A Casebook in Environmental Ethics

SECOND EDITION

Christine E. Gudorf
and
James E. Huchingson

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PRESS / WASHINGTON, D.C.

Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C. www.press.georgetown.edu
䉷 2010 by Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book
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Gudorf, Christine E.
Boundaries : a casebook in environmental ethics / Christine E. Gudorf and James
E. Huchingson.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-636-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Environmental ethics—Case studies. 2. Environmental
sciences—Philosophy—Case studies. I. Huchingson, James Edward, 1940–
II. Title.
ge42.g83 2010
179⬘.1—dc22
2009024817

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To our families
 Contents

Introduction ix

PA RT I
Environmental Ethics: The Range of Engagement
one Theory in Environmental Ethics 3

two We’re All in This . . . Alone: The Individual and

Community 29

PAR T I I
Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

three For Ecological Health or Profit? The POPs

Elimination Treaty 49
four Heart Thieves: Preserving Endangered Ecosystems or
Endangered Cultures in Madagascar 68
five Must Java Have No Forests? Nature Preserves and
Human Population Pressures 83
six Buried Alive: Future Generations and Permanent
Underground Disposal of Nuclear Waste 101
seven Water: Economic Commodity and Divine Gift 121

eight Guardian Angels of Angel Oak: To Till or Keep 142

vii
viii Contents

PAR T I I I
Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem
nine River Run or River Ruined: Hydropower or Free-
Flowing Rivers? 163
ten Nature Creates Deserts Too: Addressing
Desertification in China 181
eleven Rewilding: Restoration of Degraded Ecosystems 196
twelve Planning for Climate Change 211

PA RT IV
Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation
thirteen Improving on Natural Variation? Genetically
Modified Foods 227
fourteen Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet: Hunting and
Human Presence in Nature 242
fifteen Understanding Xenotransplants: Crossbreeding
Humans or Advanced Domestication of Animals? 259
Appendix: Using Environmental Case Studies in the
Classroom 285

Index 297
 Introduction

T he first edition of this book began as a conversation on the

foundational nature of environmental ethics—by which the
authors mean that virtually every area of ethics today involves tak-
ing account of the claims of the environment and that, conversely, environ-
mental ethics involves virtually all other existing areas of ethics. At one level
the penetration of the environment into the ethics of public policy debate
has been clear: We are not surprised to see government offices, the business
boardroom, or farmers involved in debates about environmental regulation
and ethics. The newspapers and television and radio news are full of such
coverage. Nor are we surprised by the expansion of personal ethics among
much of the population to include issues such as recycling, not littering,
installing appliances (washers, toilets, showers) that conserve water, driving
vehicles with high gas mileage, not wearing animal fur or using products
utilizing animal testing, and vegetarianism. All of these concerns are well
represented among university students, as well as among much of the gen-
eral public.
Earlier casebooks in environmental ethics—such as Watersheds: Classic
Cases in Environmental Ethics by Lisa H. Newton and Catherine K. Dill-
ingham—strongly linked environmental, public policy, and business ethics,
focusing on issues in environmental politics that became major media
events: Chernobyl, Bhopal, Love Canal, the Exxon Valdez, and others. But
technological change has brought other areas of human life into contention
with environmental ethics and broken down existing boundaries between
ethical subfields. Technologies that allow humans to consider raiding ani-
mals for replacement organs or that create genetically modified crops and
allow scientists to ‘‘restore’’ wilderness all raise anew two issues: to what

ix
x Introduction

extent humans are a part of the environment (rather than only the subject
that conceptualizes it) and the appropriate limits of human intervention in
the environment.
Not all of the cases in this book revolve directly around technology, how-
ever. The debate about hunting, for example, is somewhat predicated on the
increased power and accuracy of guns and bows—which some critics argue
make hunting more a slaughter than a competition between hunter and ani-
mal—but depends much more on new and evolving human conceptions of
human nature and human civilization. Perhaps what is pushing new per-
spectives on hunting today is not so much new technologies for hunting but
new technologies that have made most citizens into urban dwellers whose
closest association with other species is their relationship with household
pets.
This second edition of our casebook not only includes updates of cases
that were retained, which in some instances entailed major revisions, but
also includes four new cases. Two of the new cases take up current issues
in environmental ethics (water privatization and governmental efforts at
mitigating global climate change), but the other two focus on what in our
experience are some fundamental obstacles that teachers of environmental
ethics encounter in the classroom. These questions take the form of ‘‘Why
should we care?’’ ‘‘Why should I put the interests of animals or habitats or
future human beings ahead of my personal interests?’’ ‘‘What are the values
that would oblige us to conserve the natural environment?’’ And for many,
‘‘What is the basis of this moral obligation that is not part of the moral
tradition we inherited from our religions?’’ For some students, and certainly
those in the fields of economics and politics, these are central questions.
The original decision to name the book Boundaries resulted from our
recognition of three different kinds of boundaries involved in the cases
described here. The first is the boundary between fields of ethics. This type
of boundary became most apparent in the xenotransplant case (chapter 15),
which is as fully relevant to medical and bioethics as it is to environmental
ethics. The case about genetically modified organism (GMO) crops (chapter
13) traditionally would have been a business ethics question; until very
recently, the case about rewilding (chapter 11) also would have been cast as
a business ethics case—the issue being whether business has any responsibil-
ity for restoring damaged or altered environments.
A second type of boundary is the that between humans and the rest of
the environment. Should humans understand themselves as a part of the
environment or as the subject that both conceptualizes and stewards the
Introduction xi

environment? This issue, of course, is critical in environmental ethics, and

it takes many different shapes in these cases. How should the needs of
humans count against the needs of other species or individual members of
other species? Against the habitats of multiple species? Are humans merely
‘‘in’’ nature, or are they truly ‘‘of’’ nature?
A third type of boundary at stake in these cases is the boundary between
what is and what could or should be in the environment. What does it mean
to ‘‘preserve’’ the environment? If nature is dynamic, how can we know
what it should look like in the future? In the case of desertification in China,
for example (chapter 10), how can we know how much of the desert was
caused by natural forces and how much by human abuse and overuse? Fre-
quently it seems that we lack adequate data on which to pursue any sound
projects or policy. We lack the historical data to restore the environment to
the shape it had before massive human intervention—assuming, of course,
that the appropriate way to understand the environment is entirely without
human impact. Not only is nature not static, but we do not know where it
is going. If humans really are a part of nature, then our impact on it also is
‘‘natural.’’ To say that our impact on nature or the environment is ‘‘natural’’
is not necessarily to say that our impact is good, however; humans could be
the part of the environment that is responsible for killing all the rest. We
need to use our understanding of ourselves as part of the environment to
guide us in restraining our impact on the rest of the environment in ways
that allow for sustainability. A major problem is that we do not have
enough historical data to allow us to project the direction or pace of natural
change—for example, in the size of various animal populations relative to
each other—even if we could separate destructive human impact over the
past few hundred years.
We could forget the idea of preservation as the center of environmental-
ism and stick with sustainability instead, but we lack so much data about
so many aspects of our world that what is sustainable is extremely difficult
to foresee. The principle of sustainability allows us to rule out some technol-
ogies—such as fossil fuel dependence, for example—but it doesn’t tell us
much about population levels to aim for. The (sustainable) carrying capacity
of the Earth is variously estimated by reputable scientists to be between 2
billion and 30 billion humans. When one considers that the present popula-
tion is 6 billion, either we need to reduce the present population by 66
percent or we could plan to increase it fivefold—and one could defend either
as sustainable. Boundary lines are indeed in question.
xii Introduction

Yet we are not of the opinion that the attempt to draw boundary lines
should be abandoned. The questions we treat here are vital. The significance
of these cases is that they push in the direction of drawing tentative bound-
ary lines where we can and drawing boundary zones—within which we
expect lines to be drawn in the future—in areas in which it is premature to
draw even tentative lines today.
We think that this exercise of participating in the social project of concep-
tualizing the human place in the environment, the understanding of the
environment that should guide both public policy and individual lifestyle,
and the specific tasks of sustaining the biosphere is an exciting and unprece-
dented opportunity for students and an exciting responsibility for instructors.
 PA RT I

Environmental Ethics
The Range of Engagement
 one

Theory in
Environmental Ethics

P hilosopher holmes rolston iii makes an important point

about environmental ethics when he writes, ‘‘Environmental ethics
stretches classical ethics to the breaking point. . . . [It] stands on a
frontier, as radically theoretical as applied.’’1 By ‘‘classical ethics’’ Rolston
means systems of morality that apply only to humans; such ethical systems
are anthropocentric. Environmental ethics is not necessarily limited to
humans, however. It attempts to expand the circle of moral concern beyond
the human species to include at the very least other mammals, perhaps
lower animals and plants, and, finally, even entire ecosystems.
Classical anthropocentric moral theories are not designed to address or
resolve issues that go beyond the narrow circle of human life. These theories
can be stretched to include some nonhumans—mostly of the ‘‘higher’’
sort—because such species share important and morally relevant features
with ours, but they appear absurd when they are applied to plants or ecosys-
tems. The frontier dimension of classical ethics is limited to areas of human
life in which advances in science and technology have created new situations
that require attention. This is most obvious in medicine, where novel moral
questions are raised frequently in genetics, organ transplantation, and other
new fields. Yet even here, moral deliberation often remains within the circle
of human life.
In contrast, environmental ethics stands on the frontier. It must build
whole new arguments to justify and explain why nonhumans should count
morally and how conflicts in the environment should be resolved. The theo-
retical (why) and the applied (how) are not easily separated. Before one can

3
4 Environmental Ethics

address the dilemma of saving an endangered species or saving jobs that

would be lost if that species were protected, for example, the environmental
ethicist must answer the question: Why should endangered species count
morally at all? Reflection on that question may go far in determining the
shape of the resolution to the dilemma. No wonder, then, that Rolston cau-
tions us so strongly. ‘‘Environmental ethics requires risk,’’ he warns. ‘‘It
explores poorly charted terrain, where one can easily get lost.’’2 Heeding
Rolston’s advice, it might be a good idea to orient ourselves in terms of the
major moral approaches to environmental problems.

Anthropocentric Ethics

With few notable exceptions, the Western tradition in philosophy and reli-
gion is predominately anthropocentric in its claim that moral value is to be
found primarily, if not exclusively, in humans. It is possible to argue that,
although humans are the most valuable beings, some value may be found in
nonhumans as well. In practice, this weak form of anthropocentrism differs
little from the strong form, which insists that humans alone have moral
value. In cases in which the interests of humans conflict with those of non-
humans, the human interests usually trump those of the nonhuman—just as
they would in cases in which humans are valuable in the strong sense.
Given the long anthropocentric tradition in Western philosophy and the-
ology, it comes as no surprise that conventional approaches to making
moral judgments (also known as moral theories) focus entirely on other
humans as the proper objects of our moral attention.

Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a moral theory that originally was intended for deciding
human moral issues alone. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. Its
advocates argue that the proper way to judge the rightness or wrongness of
an action is to assess the consequences of the action if it were to occur.
Consequences that result in more harm than benefit are judged morally
wrong, and those that bring about more benefit than harm are morally
right. This approach is easily recognized as a form of cost-benefit analysis.
Most actions produce mixed moral results: a combination of harms (costs)
and benefits. For an act to be judged as morally right or desirable, the only
criterion that must be satisfied is that it should produce a net balance of
Theory in Environmental Ethics 5

good consequences over harmful ones. Ethical egoism and altruism are
forms of consequentialism. An egoist, on the one hand, strives to take only
those actions that bring about the greatest benefit and least harm to the
egoist alone. The altruist, on the other hand, prefers actions that bring
about the greatest benefit and least harm to others, exclusive of the altruist.
Few embrace either egoism or altruism as a preferred moral philosophy
by which to live. We look instead for an ethical approach that includes both
our own interests and the interests of others. The Golden Rule (‘‘Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you’’) is an example of this inclusive
approach, and it does offer powerful intuitive guidance. Many philoso-
phers, however, prefer a more exact and less subjective consequentialist
standard. This standard was provided by two nineteenth-century philoso-
phers—Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill—who developed a version of
consequentialism that satisfies this criterion of inclusivity. Utilitarianism, as
this position came to be known, requires that the good and bad conse-
quences of an action be taken into account for everyone who is affected.
Hence the principle of utility: Always act to bring about the greatest good
for the greatest number of persons who are affected by the action.
It is not enough for utilitarians to speak of benefits and harms. They also
must offer some way of determining what is good and what is harmful. One
widely accepted approach is simply to define a harm as that which brings
about suffering and pain and a good as that which brings about pleasure
and happiness. Although pain has no intrinsic value (we never seek it for its
own sake), it may have instrumental value. It is instructive; no child will-
ingly touches a hot stove twice. Pleasure, however, has obvious intrinsic
value; it is to be sought. It has considerable instrumental value as well. It
could be argued that, without the pleasure associated with sex, the act of
procreation, which is necessary for the perpetuation of many species, would
be a lot rarer than it is. Although both pain and pleasure may serve as means
to human well-being, only pleasure is valuable as an end in itself. Thus pain
is an intrinsic moral evil, and pleasure is an intrinsic moral good. Now the
utilitarian has a standard for judging the moral worth of the consequences
of an action. If the consequences, on balance, bring about more pleasure
than pain, the action is morally right. If they bring about more pain than
pleasure, it is morally wrong. Experience teaches us that one individual’s
happiness may be another individual’s unhappiness, because people’s
desires or preferences vary considerably. This fact presents no difficulty for
the utilitarian, who simply alters the principle of utility slightly to read,
6 Environmental Ethics

‘‘Always act to maximize satisfaction of personal preferences for the great-

est number of individuals affected by the action.’’
Because utilitarians seek only to maximize the net utility or good of an
action, they are willing to accept some harm as well. For example, situating
a polluting industry adjacent to a community of color violates principles of
social justice. But the cheap land at that location is an attraction to the
industry in the first place, and most citizens—including those who live in
the affected community—will benefit from taxes paid and jobs provided by
the polluting firm. The economic goods will be distributed widely, but the
health problems and other harms (the costs of having the industry in town)
will be borne disproportionately by the poor and powerless few. Neverthe-
less, by the standards of cost-benefit calculations, the utilitarian can claim
to have maximized the sum of benefits over harms and thus to have done
the right thing.
As traditionally applied, utilitarianism clearly is anthropocentric. That
is, the principle of utility limits the class of beneficiaries of an action to
humans alone; the greatest good should come to the greatest number of
persons. Because the happiness and pleasure of humans is the only intrin-
sic value for utilitarians, arguments for the interests of nonhumans rest
exclusively on their instrumental contribution to this value. The continued
existence of an endangered species—particularly if it is not attractive, char-
ismatic, or valuable to humans for other social or historical reasons—would
be difficult to justify on grounds other than hypothetical arguments about
its potential contribution to medicine or the gene pool of economically pro-
ductive domestic species. A small, endangered flower whose vanishing habi-
tat is a gleam in the eye of a land developer will have little chance before
the court of utilitarian judgment.

Deontology
Utilitarianism judges the moral appropriateness of an act indirectly by
assessing the harms and benefits of its consequences. Another major
approach to moral judgment examines the act directly, giving no attention
to consequences. This position is called deontology (from the Greek for
‘‘binding duty’’), or Kantianism—after Immanuel Kant, its most persuasive
philosophical advocate. Binding duty is an accurate description because this
theory requires that to be declared morally good an action must satisfy,
fulfill, or conform to some absolute, universal, and unconditional standard
usually expressed as a duty—an obligation (that which one must always do)
Theory in Environmental Ethics 7

or a prohibition (that which one must never do). ‘‘Always tell the truth’’ or
‘‘never tell a lie’’ are good examples of the duty to be honest.
Where are we to find these duties? Their sources are numerous. Such
sources can include religion: The Ten Commandments come readily to
mind, as do Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and the Hindu Law of Manu.
They also may be derived from intuitions associated with our conscience or
extracted from the God-given structure of creation (an approach known as
natural law theory). Kant, a leading figure of the Enlightenment, preferred
the authority of reason to that of revelation. The definitive feature of per-
sons, he maintained, is that they are autonomous—that is, free and rational.
Because they are rational, they are fully capable of determining those uni-
versal duties that are binding on all rational persons. Moreover, because
I—as a free and rational person—have duties to you, you—as a free and
rational person—have equivalent duties to me. We should never lie to one
another or to any other person. This reciprocal moral relationship gives rise
to the symmetry of duties and rights. I have a duty to treat you in accor-
dance with the same standards (rights) by which you have a duty to treat
me. This symmetry leads Kant to the conclusion that persons should never
be treated merely as objects—as means only—but always as rational sub-
jects: as ends in themselves.
In its Kantian form, deontology qualifies as a very anthropocentric
approach to ethics. Only beings who are capable of reasoning out duties
and acting freely upon them—that is, human beings—qualify as recipients
for the duties of others, as the bearers of rights. Because it is obvious to
Kant that no nonhumans possess these qualifying features, they are denied
any direct moral standing. By ‘‘direct’’ Kant is referring to ends, not just
means. An animal may have indirect moral standing in that by harming an
animal (your beloved pet dog, for example) I may indirectly violate some
right owed to you—perhaps the right of property. The dog, after all, is your
property as well as your companion. Therefore I am prohibited from harm-
ing your dog. I have no duty to the dog apart from my duties to you, how-
ever. Kant objects to cruelty to animals for a reason that is consistent with
his thinking: Not only is this behavior a bad example, but, Kant reasons, if
a man is cruel to animals he may develop cruel attitudes toward other men
as well.3

Anthropocentric Ethics Extended

For many environmental philosophers, the anthropocentric perspective is

sufficiently strong to address any environmental problem, and no further
8 Environmental Ethics

theoretical work is required. In fact, one can reasonably hold to an anthro-

pocentric philosophy and be environmentally concerned. The trick lies in
appreciating the importance of a clean, healthy, beautiful environment for
human well-being. John Passmore was an early environmental philosopher
who took this position.4 He argued, for example, that industrial pollution
is simply a case in which some people were harming the health of their
neighbors by degrading the air they breathe. Although we have no responsi-
bilities to the environment in its own right, we do have responsibilities to
other persons who can be harmed by the damage we cause to the environ-
ment. Hence the natural world is not valued directly—for its own sake—but
indirectly—for the sake of humans who find it valuable for the benefits it
brings to them. Passmore’s anthropocentrism works well when it is applied
to environmental problems, such as industrial pollution, that have clear
consequences for persons. It falls short of providing guidance, however,
when the benefits to be derived from a particular action toward nature are
minimal. For example, the human benefits of preserving the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge from oil exploration seem to be few: primarily for the hunt-
ing culture of local indigenous peoples, the pristine beauty of a remote place
enjoyed by a small number of visitors each year, and perhaps the personal
satisfaction we derive simply in knowing that such a unique place exists.
In both utilitarianism and deontology, nonhumans clearly have no true
moral standing. They are not to be found in ‘‘the greatest number of those
affected’’ in the calculation and distribution of benefits and harms, and they
are not the autonomous bearers of rights. In either system, nonhumans
qualify for our moral consideration only indirectly, as means to human
ends. More recently, environmental philosophers have made concerted
efforts to broaden the range of moral standing to include species other than
ourselves, and even inanimate natural systems. Several thinkers attempt to
modify or extend traditional moral systems to include nonhumans. Peter
Singer makes this attempt regarding utilitarianism, and Tom Regan does it
regarding rights. Because these philosophers are concerned mainly with
higher life forms, they may be regarded as biocentrists. Others, including
Paul Taylor, see that these two systems are too limited to take us very far
and opt instead for other approaches that would justify the inclusion of
plants and lower animals. Finally, advocates of ecocentrism, including Aldo
Leopold and his disciple, J. Baird Callicott, advocate ecosystems as the
proper object of our moral attention. One may detect a trend or process in
these efforts. To be true to its object, environmental ethics must expand our
circle of moral standing to allow for the inclusion of other animals, plants,
Theory in Environmental Ethics 9

and systems of plants and animals, not to mention mountains and rivers.
Commitment to the project of this ‘‘moral extensionism’’ is the fundamental
challenge and a distinguishing feature of environmental ethics.
Peter Singer is a utilitarian philosopher and author of Animal Liberation,
the well-known bible for the movement of the same name.5 Singer argues
for an extension of moral concern to include nonhumans. He argues that
we have a fundamental duty to avoid taking actions that bring about harm.
He understands harm to mean pain and suffering that comes from unneces-
sarily violating the interests of beings who are capable of experiencing such
violations. Besides humans, many other animal species possess this kind of
sentience. All together, they and we qualify for moral consideration. Why?
Because the only morally relevant consideration is the reduction of suffering
or the promotion of happiness. Apart from our sentience, persons have no
defining features—not even Kant’s freedom and rationality—that confer
moral standing. As philosopher Jeremy Bentham put it, ‘‘The question is
not, can they reason or can they talk, but can they suffer.’’6 Any sentient
creature—even if it has wings, four legs, fur, or gills—deserves the same
moral standing. Arguments that conclude that humans alone are morally
privileged therefore rest on arbitrary distinctions and are guilty of what
Singer calls ‘‘speciesism.’’
Furthermore, because sentient animals experience needs and have inter-
ests that are similar to our own, they must be given equal consideration.
Actions that bring about suffering to nonhumans must be justified to the
same degree that they would have to be justified if those actions were
directed toward humans. For example, medical experimentation on a chim-
panzee must be defended in exactly the same way it would be if a human
with equal capacities were substituted for the chimpanzee. Pain is pain,
whether it is inflicted on a chimp or a human infant.
Singer’s appeal to egalitarianism—the moral worth of all members of the
community of sentient beings—is compelling but not without problems.
One is that he provides no way to adjudicate conflicts between individuals
of different species. It is not clear, for example, whether interspecies organ
transplantation (xenografts)—taking the heart of a pig, for example, and
implanting it in an infant—is acceptable, because each of the two parties
has a fundamental interest at stake: the interest of not dying. Other philoso-
phers introduce a principle of discrimination that allows for such cases to be
resolved. Donald VanDeVeer suggests that level of psychological capacity,
roughly equating with the degree of sentience, would be useful.7 Individual
animals with greater psychological capacity would be favored. It is easy to
10 Environmental Ethics

see that this position leads to a kind of de facto anthropocentrism because,

in conflicts in which an individual person (a member of a species with
unequaled psychological capacity) is competing with a member of any other
species, the interests of the person would consistently prevail.
A further problem with Singer’s approach is that his reliance on sentience
as the basis for equal consideration excludes insentient life forms—that is,
lower animals and plants. Because, to our knowledge, members of these
species cannot suffer, they have no moral standing. Singer’s efforts at moral
extensionism appear to encounter an unbridgeable barrier at this point by
including primarily mammals in the exclusive club of morally qualified sen-
tient beings. Perhaps these problems are the inevitable result of applying
moral systems designed for intrahuman issues to nonhuman species: An
irreducible anthropomorphic bias remains.
Neither of these problems disappears when deontology provides the vehi-
cle for moral extensionism, as it does in the philosophy of Tom Regan.8
Though inspired by Kant’s accounts of universal duties, emphasis on ends
rather than means, and human rights, Regan moves beyond Kant’s claim
that only free and autonomous agents can qualify for deontological benefits.
Regan replaces this narrow condition with a broader definition: Any being
that has a complex emotional and perceptual life—including pain and plea-
sure preferences—and the ability to pursue actions and goals with a signifi-
cant degree of individual independence should be included as the object of
our duties. Because many species of mammals fall into this category, they
should be included along with humans as candidates for deontological bene-
fits. These ‘‘subjects-of-a-life,’’ as Regan refers to them, have inherent value
(Regan’s term, which corresponds roughly to ‘‘intrinsic value’’). No being
with inherent value should be treated as a means to some end, as a resource
or object to be exploited for the benefit of others. Subjects-of-a-life have
rights that should be respected by free and rational agents who are morally
responsible for their actions. Thus Regan reaches the same conclusion as
Singer, albeit from an entirely different direction. Many mammals have
equal worth with humans. Their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness must be considered on a par with our own.
Regan faces the same problems as Singer, however. On the one hand,
Regan’s conclusion that all subjects-of-a-life are of equal worth makes it
impossible to resolve some issues. On the other hand, at least his position
can speak decisively to the xenograft. A subject-of-a-life—in this case, a
pig (though it could be a person)—should never be sacrificed for the well-
being of another, even as a means of the preservation of the life of a child.
Theory in Environmental Ethics 11

With respect to the problem of lower species, Regan finds himself in the
same predicament as Singer. Although being sentient and being the sub-
ject-of-a-life are not necessarily identical, both require complex psycho-
logical capacities. Hence lower animals and all plants remain excluded
from consideration.
Singer and Regan are representatives of a limited form of biocentrism.
They wish to extend our moral consideration to nonhumans but can go only
as far as their modified anthropocentric ethical systems will allow. Other
ethicists—also biocentrists—applaud these efforts but fault them for failing
to extend the range of moral standing any further. What about less complex
animals and the entire plant kingdom? In the absence of arguments granting
intrinsic value, must the justification for their welfare and protection rely
exclusively on their instrumental, economic, or aesthetic value? To make
their arguments about moral standing for still disenfranchised creatures,
these concerned ethicists must turn to other moral frameworks.

