Changes in
Thought and Policy for a Better Environment
Justin Garrett-Kraus
For PHI 3033, UCF-Cocoa
Campus
Term Paper
The issue of global sustainability is a tough topic
to cover, in that there is more than one viable solution to the problem(s). This
is a problem to be solved with cooperation among a large variety of disciplines.
It is a question that should be examined by environmental scientists, political
scientists, sociologists, economists, ethnobotanists, religious leaders, etc.
There is no easy answer to the problem but rather many different paths to take.
From an environmental perspective, the habits and
lifestyles of a majority of Americans are killing the environment on many
different levels. Once pristine wilderness is now fragmented, cut, slashed,
burned, and developed. The great Rocky Mountain Range, which was once a
migration route for many species of animals, such as elk, caribou, and an
important keystone species, the grizzly bear, has been fragmented by roads for
business (namely real estate development) and timber harvest. Now, all that
remains of the grizzlies’ habitat, which used to extend from
The water supply of the
“Mercury pollution is a serious health threat
to Americans, especially children,” said NRDC staff attorney Jon Devine. “That’s
who the Bush administration should keep in mind when developing its mercury
policies, not the polluters that stand to benefit from weaker regulations.”
These are only a few of the issues of the
environmental degradation we face in today’s society. We must take action in
one form or another to stop the destruction of our environment. We can either
sit and wait for catastrophe or we can educate the masses to move towards a
more biocentric view of the environment. A change in our view towards the
environment in
There is a paradox in environmental issues, as well
as environmental policy. The remainder of this essay shall deal with the means
of changing public policy and public attitude and beliefs. I intend to show the
different ways to draw concern and attention from people to environmental
issues, and how this concern and change can shape society into a civilization
that can work in harmony with nature, as opposed to the current view which has
lead to systematically destroying and poisoning our world.
Definition
of Sustainability.
Sustainability has quite a broad definition. The
path towards environmental sustainability of this nation has been the debate of
many economists and environmentalists over the years. Here is Webster’s take on
it:
Sustain: Function-- transitive verb
1:
to give support or relief to; 2: to
supply with sustenance: nourish; 3:
keep up, prolong; 4: to support the
weight of: prop, also: to carry or withstand (a weight or pressure); 5: to buoy up <sustained by hope>; 6a:
to bear up under b: suffer, undergo
<sustained heavy losses>; 7a: to support as true, legal, or just b: to allow or admit as valid <the court sustained the motion>; 8: to support by adequate proof:
confirm <testimony that sustains our
contention>
Sustainable: Function- adjective
1:
capable of being sustained; 2a: of,
relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the
resource is not depleted or permanently damaged <sustainable techniques>, <sustainable agriculture>; b: of or relating to a lifestyle
involving the use of sustainable methods <sustainable
society>
As you can see by the definition of sustain, there are
quite a few meanings for it and they aren’t all related. For this paper though,
I shall follow the second definition of sustainable.
The definition of sustainable, when dealing with
environmental issues, is not just using natural resources the most efficient
way possible, but also knowing when to stop. One can log the forests, cut them,
fragment them, and draw out their use for centuries, and although this may seem
to be efficient use of the materials, it is not maintaining sustainability,
environmentally speaking.
Other things also rely on those forests and this is
one of the paradoxes of environmental preservation. People need supplies and
sustenance but at what point should the human race cut back and make sacrifices
for all the other creatures and their habitats? At our current state of
affairs, this question of sacrifice would seem completely absurd to most people
in America.
A Basis of the
Problems with Current Society and Proposed Solutions.
One of the biggest problems, not just with
environmental policy, but all environmental issues, is our blatant
anthropocentrism. This comes from centuries of believing that we are the
masters of this earth and all is here for us to do as we please. The history of
this problem, I think, can best be summed up by Lynn White, Jr. in his essay
entitled The Historical Roots of Our
Ecological Crisis. He says:
What did Christianity tell
people about their relations with the environment?
