I shall attempt a simple mundane approach to a global ethical environment policy focused on a just, and sustainable, quality of life for human societies. Since the planet’s environment is shared by all, an environment policy has to be global in scope to be ethical. To be ethical it should focus primarily on the subjects of ethical discourse, individuals, and even more their societies. An environmental policy should be sustainable since the future continuously evolves out of the present, and present people continuously create future people. Deep ecology according to my mundane reading concerns our spiritual relationship with Nature, and Creation. To give legal definitions to spiritual essence in a non-spiritual society, and argue in an adversarial manner what this entails is beyond rational inquiry; further it only mocks the spiritual quest to go beyond apparent reality, better understood as maya, to inner or immanent spiritual essence.
Norman Myers gives the simplest and clearest exposition of the features of an ethical environmental policy. His detailing is even more true today than when he wrote it, of the elimination of species; the reduction of bio-diversity in nature; the global pollution of air; the destruction of the ozone layer and the enlargement of the dangerous ozone hole over Antarctica; alarming global warming; the shrinkage of water resources; pesticide and chemical pollution of foods; the high consumption of fossil fuels for energy; global over population; the growing gap between the rich and the poor countries; the unacceptable levels of human deprivation and even hunger in the Third World. He focuses on redressing environmental imbalances by developing a popular anti-consumerist movement in rich countries, and among the rich in the Third World. Clearly, if the rich, necessarily a small proportion of humanity, continue to have wasteful spending and consuming habits, neither justice in distribution of goods and services, nor conservation of natural resources, can be achieved. Myers then realistically attempts to bring changes in economic and political policy to attain the ends of an ethical environmental policy.
The environmentalist camp faces enormous hurdles placed by business and political interests. President Bush recently refused to sign the Kyoto protocols on global warming and clean air, because of what are called unacceptably high costs to American business. Third world countries such as China and India burn coal to produce electricity, polluting cities, and at great health hazard to their citizens. The felling of forests by the poor in India and Africa, just to be able to get fuel-wood to cook, results in desertification and agricultural loss. The loss of forests also means the disappearance of endangered species. A tiger, for example, requires at least ten square miles of undisturbed forest to feed itself. Pressure on agricultural lands leads to overuse of chemicals and pesticides which ruin water resources. Such pollution is seen as one of the worst fall-outs of the great Three Gorges Dam under construction in China. Despite vehement citizens’ protests against the vast displacement of tribal populations as in the Narmada basin in India, big dams are still being built out of political necessity.
Hence Myers is right to call for an anti-consumerist movement, which can re-shape human aspirations away from thinking that consuming more is better towards seeking a higher quality of life. Are cars better than efficient public transport? Do strawberries taste better in winter, or fresh in summer? Should one be a gourmet, or a gourmand? Is there aesthetic value in simplicity above cluttering one’s life with things? Should one be a traveler or a tourist? Why do people in the rat-race die early, while people in the high mountains of Peru or the Caucasus live to be a hundred? Is it better to be wealthy at the cost of poor countries that supply raw materials, or would we be happier in seeing them reach a decent standard of living? Such questions need to be asked and discussed; and pressure brought to bear on decision-makers.
If Elder is impatient with the environmentalists, it is not because he disagrees with their goals, but only with some of their methods. He agrees that the present system and government policies have failed people. There may be little need to think up whole new ways of looking at life and resources, but far better to understand why we have failed. He identifies the incapacity of the mixed economy approach to secure a sound environmental policy. This would be more true of India than of Canada. Elder is tentative about the possible benefits of the participatory approach, but the thrust of his argument is towards strengthening social democracy so that large corporations are reined in by government policy to take the long-term view. Business decision-making horizons are far shorter than even the five years terms of politicians. We are witnessing huge business mergers with alarm. The lessening of competition and oligarchic control defeats democratic purpose, but larger corporations may also be able to see how to retain profits over a twenty-year cycle, rather than just over a year or so.
Stable European experience with coalition governments composed of several minority parties also may point to a longer political time horizon. The long-term view in public policy, with firmer rules governing corporations is what is needed. Though Elder is skeptical of the role of decentralization, and small-scale production, it is precisely this process that developed human skills in rural China, South Korea, and Taiwan, the so-called ‘tiger’ economies, and putting purchasing power in the hands of the masses enabled markets to grow rapidly, strengthening their economies. India did not adopt this process, and large sections of its population suffer from food deprivation, illiteracy, and high mortality rates, no longer a feature of Chinese life. While both Myers and Elder are right to concern themselves with the consumption habits of the rich on the one hand, and corporate and governmental policy makers on the other, it may be the small grassroots examples of successful alternatives that lead to large changes in policy. Poor village women in India have shown remarkable success in saving, accumulating, and managing very large sums of money, which many times they have employed in land and environment improvement, and in starting small businesses. The Indian government is now beginning to take such initiatives as a serious model for development and conservation.