Biocentrism Extended

To extend the circle of our moral concern beyond sentience, a different

appraisal of intrinsic worth must be found. Paul Taylor believes he has
found such an inclusive sense of worth in his idea of a ‘‘teleological center
of a life.’’9 The Greek word ‘‘telos,’’ meaning ‘‘purpose’’ or ‘‘goal,’’ is a
centerpiece concept of Aristotle’s philosophy of life. All living things (and,
for Aristotle, many nonliving things) have a telos—an inborn goal that they
strive to realize and sustain. That this is true is obvious to any attentive
observer. All animals and plants, sentient or not, conduct their lives in a
clearly directed way. They grow and maintain themselves specifically in
terms of the interests of their well-being. A Monarch butterfly seeks to
become a full-fledged representative of its species, as does a live oak tree or
a microbe. There is nothing superfluous in the behavior of a living organism
in this respect. Its very life is dedicated to—indeed, identical with—its telos.
Such a teleological account generates two important observations. The
first is that, unlike a species’ subjective psychological capacity, the telos of
a species is no secret. It is open to objective description. We can know what
harms or benefits an organism simply by witnessing its activities. The sec-
ond observation is that the organism need not be conscious of its purpose.
A plant does not know what it is doing, and it need not be conscious of this
to realize and sustain its full potential as an able representative of its telos,
12 Environmental Ethics

the characteristic form of its species—what Aristotle called its nature. All
teleological centers of a life are ‘‘good-natured’’ in the sense that their striv-
ing and thriving is good for them. Although they may be unaware, they
have interests and needs and act to satisfy them. They have what philoso-
phers call ‘‘a good of their own.’’ Such a good is equivalent to being worthy
or valuable. Hence teleological centers of a life are valuable objectively—
that is, apart from our assessment or judgment regarding them. Again, they
need not be conscious to contain this inherent worth.
It seems to follow that for anyone who adopts what Taylor refers to as
‘‘the biocentric outlook,’’ respect for the good of other individual creatures
is the proper moral attitude. The biocentric outlook is a sort of creed pro-
fessing that humans are members of Earth’s community of interdependence
and equality. That is, the human telos is not superior to that of any other
living thing, and neither is the telos of any sentient nonhuman or subject-
of-a-life.
Taylor has taken several strides outward in expanding the circle of moral
concern to include ever greater numbers of nonhumans. He has broken
through the confines of subjectivity—the emphasis on consciousness or psy-
chological awareness—as the main qualification for moral standing. Never-
theless, he brings some burdens with him. For example, Taylor’s system
applies only to individual creatures and requires commitment to the equality
of living teleological systems, human and nonhuman, which makes resolv-
ing conflicts between them very difficult. Moreover, he has nothing to say
about the value of rivers or mountains or of entire ecosystems, except inso-
far as they provide a suitable environment for the flourishing of teleological
systems of life.

Ecocentrism

Biocentrism, or life-centered ethics, is the laudable attempt to extend the

circle of our moral concern to include animals and, with some further modi-
fication, plants as well. To be true to its name, however, an environmental
ethic must provide a framework of principles that would justify the further
extension of our moral sensibilities to that larger association of animals,
plants, and even geologic features (e.g., rivers, lakes, mountains, and val-
leys) known in environmental science as biomes or ecosystems or generally
as the natural environment.
Theory in Environmental Ethics 13

Establishing such a philosophical foundation—a noble aspiration, to be

sure—is nonetheless an imposing task. Ecosystems are loose associations of
species—from subsoil microbes to megafauna and great forests—that live
together in countless numbers as citizens in a larger community. Arguing
for the moral standing for such communities requires a theoretical threshold
leap of some distance. Ecosystems are not sentient. It seems absurd to claim
that a desert itself can suffer (although, of course, individual members of a
desert ecosystem can suffer). An ecosystem does not exhibit a single goal or
telos toward which it strives as a whole. Instead, its wholeness or systemic
complexity is the consequence of the successes and failures of immense mul-
titudes of species over many generations, struggling to adapt to one another
and to the inanimate forces of nature. The overall emergent structure of the
ecosystem is the consequence of these evolutionary negotiations at the spe-
cies level. The ecosystem did not grow up according to some preestablished
set of commands or inherent tendencies. Unlike a plant (which does have
such a normative program—its genetic code), an ecosystem cannot be
described easily as a teleological system.
The key to a true ecocentric ethic probably lies in the mind’s eye of the
ecocentrist beholder. It seems to revolve around one’s choice of metaphors
with which to characterize the whole. If the preferred metaphor is ‘‘commu-
nity,’’ then the thrust of the moral argument moves toward individual mem-
bers of that community—that is, toward biocentrism. If the preferred
metaphor is ‘‘organism,’’ in which the members of the whole are tightly knit
in their interdependence, then attention moves toward the entire ecosystem
as the object of attention, probably employing some variation of teleological
ethics.
Aldo Leopold, a pioneer if not prophet and herald of environmental phi-
losophy, was an early advocate of ecocentrism. His essay ‘‘The Land Ethic,’’
found in his classic A Sand County Almanac (first published in 1949), is
the classic expression of the position.10 Leopold advocates the evolutionary
extension of our human ethic toward a land ethic, which ‘‘simply enlarges
the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and ani-
mals, or collectively, the land.’’11 Although Leopold uses the term ‘‘commu-
nity’’ to describe the land, it is clear elsewhere that he intends to speak of a
highly organized whole, a reality that stands on its own integrity. In other
words, the land is ‘‘a biotic mechanism.’’ Leopold rightly claims, ‘‘We can
be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love,
or otherwise have faith in.’’12 The biotic mechanisms of the Olympic Penin-
sula, the Florida Everglades, or the Sonoran Desert are more than loosely
14 Environmental Ethics

knit communities. They are entities unto themselves with which humans can
relate and toward which we may have direct duties.
Leopold concludes his essay with a succinct expression of his guiding
principle of such an ethic: ‘‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the
integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it
tends otherwise.’’13 At first glance, Leopold’s principle appears to be deon-
tological in its appeal to specific ideals rather than to subjective states of
happiness or suffering. What misleads us is his casual phrasing. ‘‘A thing is
right’’ seems to mean ‘‘an action is right.’’ If so, then the outcomes of such
actions toward an ecosystem should be judged for their preservation of its
integrity, stability, and beauty. Leopold has thus provided a radical exten-
sion of the consequentialist approach as applied to ecosystems. In addition,
his inclusion of ‘‘preserve’’ introduces limiting or prohibitionary language.
The imperative is not to increase these values of the ecosystem but also not
to decrease them. This emphasis on ‘‘do no harm’’ makes sense within the
larger context of the essay, where he relentlessly attacks ‘‘the prevailing
belief that economics determines all land use.’’14
Leopold’s commandment defines human duties toward ecosystems, but
not in a way that pleases biocentrists. If the ecosystem is the proper and
exclusive object of our moral attention, then its contributing components—
the vast array of plants and animals constituting the system—must be val-
ued not intrinsically, for their own sake, but instrumentally, in terms of their
contribution to its ‘‘integrity, stability, and beauty.’’ The ecosystem does not
serve individual creatures; they serve the ecosystem and may be treated in
ways that violate their individual interests or teleological self-fulfillment
when the ecosystem requires.
J. Baird Callicott, a philosopher and disciple of Leopold, endorses a
stronger sense of the interdependence of parts in an ecosystem by using the
image of organism. ‘‘Like organisms proper,’’ Callicott writes, ‘‘ecosystems
are complexly articulated wholes, with systemic integrity.’’15 He does not
claim that ecosystems are alive but instead that they resemble living things
closely enough to allow for some real comparisons. For example, organisms
can be ill or well. So, ‘‘like organisms proper,’’ the health of ecosystems may
be assessed by using diagnostic tests that resemble clinical examinations of
animals and humans, including monitoring vital signs and identifying risk
factors.
What values are attached to ecosystems that make this ‘‘clinical ecology’’
desirable? Instrumentally, healthy ecosystems obviously are vital for the
well-being of human cultures, which are embedded in nature. What is less
Theory in Environmental Ethics 15

than obvious, however, is why they are to be cherished intrinsically as well.

‘‘If our other-oriented feelings of goodwill may extend to nature, then eco-
system health is something we may value intrinsically,’’ claims Callicott.
The prior question is, why is this extension of goodwill reasonable? Singer,
Regan, and Taylor marshal powerful arguments for the justification of
goodwill or moral concern for other species of animals and possibly of
plants. Why is it appropriate for ecosystems? An ecosystem is not conscious
and would fail to qualify for moral standing under Singer’s sentience
requirement or Regan’s subject-of-a-life criterion. It may possess sufficient
‘‘systemic integrity,’’ however, to qualify under Taylor’s teleological cen-
teredness, especially if Callicott’s claims for organic resemblance are
persuasive.

Ecocentrism Radicalized: Deep Ecology

The first thing to note about deep ecology is its rhetorical advantage over
what would be characterized unattractively as ‘‘shallow.’’ The distinction is
revealing. Shallow ecology is establishment environmentalism. Its advocates
work within the philosophical framework and assumptions of the modern
world. These assumptions are primarily anthropocentric, utilitarian, and
individualistic. The best that shallow ecology can hope for is to reform this
worldview without touching its basic premises. Shallow ecology works
within the system; it does not ask whether the system itself is the problem.
Deep ecology is radical to the extent that it intends to correct this blind-
ness by replacing the very foundations of shallow ecology, its prevailing
worldview. This approach makes deep ecology more of a cosmological (hav-
ing to do with the whole of the world and not just the human part of it) or
metaphysical (emphasizing fundamental philosophical beliefs as opposed to
the obvious) approach to environmental ethics. The human species does
not fare well in this reconstruction project. Deep ecology, like Paul Taylor’s
biocentrism, proposes that all creatures are equal in intrinsic value—a kind
of species egalitarianism. In addition, following the more radical ecocen-
trists, it argues that the individual is completely subordinated to the well-
being of the ecosystem; the whole is of much greater value than any of
its parts, including the human parts. The more outspoken deep ecologists
sometimes invite the charge that they embrace misanthropy (hatred of
humans) in this moral holism by describing the species as a pathogen or
plague on the Earth.
16 Environmental Ethics

In addition to egalitarianism and holism, deep ecologists embrace the

principle of radical relationality. In their view, one of the most dangerous
ideas in the prevailing worldview of modernism is that individuals—
whether they are atoms or living beings—are the fundamental units of real-
ity. This position is clearly espoused by Kant and many post-Enlightenment
philosophers. Persons are autonomous individuals who control their own
destinies through rational decision processes. Thus the individual takes pri-
ority over the community, and social relationships are mostly a matter of
choice and personal advantage. Physically, we are minds or egos encapsu-
lated by an almost impermeable envelope of skin and separated from all
other existing beings, as they are from us. Deep ecology reverses this posi-
tion completely by claiming that any living being is constituted by its rela-
tionships: We are our relationships. Evolution teaches us that profound and
intricate arrangements between species emerge through processes of natural
selection and adaptation. The flower in the meadow is not an isolated indi-
vidual accidentally growing there. Its very constitution is a consequence of
millions of years of active affiliation with other species and with the forces
of nature. Even now it transforms sunlight through photosynthesis, attracts
insects with its colorful blossom and nectar, and sends its roots deep into
the soil for water and nourishment. Its individuality is a minor aspect of
its embeddedness in a complex system of relationships. Indeed, reality is a
universal river of energy. Individuals are merely local disturbances in that
flow. The ethical implications of deep ecology are clear. With few excep-
tions, individuals and species have little value except within the global con-
text of the absolute priority of the whole. Humans are no different. Thus
implementation of the principles of deep ecology would require a radical
transformation of social and economic institutions that are built on the sup-
position that human beings truly are different from the rest of creation.

Social Ecology

Murray Bookchin is a social commentator who agrees with the radical aim
of deep ecology to transform society.16 Bookchin’s analysis of these patterns
of domination and control draws heavily, however, on the notion of social
hierarchy rather than cosmology, or the nature of the universe. Most human
societies, he claims, are structured according to levels of power, authority,
and control, with those occupying the higher rungs controlling those on
rungs below them. According to Bookchin, such hierarchies include ‘‘the
Theory in Environmental Ethics 17

domination of the young by the old, women by men, of one ethnic group
by another, of ‘masses’ by bureaucrats who profess to speak to higher ‘social
interests,’ of countryside by town, and in a more subtle psychological sense,
of body by mind, or spirit by a shallow instrumental mentality.’’17 These
relational patterns are built into the habitual patterns of belief and action
in a culture so that they become internalized and promoted as normative
and beyond question. Given this ubiquitous nature of hierarchical patterns
of oppression, the solution lies not in merely changing forms of govern-
ment—for example, from socialist to liberal-democratic. All forms of social
structures are infected. The only cure is a soft form of anarchy. Bookchin
envisions a just society that maximizes individual human freedom and
establishes the absolute equality of all persons. Only such autonomous indi-
viduals are liberated from the psychological inner limits of social condition-
ing and the institutional outer limits of the authoritative exercise of power
and control. They are therefore free to enter into a truly just community of
equals with no urge to dominate one another or to dominate nature.
True to its name, social ecology explains the environmental crisis as a
consequence of societal patterns and institutions. Social ecologists fault bio-
centrists and deep ecologists for missing the point. The problem is not to be
found in mistaken ethical norms or in faulty worldviews. Instead, the prob-
lem is to be found in ourselves, in our social and ideological structures that
encourage relations of domination and exploitation—practices we extend
to our relations to nature. Environmental destruction is the universal appli-
cation of the idea that there are superior classes or groups who oppress
those whom they determine to be inferior. Ironically, the prevailing attitude
of domination is a negative instance of moral extensionism because it takes
this ideological framework of belief and action and applies it to the nonhu-
man world.

Ecofeminism

If men controlling women is a fundamental form of hierarchy, as Bookchin

reports, then elimination of such patriarchy would go far toward correcting
our exploitation of nature. The primary importance of this project is under-
scored by a form of feminism known as ecofeminism. Much feminist social
analysis focuses of the specific hierarchical notion of patriarchy—the long-
standing and traditional domination of women by men. To this extent, femi-
nists agree with Bookchin. They go much further, however, by claiming that
18 Environmental Ethics

patriarchy (the elevated and entitled status of male authorities) is the pri-
mary form of social oppression. Eliminating it would go far toward the
elimination of other forms of oppression.
Ecofeminists observe that the patriarchal attitude toward women is iden-
tical to that toward nature. Nature is addressed as feminine, often mater-
nal—Mother Nature—hence, like women, nature becomes the object of
androcentric (male-centered) subjugation. Although this myth has many
variations, the prevailing version—given modern foundations by the philos-
opher René Descartes—is that the mind is fundamentally separate from the
body and, because of its rational character, is superior to the material or
natural body that falls under its control. According to this myth, men are
more rational than women; they transcend the demands of their bodily
nature to control its instinctive and emotional drives. Women are closer to
nature with respect to their identification with the body. Hence dominance
of women (and of children and animals) is not to be distinguished from the
dominance of nature.
In detecting a kinship between women and nature, some ecofeminists
take a part of this modern myth and turn it to their advantage. This kinship,
based on the shared powers to give birth and provide nurture and the
greater consciousness of women about the importance of the embodied self,
allows these ecofeminists to rally their cause in solidarity with nature. Many
other ecofeminists strongly deny that any essential attributes of either
women or men, rational or biological, are the problem. Instead, hierarchical
distinctions of gender are based in social roles. Nurturing is a role assigned
primarily to women by cultural expectations and not an expression of any
maternal instinct. Oppression will disappear only when these discrimina-
tory roles are abolished. From either of these perspectives, elimination of
patriarchy in human affairs also would provide for its elimination in our
relations with nature.

Ecojustice

The concept of ecojustice directs us to look at distribution of goods and

disadvantages. Are both environmental amenities and toxic waste sites uni-
formly distributed with regard to income group, class, and racial and ethnic
communities, or are most toxic dumps found in or near minority neighbor-
hoods, and most public woods and parks located in upscale neighborhoods?
On an international scale as well, there are significant historically inherited
Theory in Environmental Ethics 19

but also increasing disparities in the world community between those who
have access to clean and safe resources and those who do not. These dispari-
ties are sometimes the result of historical circumstance, contemporary
economic and trade relations, or simply inadequate or inappropriate gov-
ernmental regulation—but they demand redress. The principle of ecojustice
refuses to acquit as justice unequal allocations of environmental benefits or
burdens simply because the process of their creation was indirect, acciden-
tal, and/or unintended. But ecojustice looks not only to redress past environ-
mental injustice. It also looks ahead, to the prospect of a just and peaceful
human community within a healthy, diverse, and sustainable environment.

Pragmatic Environmental Ethics

According to Bryan Norton, a philosopher who favors a pragmatic or prac-

tical approach to moral decision making, environmental ethics is a form of
applied philosophy.18 Very general and abstract theoretical principles—
utilitarian, deontological, or teleological—are applied to making difficult
choices in specific situations. Several problems arise with this top-down
approach. First, no two situations are alike in all their important details,
making it difficult to employ the same off-the-rack, universal principle uni-
laterally to every case in exactly the same way. At such times we are forced
to fall back on our good judgment to make up for the differences. More
important for Norton is that not all parties in a dispute are likely to agree
on the same fundamental principles. Consensus is almost impossible when
the discussion turns from the particulars of the situation to an abstract
debate about whose principles shall apply. In fact, the particular case tends
to get lost when the discussion turns to abstract argument.
Although Norton does not want to dismiss theories entirely in favor of
intuitive responses, he maintains that theory building takes place when the
parties grapple with a common real-world problem. If they share a common
goal, even for very diverse motives and theoretical reasons, interested indi-
viduals can arrive at a midmanagement policy for resolving the issue. The
broader unity is cemented by a common interest in caring for the environ-
ment. Norton uses the example of protecting wetlands habitats for migra-
tory waterfowl. Concerned anthropocentrists favor protection for their own
hunting interests. biocentrists act out of concern for sentient or teleological
individuals, and a few ecocentrists intend to preserve Leopold’s ‘‘integrity,
stability, and beauty’’ of precious wetlands. A strange coalition, to be sure,
20 Environmental Ethics

but it works in terms of real-world politics and habitat management. The

key to practical environmental ethics is not insisting on ideological con-
formity to abstract principles but agreeing as much as possible about values
or goals and then devising a set of diverse principles that speaks to the issue
at hand.
A pragmatic approach that relies on this moral pluralism (using a variety
of principles that are not deduced from a single master principle) has defi-
nite advantages in a world so rich, complex, and varied that no single situa-
tion conforms to some abstract ideal. Nevertheless, some moral ‘‘monists’’
are very uncomfortable with the approach. Their concern is that when real
conflicts inevitably occur, there are no standards to resolve them. What if I
am faced with a dilemma between deciding for humans (requiring an
anthropocentric, person-respecting principle) or nonhumans (requiring a
biocentric sentience or telos-respecting principle) in an either/or situation
with no middle ground? Convivial cooperation is not possible when the
value-laden goals of the interested parties are so unalterably opposed.
Moral pluralists might rank the two positions and select the one with over-
riding priority. On what basis do they arrive at such a ranking? For the
monist the answer is clear: An appeal to some master standard is the only
way to achieve consistency in moral decision making.

Interested Parties

Applied or practical philosophy? Moral pluralism or moral monism? No

one ever said that moral reasoning is easy. Moral pluralists are right: Life is
too complex to be reduced to a single ethical standard. Moral monists are
right too: Life often requires making hard choices between attractive but
exclusive alternatives. At such times, clear thinking requires coherent nor-
mative standards. Finally, however, moral judgments are never made auto-
matically, as conclusions to some logical syllogism with principles as its
premises. Unless they are disinterested judges sitting in a courtroom ponder-
ing the arguments of adversaries, decision makers are almost always person-
ally involved in the dilemmas they face. Their participation means that they
must weigh the concerns of all parties—human (possibly including them-
selves), sentient, or inanimate—and grapple with the decision. Concern and
care are appropriate ingredients in the process. The heart and the gut as
well as the head enter into the deliberations. More often than not, the deci-
sion maker cherishes loyalties to each of the parties affected by the eventual
Theory in Environmental Ethics 21

resolution, and working through the competing positions is a labor of

anguish as well as love.