While many of the world’s
mythologies provide stories of creation, Greco-Roman mythology was singularly
incoherent in this respect. Like Aristotle, the intellectuals of the ancient
West denied that the visible world had had a beginning. Indeed, the idea of a
beginning was impossible in the framework of their cyclical notion of time. In
sharp contrast, Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of time
as nonrepetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation. By gradual
stages a loving and all-powerful God had created light and darkness, the
heavenly bodies, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes.
Finally, God created Adam and, as an afterthought, Eve to keep man from being
lonely. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them.
God planned all of this explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the
physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes.
This view of domination over nature has lead to
twisted policies based solely on the perceived needs of the human race.
RIGHTS AS A
HINDERANCE
Our anthropocentric view towards nature all draws
from our views of rights and who/what has rights. As you may know, rights have
come a long way since Aristotle. Women have found a place in society as a
functional part of the system. They have gone from being harborers of babies
with responsibilities of taking care of life at the home to being full-fledged
voting and working members of this society as well. Minorities’ rights have come
a long way too. From the dominating white male view of control of everything
except themselves we now see minorities as a functional and essential part of
society, which indeed they are and should not be seen as any different than
anybody else.
In this country rights are of the utmost concern.
If you ask the average person if they think an ant
has rights, they would probably laugh in your face. But if you ask him if a dog
or, more closely related, a chimpanzee, who shares 99% of the same chromosomes
a human does, has rights he would probably have to think about that. But even
if he says yes, does it assert rights to the actual animal, the species, or
merely represent a civic human duty towards them to relieve pain and suffering.
The ability to feel pain and suffering has long been
a debate of rights within the school of ethics. Does the ability to feel pain
and the ability to suffer give an “object” rights? Here for further explanation
I turn to Peter Singer’s All Animals
If a being suffers, there
can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into
consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of
equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—in
so far as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being. If a being is not
capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is
nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience (using the
term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, short hand for the capacity to
suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of
concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some
characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an
arbitrary way. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color?
This is a good example of the ideals that should be
incorporated into our, as a society’s, standpoint on rights. There are,
however, problems with Singer’s argument. From a broader perspective, some
would say, the relieving of suffering from all creatures would inherently be
going against all “laws” of nature. Things suffer not only at the hands of
humans but other predators as well. This would be like convincing a lion to eat
grass as opposed to gazelle. This brings up the issue of what rights differing
creatures have. But Singer clarifies this with an appropriate analogy:
Many feminists hold that
women have the right to an abortion on request. It does not follow that since
these people are campaigning for equality between men and women they must
support the right of men to have abortions too. Since a man cannot have an
abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since a pig can’t
vote, it is meaningless to talk of its right to vote.
A SOLUTION:
We are now left to change the common view towards
the rights of the environment. This change in our view of rights is a step
towards developing a respect for the environment and development of
environmentally sound policy. If we could attribute rights to animals, trees,
or even whole ecosystems, the balance of power between man and nature could
level out. If one could establish legal rights for an area of wilderness, all factors effecting it
would have to be taken into account and decided, scientifically but rationally,
if it were benefiting or harming the area at hand. This view of land would, in
a sense, demand respect for the environment, or better put, demand respect from the environment by forcing society
to see how it has negatively effected the environment.
Rights have come so far in this country as to give
people with mental disorders and ‘insane’ people rights. Of course, they have
the basic rights to life but even in a judicial sense they have the right to be
represented by someone who can speak for them, an attorney. Why, then I ask, do
creatures of other species not have a legal right to live and have the
necessities of life, or representation at the least?
PRIVATE
PROPERTY AS A HINDRANCE
Private property has been a fundamental part of
western civilization throughout our, principally white, European history. You
have the right to own land and that land and everything on it is yours, and you
can defend it to the death. If you don’t want something on your land, you can
get rid of it. If you have something valuable on your land, you can sell it.
Again this shows our blatant anthropocentrism.
Although an idealist in a way, the revolutionary
French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon put it best when he asked the question “What
is property?” and answered it with, “Property is theft!” He believed that an
abolition of states as well as currency and, most relevant, an abolition of
state and individual property would be the best government reform, being that
the “good-will” of men would guide the necessary reform.
