it is morally wrong to kill a rat (provided it isn’t sadistic torture) that is in the house and by that presumption we are in some ways the vermin to wild animals. The way humans have set up a society and driven away wild animals, we are technically in a state of peace with them because we aren’t dependent on them, they aren’t dependent on us and we should have no reason to interfere with their lives. This distinction will let them reach their Eudomania assuming we aren’t constantly meddling with their ecosystems and resources. At least rats are dependent on us and it is a biological instinct that guides them right to our stores of food. We aren’t even dependent on wild animals and their ecosystems, yet why like vermin do we keep entering their territory, cutting down their homes, polluting their lakes, and killing them? If we have such high intellectual capabilities, why aren’t we finding alternative, sustainable ways to get energy or building material or whatever it is we go looking for? If it is because of shared resources, shouldn’t we try sharing?

I have little hope for the future and this can be best described through my relationship with God, something that has been on my mind for the last 3 months a lot. I feel like all living things are being tested and humans are failing because of the interplay of the following reasons and our normalization of this disastrous path. Flourishing is our purpose in life but we are both being led astray by our pursuit of money/career/capitalism and mistakenly thinking that that is our purpose in life. It is possible to have a personal and intimate connection with nature and animals (contrary to Anderson's view that we can’t because we can’t communicate which I disagree with). The more we set ourselves apart from animals, the harder it’s going to be to relearn that cooperation is possible. It is possible for humans to have conflict-free interactions with animals. I have read so many ancient Indian folktales that I grew up with that describe the forests and rivers as their own sentient beings, deserving of respect. They described villages on the edges of forests where deer would often walk through. Things have changed because we have gotten into the habit of using fear to control our surroundings. I sometimes feel sad that I will never get to experience a simple society with trust and cooperation amongst all living things in the area. I think that we, the individuals of the human species, are cooped up in our high rises and secluded neighborhoods that we don't have a strong enough connection with nature to respect it enough to want to save it. The unfortunate interplay of race and economic class causes the brunt of the environmental repercussions to fall on marginalized and indigenous peoples and their voices get drowned out by those who choose to be ignorant to reality. I feel like God is testing us and we are failing; our punishment is our maturity to understand our actions and being the key to our demise. I think it’s crazy that humans think we can play God and meddle around with the beautiful, complex ecosystems on Earth when we don’t even know if it could exist ever again.