Religion and Ecology

What do religious ethicists have to say about environmental ethics? Do reli-

gious ethicists—or religion itself—add anything distinctive to the debates?
Religious ethicists divide on the foregoing questions: Some support anthro-
pocentrism, some support biocentrism, and some ecocentrism, and others
support ecofeminism and pragmatic environmentalism. In fact, in the broad
sense of the word ‘‘religious,’’ there may be more religious ecofeminists than
nonreligious ecofeminists.19 This does not mean, however, that religious
ethicists bring nothing of their own to the debate. The distinctive element
in religious environmentalism is not so much a distinct approach to any
of the philosophical questions as it is an attitude toward the environment
that not only nuances all of these arguments but also provides motivation
for commitment to the welfare of the environment. That is, religious ap-
proaches to the environment throughout the world are based on an under-
standing of the universe either as divine creation or as permeated by divine
spirits, or both. In both understandings the environment has standing inde-
pendent of humanity; in fact, the environment takes on a sacrality that not
only gives it standing but also demands a kind of reverence from humans.
As creation, the natural world reveals the creator; as the realm of spirits,
the natural world exudes spiritual power. As we have noted, philosophers
have been largely unsuccessful in grounding claims for the nonliving envi-
ronment as having independent standing. Religious environmentalists have
no such difficulty because, from a religious perspective, the nonliving envi-
ronment shares the same claim to standing as the living environment, in that
both take their standing from their status as created by the divine.
Religious ethicists offer more to environmentalism, however, than simply
a way of offering status to the nonliving world. They also offer tools for
creating and maintaining human support for caring for the environment:
the tools of prayer and ritual. Prayer and ritual have reminded believers of
their dependence on the gifts of the god(s) that sustain them—on the need
to appreciate, care for, be thankful for, and use wisely the bounty of the
god(s). Religious systems offer an understanding of humanity not as inde-
pendent but both as dependent upon the god(s) and as charged with respon-
sibility by the god(s). This state of dependent but responsible humanity is
22 Environmental Ethics

close to the environmentalist understanding of humanity as interdependent.

The ecological crisis has pushed many religious scholars to pay more atten-
tion to their doctrines of creation. Thomas Berry writes,

Because our sense of the divine is so extensively derived from verbal sources,
mostly through Biblical scriptures, we seldom notice how much we have lost
contact with the revelation of the divine in nature. Yet our exalted sense of
the divine comes from the grandeur of the universe, especially from the earth
in all the splendid modes of its expression. Without such experience, we would
be terribly impoverished in our religious and spiritual development, even in
our emotional, imaginative, and intellectual development. If we lived on the
moon, our imagination would be as desolate as the moon, our emotions lack-
ing in the sensitivity developed in our experience of the sensuous variety of
the luxuriant earth. If a beautiful earth gives us an exalted idea of the divine,
an industrially despoiled planet will give us a corresponding idea of God.20

Many indigenous religions around the world have become ‘‘green’’ (in
the sense of being active environmentally) in the past decades. One reason
is that overpopulation and overdevelopment often have pushed into the
marginal spaces to which indigenous groups had been herded by modernity
and now threaten their very existence by encroaching on the environment
on which they are dependent. The other reason that indigenous communi-
ties have become green is that, in their religious sensibility, they recognize
threats to the health of their environment—to the rivers and streams; to the
animals, birds, and fish; to the air and the soil—as threats not only against
their lives and community but also against a sacred order, against the divine
itself. They do not require the use of logic and philosophical reasoning to
recognize that the obliteration of forests and wetlands, the poisoning of
rivers and streams from mining wastes, and the extinction of millions of
species of plants and animals is wrong.
Within the principal world religions—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism,
Hinduism, and Judaism—there are many believers who are environmental-
ists and many theologians/scholars who have been presenting arguments for
environmentalism based in their religious tradition and attempting to
reform aspects of their tradition regarding treatment of the environment.
For a variety of reasons, including earlier and more thorough industrializa-
tion in the West than in the East, this task of reconciling religious tradition
with environmentalism began earlier in the West but has now extended to
all areas and religions of the world. Some environmentalists have charged
Theory in Environmental Ethics 23

Christianity in particular as responsible for legitimating environmental dev-

astation through its teaching of the biblical injunction to Adam and Eve,
‘‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion
over every fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living
thing that moves on the earth’’ (Gen. 1:28). Most scholars who have exam-
ined this claim have largely dismissed it, noting that the process of industri-
alization, which fueled overpopulation and maximized human pollution
processes, emerged first in the West for a variety of reasons, many having
nothing to do with religion at all. Several biblical scholars and ethicists also
note that the impact of this quotation need not be destructive at all: It does
call for humankind to exercise control, but control can be used for varying
interests. They point out that the ethic early Christianity later developed on
the basis of this scriptural assignment of power and responsibility was a
stewardship ethic, which it shares with Judaism and with Islam (in which
humans are called to be vice-regents of God in conserving the Earth).
Today many Christian ecologists understand the scriptural record as
reflecting the anthropocentrism of those who interpreted God’s interactions
with humans within that scripture and regard such anthropocentrism as
historically global. Rosemary Ruether presents all inherited wisdom systems
as requiring some degree of reform:

There is no ready-made ecological spirituality and ethic in past traditions. The

ecological crisis is new to human experience. This does not mean that humans
have not devastated their environment before. But as long as populations
remained small and human technology weak, these devastations were remedi-
able by migration, retreat from top-heavy urban centers, or adaptation to new
techniques. Nature appeared a huge, inexhaustible source of life, and humans
small. Only after the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did humans begin
to recognize the possibility that they could destroy the planet by their own
expropriated power.21

Ruether goes on to examine both covenantal and sacramental systems

for relating to the Earth within Christianity, demonstrating the advantages
of each and how each requires reform.22 Other Christian environmentalists,
such as Carol Robb and Carl Casebolt, also have presented a reformed ver-
sion of covenant for dealing with the environmental responsibilities of
Christians.23
Within a traditional Christian stewardship ethic, several distinctions
have arisen under the influence of environmentalism. The most conserva-
tive, traditional interpretation of stewardship is that the goods of the Earth
24 Environmental Ethics

were given to humans to meet human needs and should be used by all; the
only misuse of the Earth in this understanding is to squander a resource
needed by another human. Other traditional interpretations emphasize the
moral requirement that the goods of the Earth were given to meet the needs
of all, including the poor, and that no human has a right to excess until the
basic rights of the poor are cared for. Although both of these interpretations
are thoroughly anthropocentric, the latter would effectively preserve more
of the environment in that meeting the needs of all people would include
protecting the environments on which many indigenous and poor peoples
of the world depend.
Many Christian environmentalists have rejected simple anthropocen-
trism, however—even when, like James Nash, in the end they prefer the
claim to life of an individual human being over that of another species. Like
many others, however, Nash defends the biotic rights of other species and
would place their right to survive as a species ahead of many human inter-
ests other than life itself.24 As the literature in religious environmentalism
continues to expand around the world, religionists are replicating the spec-
trum of ethical stances we have seen among environmental philosophers.
On the one hand, the most institutional of the religious responses—
especially those issued by officials of the religion—tend to present steward-
ship models expanded to include both future generations and varying
degrees of intrinsic value for other species. On the other hand, in virtually
every religion some thinkers have traced through existing tradition a strand
from which to challenge the anthropocentrism in the rest of the tradition
and have developed an approach that is similar to deep ecology.

Values, Value, and Valuing

Although ‘‘value’’ is a term that appears often in religious and philosophical

discussions—including this introduction—its meaning is not always clear.
Philosophers have dedicated a subfield called axiology to a discussion of the
concept; religions ritualize and confess their values in very public ways. Yet
even among these specialists, clarification of the term is sometimes wanting.
In philosophy this lack of clarity probably reflects the fact that the notion
of value is something of a latecomer in philosophical reflection. In the tradi-
tion, self-conscious reflection on value is primarily an aspect of modern
inquiry, appearing since the Enlightenment. In religion, a lack of precision
is the underside of religion’s use of symbolism, which allows religion to
Theory in Environmental Ethics 25

make powerful connections between different aspects of reality—

connections that involve not only cognition but also affectivity.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that popular expressions of value are
mostly seen and heard at the local mall or the stock exchange. In its eco-
nomic or commercial sense, ‘‘value’’ means the worth of a thing in terms of
money or the purchasing power of the dollar: fair price or more than fair
price. ‘‘This new pair of jeans was on sale. What a value,’’ or, ‘‘In this
market, devalued stocks are a great bargain.’’
For philosophers and religionists, the economic understanding of value
is uninteresting, for the most part. They prefer instead to study its meaning
in terms of the worth of an action or object. Our discussion of value is
based on this idea of worth. Philosophers are not of one mind about value.
Traditionally, value as worth has been understood in two ways. In the first,
x is valuable to me if x serves some useful purpose for me—if it performs
some function that benefits me or others. A hammer sitting in a toolbox is
worthless until I remove it to drive a nail. In this case, the hammer is said
to have instrumental value. A second way of understanding value is to
assign worth to x in its own right, independent of any usefulness. Specified
value becomes a quality carried by x rather than imputed to it, so that even
in the absence of anyone to appreciate it, x may be said to be valuable.
Instrumental value is easily understood, but this intrinsic or objective value
is less clear for two reasons. How are we to understand a value as attached
to a being: Is it like a physical property? Second, how is any imputed value
truly objective, given that a quality is valuable only when it is appreciated
by a qualified observer?
These questions are more readily avoided when x is a person. Most of us
recognize that others like ourselves possess intrinsic value simply because
they are persons. Persons possess inherent dignity and significant worth.
Religions have always taught that it is our duty to treat others of our species
with dignity or in a dignified way. This means taking no actions that violate
others’ integrity or otherwise bring unjustified harm to them. Of course,
attention to dignity does not prohibit seeing others in terms of their instru-
mental value. In an economy driven by service industries, such a prohibition
would be our ruin. A service worker such as a plumber or electrician volun-
tarily performs tasks that may benefit me. I should not treat the plumber or
electrician as an object of lesser worth than others in my world, however.
Furthermore, of course, service representatives should receive fair value or
wages for their labor.
26 Environmental Ethics

As described in the section on anthropocentrism, problems arise when x

is not a person. How are we to understand the value of nonhuman beings
or collections of nonhuman beings, species, ecosystems, or nature itself?
Do nonhuman beings have any value at all? If the discussion is limited to
instrumental value, the question is easily answered. Nature provides us with
the wherewithal for our secure and comfortable lives. Nature has tremen-
dous instrumental value. In this context, our duty to nature is to conserve
it, protect it, and utilize it effectively, lest we do ourselves in. This position
is that of John Passmore, who concludes that we have no direct duties to
nature, only direct duties to ourselves. That is, we should bring as little
harm as possible to natural entities, not for their own sake, but for ours.
Holmes Rolston III lists several of these instrumental values. He includes
life-support value, economic value, recreational value, scientific value, aes-
thetic value, diversity value, historical value, cultural value, character-build-
ing value, and religious value.
Carrying this analysis to the extreme, a philosopher could argue that all
values, even objective values, imputed to nature actually are thinly disguised
instrumental or subjective human values. Why would I work to preserve the
Grand Canyon? Because its grandeur and marvelous vistas trigger a pro-
found response in my psyche. Is all of this beauty merely in the eye of the
beholder, and is my duty to preserve the Grand Canyon really only an indi-
rect duty to myself? Although I may be taking actions that protect the
sources of my preference for beauty and majesty, I may be doing so because
beauty and majesty truly reside in this natural place, to be recognized and
appreciated by me. Likewise, because I love and cherish my son, I will take
every action to ensure his fulfillment as a person. Are these duties ultimately
based in selfish intentions and egoistic satisfaction? What I value in the
Grand Canyon and in my son are not my experience and desires alone but
also the very existence of this place and this person. It would seem odd to
speak of intrinsic value in any other way.
A religious perspective is very different at this point, however. If one
believes that there is a god or gods, then the ultimate perspective is not the
human but the divine. Religious scholars such as Thomas Aquinas insisted
that God created the world because it pleased him, and the purpose of cre-
ation is to glorify God. Creation is diverse, Aquinas wrote, because that
diversity testifies to the majesty of God. From this perspective, even within
a stewardship framework in which God gave responsibility for creation to
humans, humans have no right to decrease either the glory or the diversity
of God’s creation. From a religious perspective, human responsibility for
Theory in Environmental Ethics 27

creation is limited to maintenance and preservation precisely because it

would be idolatry—substituting our own judgment for God’s—to decide
that the only value of the rest of creation is instrumental and indirect, lim-
ited to its value to humans.
The implications from this discussion are numerous. First, values are enu-
merated as subsequent reflections on the act of valuing. Hence valuing may
be understood as an experiential judgment, a connoisseurship, that involves
both the evaluator and some object of evaluation in a relational process.
Second, valuing is not limited to the human species. Many sentient creatures
clearly appreciate certain experiences for their own sake—such as play and
sex—even if these experiences are prepared for and driven by instinct and
serve larger purposes (e.g., predatory skills and procreation). Third, the
human species shares this natural appreciation of essential goods, but its
appreciation of value carries much further into nonessential goods in the
creation of culture. Finally, the human appreciation of value in nature
entails moral duties with respect to this value. If value is that which is wor-
thy or good, and morality is the pursuit, realization, and preservation of the
good, then value entails duties. With the recognition of value beyond human
culture, our relations with nature become moral.

Notes

1. Holmes Rolston III, ‘‘Environmental Ethics: Values and Duties to the

Natural World,’’ in Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, ed.
Herbert Bormann and Stephen R. Keller (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1991), 73.
2. Ibid., 74.
3. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York:
Harper & Row, 1963), 239.
4. See John Arthur Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature (New
York: Scribner, 1974).
5. See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon, 1976).
6. Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1945), chap. 17, sec. 1, fn. to para-
graph 4.
7. See Donald VanDeVeer, ‘‘Interspecific Justice,’’ Inquiry 22 (Summer
1979): 55–70, reprinted in Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce, eds.,
28 Environmental Ethics

The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book: Philosophy, Ecology, Econom-

ics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), 179–92.
8. See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1983).
9. See Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1986).
10. Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation
from Round River (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953).
11. Ibid., 239.
12. Ibid., 251.
13. Ibid., 262.
14. Ibid., 263.
15. J. Baird Callicott, ‘‘La nature est Morte, Vive la Nature,’’ Hastings
Center Report 22 (September 1992): 19.
16. See Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (Palo Alto, CA:
Cheshire Books, 1982), and The Philosophy of Social Ecology (Montreal:
Black Rose Books, 1990).
17. Bookchin, Philosophy of Social Ecology, 123.
18. See Bryan G. Norton, Toward Unity among Environmentalists (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
19. See, e.g., Carol J. Adams, ed., Ecofeminism and the Sacred (New
York: Continuum, 1993); and Rosemary R. Ruether, ed., WomenHealing
Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Mary-
knoll, NY: Orbis, 1996).
20. Thomas Berry, Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology (Mystic, CT:
Twenty-third, 1987), 17.
21. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theol-
ogy of Earth Healing (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 206.
22. Ibid., 205–53.
23. Carol S. Robb and Carl J. Casebolt, Covenant for a New Creation:
Ethics, Religion and Public Policy (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis/GTU, 1991).
24. James A. Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Inquiry and Christian
Responsibility (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1991).
 two

We’re All in This . . . Alone

The Individual and Community

L
‘‘ ook! Isn’t that Mrs. Simmons?’’ Josh pointed in the direc-
tion of a lady purchasing some local honey from a booth at the
Saturday farmers’ market in downtown Lawrence, Kansas. Those
with him, his spouse, Gail, and old friend Bernie Kelloms turned to follow
his indication.
‘‘Yes, that’s her,’’ Bernie said, ‘‘and she doesn’t look a year older.’’
Frances Simmons was surprised as the apparent strangers gathered excit-
edly around her, and then she began to recognize them.
‘‘Joshua Clayton, Bernard Kelloms. Oh my, it’s been such a long time.’’
‘‘You still recognize us,’’ said Bernie incredulously. ‘‘It’s been decades!’’
‘‘How could I not?’’ said Frances. ‘‘You were the most memorable stu-
dents in a most memorable class.’’
‘‘Obviously, you are unforgettable as well,’’ replied Josh. ‘‘Our demand-
ing chemistry teacher, and twenty-five years isn’t that long, or we like to
think it’s not!’’
‘‘Oh, that’s why you’re in town, isn’t it? The twenty-fifth class reunion
from Lawrence High.’’
‘‘You got it. And it’s great to be back, Mrs. Simmons,’’ said Josh.
‘‘Let’s leave the ‘Mrs.’ for history. Please call me Frances.’’
‘‘That’s hard,’’ said Josh, ‘‘but I’ll agree if you’ll drop the ‘Joshua.’ ’’
‘‘And the ‘Bernard,’ ’’ added Bernie.
‘‘I’m Gail, Frances, and I don’t have that problem. Wonderful to meet
you,’’ said Josh’s spouse.

29
30 Environmental Ethics

‘‘Where are you all now? What are you doing?’’ asked Frances.
‘‘Well, the three of us earned degrees here at the university. Bernie went
on to law school and now practices in San Francisco. Gail and I work with
Cessna Aircraft in Wichita as engineers,’’ explained Josh. ‘‘And you, Mrs.,
um, Frances, still teaching the clueless how to fire up Bunsen burners at old
Lawrence High?’’
‘‘No,’’ answered Frances, ‘‘I returned to KU for an advanced degree, and
I’ve been an instructor in physical chemistry at Haskell Indian Nations Uni-
versity across town for about a decade now, and loving every minute of it.
Teaching Native Americans and Alaskans of many tribal backgrounds is a
challenge and a joy, not to mention an education.’’
‘‘Wonderful!’’ exclaimed Josh. ‘‘I want to hear all about it. Say, we’re on
our way to the old soda fountain over on Massachusetts Street—Bernie says
it’s a coffee shop now—to have a latte sweetened with a dose of nostalgia.
Care to join us?’’
As they took seats at their table surrounded by the studious and their
laptop computers from the University of Kansas, Frances noticed that Josh
and Gail were dressed in running sweat suits. ‘‘I take it you plan to jog a
little later on,’’ she said.
‘‘Yes,’’ said Josh. ‘‘Actually, that’s how Gail and I met at KU, running on
the university’s cross-country course. We’d go out there four or five times a
week.’’
‘‘It’s certainly lovely there,’’ agreed Frances, ‘‘but isn’t it at least ten miles
outside of town? That’s makes it a twenty-mile round trip.’’
‘‘So?’’ asked Josh.
‘‘Well, not to be judgmental, but that’s a lot of unnecessary pollution—
about twenty pounds of carbon dioxide for a round trip from the dorms,
I’d reckon—ironically, just to use your legs in the woods rather than on the
street,’’ said Frances.
Josh glanced at Gail and then at Bernie before responding. ‘‘Yes, but we
wanted to run on the course. It’s a lovely rural atmosphere and much pre-
ferred to running up and down streets, around and around the school track,
or even along the long straight levee by the river. Boring! We’re not going
to deny ourselves that pleasure, and we’re not going to feel guilty about it
either. I don’t know anybody who would, do you?’’
‘‘Actually, I would,’’ replied Frances in a firmer voice. ‘‘One thing I’ve
learned from my time at Haskell is that tribal cultures, as different as they
are from one another, share deeply the value of the importance of their
community, including the extended community of nature, and its welfare
We’re All in This . . . Alone 31

over that of the individual. In my courses I try to inform them of the social
and ecological costs of our consumer lifestyle. They then draw their own
conclusions about what they can do to cut back on their individual contri-
butions to those costs.
‘‘For example,’’ Frances continued, ‘‘members of one class decided to
patronize our farmers’ market as often as possible in their effort to reduce
the tremendous economic and environmental expenses of hauling avocados
from California, oranges from Florida, and flowers from Central America.
They did some research and discovered that out of every hundred dollars
spent on local produce forty-five dollars remains in the Lawrence
community.’’
‘‘Well,’’ replied Josh, ‘‘we frequent the farmers’ market in Wichita for
fresh vegetables. But the prices are often greater than in the chain supermar-
kets, and I have to confess, we love our avocados and oranges in January.
So do our kids. And so many things are manufactured overseas. When we
shop for family clothes I play the game of examining the labels of garments
for their ‘made in’ label. You’d be amazed. On one trip I counted fifteen
different places—obscure countries, islands—just in women’s apparel.’’
‘‘So, you prefer to be savvy consumers rather than principled ones,’’
replied Frances.
‘‘Oh no,’’ exclaimed Josh. ‘‘We have a principle. Buy local, but not if
China is cheaper. It’s the consumer version of the principle ‘Think globally,
act locally.’ ’’
Josh again exchanged glances with Gail and Bernie and continued, ‘‘It
looks like you’ve converted to the Indians’ spiritual love of nature, which
we share in some ways. That’s why we use our ‘legs in the woods rather
than the street,’ as you put it. Sure, the fossil fuel burned for our sake does
have its emissions, but the pleasures are well worth the costs. To speak hon-
estly, none of us is into sacrifice for the sake of some greater good.
‘‘And let me say also that, unlike Indians, we see nature as valuable only
because it provides us with resources for our lives, including resources for
enjoyment, like jogging in the woods. So sacrificing for the sake of nature
doesn’t make a lot of sense.’’
‘‘Oh, I agree with much of what you’re saying,’’ replied Frances, ‘‘espe-
cially the part about nature not qualifying for any sacrifice from us for its
sake alone. In fact, using ‘nature’ instead of ‘the environment’ just confuses
things. If we use ‘the environment,’ which of course includes natural ecosys-
tems and geography, such as the Kansas River that runs through Lawrence,
and the atmosphere, especially the air laced with industrial emissions that
32 Environmental Ethics

sometimes drifts over the city, then it’s easy to see that our actions do affect
not only nature but most importantly our own lives and health. I don’t want
to get into a lecture here, but to me it’s all about us, and that includes the
air we breathe. I don’t hug trees, but, like you, I do appreciate them.’’
‘‘Hmm,’’ interjected Bernie, ‘‘then I guess we disagree about something
else. Let me guess. Like the Indians, it’s about what we might call our duties,
personally, to some greater community.’’
‘‘Yes, that’s it—the community of fellow persons—we have responsibili-
ties to limit our actions to reduce harm to that community, and that includes
making sure that our so-called carbon footprint is as small as possible,’’ said
Frances.
‘‘OK,’’ replied Bernie. ‘‘It just seems like common sense to reduce green-
house gasses because not doing so will eventually come back to cause each
one of us big problems. But I must first be persuaded of the probable harms
for me and those I love before I will cooperate. It has to be voluntary,
approved by me, and no more costly than to anybody else. In other words,
I’d be happy to put out the extra effort required to recycle rather than live
in the shadow of a mega landfill. And if everybody followed suit voluntarily,
we’d solve most of our environmental problems without irksome laws and
regulations.’’
‘‘Not only that,’’ interjected Gail, ‘‘but it seems to me that my first
responsibility is to myself and my loved ones and not to some vague crowd
of faceless persons. If jogging in the woods is that important to me, then I
may well accept the carbon emissions as costs. Others may want to make
different choices. It’s up to them. I don’t see why I must involuntarily
restrict my quality of living if my choices are reasonable.’’
‘‘For example,’’ she continued, ‘‘Josh and I were forced to tear out the
wall in our older place in Wichita to install a new air conditioner because
energy efficiency regulations passed after we purchased the home meant that
the new unit had to be larger—too large to fit in the space occupied by the
old one. A new air conditioning compartment cost us more than a thousand
dollars. We paid money others did not have to pay. We had no choice;
government insisted. Some would say that our sacrifice was for the greater
good. I say that it was for our greater harm.’’
‘‘I hate to say it, Gail, but that sounds a little narrow and selfish,’’ said
Frances.
‘‘Sure, that’s the opinion of those who aren’t compelled to make unusual
contributions to society,’’ Gail responded. ‘‘And that’s to be expected,
because they benefit, thanks to the sacrifice of those of us who may not.
We’re All in This . . . Alone 33