Through his idealist stance that good-will can guide
necessary reform, he makes a wise point when suggesting that property leads to
exploitation of resources when one puts legal claim over it. Once legal control
over land is acquired the individual, state, or corporation has free reign over
its resources and in turn monopolizes its use.
In sharp contrast to Proudhon’s theory of property,
Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons
points out that exploitation over a commons, or group public property, will
occur due to peoples desire to increase individual profit. If a farmer can bring
one more sheep to graze, that’s one more sheep he’ll have to reap the benefits
from.
A SOLUTION:
Exploitation of resources can occur whether the land
is owned or not, but the key to solving the problem of exploitation is
regulation. Modern economists who favor privatization of goods follow the
theory of economic modernization which implies that: business will regulate
itself based on demand and availability and regulations will encourage more
efficient growth.
But, as we have seen in the
In an article entitled, A Breach of Trust: The Radioactive Colonization of Native North America,
Ward Churchill explains how the
“formally and unilaterally [assigned] itself ‘plenary’—that
is, absolute and unchallengeable—power over all native lands, lives, and
natural resources within the area of forty-eight contiguous states of North
America, as well as Alaska, Hawaii and other external possessions such as Guam
and ‘American’ Samoa. The only curb upon the imagined prerogatives of the
He goes on to explain how the
This type of situation shows the need to eliminate
private property and increase regulation of its use by local authorities. UN
official Maurice Strong, a long time outspoken member known for his fight for
new, more effective environmental regulation, wrote in an article for the
magazine The Futurist,
“I am a great believer in the principle of subsidiary[subsidiarity?]—that
government is most effective when it is carried out at the level closest to the
people its decisions affect. Many of the powers and functions that national
governments have taken on in recent years could be more logically and
effectively performed at the state, local, or in some cases regional levels.”
INCREMENTALISM
AS A HINDRANCE
Americans are wary of making changes to policy that
could substantially alter their way of life. The American attitude and
uncertainty leads to flawed and fragmented government through incrementalism.
Incrementalism is a fatal flaw in this representative democracy. In this fast
paced world, with scientific breakthroughs and
Incremental theory is summarized by Zachary A. Smith
in his book The Environmental Policy
Paradox as follows:
1. Only some of the possible alternatives for dealing
with a problem are considered by the decision maker. Either by virtue of
limitations on information, ability, time, or because of the desire to achieve
a consensus, a comprehensive evaluation of all alternatives is not undertaken.
2. The alternatives considered and the option ultimately
selected will differ only slightly or incrementally from existing policy.
3. Only a limited number of consequences for each
alterative are evaluated.
4. The problem being evaluated is continually redefined
with adjustments being made to make the problem more manageable.
A SOLUTION:
To put a stop to these feeble attempts to change our
policy, we must stop being afraid of change and make the necessary changes no
matter how drastic they need to be. The environment is in a dire situation and
it may take massive reform to get back on a path that will lead us into an
environmentally sound society with positive green policy. Government needs to
remain unbiased and cut connections with industry, which has been the major
factor in debate over green policy. Like Rachel Carson exposing the cover-ups
and lies within the chemical industry, we need to break open the government and
expose its true ugly face. When people lose faith in their government and see
it’s only doing what’s best for the richest 1%, then they are more likely to
cleanse the cabinets and push for better policy.
ATTITUDE AS A
HINDRANCE
In today’s society people steer clear of questions that
tend to have uncomfortable or controversial answers. This comes out of fear
that they might actually have a differing opinion. Norms are what people live
their life through. You are judged by standards set and these standards are the
norms. Boundaries are set, be it actual or implied, to situations and
reactions. If you go beyond the boundaries you may fall into a category you don’t
want to fall into.
An example would be of a Roman Catholic who is asked
about his stance on abortion. He may actually agree that a woman should have
the option to abort a newly developed fetus but he may tend to avoid the answer
to avoid falling out of ‘the box.’ People
are social animals and need the support of others, and if a differing opinion
alienates him/her from the rest, then they must either change their opinion,
the opinions of everyone else, or join a differently thinking group. Of course,
there are exceptions to everything, but a look at history will show that people
generally follow the flock.