Salleh’s exposition of eco-feminism points to the attitudinal roots hidden behind consumerism, uncaring control of others, and exploitation of people and Nature. The evils of society are not to be externalized, and responsibility foisted on to governments, the rich, or corporations. A paternalistic society has left the germ of such uncaring regard for others in the minds of all, and built a history on such exploitation. Would not all attempts at an environmental policy be only window dressing, unless we expose and do away with the roots of such behaviour? If Margaret Mead is intuitively right in saying that the recurrent problem in civilization is to find an adequate role for men, should we not re-direct their energies to seek balance with the nurturing role of women, in fact to find the ‘woman’ in themselves? Salleh, disposing of the current ‘culture of narcissism, asks for masculine norms of exploitative technical rationality to be replaced with the ‘nurturant’ consciousness women have, ‘coterminous with nature.’ Without including such a complete reordering of society, and its values, in the environmental agenda, can one hopefully talk about conserving the environment? It seems to me that the public consumer behaviour concerns of Myers and the governmental policy concerns of Elder are anchored by Salleh in the attitudes of each one of us, especially men, to each other and to Nature. External policies cannot succeed unless individuals wish to change.
Even without Arne Naess’s formidable command of Sanskrit and Latin, many can agree that individual perceptions of each other, and of Nature, may or can change only with a gradual process of identification with Nature, and its creative beauty. Hunters who start off collecting trophies end up enthralled just at the privilege of witnessing the casual beauty of wild things, of forests, and brooks. Jim Corbett, a legendary shikari of my grandfather’s time, has left several accounts of this transformation within himself. The creation stories of Canadian First Nations beautifully compel our understanding of how the forces of Nature participate in the shaping of human history. A pygmy when asked by Colin Turnbull (a British anthropologist who is famous for his studies of the pygmies) why he was dancing alone replied that he was not alone but dancing with the forest! At a mundane level, this identification by tribals with Nature translates into specific understanding of the role of biodiversity for maintaining human life, and several festivals celebrate such sustenance.
Being brought up in India, I do not find as exotic the concept of atman, or Consciousness, as immanent in all aspects of Nature, including ourselves at the very core of being. It is commonplace experience to hear elders talk about how self-realization is achieved through recognizing this in others, and in everything, and in parambhraman ( translatable as the Holy Spirit), which is and is not. But all this is just now hearsay for me; and I may never experience it. According to Hindu tradition, the paths to human liberation (moksha), to achieving this oneness with Consciousness that Naess relates to, lead thorough aesthetic(kama) appreciation; through economic (artha) activity; and through seeking justice(dharma). While environmentalists adopt different paths, Naees proposes the path of appreciating the spiritual beauty of Nature as central to his concept of deep ecology. This may not be as foreign to the nurturant nature of eco-feminism as Salleh makes out. Naess’s terms are rationalistic, and ‘male,’ as are the concepts, originally conceived by male Hindu gurus. But, Hindu religious tradition places as much emphasis on nurturant insight, as on its better known, male, individualist, transcendental philosophy. It is the Devi, the great goddess, who is most commonly worshipped by people in India; who is the beautiful, wealth-giving, just, and fertile nurturing source of all life and creation; who herself came into being by all the male gods putting their powers together. So, common practice may be wiser than the wisdom of gurus!
Narveson correctly criticizes the overstatements of environmentalists. The Erlichs’ Malthusian doom hypothesis has not proved true – so far. The resilience of Nature, the benefits of technology, and human capacities have staved off any crisis in development. However, we know of the historical decline of civilizations due to environmental factors, the disappearance of the Indus Valley culture being nowadays attributed to desertification. Sahelian crises deepen even today as sand dunes march on Timbuktu. If the fall-out of global warming is challenged, so are the health effects of smoking by the scientists employed by large tobacco corporations; whose trade flourishes as ever . Not only Narveson but also agri-biz scientists hold that DDT just sits harmlessly in people’s fat. While scientific debates must go on, environmentalists sound an early alarm, and it behooves us to care, care for the earth, and care for the people. In such caring we may find a higher quality of life- we may even find ourselves.
Richards, Janet R. The Sceptical Feminist. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
Soifer, Eldon. Ethical Issues. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999.
Articles
Lata Mani, “ Reckoning with Gujarat: Contemplating Tradition,” The Hindu, March 24, 2002.
Waxman, H.A.,” The Future of Global Tobacco Treaty Negotiations,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 346 (12), March 21, 2002.
P.S.Elder,” Legal Rights for Nature: The Wrong Answer to the Right(s) Question,” Ethical Issues, 98-106.
Elder, Ethical Issues, 104.
Ariel Kay Salleh, “ Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection,” Ethical Issues, 93-97.
Janet R. Richards, The Sceptical Feminist (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 220.
Salleh, Ethical Issues, 96-98.