Also,’’ Gail continued with increasing enthusiasm, ‘‘the federal government

may place a huge tax on gasoline to reduce consumption and to fund clean
energy technology. I approve of that so long as everybody pays the tax. But
then there’s the provision that those whose income is below a certain thresh-
old will receive gas stamps, sort of like food stamps, to offset the added
expense. While personal hardships sometimes qualify for such welfare,
those of us in the middle class who pay a lot of taxes that make these hand-
outs possible are unfairly burdened with the inequitable application of gov-
ernment regulations.’’
‘‘Um, thanks dear. Points well made,’’ said Josh as he interrupted diplo-
matically to change topics. ‘‘The caffeine in our coffee makes for a stimulat-
ing conversation.
‘‘Bernie, it must be really interesting to be an attorney in San Francisco,
especially for the member of the class who was voted in our yearbook as
‘most likely to be annoying,’ ’’ Josh continued playfully, placing his hand on
Bernie’s shoulder.
‘‘More than you might expect, Josh. I fully concur with your lovely
spouse about injustices to individuals whose ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness’ are the very reasons for our form of government. Let me tell you
what I’m doing out there. The city fathers are pushing to spend a great deal
of money building bike paths and racks throughout the city to encourage
more riders. I’m suing to stop that project.’’
‘‘I beg your pardon, suing to halt the project? Why on earth would you
do that?’’ asked Frances incredulously.
‘‘Cars will always vastly outnumber bikes,’’ continued Bernie. ‘‘Allotting
more space and passing protective traffic regulations for cyclists would just
add to our traffic jams, idling cars, and thus to increased loss of productive
time and even more pollution. It’s a project imposed on the majority of the
city’s citizens by a few anticar eco-fanatics indulging in their bicycle fantasy.
If I win, at least the project will be delayed for years by court-imposed envi-
ronmental impact statements for those paths and bike racks. How’s that for
poetic justice?’’
With a smile, Frances offered her insight to Bernie’s account. ‘‘I’m sure
that those individuals, yes, individuals, in San Francisco who want to ride
bikes instead of drive cars around town would agree that you have fulfilled
your class yearbook prediction! Now, isn’t that one function of government,
to step in and adjudicate between individuals who feel coerced by other
individuals with conflicting goals? Isn’t government, ironically, a necessary
34 Environmental Ethics

institution if your kind of radical individualism, with its minimal commit-

ment to social community, is to work?’’
‘‘Certainly,’’ agreed Bernie in surprising agreement. ‘‘A politician
recently said that ‘government is just another name for the things we choose
to do together.’ That’s a wonderful definition!’’
‘‘Why is that?’’ asked Frances.
‘‘Because it bases what we do together upon the reasonable choices of
self-interested individuals and not upon any ideal of some abstract and
vague entity, known as society or community, to which we owe allegiance
and personal sacrifice and to which we have duties,’’ responded Bernie.
‘‘Please understand,’’ he continued. ‘‘I’m neither a tree hugger nor one
who sees tree huggers as eco-nuts. I’m just your average American. I get up
in the morning, go to work, come home to my family, eat, sleep, and then
get up the next morning and do it all over again. I go to church, coach a
Little League baseball team, and belong to the PTA. I choose to live my life
that way, play by the rules, and give of my time and energy freely, and
not because of some authority that, through obligations and prohibitions,
cordially compels me to do these things. Rather than accept duties, we keep
promises. When it comes to the community, good citizens, it seems to me,
are motivated by character and not by coercion.’’
‘‘I think Frances has a point, Bernie,’’ said Josh, ‘‘when she talks about
selfishness, except there must be a better word for it. ‘Libertarianism,’ per-
haps. I prefer ‘rational individualism.’ If I am assured of my fair share, I will
make my fair contribution to reduce pollution or prevent KU’s cross-coun-
try course from being sold to developers, if that were a threat. I’ll give, but
I won’t give away. Without persuasion I won’t voluntarily surrender part of
my fair share for the good of the environment or the so-called community.
If I conclude that my reasonable interests are best served by protecting the
environment, then I’ll pay the price. That’s what I call charity. So, if you
want my cooperation and involvement, provide incentives and a reasonable
argument. And speaking about community . . . if my interests are satisfied,
I’m happy, and if I’m happy there’s a good chance that others around
me—my family and friends, the businesses I patronize, my boss, and even
my minister—are happy too. That’s how you can be selfish and contribute
at the same time.’’
‘‘As a chemist, I count a lot,’’ Frances noted, slightly bemused. ‘‘And I
counted twenty times you used ‘I’ and ‘my’ in your comments. Would it be
unreasonable to conclude that, for you and most Americans, the world
We’re All in This . . . Alone 35

revolves around that wonderful thing called ‘I’? No wonder ‘I’ is the only
personal pronoun that’s capitalized!
‘‘Maybe this is the crux of our disagreement,’’ Frances continued. ‘‘My
experience at Haskell has taught me that, traditionally, Indians have a col-
lective identity, not an individual one. For them, who you are has always
been defined by your tribal culture and by all your relations. And you have
unquestioned duties to those persons and to the long traditions that they
and you carry forward to the next generation. Indians think in larger intu-
itive wholes. We Americans think in autonomous units. We’re social atoms.
‘‘Also, native traditions understand non–human beings—bison, wolves,
coyotes, owls, and many other species—as tribes or ‘nations’ just like our
own. We have duties to members of our tribe. We also have duties to mem-
bers of those other tribes because they are persons, too, disguised by their
dress, by coats of fur, feathers, or scales. They make sacrifices for us such
as offering their coats and flesh. We have duties to them, including thanking
them for their cooperation through ceremonies and not depleting their num-
bers or fouling their habitats. This is a principle known as reciprocity. It
works for community relationships. It works also for individual relation-
ships, and it works for the environment. Sure, most of my students prefer
the Internet, especially social sites like Facebook, to traditional stories about
the give-and-take covenants of their ancestors with bison and eagles, but
the instincts remain deep down in historical memory and through encoun-
ters with tribal elders, and they still make a difference.’’
‘‘That’s lovely, Frances,’’ said Josh, ‘‘but it’s quite a stretch for me. Do
you subscribe to that philosophy?’’
‘‘Not all of it,’’ replied Frances, ‘‘just the part about the identity of the
individual defined by the tribal community. If that community is expanded
to include other creatures, then reciprocity is reasonable as a fundamental
moral principle. Sacrifice makes sense for them, both in their tribe and in
nature. To an Indian, ‘my fair share’ is a fractious and alien idea, given their
inclusive scheme of things.’’
‘‘Just as their notion of a ‘collective ego,’ if you please, is almost unthink-
able to us,’’ said Gail.
‘‘And reciprocity?’’ asked Frances.
‘‘Hmm. Perhaps,’’ said Gail. ‘‘We would call it ‘compromise,’ wouldn’t
we? In our world, trade-offs are always part of negotiations carried out
between reasonable individuals. It’s part of our pragmatic attitude and may
be the only way to maximize personal benefits politically, socially, and eco-
nomically. It might even work for pollution problems and global warming,
36 Environmental Ethics

just so long as everybody contributes, and we get a return on our

investment.’’
‘‘Unless you can get a federal judge to do it for you!’’ interjected Bernie
with a wry smile.
A few moments of silence showed that both the coffee and the conversa-
tion had cooled. It was time to go.
‘‘Your plans for the rest of the day, Frances?’’ asked Josh.
‘‘I’m going back to the farmers’ market for a bouquet of locally grown
flowers to continue the brightness of the day that running into all of you
began,’’ said Frances. ‘‘What’s the next event in the reunion? Trying to rec-
ognize fellow students you haven’t seen in a quarter century?’’
They laughed together. Then Josh concluded, ‘‘We hear that folks are
gathering at the bowling lanes over on Indiana Street. Bowling’s a great
sport. You can renew old acquaintances between frames, or bowl alone if
you prefer. Perfect for rational individuals! After that we plan to jog in the
woods, and we may even commune with a few trees. Who knows?’’

Commentary

Disputes about environmental issues often place in opposition those who

give humans a unique superior status and those who see us as just another
species in nature, that is, anthropocentrists opposing ecocentrists. Not so
on this day in Lawrence, Kansas. The characters in this case, Josh, Gail, and
Bernie on one side and Frances on the other, are committed anthropocentrists,
a philosophy discussed in chapter 1. Yet they embody two very different
moral approaches to social and natural community. As anthropocentrists,
they agree on one thing: Humans are of primary worth, and the value of
nature is determined fully by its contributions to human well-being. Beyond
this single affirmation, they disagree mightily on what that position means
for their responsibilities toward other persons and, within that context,
their responsibilities toward nature.

Individualism and Autonomy

Josh, Gail, and Bernie are representatives of individualism, the prevailing

philosophy of human nature in Western society and most radically found in
American culture where it reigns, especially in the consumer economy,
We’re All in This . . . Alone 37

almost without serious critical examination. In its modern form, individual-

ism is the invention of the European Enlightenment, especially in the eigh-
teenth century. During several hundred years of social and cultural
repositioning, the dominance of older prevailing authorities, including the
church and autocratic monarchies, was replaced by rationalism, capitalism,
and democracy, with their common emphasis on the inherent rights of free
persons. Very influential thinkers of the period, including John Locke,
argued for the account that human society is a voluntary association of
autonomous individuals who negotiate a covenant in which they agree to
surrender some of their liberties in exchange for the benefits of security and
the promise of material comfort. These are advantages that would be hard
to come by for the solitary individual in ‘‘a state of nature,’’ as Thomas
Hobbes put it. Thus, through mutual consent, individuals who enter into
such a social contract stand the best chance of maximizing their self-inter-
ests, which include, as Thomas Jefferson writes in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, ‘‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’’
The key concept anchoring this philosophy is human autonomy. A quick
trip to the dictionary reveals that autonomy is composed of two compo-
nents from the Greek language: ‘‘auto’’ and ‘‘nomos.’’ ‘‘Auto’’ is broadly
translated into ‘‘self,’’ as in ‘‘automobile’’—a self-moving vehicle. ‘‘Nomos’’
is ‘‘law’’ or ‘‘rule.’’ Together these terms signify ‘‘self-governance’’ or ‘‘self-
rule.’’
As several of our characters reveal, the philosophy of autonomous indi-
viduals in singular pursuit of their self-interests and personal preferences
thrives in a culture of leisure, consumption, and political liberty. In this
scheme the self governs; he or she is sovereign in the sense that his or her
own rules take precedent. Other sets of laws are derived from the sover-
eignty of the self and voluntarily embraced only after it is reasonably shown
that doing so will benefit the interests of the individual. Of course, despite
this pledge of allegiance to the self, some interests require choosing to honor
duties to at least a small circle of others, often the immediate family, whose
own happiness is of great psychological and emotional value to that individ-
ual. In sports as well, athletes will subordinate their own good to the success
of the team in order to satisfy the greatest personal interest of all—winning.
Thus self-interested individuals often negotiate and occasionally even com-
promise to achieve the greatest happiness.
When practiced in this way, there’s nothing morally suspect about auton-
omy. Indeed, it is the most important ingredient in a free market economy
and political democracy, the success of which benefits everybody. The ideal
38 Environmental Ethics

of liberal education in America is to produce educated citizens who are

informed about such things as environmental ethics and skilled in reasoned
argument and critical judgment, that is, who are autonomous in the best
sense of the term and least likely to fall victim to political demagogy and
ideological propaganda. Also, individualism embraces virtues and demon-
strates character. In addition to reasoned prudence just mentioned, there are
virtues of self-reliance, discipline, and courage celebrated in the romantic
notion of the American frontiersman. Or, to paraphrase Shakespeare liber-
ally, be true to yourself, and everything else follows.

A Minimalist Ethic

Still, deep within even enlightened and virtuous self-interest, there lurks a
fundamental flaw—a commitment to a minimalist moral strategy. The ethi-
cist Daniel Callahan describes this flaw nicely: ‘‘We are obliged under the
most generous reading of a minimalist ethic only to honor our voluntarily
undertaken family obligations, to keep our promises, and to respect con-
tracts freely entered into with other freely consenting adults.’’1
Thus being true to oneself means not only answering to oneself but also
deciding who else shall qualify for your true and unwavering commitment.
So in difficult times, for example, severe economic downturns, natural disas-
ters, and environmental crises, the autonomous individual does not neces-
sarily feel obligated by social duties that require restraint or sacrifice for the
sake of the common good, unless, of course, that good, in a utilitarian sense,
is their good too. In such a case, they, in the absence of counterarguments,
may rationally choose to embrace it.
In spite of its commitment to the metaphor of ‘‘the social atom,’’ individ-
ualism is not without regard for justice or equality with respect to the distri-
bution of public goods, especially basic and universal goods like clean air.
But this use of justice and equality continues to turn mostly on concepts of
individual interest. Josh and Gail speak of their ‘‘fair share,’’ which for the
individual means that I should not be arbitrarily deprived of some portion
of what I am owed by society even if that personal loss results in a greater
overall benefit for everybody, including myself. Gail mentions the unjust
expenses of an energy efficient air conditioner and gasoline coupons distrib-
uted to the poor but not to those whose hard work, in this case engineers,
make them too wealthy to be eligible. These are irksome because of
expenses some bear and others do not (contributive injustice) and also for
We’re All in This . . . Alone 39

benefits that some receive and others do not (distributive injustice). In addi-
tion, these harms are onerous in that they are imposed and not negotiated, a
clear violation of autonomy. Josh and Gail were not consulted in the matter.
For Frances, Gail’s complaints seem ‘‘narrow and selfish,’’ even self-
indulgent. She’s probably thinking, ‘‘Grow up. Get over it.’’ If Gail is an
autonomous adult, the grown-up described by Callahan, she will be open
to further persuasive arguments as to why such sacrifices, though apparently
unjust for the individual, are justified in the bigger picture of the health
advantages of clean air and the ominous threat of global warming. Even so,
proponents of ethical minimalism have trouble participating in community
actions that promise few personal benefits in return for their contribution,
even if, overall, benefits come to all members of the community. Some addi-
tional benefits, offered as incentives, are frequently required to make it
‘‘worth their while.’’
It should be noted that Gail’s remarks are echoed by developing coun-
tries. China and India are moving rapidly into the automobile culture by
adding millions of vehicles and thousands of miles of roads for the conve-
nience and pleasure of their billions of citizens. Western industrialized
nations look upon this stunning growth with grave concern. China is rap-
idly overtaking the United States as the world’s most polluting nation. Auto-
mobiles are contributing substantially to greenhouse gases and toxic urban
haze in a time when industrial nations are embracing crisis programs to
reduce them. When faced with pleas from the West to seek alternative
modes of transportation and energy, the response of China and India is
predictable: ‘‘Why,’’ they complain, ‘‘should we put the brakes on the devel-
opment of an automobile culture with its consequent material abundance
when you industrialized nations have been spewing carbon dioxide for a
century and enjoying the benefits with no concern? You have your share.
Now it’s our turn.’’ In the nation-state system of international relations that
has been dominant since the rise of the modern state in the sixteenth cen-
tury, the model has been that of the sovereign state whose responsibility to
maximize its interests in competition with other sovereign states trumps all
other moral concerns. This position mimics that of the autonomous, self-
interested individual—a Josh, Gail, or Bernie—as a primary stumbling
block to a truly global response to global warming.
Bernie’s project to halt or at least delay implementation of a system of
bike paths in San Francisco reveals other consequences of individualism.2 If
negotiations leading to the satisfaction of the interests of all parties fail, the
individualist often resorts to confrontation, in this case legal roadblocks.
40 Environmental Ethics

Interest groups often take the adversarial approach to achieve victory if

their goals are incompatible with those of their opponents. While individu-
alism can be conciliatory, it may employ fractious tactics of combative con-
frontation that result in alienation. The recent history of environmentalism
is filled with accounts of suits and other kinds of defensive, ad hoc litigation
that are intended to halt actions that would bring about harm to ecosys-
tems, wild species, or the atmosphere.

Leopold’s Puzzlement

In his seminal essay ‘‘The Land Ethic,’’ the environmental philosopher Aldo
Leopold expresses similar puzzlement when he examines the moral attitudes
and resultant behavior of small farmers in Wisconsin in the 1940s.3 For
example, as a good citizen, Farmer Jones obeyed the law, voted, and joined
community organizations. Yet, on his own land, he implemented conserva-
tion practices that were profitable to him while ignoring those that were
profitable to the health of the land community or what we would call the
ecosystem. Farmer Jones’s actions were governed exclusively by economic
self-interest. What puzzles Leopold is the apparent contradictory conduct
of Farmer Jones, who seems to put the existence of social obligations that
require commitment of time and labor over and above the concerns of self-
interest alone while he views his land not as a community but as an engine
of commodity production to be treated only with expediency.
Bernie embodies a similar attitude. He tells us that he goes to church,
coaches a Little League baseball team, and is a member of the PTA. Each of
these is readily justified using self-interest because it benefits him and his
family. Involvement in such social activities, it could be argued, discloses a
commitment to good citizenship above and beyond self-interest, one that
requires sacrifice. His point, of course, is that he is not a callous egoist, but
a person who acts to bring about fulfillment of both his and his loved ones’
interests as an expression of personal character and civility.
Still, Leopold’s puzzlement concerning the apparent incompatible atti-
tudes of Farmer Jones regarding his social commitments and his commit-
ments—or lack thereof—to his land is not removed by Bernie’s revelation
of the softer and more accommodating social side of his moral minimalism.
Here we turn to Frances not only as a spokesperson for Leopold’s land
ethic but also as one who, given her experience with the Native American
worldview, carries the ideas of this celebrated environmental prophet even
further.
We’re All in This . . . Alone 41

Beyond Ethical Minimalism

As discussed earlier, Frances shares with the other three a commitment to

anthropocentrism. She understands that humans are morally considerable
and possess an intrinsic worth that greatly transcends that of any other
species and that of the natural world. But this shared philosophy does not
compel her to join Josh, Gail, and Bernie as members of the fraternity of
self-interested individualism and moral minimalism. In fact, her position is
far from theirs.
Frances argues that membership in a community entails obligations and
duties that transcend the interests of the individual. The metaphysical
notion that the person is essentially atomistic—a solitary and autonomous
ego—and that community is derived from this fundamental identity as a
negotiated and artificial construct is thoroughly denied by her. The truth is
rather that our personal self arises from the matrix of numerous communi-
ties, beginning with the family and radiating out to tribe, village, and
nation. ‘‘It takes a village’’ to raise a child, to take the title of Hillary Clin-
ton’s book. Moral membership in the community is sustained only through
civitas, a sense of duty to the community that entails obligation and sacrifice
that go beyond self-centered calculations. No community could exist for
long without the serious and enduring civic participation of its members.
If this is true, then the idea of the solitary and autonomous individual is
at best an unworkable abstraction and more likely a dangerous myth. It is
dangerous because its subscribers behave in ways that are perfectly rational
for individuals but can spell disaster for human and natural communities.
Some claim that just such a disaster is playing out now in Western industri-
alized society, with its official ideology of the rational consumer—that self-
celebrated and ‘‘wonderful thing called ‘I,’ ’’ as Frances puts it—who seeks
short-term happiness through choices that maximize individual satisfaction.
Somehow this behavior, its advocates proclaim, turns out for the best for
everybody. This ideology also assumes that the cornucopia of natural
resources is fully adequate for the task of meeting this unrestrained material
‘‘pursuit of happiness.’’ As it turns out, this is not so. Resource extraction
and depletion are the conspicuous consequences of this assumption. The
land is scarified and diminished, and the planet is enshrouded in its own
toxic effluents—a mounting global disaster in its own right.
Frances argues for a respect that restrains this unbridled destructive
behavior. She does so by emphasizing the participation of persons in both
human and natural communities. Leopold speaks through her. His words
42 Environmental Ethics

are clear on this point. ‘‘All ethics so far evolved rests upon a single premise:
that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.’’4
From this premise he concludes that ‘‘a land ethic changes the role of Homo
sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen
of it.’’
We hasten to add that Leopold recognizes the legitimacy of the economic
use of land, but, unlike the self-interested individualist, he insists the prevail-
ing belief ‘‘that economics determines all land use’’ is simply untrue.5 It is
false for two reasons. The first is that human history teaches us that the
conqueror role is self-defeating. We will never possess knowledge sufficient
to enslave ecosystems for the sake of economic expediency. The second rea-
son is that biotic communities deserve our ‘‘love, respect, and admiration.’’6
These attitudes, in turn, entail duties to ‘‘preserve the integrity, stability,
and beauty of the biotic community.’’7 So Leopold is an ecocentrist who
recognizes that, as citizens of the natural systems they inhabit, humans have
every right to harvest vital resources or, as our trio of Kansan individualists
put it, ‘‘our fair share.’’ In Leopold’s view, human urges to take much more
are constrained by objective duties that take the individual beyond exclusive
loyalty to self to something larger: loyalty to community, both human and
natural.
As Frances clearly recognizes, this last point is most important. Her com-
mitment to anthropocentrism verges on ecocentrism. She bases human ethi-
cal reasoning on the basic principle of loyalty to community. Our duties to
the community logically decide as well as limit our actions. The tangential
connection with ecocentrism is, as Leopold brilliantly recognized, just this
notion of community because it applies literally, not metaphorically, to both
human society and ecosystems. Frances is hesitant to go that far. She
believes that individuals have broad direct duties, duties that include
restraint and sacrifice, to others in their human community, even strangers,
as well as to themselves and their immediate loved ones as participants in
that community. But she will only go so far in proclaiming obligations to
the natural community. The best she can do is to say that we have indirect
duties to the environment as a means of serving human welfare. Reducing
our carbon footprint is not aimed at benefiting the atmosphere. Rather, the
true aim is to bring about health and well-being to persons by benefiting the
atmosphere.