The desire to improve upon oneself spiritually and
mentally is stunted by rampant consumerism and materialism. Children and adults
alike are bombarded with what I’ll call corporate propaganda. Materialism is at
the heart of the problem. People want more and more and tend to relate success
with money. When paper money is all they see, they think we need more paper for
more money and only see success in life as fulfilling their own interests.
Laurence H. Tribe makes a good point when he says, “[I]f human interests only
are taken into account, the replacement of natural trees by plastic ones would
often be justified.”
A SOLUTION:
A solution that may seem simple is to set the flock
in the right direction. Changing the attitudes of a majority is no easy task
and takes extreme measures, be they positive or negative. Things like education
and reform only take a society so far; a whole new viewpoint or whole new
government is sometimes needed to correct a problem, especially problems as big
as our environmental ones.
There are positive and negative ways to go about
fixing our attitude towards the environment, or should I say avoiding an
environmental crisis. Positive ways would be education, policy reform, or even
using an isolated but sustainable society as an example of an environmentally
sound way of living. Even a new religion could be a positive choice, though it
definitely could have negative effects, seeing as how today’s churches have an
iron grip on society’s moral basis.
Some negative ways of changing our currently
destructive path would be: environmental crisis propaganda (be it slightly
exaggerated or flat out lies), a complete overthrow of our current government
and replacement with a new one, or just sitting back and watching humanity kill
the world and itself along with it. These, of course, are just temporary ways
of changing the attitudes of the general public.
Turning to the more positive, education is an
essential part of changing the public’s opinion about issues and their ideals
in general. An informed public isn’t just necessary for change; it’s a powerful
machine of change. If the public knows about and fully understands the issues
and problems at hand, it alone has the power to make the necessary changes. The
problem is getting the public informed and educated on the issues.
The first thing that needs to be done is education
of the voting public, as in adults, men and women alike, rich and poor. The
children come next. The most obvious of methods for informing the voting public
is mass media bombardment. Television and the Internet are so used in today’s
society; it is hard to meet someone who uses neither of these. There are
already shows, Internet sites, and people out there who are crusading for the
environmental cause but the question isn’t if they’re there but how many people
actually see, visit, or talk about these issues.
What needs to be done is to
have an outrageous ad campaign for the environment. Here both positive and
negative aspects of change can be used. No matter which path one chooses there
is going to be a sense of fear arising in the public due to the nature of the
material. The environment is in serious trouble, but not everybody knows how
serious. When they find out, there is going to be, no doubt, a sense of fear
and urgency.
The problem is determining
how much fear you want to instill, because you don’t want people to fear losing
their lives to a collapsing environment. You want them to love the environment
for its beauty, then decide to take action on the premise that the environment
is beautiful and we are a part of it, not a commander and conqueror of it. But
sometimes fear is the key to change and even revolution, as Lenin or Engels
might say.
The point of the propaganda
bombardment is to get people to act out against those who are degrading the
environment and to put into action policy that would take the power away from
those large-scale, faceless corporations who are after profits and growth at
any cost. Money is power in this society and that idea needs to be changed to
unity and numbers equal power. That is the essence of revolt and revolution,
that those few in power have too much and that it needs to be redistributed, to
take the power from the robber barons.
All this change in beliefs
and habits won’t come easy and might require a whole new religion or another
massive reformation in the likes of Luther and Calvin. People, in essence, are
afraid of change, or better stated, the unknown, and radical change is
definitely a step into the unknown, most of the time. But an effective way of
changing religious beliefs is exposing fallibility in their doctrines.
The essence of the human is
fallibility, which is due to free will. We, as humans, have the ability to
change our views and beliefs when the falsities of our beliefs are exposed, or
the effects of our systems of beliefs are found to be damaging to something.
Again, the key to the solution of this problem is education. Once we see how
much havoc our twisted and selfish beliefs have caused, a reformation is bound
to follow, such as rebellion against penances for sins, leading to a whole new
outlook on Christianity.