Arne Naess, “ Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes,” Ethical Issues, 84-88.
Naess, Ethical Issues, 85-86.
Lata Mani,” Reckoning with Gujarat: Contemplating Tradition,” The Hindu, March 24, 2002. A spiritual feminist writer of India, Lata Mani says: It is only by embracing immanence that one is opened to the mystery of transcendence. Without such a simultaneous, conscious embrace of the inherently sacred nature of all aspects of the phenomenal world, the pursuit of transcendence is accompanied by indifference to things around us. Such a path takes us away from making the world the ground of our spiritual practice. In following it, we set aside the real challenge of human embodiment: the cultivation of dharmic free will in service to selflessness, compassion and peace.
Jan Narveson, “ Resources and Environmental Policy,” Ethical Issues, 107-124.
Narveson, Ethical Issues, 113.
H.A.Waxman, “ The Future of Global Tobacco Treaty Negotiations,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 346 (12), March 21, 2002, 936-939. A member of the House of Representatives of the U.S.Congress, Waxman points out the power of business to stymie protective legislation: Government officials around the world now recognize what industry executives have long understood — the tobacco business is fundamentally a global enterprise.1 The sale of raw leaf and finished products, the smuggling of cigarettes to evade taxes, and the effects of print and television advertising all cross national borders. The consequences of this enterprise are staggering — by the year 2020, an estimated 8.4 million people will die annually from tobacco-related diseases, more than two thirds of them in developing countries. If current trends continue, more people will perish annually from tobacco-related illness than from any single disease….The U.S. role will be central in negotiations on all these critical public health issues.
Unfortunately, efforts to improve the U.S. position face a daunting obstacle: the political might of the tobacco industry. As Richard Kluger wrote about past efforts to reduce tobacco use, in his Pulitzer Prize–winning history, Ashes to Ashes, "Big tobacco did not hesitate to dig into its deep pockets to resist the
social tide through the purchase and manipulation of the political process." These attempts to influence federal policymakers have continued to the present day. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2000 campaign, U.S. tobacco companies contributed $7.0 million to George W. Bush, Republican congressional candidates, and Republican party organizations and $1.4 million to Democratic candidates and organizations.
N.Myers, “ The Sinking Ark,” Ethical Issues ( Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999),125-133.
Myers, Ethical Issues, 127.
P.S.Elder,” Legal Rights for Nature: The Wrong Answer to the Right(s) Question,” Ethical Issues, 98-106.
Elder, Ethical Issues, 104.
Ariel Kay Salleh, “ Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection,” Ethical Issues, 93-97.
Janet R. Richards, The Sceptical Feminist (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 220.
Salleh, Ethical Issues, 96-98.
Arne Naess, “ Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes,” Ethical Issues, 84-88.
Naess, Ethical Issues, 85-86.
Lata Mani,” Reckoning with Gujarat: Contemplating Tradition,” The Hindu, March 24, 2002. A spiritual feminist writer of India, Lata Mani says: It is only by embracing immanence that one is opened to the mystery of transcendence. Without such a simultaneous, conscious embrace of the inherently sacred nature of all aspects of the phenomenal world, the pursuit of transcendence is accompanied by indifference to things around us. Such a path takes us away from making the world the ground of our spiritual practice. In following it, we set aside the real challenge of human embodiment: the cultivation of dharmic free will in service to selflessness, compassion and peace.
Jan Narveson, “ Resources and Environmental Policy,” Ethical Issues, 107-124.
Narveson, Ethical Issues, 113.
H.A.Waxman, “ The Future of Global Tobacco Treaty Negotiations,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 346 (12), March 21, 2002, 936-939. A member of the House of Representatives of the U.S.Congress, Waxman points out the power of business to stymie protective legislation: Government officials around the world now recognize what industry executives have long understood — the tobacco business is fundamentally a global enterprise.1 The sale of raw leaf and finished products, the smuggling of
cigarettes to evade taxes, and the effects of print and television advertising all cross national borders. The consequences of this enterprise are staggering — by the year 2020, an estimated 8.4 million people will die annually from tobacco-related diseases, more than two thirds of them in developing countries. If current trends continue, more people will perish annually from tobacco-related illness than from any single disease….The U.S. role will be central in negotiations on all these critical public health issues.
Unfortunately, efforts to improve the U.S. position face a daunting obstacle: the political might of the tobacco industry. As Richard Kluger wrote about past efforts to reduce tobacco use, in his Pulitzer Prize–winning history, Ashes to Ashes, "Big tobacco did not hesitate to dig into its deep pockets to resist the
social tide through the purchase and manipulation of the political process." These attempts to influence federal policymakers have continued to the present day. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2000 campaign, U.S. tobacco companies contributed $7.0 million to George W. Bush, Republican congressional candidates, and Republican party organizations and $1.4 million to Democratic candidates and organizations.