Life Story: Mine or Ours

Frances is impressed, however, with the traditional wisdom of Native Amer-
ican elders contained in their teachings about animals and human relations
We’re All in This . . . Alone 43

to them. If animal nations possess a fundamental human nature, then,

through its universalization, anthropocentrism loses its exclusiveness. Per-
sons are persons regardless of their garb and should be treated as such.
Human community is extended seamlessly beyond its exceptional embrace
of naked human animals to include all persons, furry, feathered, or scaly. It
follows that we owe important considerations to these other persons. And
if we must consume them to feed our vital interest, then our duty is to treat
them with respect and offer just compensation for their sacrifices to us. This
Indian philosophy more closely resembles biocentrism than Leopold’s eco-
centrism. But it contributes to a sense of valued community as the collection
of all persons, whatever their ‘‘nation,’’ and their reciprocal obligations.
This position contrasts radically with that of individualism. Speaking for
her fellow individualists, Gail insists that reciprocity is not so much a princi-
ple of respect as it is a strategy for maximizing one’s own interests. She sees
it as compromise achieved through negotiation.
Tribal elders recount traditional stories (known as etiological myths) that
explain how relationships between humans and specific animals originated
as a way of grounding the authority of consequent ethical norms. To be a
moral member of a community may be defined as participating in a com-
mon story. Thus, as religions have always recognized, storytelling is an
indispensable social cohesive. For Native Americans these mythic accounts
of ancestors and animals also cement their legacy with the larger whole of
nature.
In individualist philosophy, collective stories play at best a minor role in
providing a common web of narrative. Indeed, they play an opposite role.
Biography and especially autobiography are literary forms that flourish in
America as our preferred narratives. Entire sections of bookstores are dedi-
cated to the life stories of the rich and famous, or infamous. For the author
or celebrity subject, these books are often exercises in narcissistic exhibi-
tionism. For the reader, they satisfy some voyeuristic impulse for intimate
details of conquest or tragedy. The genre is ample evidence for and rein-
forcement of our commitment to the primacy of the individual.
This commitment is not the case with Native American biography or
autobiography. With rare exceptions (written mostly by white Americans),
accounts of the lives of individual Indians focus on experiences within the
context of the tribal societies to which the subjects belong and from which
they take their meaningful sense of self. Little emphasis is placed on the
existential experiences of the insular ego as an actor in its own right. One is
first a Sioux or a Cherokee and only then an individual. Autonomy is impor-
tant, but it is located in the greater community where it is shared by those
44 Environmental Ethics

who constitute that tribal group. Furthermore, including animal members

of other tribes in formative stories guarantees that they will also receive
moral consideration in issues affecting their interests, for example, healthy
habitats. An environmental ethic arises easily from such an inclusive
worldview.

Bowling Alone

As Josh and Gail recognize, good neighborliness is a virtue, even between

individualists. Social conviviality moderates the extremes of the isolationist
tendencies of individualism. But recently, according to some observers, good
neighborliness, known as social capital, has declined in American life.
Despite their commitment to the rights of the poor and disfranchised in
society, liberals champion the moral liberation of the individual. Despite
their commitment to family values, conservatives champion economic liber-
ation. Autonomy benefits from these positions, but good neighborliness,
understood as social networking, trusting in others and in institutions, and
willingness to engage in joint sacrifices to build social cohesion, suffers. The
result is lower levels of community participation, sharing, and communica-
tion and a weakening of common resolve. In this kind of diminished social
environment, individualism dominates and the crucial awareness of being a
faithful member of a community of equals is lost. That is, the norm of civi-
tas, understood as this willingness to enter into responsible associations of
trust and service, is diminished. With this loss also comes reduced incentive
to tackle those issues, like pollution, that affect everyone but that are
addressed as if they affect only one—the individual. Thus our case ends with
the three companionable anthropocentrists going off to a bowling center
where they have the choice of engaging with their ex-classmates or bowling
alone. Bowling is the exact metaphor for the rational individualist engaging
collective environmental issues in an age of diminished social capital—a
perfect strike.

Questions for Discussion

1. Is individualism compatible with environmentalism?

2. Bernie makes the case for opposing bicycle paths and racks in San
Francisco. How would advocates of these improvements in the
We’re All in This . . . Alone 45

cycling community make their case? With which side do you agree?
Why?
3. What is the social contract model of community, social responsibil-
ity, and government? Can environmental issues such as pollution and
global warming be addressed effectively through this model?
Explain.
4. Describe moral minimalism. What is your position with respect to
it? What, if any, additional duties do we have toward one another
and society?
5. Is the idea of national sovereignty obsolete in a time of global warm-
ing? Do China and India have a right to industrialize even if the
consequences include increased greenhouse gas emissions for the
planet?

Notes
1. Daniel Callahan, ‘‘Minimalist Ethics: On the Pacification of Morality,’’ Hast-
ings Center Report 11 (October 1981): 22.
2. This example comes from a news item. See Phreo Dvork, ‘‘San Francisco
Ponders: Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution?’’ Wall Street Journal, August 20,
2008, A1.
3. Aldo Leopold, ‘‘The Land Ethic,’’ in Sand County Almanac with Essays on
Conservation from Round River (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953). Leo-
pold’s essay can be found on several internet sites, including www.luminary.us/
leopold/land_ethic.html.
4. Ibid., 239.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 263.
7. Ibid., 262.

For Further Reading

Brown, Joseph Epes. Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Traditions.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Callahan, Daniel. ‘‘Minimalist Ethics: On the Pacification of Morality.’’ Hastings
Center Report 11 (October 1981): 19–25.
‘‘China Expected to Become Top Auto Producer, Displacing Japan.’’ Electronic
Design Strategy News. www.edn.com/artide/ca6647505.htm.
Cronon, William. ‘‘The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature.’’ Environmental History 1, no. 1 (1996): 7–55.
46 Environmental Ethics

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round
River. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. 2nd ed. (originally published 1869).
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1980.
Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Commu-
nity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
 PART II

Maintaining and
Managing the Ecosystem
 three

For Ecological
Health or Profit?
The POPs Elimination Treaty

T
‘‘ his is a heavy responsibility, and I need help from all
of you to fulfill it,’’ announced Diego Sandoval solemnly as he
looked around the room at the senior staff of Medios Nuevos,
the nongovernmental organization (NGO) for which he worked. Diego had
just been appointed to the Peruvian delegation to the fourth Conference
of Participants (COP) of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic
Pollutants, which was to take place May 4–8, 2009, in Geneva. Diego was
the head of the environmental department of Medios Nuevos—a depart-
ment that had expanded fourfold over the past five years under the interna-
tional funding Diego had obtained for regional environmental research and
implementation. It was the staff opinion that Diego’s two latest projects in
Lima’s northern cone—one a pesticide education project for local farmers
and their families and the other a plant that recycled sanitary sewer water
from local neighborhoods for irrigation of park and (inedible) garden
land—had caught the eye of someone in the government and resulted in this
appointment. Diego had assembled the senior staff from all of the depart-
ments to ask for help in developing a comprehensive position.
‘‘Much of the information available on these POPs [persistent organic
pollutants] emerges from the situation and perspective of the developed
nations and does not represent our situation here in Peru,’’ Diego went on.
‘‘There are many delegates from developing nations who, like me, come

49
50 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

from NGOs. I want to network with them and share information, but I
need you to help me gather as comprehensive a set of data as possible as
our contribution. The questions involved in eliminating these POPs involve
many of your areas of work, as they affect public health, the welfare of
infants and children, human rights, agriculture, and labor rights, to name
just a few. I know that all of the departments are busy with their own proj-
ects and face their own deadlines. I thank you for coming today to share
some initial information and an overview and ask that we reassemble in five
weeks to share the fruits of our research in our various departments relative
to these negotiations. Is that agreeable?’’ All present nodded acquiescence.
‘‘Maria Amparo has done some initial information gathering on the
status of the negotiations. Maria?’’
Maria Amparo read from her notes. ‘‘The Stockholm Convention on Per-
sistent Organic Pollutants was initially organized to outlaw a ‘dirty dozen’
of organic toxins. The convention went into effect for all the signatories in
2004, who were pledged to ban the production, stockpiling, export, import,
and use of these dozen chemicals. These dirty dozen included eight pesticides
(aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, and toxa-
phene), two industrial chemicals (hexachlorobenzene [HCB] and polychlo-
rinated biphenyls [PCBs]), and two unintended by-products (dioxins and
furans), all of which are used—or, in the case of dioxins and furans, pro-
duced—in Peru. The pesticides had been banned in the United States and
other industrialized nations for about twenty years, though the United
States and some other rich countries still produced them for sale to other
nations. However, although the European Union [EU] nations signed, the
United States has still not signed onto the Convention, because the Conven-
tion committed to banning other chemicals in the future upon evidence of
their being toxic to life forms and persistent in the environment.’’
Diego added as an aside, ‘‘The United States is always worried about
signing anything that will commit it to a course of action in the future—
some of its politicians and people see this as a limitation on national sover-
eignty!’’ There were some rueful nods of understanding around the room.
Maria Amparo continued. ‘‘Peru is a signatory. In the past meetings we
participated principally on two issues. The first was the debate around
whether or not the precautionary principle should be accepted as part of the
approach for deciding on new chemicals to be banned. This was hotly
debated and slowed the process for well over a year. Environmental groups
strongly pressed for acceptance, but some nations, both rich and poor,
argued that too much caution in banning chemicals could have disastrous
For Ecological Health or Profit? 51

economic consequences. In the end the agreement was more procedural

than principled: The measurements for toxicity and persistence and the
method for reporting were agreed upon. When these levels are met, the sig-
natory nations will vote on a ban.
‘‘Many of the poorer nations agreed with us that it was difficult for us to
agree to ban the dirty dozen because these were heavily used in our coun-
tries, and replacements were more expensive, while banning the dirty dozen
cost the rich countries very little—they hadn’t used them for decades. Ban-
ning new chemicals, conversely, could cost the rich nations who researched
and produced them a great deal but would be easier for us because they are
too expensive, being under patent protection, for many of our farms or
businesses to afford.
‘‘The second issue on which we participated was the implementation of
the ban on the dirty dozen. Like many other poor nations, our farmers use
many of these older pesticides because they are cheaper, out of patent pro-
tection, and often manufactured here or in neighboring Latin nations. Poor
nations like us need financial help to implement a ban—not only to enforce
it on would-be importers, local manufacturers, and agricultural users but
also to subsidize for our farmers substitute pesticides, which tend to be
much more expensive. Our farmers cannot afford to stop using pesticides
and lose significant parts of their crops to insects. But in addition to the
need for implementation funding in poor nations, there is another imple-
mentation issue, chiefly involving DDT, but also involving the whole issue
of exceptions to the ban.’’
Elsa Dominguez interjected, ‘‘Yes, the malaria issue!’’ Elsa worked in the
Department of Health and Nutrition in Amazonas, Peru. ‘‘I would like us
to talk about this aspect. Many of us in community health think that the
reservation for the use of DDT spraying during malarial outbreaks needs
amendment. Can we come back to that later?’’
Both Maria Amparo and Diego nodded agreement, and Elsa subsided.
Diego prompted, ‘‘And where do the discussions stand now?’’
‘‘The May meeting will focus on implementation of the agreements
already made, and on the nine new chemicals proposed for ban,’’ responded
Maria Amparo. ‘‘I need to do further research on these new chemicals, but
so far, I have not found any of them to be imported in large quantities into
Peru.’’
‘‘How did Peru stand at the previous meetings?’’ Diego asked.
‘‘Solidly with the other seventy-six developing nations on the funding
issue, demanding that the developed nations contribute to a specific fund to
52 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

cover the costs of the transition in developing nations,’’ Maria replied.

‘‘Canada offered to donate $10 million, but the United States and the EU
only offered pocket change—less than a million apiece. Probably because of
the mining companies, Peru was unwilling to give blanket authority for ban-
ning new chemicals. The political and economic fallout from the big mer-
cury spill in June 1999 at the Yanacocha gold mine in Choropampa
continues to make the mining industry uneasy.1 The financial arm of the
World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, has owned a piece of
that mine and went into shock at the news of a 330-pound spill with sixty
people immediately affected. They were able to cover up the worst of the
news, but anything to do with lethal chemicals makes them sweat.’’
‘‘Well, we can understand the mining companies’ interests, and why the
government would try to protect them,’’ Diego said. ‘‘And the miners’
unions certainly would support them too. Can you imagine if the mines
were shut down because new regulations on chemicals made them not
profitable enough to operate? We have less than half of the national work-
force in full-time employment now, and mining is a big piece of that!’’
José, head of the Department of Public Health and Nutrition, spoke up.
‘‘To what extent does the debate over the exceptions involve the use of DDT
for malaria control?’’
‘‘DDT has been the issue for exceptions,’’ Maria answered. ‘‘South
Africa, where two of the previous sessions were held, banned DDT in 1974
but has just begun spraying it to combat a 100 percent increase in malaria
deaths since 2002. They reintroduced DDT largely because the mosquitoes
had become resistant to the other pesticides they had been using. This use
of DDT is only for public health reasons; agricultural use is still banned.
South Africa is not the only developing country with an escalating malaria
problem; several million people die every year from malaria, three hundred
to five hundred children under age five die every hour, and the death toll is
rising, largely because of strapped public health budgets and growing mos-
quito resistance. Several other developing nations also use DDT for malaria
control, including China, India, and Mexico.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ José responded, ‘‘but the convention signatories should look care-
fully at Mexico, because they became a major producer of DDT—they have
a vested economic interest in its continued use. And there is evidence that,
at least in parts of Mexico, DDT is no longer effective; their mosquitoes,
too, have become resistant.’’
‘‘You all read the initial report from our pesticide education project,’’
Diego said. ‘‘That project was begun following the deaths in Tauccamarca
For Ecological Health or Profit? 53

in October 1999 and aimed at assessing the level of safety common in pesti-
cide usage in Peruvian agriculture and then introducing safer practices
around pesticides.2 The problems we found were immense: We have illiter-
ate and semiliterate peasants buying and using increasing amounts of dan-
gerous chemicals without any instruction or any ability to read directions
and warnings. Moreover, even if they could read the directions and warn-
ings, they would be unable to carry them out. Many peasants—for example,
here in the northern cone—have limited access to water, which they must
buy by the liter from trucks, so they cannot wash after applying pesticides.
Worse, many store the drinking and cooking water they buy in empty pesti-
cide containers! Most sleep in the same clothes they wear to apply pesticides
because they have at most one other set of clothes. Because pesticide appli-
cation does not require great strength, children and pregnant women often
are given this chore, and they seem to be most vulnerable to health damage,
at least based on the medical research that has been done. Women often go
straight from pesticide application to food preparation.
‘‘The education project has had limited success. We have succeeded in
convincing farmers to store the pesticide as far as possible from food, drink-
ing water, and livestock; to avoid whenever possible direct contact with skin
or food; and to keep pregnant women and very young children away from
pesticides. But protective gear—gloves, masks, special clothes—these are
simply out of the question for virtually all.’’
Juan Francisco, the head of the agriculture department, which had coop-
erated with Diego’s environmental department in the pesticide education
project, now joined the conversation.
‘‘You know, in the last few years several MIP [Manejo Integrado de Pla-
gas (Integral Pest Management)] projects in the mountains have been pretty
successful. I have been looking at a program at the University of Cusco
that teaches peasants to use the old Indian methods to control pests. The
experimental fields have actually decreased pest damages to crops by 12
percent after two years of substituting MIP for pesticide use. As one peasant
tries it successfully, his neighbors take it up voluntarily, so the method is
steadily spreading.’’
‘‘But what is MIP?’’ José asked. ‘‘I don’t know much about agriculture.’’
‘‘It’s a combination of methods called Integral Plague Management,’’
Juan replied. ‘‘The basic method is crop diversification and rotation, supple-
mented by one or more of a variety of methods. Sometimes one borders a
field with plants that repel particular pests; at other times and situations
54 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

one uses pest traps, sexual pheromones, and even farm-produced baculo-
virus—which is made from larvae from damaged potatoes, ground and
mixed with talcum powder, and then spread at the edges of the fields. In
the past eight or nine years these methods have been more successful than
pesticides in combating the resistant ‘gorjogo’ giant potato moth infestation
that appeared in 1998. Crop damage was reduced from a 44 percent level
with pesticide use to 8.5 percent with MIP. But it is still experimental; some
critics charge that farmers using MIP are obtaining benefits from their
neighbors’ use of pesticides and that if the majority switch to MIP the results
will be much worse—though it’s interesting that MIP farmers have higher
yields.’’
‘‘I’d like to know more about the extent of the danger from these pesti-
cides and how important they are for maintaining crop yields,’’ said Xavier,
who headed the human rights department, which engaged in popular lead-
ership training and human rights education work. ‘‘El Senor, the Lord,
knows that the campesinos can’t afford to lower either their caloric intake
or their marketable crops.’’
‘‘Do we have an agreement to research these areas, circulate our findings,
and meet again in five weeks with suggestions about what the Peruvian posi-
tion at the INC-5 [fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Com-
mittee of the Stockholm Convention on POPs] should look like?’’ asked
Diego. All the heads in the room nodded. ‘‘In the meantime I will initiate
contact with the minister and see how open he is to preparatory discussions
within the delegation. I also will find out from our NGO Internet network
who the NGO members of other Latin American delegations are so that I
can contact them and work out information sharing. Thank you all for your
help.’’

Five weeks later, half an hour into the meeting, the debate was loud and
divisive. Diego finally stood and quieted the room.
‘‘Let me see if I can fairly summarize the two positions I have heard. On
the one hand, Maria Amparo, Juan Francisco, and Xavier propose that Peru
should refuse to implement the ban on the dirty dozen or newer pesticides.
Instead, they argue that we should support a more gradual shift away from
use of these chemicals, continue demanding economic aid from the develop-
ing nations to fund this gradual transition, regulate national pesticide sales
to ensure that safety directions in Spanish are included with each purchase,
inspect to ensure that the pesticide application processes on large farms
protect worker health, and immediately begin large-scale pesticide safety
For Ecological Health or Profit? 55

instruction for campesinos throughout Peru. They think we should move

more gradually to a phaseout and reserve the right to use one or more of
these chemicals when needed either to promote public health or to combat
agricultural threats. Especially they want more local authority to decide
when it is appropriate to use banned chemicals in malaria prevention. Wait-
ing months for consensus on the seriousness of the outbreak is simply not
acceptable. Maria Amparo points out that these pesticides were never so
harmful in the developed world as they are here and that we can lower harm
here by attacking overuse of chemicals and poor handling techniques.
‘‘These advocates offer several compelling reasons for this position. First,
they point out that the developed nations that have been pushing this ban
eliminated virtually all of these chemicals from use in their own nations
many years ago. They do not use these older, broad-spectrum organophos-
phate agents; they use more herbicides, which tend to have lower acute tox-
icity. Virtually all of the older, broad-spectrum agents that the rich nations
had globally banned have moved out of patent protection and are cheaply
made locally. The newer pesticides we are now being required to substitute
for the dirty dozen are still under patents owned by the developing nations
and are much more expensive than the ‘dirty’ ones. As with other technolo-
gies, the developed nations invented these pesticides, got rich selling them
to the rest of the world, and now want not only for us to pay all the costs
of cleaning up the toxic mess their products created but also to dictate when
we abandon them and which of their new toxic technologies we buy to
replace them.
‘‘The supporters of the gradual phaseout also point out that Peru does
not have the capacity to effectively enforce either an import ban or a manu-
facturing ban; an immediate ban would only worsen the present black mar-
ket in these chemicals. Moreover, we do not have the capacity to test the
toxicity or environmental harm of the new substitutes, either. Perhaps with
a slower phaseout we could move directly from these pesticides to more
natural methods like MIP.’’
Maria Amparo, Xavier, and Juan Francisco all nodded their approval of
this account.
‘‘On the other hand, Rosaria, José, and Jaime propose that Peru imple-
ment the ban on the dirty dozen. They argue that mobilization of the nation
is difficult and expensive and that it should only have to be done once, not
first to ensure safer handling of dangerous pesticides and then later to shift
to alternative methods of pest control. Instead, they think we should use the
56 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

discontinuation of these pesticides as the opportunity to move immediately

to MIP methods.’’
‘‘We think that MIP is not only safer, avoiding all the health hazards of
the POPs, but that it has great potential for increasing the status of and
appreciation of Indians and Indian culture in Peru,’’ Rosaria said. ‘‘The
Indian population has been discriminated against for centuries, their reli-
gion and culture persecuted and denigrated. The mountain terraces that we
inherited from our Indian ancestors are still the basis of Peruvian agricul-
ture, however, and the crop diversification and rotation that are the founda-
tion of MIP defined traditional Indian agriculture on those terraces. Think
what effect it will have on Indian communities to have national agricultural
agents teaching that the pesticides and large-field monoculture that have
represented modern scientific agriculture are more toxic and less productive
than the traditional Indian practices! There will be boomerang effects on
the status of village leaders; on curanderos/as, or native healers; and maybe
even on the preservation of other cultural practices such as regional cos-
tumes and dances. We think that all of these factors are important if the
Indian population is to be included in the national project.’’
José nodded and said, ‘‘One of the articles sent to me by a Brazilian
researcher in our network concerned the potential effect of discontinuing
organophosphate pesticides on the fishing industry. Fish are even more sen-
sitive to pesticide residues than birds, and there is a great deal of evidence
that points to the tremendous increase in pesticide levels in freshwater and
oceans as a primary cause of decline in the fish stocks of the world. Cer-
tainly mountain trout have been disappearing in Peru as the use of pesticides
rose in the past twenty years, and the coastal fishing industry is in even
worse shape. The evidence suggests that pesticide accumulation in fish
weakens their immune systems and makes them vulnerable to a host of
other threats. Our Humboldt current brings us frigid waters from the Arc-
tic, to which pesticides tend to migrate, so the fish in the current have higher
levels of pesticides than those in warmer currents. The bulk of our popula-
tion lives in the coastal cities, and fish—now contaminated with pesticides—
were a staple in the coastal diet until the fishing industry went into decline
from lack of fish. Stopping pesticide use here would bring back our native
trout, but with global action the ocean fish stocks also could be restored.’’
‘‘Juan Francisco,’’ Rosaria said, ‘‘I understand and share your resentment
at the developed nations, which always seem to be on the profitable end of
things. They invent these POPs, make tons of money on them, and when
they decide they are too dangerous to use at home they continue to sell them
For Ecological Health or Profit? 57