Another way to change the
views of the masses is an overthrow of current leaders or government and
replacing it with a new one. This is a negative way to make a positive turn in
behavior. A good public speaker can rally the masses to just about anything. Just
look at Hitler and Stalin. A dictator has the potential to rewrite policy as he
pleases. Socrates said, through Plato’s Diologues,
that the best form of government would be a philosopher king, or noble
dictator; someone who knows the people, the issues, and has the might, courage,
and power to make a change.
Although the dictator path
seems quite unlikely in
The last way to change
beliefs would be just sit back and wait for crisis, being that
EDUCATION AS A
HINDRANCE
Today’s schools are based around the idea of general
education and equal education in the developing years. This leads to teachers
having to teach a large group of students with a broad range of capabilities,
be it physical, mental, etc., and in essence have to teach to those with the
least amount of “capabilities.” Boldly stated, they have to teach to the dumb
ones and the others are left to twiddle their thumbs while the others catch up.
Then, in their later years, they are forced to go through
specialized schools, which push them through, as capital, to go straight into
the job market. Throughout this process they are taught that education is
beneficial because it will provide for you in the job market. But, education
isn’t just for job placement, it is for bettering oneself and pushing one's
own interests to all boundaries, to learn not just facts, but learn about
oneself and the world as a whole.
A SOLUTION:
The big step is the
education of the youth and educational reform for future generations. For this,
a reworking of the current educational system needs to occur. We must abolish
the wall between religious ideals and education, because education is for
bettering oneself, and one needs faith and understanding to do that; in the
sense that a deeper understanding of the world comes not only from scientific
fact, but something beyond explanation or something only a completely
non-scientific explanation can convey.
The education system needs
to be based on the individual needs of each child. Students shouldn’t be rated,
or graded, on the existing scales (i.e. A,B,C,D,F), but rather should be
evaluated on their understanding of the subject, because you either understand
it or you don’t. Classes need to be limited and more open-ended, like a forum
of sorts. Children should do more independent research on subjects they find
interesting and should teach each other under the guidance of the teachers.
This would require better
libraries, better materials, and most importantly, smaller classes consisting
of equally able children. To be blunt, a segregation of children who have
similar interests and capabilities, but at the same time allow the children to
move freely from one program to the other to learn at their own pace and their
own desires. The children are the future of our government and economy and
might be the saviors of the environment.
POPULATION AS
A HINDRANCE
The population of this
country, and the world for that matter, has, without a doubt, skyrocketed in
the past century, with population rates increasing exponentially. This has a
definite negative impact on the environment, in that the rates of consumption
and the need for materials and capital increase with the population, just as
the growth of the economy has a dramatic impact on the environment.
In this sense, economic growth is not always good. A
sustainable economy is much harder to maintain than a constantly growing and
contracting one. This is the treadmill of production. When the economy grows,
everything grows with it (i.e. consumer habits, prices, amount of capital
needed) and doesn’t move forward, it just gets bigger and bigger. And with this
ever increasing economy, externalities, or external costs, grow more and more,
that is, the side-effects of production that aren’t taken into account in the
price of the goods produced.
A SOLUTION:
Birth control and education
on the issue is a must for curbing this unbelievably high growth rate.
Immigration is an issue only when looked at on a localized forum, I believe.
Government can cut immigration rates dramatically and maintain a zero-growth
rate (births equal deaths), but the ever-increasing population rates in the
rest of the world will still have an enormous impact on the environment and, in
turn, will have an effect on our own country. This is why I see population
control as a global issue that must be dealt with by all nations equally. A
definite change in the beliefs of all nations is needed to curb growth rates.
CONCLUSION.
I have tried to touch on as
many ways to change public belief and environmental policy as I could, while
still staying within the confines of reason, for the most part, though I may
have put a little too much faith in humanity still. Overall, there is much
change needed to views toward nature and societal structure in this country if
we are to preserve our environment and maintain, at least, a national
sustainability.
Bibliography
1. Bass, Rick, The Book of
Yaak. Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
2. Schmidtz, David &
Elizabeth Willot, Environmental Ethics.
3. Smith, Zachary A., The
Environmental Policy Paradox. 4th Ed. Prentice Hall, 2004.
4. Strong, Maurice, The
Global Struggle to Save the Environment, The Futurist, Sept-Oct 2001.