to poor nations for twenty years until they think they can make more money
selling us new replacements for them—all in the name of our own welfare!
But the health costs of these pesticides are real here in Peru. We can debate
how we should weigh the welfare of other species against the welfare of
human communities, but we must all take seriously health risks to people.
I know we can greatly decrease incidents of pesticide intoxication that result
in death, blindness, and neurological damage by teaching safer handling
techniques. We have to be concerned not only about workers who may get
directly overdosed but also with chronic, low-level exposure of our whole
population.
‘‘You saw the Chilean study of newborn children of workers in fruit
orchards: almost double the national rate of serious birth defects, and the
national rate also included other high-risk agricultural populations. In
Ecuador a 1994 study found exceptionally high rates of organophosphates
in children working in orchards. And our own 1996 Peruvian study found
that the pesticide levels in men, women, and children living in three valleys
with high pesticide use was so high as to seriously impair quality of life.
Eighty percent showed signs of chronic agrochemical absorption, and 72
percent had toxicity resulting in memory loss, depression, anxiety, language
deficits, and other signs of neurological dysfunction. Seventy-five percent of
breast milk samples—and 95 percent of cow milk samples in this Peruvian
study—contained toxic chemicals in concentrations that exceed tolerance
levels. The most recent study, from 2006, performed in southern Spain,
showed workers exposed either to an acute pesticide poisoning incident or
to ten years or more of normal but unprotected seasonal spraying of pesti-
cides showed significant deficits in perceptual, visuomotor, visual memory,
and mood state domains as compared with a control group. The literature
from the north is full of accounts of animal and some human studies of
endocrine disruption and weakening of the immune system by pesticides.
We have not done many of these carefully controlled studies here, but our
Peruvian study showed a 2.7 percent rate of defective newborns born to
agricultural families in these valleys with high pesticide use. The majority
of our population is already at high risk of malnutrition, tuberculosis, para-
sites, dysentery, and malaria; they cannot survive with weakened immune
systems. Is your proposal aimed more at resisting further manipulation by
the developed nations than at protecting the welfare of the people of Peru?’’
Juan Francisco hesitated, then responded.
‘‘We think that resistance is a survival factor. We think that it is impor-
tant not to tie ourselves to decisions we might regret. With global warming,
58 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

our malaria problem may be moving out of the jungles of Iquitos and up
the lower slopes of the Andes. Are you sure that you want to give to others
far away the decision as to whether we can use DDT, not for agricultural
use, of course, but only for insect control? We don’t know what kinds of
problems will come along, and DDT, for example, is cheap, it can be manu-
factured locally, and its acute [immediate] toxicity is relatively low for
humans. We want to keep these options open while we move in safer direc-
tions. Some of our public health officials in the jungle want to continue
spraying residence walls because they find high resistance to the bednets
that have been introduced as protection against malaria. The nets are too
expensive for many families to afford one for every member, but it is usually
too hot for many persons to sleep under one net. Which is better: malaria
deaths or the long-term risks of sprayed walls?
‘‘Furthermore, you do not know how safe replacement pesticides will be.
I recently read the October 1999 speech by Lynn Goldman, the assistant
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] Office of
Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, in which she said that of the
three thousand chemicals that the United States imported or produced in
amounts in excess of 1 million pounds per year, the EPA has found that 43
percent had no testing data on basic health and environmental effects, and
only 7 percent had a full set of basic data. Although the United States
required any pesticide that touches food to have basic health and environ-
mental testing, that did not cover all pesticides. Following her report, since
2000 the United States has been gathering toxicity testing on thousands of
chemicals and making it available, but the process is not nearly completed,
and there are huge gaps for many of the newest chemicals. Many other
manufacturing countries do even less. How can we know that the new
chemicals they want us to use are any safer than the banned ones? If they
were really interested in human and environmental health, they would use
the precautionary principle for manufacturing new chemicals, and not only
for banning them. Nothing should be produced and sold that was not
proven safe first.’’
Maria Amparo jumped into the discussion.
‘‘You know perfectly well that you can explain to miners and their fami-
lies, or to campesino families, that these chemicals may cause miscarriages,
a higher risk of defective children, and health risks to workers—tell them
everything researchers suspect. But if their choice is between using the chem-
icals with all their risks and not having jobs or not producing as much
potatoes and maize, they’ll choose the chemicals regardless of the risks,
For Ecological Health or Profit? 59

because hunger is the bigger risk, the more immediate risk, the one they
know.’’
At that Diego stood up. ‘‘We are almost out of the time we agreed to.
This has been most helpful in getting all the issues out in the open. What
we need now is some way of choosing a basic stance or finding a compro-
mise between opposing proposals. Can we use the remaining half-hour to
reach a decision? Do we want to discuss the possibility of compromise first?
All in favor, raise your hands.’’

Commentary

The discussion of the POPs treaty and the process at Medios Nuevos proba-
bly would surprise and disturb many observers in the developed world who
thought they understood the issues involved in the POPs treaty. The issues
can look very different, however, from the perspective of developing
nations. For many observers in developed nations, the POPs treaty looks
like a no-brainer. Who could possibly object to banning chemicals that we
know are dangerous not only to humans but also to virtually every animal
species ever tested, from fish and birds to all the animals that eat them, all
the way up the food chain? Many Americans thought that most of these
chemicals had been banned throughout the world when DDT was banned
decades ago in the United States and only learned of their continuing sale
and use in the developing world when media coverage of the POPs treaty
began.
Perceptions of the POPs treaty as completely noncontroversial were
heightened in the United States by the stance of chemical companies. Chemi-
cal companies in the developed world generally supported the banning of
the dirty dozen, though they have demanded assurances that their interests
would be protected in any process that was developed for banning other
chemicals in the future. This feature, however—the support of chemical
companies for the banning of the dirty dozen—was very much a local phe-
nomenon, limited to large multinational chemical companies headquartered
in developed nations, few of which produced many of the dirty dozen and
all of which stood to gain sales of their patented next-generation chemical
pesticides and herbicides that would replace the banned substances. In the
developing world, many of the medium-sized and mom-and-pop chemical
companies that have been producing the POPs chemicals since the patents
60 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

of the multinational companies lapsed would be forced out of business or

to black market operation by a worldwide ban.
Just as the stance of chemical companies differed between developed and
developing nations, so did the stance of farmers. There was no great opposi-
tion to the POPs treaty from farmers in the United States, where most of the
chemicals to be banned had been made illegal and unobtainable decades
before. In developing nations, however, farmers stood to lose the cheapest
pesticides available to them—and in many cases the only affordable ones.
At the level of public health officials as well, the United States had no attach-
ment to any of the chemicals in the dirty dozen, whereas several developing
nations were facing an upsurge in malaria deaths from strains of the disease
that were resistant to newer, more costly pesticides that were preferred for
human and environmental health and safety reasons. In those nations,
health officials wanted to be able either to use DDT in limited malaria-
control operations now or to reserve the possibility of restricted malaria-
control operations in the future.
The desire to use DDT is not based primarily on its low cost, though that
is a factor. The primary reason for reserving rights to use DDT for malaria
control is precisely because in many nations it has not been used in decades,
so the mosquito population no longer has any resistance to it. That is, in
any initial use of pesticide, the vast majority of affected mosquitoes will die,
but a small amount—often those on the edges of the sprayed area—will
survive, recover, and reproduce, passing on some resistance to the pesticide.
With each application the number of survivors increases slightly, requiring
heavier and heavier applications to achieve the same level of effect, until
most of the mosquito population is resistant to this particular pesticide.
Thus, although public health officials, like farmers, want to use a pesticide
that is effective, their long-range goal must be to have lined up and waiting
in the wings a pesticide or two or three to which their pest targets have no
resistance.

Cheapness of POPs Pesticides

In developing nations, the fact that the pesticides that the POPs treaty would
ban are cheaper than the available replacements is a critical fact that tremen-
dously alters the general perception of the issue at stake in the POPs process.
The increased cost of replacements has the potential to lower or even pre-
vent pesticide use altogether, thereby lowering crop yields—which, in turn,
lowers the amount of food that farmers have to eat and to sell to markets.
For Ecological Health or Profit? 61

In developing nations, the environmental advantages of the treaty are more

easily outweighed by the specter of mass hunger than in developed nations,
where any disadvantages are of much less import. This calculation is true
even when some of the environmental disadvantages from the POPs chemi-
cals—such as health effects on humans, especially farmers—loom much
larger than they did in the developed nations even when these chemicals
were common there.
Farmers in the developed world who used these chemicals usually did not
have to contend with acute water shortages that prevented them from wash-
ing the chemicals off of their bodies and clothes after application, as is often
the case in developing nations such as Peru. Farmers in developed nations
were less often illiterate than those in developing nations. Furthermore, U.S.
and European farmers were seldom faced with having the directions for
preparing and using pesticides and other chemicals printed in foreign lan-
guages they could not decipher, as is the norm in many developing nations.
In Peru, for example, one of the reasons many farmers preferred DDT made
in Mexico to other imported pesticides that scientists consider to be much
safer and are not too much more expensive is that Mexican DDT came with
very simple directions printed in Spanish about how to prepare, apply, and
store the mixture. This was in contrast to directions for pesticides imported
from the United States, which not only had directions printed in English but
also gave directions in such obscure scientific language that even most
English speakers could not decipher them.
For the staff of Medios Nuevos, and probably for many of their fellow
Peruvians, the highest and most compelling good is the immediate welfare,
the survival, of the human population—especially poor people, whom they
understand to include many different groups of the most vulnerable. In this
case the staff clearly understands the most vulnerable individuals to be small
farmers, especially Indians, who invariably are living below the economic
median. Thus the approach of the staff is not only anthropocentric but also
typical of the Latin American religious movement called liberation theology.
For the liberation theology movement, the god of Christians and Jews has
historically professed and demonstrated a preference for poor people on the
basis of their suffering and has called humans to respond with their own
preferential option for the poor. Because so many poor people in many
nations of Latin America are Indians whose spirituality is largely based on
nature and whose welfare is closely connected to the welfare of the ecosys-
tem, environmentalism is not alien to liberation theology. Concern for the
environment in liberation theology clearly takes a backseat, however, to
62 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

concern for human beings. For most theologians of liberation, so much of

the local human population lives on the edge of physical and psychic sur-
vival that it would be inconceivable that the needs of any other species could
take priority over those of humans.
Nevertheless, it would be simplistic to characterize the basic difference
between U.S. and Peruvian views as biocentrism versus anthropocentrism.
The more one has, the less costly generosity is. As the scene shifts from the
United States to Peru, the level of prospective damage to humans and other
species increases dramatically in all possible POPs outcomes. On the one
hand, if developing nations support the POPs treaty and it is enacted, most
small farmers will not be able to afford POPs substitutes, and it is unlikely
that there will be sufficient MIP instruction for them to switch systems.
These farmers, then, will either suffer decreased yields and increased hunger
or continue to make, or to buy on the black market, banned chemicals—
with deleterious health effects on their families; other species of animals;
and the health of the land, rivers, streams, and oceans. On the other hand,
if POPs chemicals are not banned, even if the Peruvian government and
NGOs do begin an MIP program, that program will take years—probably
decades—to include the entire farming population. In the meantime, mas-
sive damage to the health of agricultural families will decrease only very
gradually, even if the caloric levels of agricultural families do not decline.
Moreover, DDT and other chemicals will continue to accumulate in fish and
birds, multiplying at every step up the food chain, decreasing the sizes of
animal populations and very possibly making some species extinct—not to
mention increasing the rates of sterility, spontaneous abortion, and birth
defects in the human population.
Both stances developed by the staff at Medios Nuevos focus on the need
to protect human farmers and their families. They consider the dangers to
trout, ocean fish, and other animals in the context of their importance as
human resources. Within the Peruvian perspective this attitude is not
regarded as a conflict, as it often is in the United States—where the liveli-
hood of one segment of a local human population is pitted against destruc-
tion of the environment of the last representatives of an endangered animal
species. In a developing nation such as Peru, farming is not just one occupa-
tion among many others (as logging, for example, is in the United States).
Farmers make up half or more of the population, and any failure of small
farmers would cause a rise in food prices that would disastrously impact
another quarter or more of the population—poor urban dwellers—as well.
For Ecological Health or Profit? 63

On the environmental side, Peru—even more than most developing

nations—has lacked the resources to map and catalogue its ecosystem. Peru
has three distinctly different types of ecosystems: the coastal deserts, the
Amazonian jungle, and the Andean Altiplano, all of which are internally
diverse as well. None of these ecosystems has been well mapped for plant
and animal species. Like several other Latin American nations, Peru has
even been unable to police the botanical piracy that has developed over the
past decade and a half by pharmaceutical companies and freelance bota-
nists. Not only do these botanists fail to contribute their findings to any
national database, but they also have been known to appropriate large
stocks of plants and to deliberately destroy any remaining examples of the
species growing in the wild to prevent competition.

Lack of Baseline Data

Knowledge of the status of local species and their ecosystems is rudimentary

to any effective environmental policy. Scientists know that many Peruvian
animal populations—including mountain trout and coastal fish, as well as
the national icon, the condor—have declined drastically, but for most spe-
cies little is known about the size of remaining populations or the extent of
the decline in population size; still less are environmentalists able to point
with any certainty to most of the causes of decline. One question in this case
is how this lack of information should be interpreted: Should we treat all
species in decline as if they are endangered, or should we reserve endangered
status for species that have been proven to be endangered? Without the
resources to investigate the level of threat, a nation that chooses to assume
that no species is threatened without clear and convincing proof of the
threat risks many extinct species. Yet there are definite human and economic
costs to assuming that all species in decline are threatened. The paucity of
environmental data in many developing nations is an additional factor—in
addition to the extreme vulnerability of the majority poor—helping to per-
petuate anthropocentric approaches to environmental questions. The less
we know about the environment, the less weight the environment can have
in our decision making. The information we need involves not only map-
ping various species’ populations and health but increased data about the
interrelationships between species within ecosystems—including relation-
ships of humans within ecosystems.
64 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

Paths to MIP
One of the more interesting aspects of this case is that the immediate ques-
tion—whether Diego Sandoval and his fellow Peruvian delegates to the
POPs conference should support the POPs treaty—is largely instrumental.
The ultimate ‘‘answer’’ is agreed upon by both sides at Medios Nuevos.
Both sides agree that the nation needs to move toward MIP as the basic
approach to pest control in farming. They disagree about whether signing
the POPs treaty will move them toward MIP more quickly and with the
least suffering. MIP certainly is the cheapest method of pest control for
individual farmers and for the Peruvian economy—assuming that it is as
effective as the existing studies suggest—and it certainly is the safest for the
farmers themselves, as well as for other species. In terms of the environment,
the philosophy of MIP largely parallels what we have learned about ecosys-
tems in general. MIP utilizes principles of diversity (crop rotation and diver-
sification) and particularity (treating specific pests with their natural
controls). By working with nature instead of against it, MIP avoids trigger-
ing nature’s response of escalation (pesticide resistance), which demands
heavier and heavier pesticide application at greater and greater cost to
achieve the same or ultimately diminishing results.
MIP is one example of an agricultural system that meets the ecological
paradigm proposed by Joe Thornton.3 Thornton advocates replacing the
risk paradigm that until now has been used to regulate and manage chemi-
cal pollution, one chemical at a time, by allowing chemical discharges as
long as they don’t exceed a numerical standard of ‘‘acceptable’’ contamina-
tion. Thornton’s new paradigm is based on the precautionary principle but
specifies three additional principles that direct us in choosing action: zero
discharge, clean production, and reverse onus. Zero discharge means that
we eliminate rather than allow the release of substances that persist or
bioaccumulate; their persistence tells us that nature does not have any
means for handling them. Clean production means not using or producing
toxic chemicals, but using alternative products and processes. Reverse onus
means that the burden of proof that a new product is safe is shifted to those
who want to produce it; it is not up to society to prove that it isn’t safe.
Interestingly, the reason for favoring MIP that receives the most emphasis
within the case itself is cultural, not environmental or public health ori-
ented. This fact probably seems strange to North Americans accustomed to
scientific approaches to issues such as POPs. The argument is that MIP is
merely an update on traditional Indian methods of pest control that origi-
nated before the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Adoption of MIP would
For Ecological Health or Profit? 65

be interpreted as a vindication of Indian culture in a Peruvian—and, indeed,

Latin American—historical tradition that has seriously and continuously
devalued and even degraded Indian culture.
The masses of the Peruvian Indian population have lived in the Andes,
while the descendants of the Spanish have settled disproportionately in the
major cities on the coastal plain. The descendants of the Spanish on the
coastal plain have controlled national government, which has consistently
distributed government services—including electricity, sewers, running
water, health clinics, schools, universities, and hospitals—disproportion-
ately, favoring the Spanish on the coast at the expense of the Indian popula-
tions in the mountains, where the worst national poverty has been located.
For the most part, in Peru, ‘‘farmer’’ has been synonymous with ‘‘Indian,’’
and both have been terms of derision. Although it is true that national asser-
tion of the superiority of traditional Indian MIP over imported, scientifically
produced chemical pesticides could support Indian pride, it cannot be
assumed that all Indians therefore would embrace MIP. Given the centuries
of domination and degradation of the Indians that have driven many Indi-
ans to dissociate from their traditions, one could expect tremendous resis-
tance to MIP from farmers, including many Indians, who would refuse to
believe that anything traditional or distinctly Indian could be superior. One
also could be sure that advertising by the chemical companies would sup-
port that prejudice. This is not an argument against the value of MIP; it is
merely a suggestion that a transition to MIP undoubtedly will encounter
obstacles that the case itself does not mention.
Once past this initial self-deprecatory suspicion of MIP, however, Indian
farmers may well be easy converts to MIP. The geographical divide in Peru
between the dominant criolos of the coastal cities and the subordinated
Indians of the Andean valleys preserved not only a dominant anti-Indian
prejudice but also many subtle and not so subtle aspects of Indian culture
in the mountains. Those cultural aspects include close and reverential—even
religious—attitudes toward all aspects of the natural environment, begin-
ning with the mountain winds and the mountains themselves. This environ-
mental awareness not only offers a platform on which to found an MIP
program, but such environmental awareness also would almost certainly be
expanded and deepened by extended exposure to and use of MIP. MIP
could support a shift in the very agricultural ideal from the massive fields
of chemically treated monoculture promoted by ‘‘scientific’’ farming in the
developed world to a historically grounded local ideal of mountainsides of
small terraces planted in different crops and varieties of crops, with pests
66 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

controlled by alternative borders and crop rotation. Such a shift in the ideal
could promote restoration of more ancient terraces and the creation of new
ones, instead of disastrous attempts by poor farmers to plow up the hillsides
of the Andean valleys, which promotes erosion of topsoil, flooding, and
silting of rivers and streams.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the one issue on which the
developing nations had agreed at the previous POPs meeting is indeed cru-
cial: funding for the transition from POPs in the developing nations. If the
POPs process supported by the developed world really is about environmen-
tal protection rather than about forcing the poor nations to give up cheap,
locally manufactured—in some cases even homemade—pesticides in favor
of expensive pesticides imported from the rich nations, then rich nations
should be willing to fund an open-ended transition from the dirty dozen.
Their aid should not take the form that so much aid to poor countries does:
funding for commodities that must be bought from the nation giving the
aid. Instead, the developed nations should be willing to fund a transition
from POPs to nonchemical alternatives such as MIP.

Questions for Discussion

1. What do the Medios Nuevos staff suspect are the motivations of the
developed nations in the proposed POPs treaty? Why?
2. In what ways is the approach of the staff anthropocentric? Is this
appropriate or not? Why?
3. Spokespersons for developed world chemical companies have called
the approach of the staff in this case ‘‘antitechnology’’ and ‘‘antisci-
ence.’’ Do you agree? Why or why not?
4. What is MIP? To what in U.S. agriculture is it analogous?

Notes
1. In June 1999 a truck hauling mercury extracted in the process of mining gold
at the Yanacocha gold mine in Choropampa, Peru, sprang a leak and dropped 330
pounds of mercury through the streets. People picked it up, tasted it, took drops of
it home as a decoration. Later, when the company discovered the spill, it announced
small rewards for turning in the mercury; much of the population went out to the
streets and fields seeking further droplets. Thousands of persons were contaminated;
cases of blindness, tumors, tremors, and miscarriages resulted over the next days,
months, and years. The company has spent $10 million in mitigation, and the case
For Ecological Health or Profit? 67

is in court in Denver, Colorado. Peter Hect, ‘‘Peasants in Peru near Showdown on

Mercury Spill,’’ Miami Herald, March 5, 2005.
2. On October 22, 1999, thirty schoolchildren died after sixty ate milk and
cereal laced with rat poison at a school in Tauccamarca in the province of Cusco,
Peru. One of the children had mistakenly picked up the poison-laced milk her
mother intended to use to kill wild dogs ravaging her livestock and took it to school,
where she added it to the milk used in the communal breakfast. The poison initially
was reported as insecticide.
3. Joe Thornton, Pandora’s Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmen-
tal Strategy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).

For Further Reading

Ashford, Nicolas, and Claudia Miller. Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High
Stakes. 2nd ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998.
Hallman, David G. Ecotheology: Voices from South and North. Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis/WCC, 1994.
Krimsky, Sheldon. Hormonal Chaos. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1999.
O’Brien, Mary. Making Better Environmental Decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2000.
Pesticide Action Network Intervention/Online Information Service for Non-Chemi-
cal Pest Management in the Tropics. www.oisat.com.
Peterson, Anna L. Being Human: Ethics, Environment and Our Place in the World.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Roldan-Tapia, L., F. A. Nieto-Escamez, E. M. Del Aquila, F. Laynez, T. Parron,
and F. Sanchez-Santed. ‘‘Neuropsychological Sequelae from Acute Poisoning and
Long-term Exposure to Carbamate and Organophosphate Pesticides.’’ Neuro-
toxical Teratol 28, no. 6 (2006): 694–703.
Thornton, Joe. Pandora’s Poison: Chlorine, Health and a New Environmental Strat-
egy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. ‘‘Priority: PTBs; Dioxins and Furans.’’ Per-
sistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Chemical Initiative Report, November 15,
2000. Available at www.epa.gov/opptintr/pbt/dioxins.htm.
 four

Heart Thieves
Preserving Endangered Ecosystems or
Endangered Cultures in Madagascar

H erbert stepped out of the van, happy to put his feet on the
ground after a long and bumpy ride. Madagascar, he thought, is
a much larger island than it seemed on the map. Perhaps its loca-
tion some five hundred miles off the eastern coast of Africa gave a false
sense of minor proportion when compared to that great continent. And the
ride from the airport in the capital, Antananarivo, to this remote village of
Ranovao in a celebrated taxi-brousse, a wreck of a passenger van, reminded
him just how far he was from his work as a tropical botanist with the Mis-
souri Botanical Gardens.
‘‘Are you exhausted, Dr. Jenkins?’’ asked Lucianne as she stepped from
the van. ‘‘The flight from the United States is long and demanding. I know.
I’ve made the trip on several occasions. And having to come straight from
the airport to Ranovao is hardly a proper Malagasy welcome.’’
‘‘Are my aches and pains that obvious? It would have been worse if I had
not enjoyed the fine company that you and Jean-Amie provided.’’
‘‘Merci,’’ said Jean-Amie as he emerged from the open rear of the van
carrying several small suitcases. ‘‘You Americans are as generous with your
praise as you are with your money.’’
Herbert laughed. ‘‘Well, it’s not exactly my money, you know, nor is its
source exclusively American. After all, the checks I write draw on the
accounts of the World Fund for Nature, which taps into purses from many
countries.’’

68
Heart Thieves 69

Several young boys ran across the dusty plaza to take the bags from Jean-
Amie and carry them to a modest but comfortable-looking mud-brick bun-
galow near a stand of large trees at the edge of the village.
‘‘So that’s our abode for the night,’’ said Herbert, ‘‘and our offices as
well.’’
Herbert knew that the three had their work cut out for them, and the
workday was about to begin.
‘‘Dr. Jenkins, please come and meet our host,’’ said Lucianne.
Herbert turned and was confronted by a distinguished gentleman dressed
in traditional Malagasy attire and carrying a wooden staff, which he recog-
nized as a symbol of village authority.
‘‘Dr. Jenkins, please meet Hanairivo Rahandraha, senior elder of Rano-
vao and former government magistrate, among other distinctions,’’ said
Lucianne.
Then turning to Rahandraha, she shifted from English to Malagasy. ‘‘Dr.
Jenkins is the American scientist and representative of the World Fund for
Nature. He is the real reason we are here.’’
Herbert was pleased to have someone as competent as Lucianne at his
side. She was a Malagasy who had trained with him in tropical botany on
an international fellowship at the Missouri Tropical Gardens. Her fluency
in several languages and her experience as a government official in the
Departement des Eaux et Forets made her perfectly suited for the difficult
task that lay ahead.
‘‘And this is Jean-Amie Decary from the Institute for the Conservation of
Tropical Environments in Antananarivo.’’ Although Jean-Amie was of
French extraction, he was a fourth-generation Malagasy whose family had
long abandoned any loyalty to the land of their origins.
Rahandraha nodded to the three of them and then with a sweeping ges-
ture ushered them into his home and to a large table—obviously the confer-
ence room for important discussions among the elders of Ranovao.
‘‘Herbert, please, you must sit here, between Jean-Amie and me,’’ said
Lucianne, directing Herbert away from the nearest chair to another on the
opposite side of the table.
‘‘Oops, was I about to violate a taboo?’’ asked Herbert.
‘‘In a way,’’ responded Lucianne. ‘‘The cardinal directions are very
important to the Malagasy and especially to this tribal group, the Tanala.
They consider north and east to be superior to south and west. We are
sitting on the northeast side of the table—a place reserved for dignitaries
and other distinguished guests in the village.’’
70 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘I gather that tradition is important here,’’ said Herbert.

‘‘Yes,’’ Lucianne answered, with a touch of apprehension in her voice,
‘‘in ways you may find difficult to appreciate. And that fact won’t make our
job any easier.’’
‘‘I realize that as one whose own upbringing was in a village like this,’’
Herbert said to her, ‘‘you are sensitive to the villagers. But we have a larger
perspective and a very important goal: preservation of the forests for all
humankind. Achieving that goal may bring discomfort, and that is to be
lamented. But such, as they say, is the price of doing business.’’
‘‘I hope you realize that your tone is a little callous, Dr. Jenkins,’’ Lu-
cianne responded, with her characteristic honesty.
‘‘I know, and I regret the evident lack of compassion in my remark. But
we have to prepare ourselves mentally for the announcement we’ve come to
make.’’
‘‘Obviously you believe deeply in what we’re doing,’’ Lucianne said.
‘‘Yes,’’ Herbert replied. ‘‘So let’s get started.’’
After an initial period of social conversation, Lucianne addressed Elder
Rahandraha, again in Malagasy. ‘‘I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that
the central government has decided, for reasons Dr. Jenkins will explain, to
relocate the people of your village from Ranovao, here in the east central
highlands, to land and new homes in the western sections within the coming
year.’’
Rahandraha’s eyes grew wide with shock.
‘‘Once the move is completed,’’ Lucianne continued, ‘‘you will be pro-
vided with all that you need until the crops and harvests are sufficient to
support the village. We believe that the living conditions in your new home,
including health care and education, will be greatly improved. And the
opportunities for your children will be greater too.’’
Rahandraha’s immediate response was one of sadness. His remarks were
sharpened by anger and frustration as well, and he looked straight at Lu-
cianne. ‘‘I have been expecting the government to take some action, but
certainly not this radical. You are intimately familiar with Malagasy tradi-
tions, Dr. Randrianasolo. They are your own—or, perhaps I should say,
they were your own before you were trained to embrace other values.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ countered Lucianne, ‘‘but I recall that you as well spent many
years in a distinguished career that took you at least as far from this village
and into a different world.’’
‘‘True, but I finally left my position with the government to return here
because I was forced to think and act in the clever and crafty ways of the
Heart Thieves 71

Europeans and the Americans, who are full of tricks, full of vazaha. In our
new place, far from the forest, the government will provide for us to become
vahiny, strangers to our traditions, to this land of our ancestors—just as
you have become a stranger to yours.’’
Lucianne winced. The elder’s remarks cut deeply. In her home village she
was received coolly when she returned to visit her family, as if she no longer
qualified as kin—the only ones who can truly be trusted. She thought briefly
of her own young children and what they might have lost permanently in
her neglect of those who were their ancestors as well as hers.
Rahandraha continued, turning his attention to Herbert, who needed no
translation to understand the elder’s intense emotions. ‘‘I have two sisters
whose rice plots are entrusted to me on that hillside outside this village.
What will happen to them if they become widowed and have nothing for
support? I have obligations to work that land and keep it productive for my
kin. If I fail, I am guilty of a sin as great as any claimed by you from Chris-
tian countries. I have ancestors resting in the big tomb house you will see
over there.’’ He gestured to the northeast. ‘‘I am head of the tomb group.
What will happen to the razana, the ancestors, if I am no longer here? This
village is tanindrazana, the place of the ancestors and my true home. If we
are forced to live far away, and the village is destroyed, all of us will be
vahiny, with no tomb to live in when we die.’’
The elder fell silent, and Lucianne continued to translate his statements
to Herbert, who took a deep breath before beginning his response. ‘‘It is not
possible for me to appreciate fully what will be lost in this relocation,’’ he
said. ‘‘But I hope to help you understand why this action must be taken.’’
‘‘I will listen,’’ Rahandraha said through Lucianne’s interpretation, ‘‘but
my appreciation of your justification may be lacking as well.’’
‘‘The World Fund for Nature is one of many international organizations
that have given priority and major funding to rescuing the remaining rainf-
orests of Madagascar,’’ Herbert said. ‘‘I have been authorized to work with
the central government in this task. Ranovao is located in a section of rainf-
orest that is currently intact but gravely threatened by growing human pop-
ulation pressures and farming practices that threaten to cut it off from the
strand of forest that connects it to the special preserve of Manombo, some
fifteen kilometers to the west. If this happens, the isolated section will be
fragmented and destabilized, and the animals now inhabiting the fragment
will be unable to move back and forth to the preserve. These animals
include a recently discovered and very rare subspecies of the Aye-Aye lemur,
which will undoubtedly become extinct unless urgent actions are taken to
72 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

preserve its habitat.’’ Herbert hesitated, wondering if he had omitted any-

thing important in his statement. He sat silently as Lucianne completed her
translation to Rahandraha.
Turning to Herbert, she whispered, ‘‘I’m not sure if that was an explana-
tion or an ultimatum.’’ There was no hint of humor in her voice.
The elder responded. ‘‘What you say is true, I’m sure, but the situation
is not the fault of the people of this village. Certainly, for generations we
have burned sections of the forests to clear land on the hillsides and produce
fertile soil. But we allowed the forests to recover for five or ten years before
taking any other action. Nothing was permanently destroyed by this proc-
ess. And our irrigation of rice paddies on the slopes of the hills and moun-
tains is as permanent and natural as lemurs eating nuts from the trees. The
forest provides us with so much. Why would we destroy it now?’’
Rahandraha thought for a moment and then answered his own question.
‘‘The problems were not caused by the people of Ranovao. They were
caused by too many people moving here from the lowlands in search of land
for their zebu cattle and rice. They were caused by the needs and demands
of the growing cities of this great island. But mainly they were caused by
Europeans and others like them.’’ He turned and spoke directly to Jean-
Amie. ‘‘First the French and then others brought great vazaha to the Mala-
gasy, with your knowledge of things but your ignorance of tradition and
custom. You are witches and mpakafo, heart thieves, and you have stolen
the heart of the Malagasy. And so Ranovao must be sacrificed. Is that jus-
tice? I thought justice was precious to you. Obviously, it is not as precious
as cleverness.’’
Now it was Jean-Amie’s turn to wince. He wanted to respond; his sympa-
thies lay with the plight of the village and not with Jenkins. But he kept
silent for the time being and allowed Rahandraha to speak for him by
speaking against him.
There was little more to say. The bad news was delivered, and Herbert’s
responsibilities were completed. Rahandraha ushered other villagers into
the house. The table was transformed from a place of debate to one of social
exchanges, and dinner was served. Even strangers bearing bad news must
be treated with traditional hospitality.
As night fell, several young boys with lanterns led the way for the three
guests to their bungalow for the night. The evening was not yet completed,
however. Lucianne and Jean-Amie, still feeling the emotional wounds
inflicted by the village elder, needed to talk. Lucianne initiated the
conversation.
Heart Thieves 73

‘‘I think I’ve answered my own question to you, Dr. Jenkins,’’ she said.
‘‘Your statement was an ultimatum, wasn’t it?’’
‘‘I’m not surprised at your comment, Lucianne. I have felt for some time
that your frustrations might result in some criticism of my approach. And
that’s understandable.’’
‘‘Sometimes my work is very difficult,’’ Lucianne responded.
Herbert continued. ‘‘You’re caught in the middle—a Malagasy who is
Western trained and yet respectful of her traditions. That’s why I made this
trip from the United States just to announce the decision to move the village
for the sake of saving the forest tract. I carry a delegated authority as an
advocate for preservation, and I’m not shy in wielding it.’’
‘‘But that’s the problem, now, isn’t it?’’ said Lucianne. ‘‘Conservationists
are not democratic, nor do they seek a balance between the traditions or
lifeways of a people and the need to rescue threatened biodiversity. Biodi-
versity always trumps. Your political, economic, and social agenda for the
people of Madagascar revolves around the value of biodiversity.’’
‘‘I recognize myself in your description, Lucianne,’’ Herbert responded.
‘‘I don’t relish the task of bringing bad news to the village, but removing
these people is a necessary step in protecting some of the richest rainforest
in the world from the ignorance of those who have lived with it for thou-
sands of years.’’
‘‘Is it really worth it, Doctor?’’ Lucianne pleaded.
‘‘Certainly,’’ Herbert replied. ‘‘The Manombo preserve contains ancient
botanical and zoological riches—dozens of species of orchids, for example,
that are found nowhere else on Earth. Relocating the people of Ranovao is
the lesser of two evils, with the greater being the unthinkable and eternal
loss of those orchids and all the other incredible life that thrives in the
forest.’’
‘‘There is something to be said for the preservation of our rich traditions
as well, but they will vanish—‘eternally,’ as you say—with the forced
removal of the villagers from the land of their ancestors,’’ said Lucianne.
‘‘Perhaps, and you’ve introduced another good point. Those very ances-
tors, so rightly venerated, were responsible for the original destruction of
the vast wilderness of Madagascar with the introduction of zebu cattle and
the practice of tavy, periodic burning, around nine hundred years ago. The
old biblical adage about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the chil-
dren is true here. Perhaps, with the loss of attention to their tomb dwelling
once the village has been relocated, the ancestors will finally receive the
consequences of their actions.’’
74 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘But we’re talking about the living, Dr. Jenkins,’’ said Lucianne. ‘‘We
may successfully save this patch of rainforest, but at the cost of destroying
the rich cultural heritage of these people.’’
‘‘I understand that,’’ Herbert said. ‘‘But even that culture is a present
danger to numerous species in the forests. That newly discovered subspecies
of the Aye-Aye lemur is a case in point. The villagers fear the animal and
declare it to be taboo. They kill individual lemurs that stray too close to the
village, and many are hunted down as a way of dispelling bad luck.’’
Herbert hesitated thoughtfully for a moment before delivering his harsh
conclusion. ‘‘Undoubtedly, it is best that some traditions, the destructive
ones, be put to rest in the tombs with the ancestors.’’
Jean-Amie, who had been listening quietly, could no longer restrain him-
self. ‘‘The question goes far beyond custom and tradition and whatever
‘ignorance’ you find in it, Dr. Jenkins. It has to do with the right of our
people to decide their own destiny, apart from some other destiny not of
our own choosing imposed upon us by foreign ideologies.’’
‘‘But without intervention,’’ Herbert responded forcefully, ‘‘the Mala-
gasy will persist in and even amplify actions that eventually will destroy
priceless natural treasures. Look,’’ he continued, ‘‘forest loss is not the only
environmental problem on this island. Eighty-five percent of the land is
burned annually—85 percent! The great and growing herds of cattle graze
along the margins of the forest and encourage the herders to slash and burn
new pastures. Exotic species are flourishing everywhere, and endemic spe-
cies are being harvested at alarming rates.’’
‘‘That’s true,’’ Lucianne interjected. ‘‘I was in the capital this week at
zoma, market day, and saw several shops that were displaying great num-
bers of mounted butterflies for sale. Many were from gravely endangered
species.’’
‘‘These are urgent causes for alarm,’’ Herbert continued. ‘‘The world has
taken notice and, through organizations like the World Fund for Nature,
has taken action as well. Our position is that nature should not always be
sacrificed to human folly and that a portion of the costs of its preservation
should be borne by those responsible.’’
Jean-Amie smiled at the idealist purity of Herbert’s comments. ‘‘What
you say about responsibility is the truth, but not the whole truth. One must
use a mirror to see the whole truth. Many of these problems are not of
Malagasy making.’’
‘‘How do you mean?’’ said Herbert.
Heart Thieves 75

‘‘The responsible parties live across the seas. Our overpopulation,

crowded cities, increasing demands for material goods, economic displace-
ment, and abject poverty—the average annual income of the Malagasy is
under three hundred American dollars—are consequences of imported ide-
ologies and influences. For example, Madagascar cannot afford to buy
much oil for the generation of energy for our rapidly growing cities, so we
burn charcoal, which is made from an introduced species of rapidly growing
tree, the eucalyptus. It is tragic that our rich native forests are being replaced
by a single alien species that is good only for burning. The village elder was
right when he characterized Western influence as vazaha: admirably skilled
but full of clever tricks. My French heritage is implicated, and now so are
your American attitudes. Modernization and development are the really
dangerous exotics that destroy this land. Should the village be sacrificed at
the command of those whose culture introduced the evil forces that created
the problem originally?’’
‘‘I can’t deny that, Jean-Amie,’’ said Herbert. ‘‘My presence as a repre-
sentative of the values of preservation is partially in recognition of our com-
plicity and yours in creating this situation. And we are moving to correct
it.’’
‘‘But it is a goal to be achieved at considerable cost to those who have
had little to do with its creation,’’ Lucianne persisted. ‘‘Let’s look clearly
into Jean-Amie’s ‘mirror.’ I traveled to America several times for study. I
saw your impressive affluence. But it is accompanied by arrogance and igno-
rance. Americans generate more global environmental damage in a single
day with their SUVs than the Malagasy contribute in a year of burning of
forests and grasslands. I recall seeing one SUV with an environmentally
friendly license plate that read ‘Save the Rainforests.’ That’s worse than
ignorance; it’s schizophrenia. Perhaps our passion and attention should
be as devoted to the threats that Miami poses for the Everglades as they
are to the threat that Ranovao and other villages pose for the Manombo
Preserve.’’
‘‘Some of the sources of your frustration are now clearer to me, Luci-
anne,’’ said Herbert, who couldn’t resist a smile as Lucianne finished. ‘‘I
can’t deny the irony of your example, but American hypocrisy does not
cancel the truth.’’
‘‘No, but it contributes to the truth,’’ replied Lucianne.
‘‘Listen to me, Lucianne,’’ Herbert continued. ‘‘The rainforests do not
belong to the Malagasy alone. Their importance goes far beyond national
76 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

sovereignty and the customs of a single culture. They belong to all human-
kind. You and I are merely the custodians of these treasures. And it’s time
that they are permitted advocates to defend them against the claim that
nature must always be sacrificed to cover human incompetence.’’
‘‘Your single focus is admirable,’’ Jean-Amie responded. ‘‘But my work
in the conservation section has shown me the wisdom of attacking the prob-
lem not narrowly with strategies based on ideology but along a broad front.
We are working to increase the productivity of domesticated lands so the
farmers and herders won’t have to push farther into the forests. We are
working to improve the lot of women through education and better medi-
cine so that they and their families will not find it necessary to have a large
number of children simply to get by. In time, the birth rate will fall, and
with it the pressure on the forest preserve will diminish.’’
Lucianne added her thoughts to Jean-Amie’s point. ‘‘And we can teach
the people—or remind them—of what their ancestors once knew, but they
have forgotten: that the forest is a friend and a self-renewing resource. For-
ests can attract tourists and provide medicines, food, and other nondestruc-
tive products for local communities such as Ranovao. Destruction of
villages and traditions or the degradation of forests is not our only choice,
Dr. Jenkins.’’
‘‘In the long run, probably not,’’ Herbert replied, ‘‘but the situation is
critical. We can’t simply wait for these long-range programs to bear fruit.
Mounting population pressures on the remaining 10 percent of the island’s
original rainforests are unavoidable. Perhaps we can slow, but nothing can
stop, the island’s population from doubling in the next twenty years, given
the staggering 2.8 percent growth rate—one of the highest in Africa.’’
‘‘We must work with the people, or we will compound the wrong and
invite disaster,’’ said Jean-Amie.
‘‘Averting disaster—that’s why I’m here. Not to negotiate, but to
announce,’’ Herbert said. ‘‘Yes, some people, such as those in Ranovao, will
be victims in that they must bear the costs of actions intended to bring about
our immediate goal—to save this fragment of rainforest and the endangered
species—the lemur and the orchids—for which it provides a shrinking habi-
tat. These battles must be waged now, or else it will be too late, and all
humanity will be tragically and irreversibly diminished.’’
In the face of Herbert’s impassioned dedication to the cause as he saw
it, Lucianne and Jean-Amie were silent for a moment. The day had been
exhausting, and a long ride back to Antananarivo awaited them in the
morning. Finally, Lucianne concluded the discussion. ‘‘Perhaps the best we
Heart Thieves 77

can hope for is that these people will be treated with some sense of compas-
sion, because all they seem to have left is the traditional Malagasy exhorta-
tion ‘malemy, malemy’: ‘Be gentle, be kind.’ ’’

Commentary

Madagascar, the earth’s sixth-largest island, has some of the richest trea-
sures of biodiversity in the world. It also has one of the poorest economies.
Originally Madagascar was part of a huge landmass connecting Africa and
South America. As the continents drifted into their current locations, the
island separated and stood apart, marooning many species. Although many
of its plants and animals are African in origin, some species are found only
in South America and Madagascar. Evolution on the isolated island also led
to a great number of insects, plants, fish, and reptiles that are found
nowhere else. Amazingly, all sixty-six endemic land mammal species are
unique to the island. The rainforests alone contain nine hundred species of
orchids. Many of these plants and animals are not only unique but also
endangered.1
One island species that is not endangered is Homo sapiens—humankind.
Madagascar is peopled with immigrants from Asia and Africa, making it
unique in another way. Although there are distinct tribal cultures, especially
in rural areas, the Malagasy share a strong panislandic identity and a com-
mon language. Another thing they share is poverty. The average per capita
annual income is less than three hundred dollars. Eighty percent are subsis-
tence farmers. As in many other developing nations, the population of Mad-
agascar is burgeoning. It increased a staggering 550 percent from 1900 to
2000. By 2025, its current population of 14 million is expected to double,
thanks to an increasingly healthy and youthful population. Many of these
people will choose to live in cities, placing additional stress on the already
burdened social and economic infrastructure.2 The country is even too poor
to import the oil it requires. Consequently, 80 percent of its domestic fuel
needs are met by charcoal made from felled trees.

Impending Disaster
Given the rich but vulnerable biodiversity of Madagascar and its increasing
population and economic pressures, no prophetic powers are needed to pre-
dict impending environmental disaster. Even now, an astounding 85 percent
78 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

of the island is intentionally burned each year in a traditional agricultural

practice known as tavy. Herdsmen burn the grazing lands in the belief that
a new and more nutritious carpet of grass will replace that consumed by
fire and provide nourishment for increasing numbers of zebu cattle. Rural
villagers living at the edge of the rainforests burn trees to make way for rice
paddies or other crops. In the past, tavy could be sustained because the
burned areas were allowed to replenish themselves through rotational burn-
ing over a period of years. Population pressures have destroyed this rhythm,
however, and many Malagasy have abandoned traditional environmental
wisdom in the face of urgent needs for immediate survival.
Alarmed by this situation, powerful international environmental organi-
zations have responded. With the cooperation of the government of the
island nation, they have set up several natural parks and preserves and initi-
ated studies to determine which species are in the greatest danger. In our
case, Herbert Jenkins represents the environmental nongovernmental orga-
nizations (NGOs), and Lucianne and Jean-Amie represent the government’s
interests in the preservation of the rainforest. Their meeting with the village
elder, Rahandraha, reveals additional moral quandaries in this already dif-
ficult situation. The continuing presence of this village—and presumably
others abutting the endangered section of rainforest—threaten its survival
and the survival of specific plants and animals that live in it.

The Importance of Place and Culture

Removal of the villages—to a better place, presumably—would seem to be
beneficial to the endangered environment and to the villagers. The elder’s
angry response is based primarily on beliefs arising from his tribal tradi-
tions, which are representative of a large portion of Malagasy culture. The
principal issue is the status of the ancestors—who, as we learn, are interred
in a local tomb dwelling that is far more than a mausoleum. In Malagasy
culture, the departed have not yet parted. They ‘‘live’’ in the tomb dwelling
in the middle of the village and influence their neighbors and surviving kin
through the substantial power they wield, ironically, as suppliers of life. To
touch the tomb or to pay homage through small offerings left in its entry-
way ensures fertility. The dead, not the living, are the source of vital energy.
By residing close to this center of power, the living derive blessings that are
necessary for a good life. They also bear considerable civic and ceremonial
responsibility, however, for the upkeep and maintenance of the tomb dwell-
ing. Failure to fulfill these obligations results in considerable tsiny, or guilt.3
Heart Thieves 79

Of equal importance is the intimate relationship between place and iden-

tity, both personal and communal. If the inhabitants of Ranovao are forced
to abandon the village and the tomb, they face psychological and spiritual
deprivation. Their center of the world, or axis mundi—the place where the
ancestors lived and still abide—suddenly will be far away, and they will be
like Lucianne: vahiny, or strangers in their new place.
With these observations, it becomes clear why Rahandraha responds so
strongly to the government’s removal order. He is far from finished, how-
ever. After chastising Lucianne as one who has not fulfilled her traditional
obligations to her village kin, he turns his attention to Jean-Amie. Jean-
Amie’s ancestors, the French, were the early colonizers of the island. They
introduced European customs and religion and opened the way for the
reception of Western ideas of materialism and individualism. By describing
these modern values and practices as vazaha, or crafty, the elder is express-
ing his mistrust of and disdain for European and American cleverness. He
also is expressing his belief that such alien ideology (emphasizing material
possessions over traditions) and urban life (emphasizing individual liberty
over village and tribal customs) are major contributors to the current plight
of Madagascar. Later, Jean-Amie and Lucianne echo these points. It seems
paradoxical to them that Herbert, an American, is so concerned for the
rainforest that American values have put in danger. Lucianne’s poignant
example of the sport utility vehicle with an environmentally promotional
license plate sharpens this contradiction.
Along with paradox and contradiction comes ambiguity. Jean-Amie rec-
ognizes that Western ideology carries tremendous practical power; vazaha,
cleverness, has its beneficial side. Agricultural, social, and marketing strate-
gies can make a huge difference in the preservation of the island’s environ-
ment. Providing the Malagasy with better education and access to basic
medical care will go far in reducing birthrates and mortality rates for chil-
dren. By encouraging consumer-oriented Americans to live out their contra-
dictions by using their affluence to travel to Madagascar to enjoy the lemurs
and the orchids in the rainforests, ecotourism promises to improve the ailing
economy of the island dramatically. The ambiguity cuts both ways. Herbert
notes that local beliefs about the Aye-Aye lemur as a demonlike creature,
based on the bizarre appearance of the animal’s huge eyes and large paws,
constitute a real danger for its survival. Not all customary practices or long-
standing beliefs of indigenous peoples are necessarily harmonious with or
favorable to the natural environment.
80 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

Herbert’s ideology is an additional important factor in the discussion. By

acting locally in the village, he is thinking globally in terms of working
assumptions and moral principles to which he is dedicated. One assumption
is that the natural heritage of the Earth is the common possession of all
peoples throughout all generations. It follows that the obligation of those
who are entrusted with these treasures, including the government and citi-
zens of the nation within whose boundaries they lie, is to maintain them in
a state of health and well-being. The responsibility of trained professionals
like Herbert, Lucianne, and Jean-Amie is to be vigilant in their assignment
to monitor ecosystems at risk.
This position calls into question a fundamental assertion of the modern
nation-state system: that a nation-state is sovereign over all activities that
take place within its recognized borders. This notion of sovereignty is being
honored less and less as the world changes politically, economically, and
technologically. It is weakened especially by the international war on terror,
the emphasis on human rights, communications technologies, and transna-
tional corporations. Preservation of environmentally valuable places may
be added to this list as well.
Herbert’s philosophical position also holds that a specific value is para-
mount and decisive in determining action. This value, discussed in the intro-
ductory chapter as biodiversity—the variety of living things in a single
region—guides his moral judgment and determines his strategies. Although
biodiversity, like beauty, often is regarded as an intrinsic value (it is inher-
ently good, for aesthetic or other reasons), Herbert does not argue exclu-
sively from this claim. Instead, he begins and ends with a tacit appeal to
universal human rights. All humankind has the right to enjoy its common
heritage and to have it protected from the destructive actions of a few. This
right is bestowed not by virtue of membership in a society or political group
(perhaps in common agreement as a social contract) but by virtue simply of
being a human citizen of planet Earth. Thus it is nonnegotiable (‘‘unalien-
able,’’ according to the Declaration of Independence) or ‘‘natural’’ in the
sense intended by natural law ethics.
But what about the rights of the few—for instance, the Tanala of Rano-
vao for whom maintenance of the Manombo rainforest’s biodiversity is par-
ticularly costly? There seems to be something inherently unfair about
destroying a village and displacing its inhabitants for the sake of the sensi-
bilities of patrons of a botanical garden in St. Louis who fill its parking lot
Heart Thieves 81

with gas-guzzling SUVs. Herbert concedes that this blatant hypocrisy exists
and includes the oddly illogical situation of the people of the Earth contrib-
uting to the destruction of the common heritage they wish to rescue, but he
does not allow it to derail his argument. Neither the questionable intentions
of some people nor the outright confusion of others negates the moral end
of his project: saving the rainforest from human folly regardless of its
numerous sources, including the vazaha of Western influence and the envi-
ronmentally dysfunctional tribal customs of indigenous Malagasy.
Despite its complicity, the village cannot be blamed entirely nor even
primarily for the diminishing rainforest. Indeed, we learn that it has tried to
live peacefully within its natural surroundings. Yet it finds itself in this diffi-
cult predicament. Why must the villagers bear the cost for the consequences
of actions taken principally by others? Herbert would counter with a ques-
tion of his own: Why must ‘‘nature . . . always be sacrificed to cover human
incompetence’’? The village is caught in the middle. For Herbert, however,
its relocation is the lesser evil that will bring about the greater good—the
rescue of the rainforest.
Perhaps other, less disruptive alternatives are possible. Jean-Amie argues
for social and economic programs that would rescue the people and the
environment. These programs will take years to implement, however, and
by then this section of the rainforest will no longer exist. ‘‘These battles
must be waged now,’’ Herbert concludes, ‘‘or else it will be too late, and all
humanity will be tragically and irreversibly diminished.’’ Lucianne probably
is accurate in her final observation: For the people of Ranovao, it seems that
all that is left is to make the appeal ‘‘malemy, malemy.’’

Questions for Discussion

1. Describe Dr. Jenkins’s position. Do you agree with Lucianne that he

is rigid and ideological, or is he merely steadfast in protecting rare
and endangered ecosystems for the sake of all humanity? Give rea-
sons for your choice.
2. What reasons does the tribal elder give as he resists being moved to
a new location despite promised improvements for his community?
Do you agree with his position?
3. In Madagascar the ancestors are understood to possess tremendous
power. Maintenance of their tombs therefore is an important
82 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

responsibility for the living. What is the modern secular under-

standing of the dead and their burial grounds? Would you favor,
for example, the removal of buried remains from Arlington
National Cemetery for any reason? What weight should be given
to such ancient cultural beliefs in modern attitudes toward the pro-
tection of the environment?
4. Jean-Amie argues for a strategy that involves economic development
and social advance in Madagascar as a way of curbing environmen-
tal destruction. Is his proposal realistic? Explain.

Notes
1. Harry T. Wright and Jean-Amie Rakotoariso, ‘‘Cultural Transformation and
the Impact on the Environments of Madagascar,’’ in Natural Change and Human
Impact in Madagascar, ed. Steven M. Goodman and Bruce D. Patterson (Washing-
ton, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977), 309.
2. Claire Kremen, ‘‘Traditions That Threaten,’’ www.pbs.org/edens/madagas
car/paradise.html (accessed September 6, 2009).
3. Maurice Bloch, Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship
Organization in Madagascar (London: Seminar Press, 1971), 163.

For Further Reading

Bloch, Maurice. Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organi-
zation in Madagascar. London: Seminar Press, 1971.
Goodman, Steven M., and Bruce D. Patterson, eds. Natural Change and Human
Impact in Madagascar. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.
Gradwohl, Judith, and Russell Greenberg. Saving the Tropical Forests. Washington,
DC: Island Press, 1988.
Gupta, Avijit. Ecology and Development in the Third World. New York: Routledge,
1988.
Jeffery, Leonard H., J. Dirck Stryker, and Montague Yudelman. Environment and
the Poor: Development Strategies for a Common Agenda. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction, 1989.
Jolly, Alison. A World Like Our Own: Man and Nature in Madagascar. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1980.
Meyers, Norman. The Primary Source: Tropical Forests and Our Future. New York:
Norton, 1984.
Nations, James D. Tropical Rainforests, Endangered Environment. New York:
Franklin Watts, 1988.
Rolston, Holmes, III. ‘‘Feeding People Versus Saving Nature,’’ in World Hunger and
Morality, ed. James Aiken and Robert Lafollete, 143–65. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1996.
 five

Must Java Have No Forests?

Nature Preserves and
Human Population Pressures

T he Indonesian heads of twenty different environmental groups,

including national and international nongovernmental organiza-
tions (NGOs), began to filter into the conference room at the offices
of the Indonesia Environment Forum in Jakarta to begin a planning meeting
on responding to the recent Jakarta floods. Beginning in mid-February
2007, the rivers and streams around the capital city of Indonesia, swollen
with monsoon rains, overflowed their banks and inundated streets and
homes in low-lying districts throughout large portions of greater Jakarta—
home to 11 million people. The floodwaters in many places rose more than
two meters (over six feet). The first wave of flooding crested on the third
day and by the eighth day had receded from most parts of the city. As the
rains continued past the end of February, however, the flooding returned in
new waves; some parts of the city suffered many waves. Each wave lasted
for days.
Jakarta has a history of flooding on a five-year average. The flood of
2002 had been widely considered the worst flood in recorded history, killing
twenty-five. But there was general consensus five years later that the 2007
floods were the worst in three centuries, drowning fifty-four people. The
floodwaters were full of mud, snakes, and dead animals, from rats to chick-
ens. They also contained petroleum products, chemicals, and other pollut-
ants from factories, businesses, and homes, not to mention thousands of
tons of rotting garbage. Many hundreds of persons sickened by the flood

83
84 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

died in the following days and weeks. Hospitals were crowded with thou-
sands of patients complaining of respiratory ailments from exposure to the
water, mold, and rot; of dysentery from contaminated drinking water and
spoiled food; and of skin irritations and infections from contact with the
floodwaters. A hundred or more young children later died of dysentery
directly related to the flooding.
The losses from the flooding were enormous. Many millions of house-
holds had all their possessions ruined. Clothing and furniture rotted because
there was no way to dry them even after flooding receded, as a result of
continuing monsoon rains and then new waves of flooding. As the floodwa-
ters drained into the Java Sea, they carried the garbage, chemicals, and
debris with them. Fishermen were forced to move far from the shore to
catch anything at all.
Nor did the flooding affect only poor Jakartans. Many hard-hit areas
were rich neighborhoods of upscale villas. By March, outbreaks of malaria
and dengue fever, both spread by mosquitoes, and leptospirosis—a disease
spread by contact with rat urine—were under way throughout the city. The
rat population, displaced from some locations by floodwaters, multiplied
rapidly as garbage collection ceased. Mounds of garbage still filled the
streets six weeks after the floods began.
The September 2007 meeting of officers of twenty environmental organi-
zations was brought to order by the director of the Indonesia Environment
Forum, Iqbal Soetarto, who began by reminding the group that by the sec-
ond week of flooding, many of the same environmentalists gathered here
had been saying that the prime reason for the flooding was the failure of the
government to enforce its environmental plans and laws.
‘‘We all know that this is true,’’ Iqbal said. ‘‘The three major enforcement
failures within Jakarta itself have not changed since the 2002 flood, nor
have the other failures of implementation upstream from Jakarta, which
have gotten even worse. Within Jakarta, we can name illegal development
in areas designated as catchment areas, the failure of developers in other
areas to build the canals and catchment ponds that were part of the permits
approved for their buildings, and the excessive number of golf courses in
Jakarta (thirty-one!)—most of which had not followed the environmental
specifications in their permits. Harwanto Amin, Elys Muhammad, and Acik
Mentuto have pointed in particular to Puncak, as well as Bogor and Cianjur,
as examples of areas upstream of Jakarta where the villas of the rich had
been built onto hillsides and in forests that were designated as catchment
areas for streams headed for downstream Jakarta. As those areas were
Must Java Have No Forests? 85

cleared and built on, local streams became filled with silt from erosion and
the rainfall that could no longer be absorbed.’’
Iqbal then recapped the widespread discontent in Jakarta with the inef-
fectiveness of local government in predicting, preventing, or responding to
the flooding. In the aftermath of this flood, property values dropped precipi-
tously in all the flooded areas, most of which had only recently reached the
highs enjoyed before the 2002 flood. The flood affected rich and poor alike
in a nation still recovering from the financial crisis that had hit in mid-1997.
Demands were heard on all sides that this time the government must do
something to prevent such flooding from ever occurring again.
‘‘This is our chance,’’ Iqbal said, ‘‘while the population is paying atten-
tion to the suffering from the floods, to achieve a coordinated environmen-
tal plan that will prevent this kind of disaster, allow for planned growth in
Jakarta, and protect the environment surrounding Jakarta. How should we
proceed?’’ The group was silent. Finally, someone spoke.
‘‘Many of our groups have different foci,’’ Elys said, ‘‘especially divided
between the urban planning issues in Jakarta and the preservation of forests
in the upstream areas. The floods involved both our interests. At a more
fundamental level, we are all aware that our efforts face the same basic
problems: the corruption of government officials at all levels and the still
persistent public feeling that, now that the repressive centralized govern-
ment of Suharto is replaced by democracy, all national resources belong to
the people—which often means whoever seizes them first. While the govern-
ment since 2005 or so has made some good attempts at law enforcement
to curtail this attitude, it is especially persistent when it comes to ‘unused’
land.’’
‘‘And some people began seizing public resources immediately,’’ said
Acik, who recounted his findings in Puncak: ‘‘About 4,000 new villas were
built in the first four years after the New Order government fell, and easily
another 4,000 have been built since then. Not only many are large homes
with patios, some have tennis courts, garages, even swimming pools. Some
of them have additional small guest houses around the main house. There
are, of course, long roads, some portions even paved, leading to the villas,
and the buildings, tennis courts, and roads all prevent water absorption,
increasing the flow in the Ciliwung River. Many of these developments have
replaced natural lakes. Bogor had 122 lakes in 1949; today it has 102. The
situation is much worse in other upstream areas: Tangerang had 45 lakes
and Bekasi had 17 in 1949; today Tangerang has 19, and Bekasi has 8.
Furthermore, the most popular places to build the villas are along the banks
86 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

of the Ciliwung, so the increased surface flow goes directly into the Cili-
wung, with no chance to be absorbed by surrounding land.
‘‘According to the locals and the records I checked, most of the villas are
owned by generals, politicians, and rich people connected to the military
and government,’’ Acik continued. ‘‘Only about 40 percent have building
permits, and those permits are illegal because the land belongs to the gov-
ernment and is clearly designated as either protected forest or community
forest. A protected forest, as we know, is one in which all human activities
are prohibited; a community, or traditional, forest is one that may not be
cleared and in which people may not live or farm but from which they may
take deadfall wood and in which they may allow small animals such as
chickens to feed and gather. The local forestry officials will not do anything
to enforce the law, however, against either villa owners without building
permits or those with permits obtained through bribery. They say the villa
owners are too powerful, that those people never lose. If the cases go to
court, the charges are dropped, or the judges are bribed. And most forestry
officials in Puncak are locals—many of their relatives are employed at the
villas as cooks or drivers or guards, so they don’t want to see the villas
destroyed. And they are afraid of the local officials who sold the building
permits in the forest. Citing the villas for the illegal permits would be an
attack on the local officials who sold them.’’
As the group pondered Acik’s words, Iqbal responded.
‘‘Yes, we have the same basic problem in Jakarta,’’ he began. ‘‘Though
many new housing and commercial developments in the areas designated
for water catchment have illegally purchased permits, many do not, but
were developed by rich persons, often army generals or politicians. Police
and other government officials won’t issue either demolition notices or war-
rants or arrests that might offend powerful persons. In addition, the
increased density caused by building in the catchment areas has caused
another problem with water. Jakarta has virtually no septic sewers; it relies
on septic tanks. Because the city gets 70 percent of its water from ground-
water—much of it from shallow private wells that are far less than the rec-
ommended 10 meters from septic tanks—the quality of much of the city’s
water is deteriorating. Furthermore, we have pumped so much groundwater
that seawater subsidence has reached the Monas [a well-known public mon-
ument in the center of Jakarta], and moves inland 40 to 80 meters annually,
contaminating our water.’’
‘‘But surely there are some places to start in putting together a plan,’’
said Herman Suparjo, an officer of an international NGO. ‘‘The city has
Must Java Have No Forests? 87

announced that it will destroy two more golf courses and convert them back
into catchment, and the central government has announced that it will sus-
pend new building permits until a study can be done of the catchment needs
in Jakarta and build five new dams to control flooding. Surely those are a
foundation.’’
There was an angry buzz of voices as Herman concluded. Elys leaned
across the conference table toward Herman and said, ‘‘But Herman, the
Jakarta governor refused to agree to the suspension in building permits as
soon as the developers and construction unions protested that suspending
building permits for six months would throw hundreds of thousands of
people out of work. Those five new dams—they are the same ones that the
city promised to build after the 2002 floods! And even if the central govern-
ment could effectively suspend building permits in Jakarta, do we want to
side with the central government here?’’
‘‘That’s an important issue,’’ insisted Anchu Pamin, ‘‘because most of
our groups are clear that the central government is good at issuing environ-
mental plans and orders but has neither the resources to enforce them nor
the will to prevent bribery from undermining them. Our only chance to
protect remaining forests, reefs, and fisheries is to work with local popula-
tions and officials who have an interest in their preservation and helping
them see short-term as well as long-term benefits from preservation.’’
In the previous nine years, since the New Order government had fallen,
environmental policy had disintegrated in Indonesia. National forests all
over Indonesia’s thousands of islands had been stripped by logging compa-
nies that had encouraged villagers to log the forests at cheap wages, assuring
them they could build and farm on the cleared land. The few projects that
had been successful in stopping incursions—and only after massive local
forests had been cleared—were those in which environmental groups and
forestry officials had worked out compromises that allowed villagers to
expand onto the outermost parts of the cleared forest, worked out with all
concerned groups the boundaries between protected and community for-
ests, and found external funds to pay villagers both to replant core forest
areas that had been cleared and to assist forestry officials in detecting and
preventing incursions by logging crews. A general consensus had emerged
that there was simply no other way to prevent the total destruction of Indo-
nesia’s forests and wildlife habitats in the absence of effective legal enforce-
ment. Yet there was still great discontent, especially on the part of many
international conservation groups, over the environmental concessions
those compromises entailed and the precedents they set for the future.
88 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

Iqbal called for attention. ‘‘In talking with several organizations prior to
this meeting, it seemed to me that the most contentious issue is the five
dams. Perhaps we should turn to that now.’’
Willis Brecht, from the Urban Planning League of Jakarta, spoke first. ‘‘I
will not pretend that these five dams are the best environmental answer to
the situation we face in Jakarta. Ideally, we all know that it would be prefer-
able to restore the catchment areas in the 1999–2000 Environmental Mas-
ter Plan by bulldozing illegal residential and commercial developments and
forcing the developers to install the drainage and canals that their permits
called for. Politically, however, that will not happen. At most a few token
developers will be forced to add drainage canals. There simply is no way
any Indonesian government will destroy subdivisions or shopping centers
of two hundred to five hundred acres because they were built illegally on
state land designated for catchment. So the five dams, the four new water-
pumping stations, and the continued acquisition of land for the East Flood
Canal offer the best plan for dealing with flooding in Jakarta.’’
Elys faced the group around the conference table. ‘‘I don’t believe I just
heard this,’’ she sputtered. ‘‘This is not an environmentally sound proposal
at any level. And it’s not even the issue of dams in themselves. Like most
of us, I’m skeptical about using dams. But these proposed dams, with one
exception, would not even dam up rivers but only excess runoff. They will
barely make a dent in any real flooding. Perhaps if the population of Jakarta
stayed constant and there were no new development, these dams and new
pumps could prevent flooding in a third to a half of the areas affected this
year. But we continue to lose catchment areas to development every year in
Jakarta. In another year, two at most, the increased loss of catchment would
exceed the capacity of these dams, and we would be worse off than this
year. The proposal for the dams is simply public relations—an attempt to
fool the public into believing they will be safe.’’
‘‘I’m not so sure, Elys,’’ replied Agus Winik, who worked with the Wild-
life Conservation Fund. ‘‘It seems to me that any plan with a chance of
success will be cobbled together out of many pieces, and these dams may
have a role. Virtually none of the common objections to dams apply here—
they will not inundate large areas, they will have minimal displacement
effects on animals and humans, and they do not affect the normal flow of
rivers. Although I agree with you that the catchment areas are vital and that
we cannot simply concede their loss, it seems to me that building the dams
could give us a little extra margin in trying to preserve and reclaim catch-
ment. Most important, I think, is to not be co-opted into what, as you say,
Must Java Have No Forests? 89

clearly is an attempt by the city government to persuade the people that

the dams are enough to protect them. We must press for preservation and
restoration of catchment.’’
Bodies settled back in their chairs and heads nodded as Agus concluded.
There was a moment of silence, then Herman spoke. ‘‘We may all agree that
the catchment areas should be restored and, of course, remaining catchment
preserved. But how do we see that being done?’’
Iqbal intervened. ‘‘Lunch has arrived. Let me suggest that we divide into
groups that are appropriate to our particular organizational strengths and
interests and talk over lunch. How about one group on the upstream clear-
ings, one group on Jakarta catchment, and a third group on dams, canals,
and land procurement for the East Flood Canal?’’
Everyone agreed, and he continued. ‘‘Jakarta catchment meets here,
upstream clearings in the reception area, and dams/canals in my office. We
meet back here in an hour. OK?’’
When the groups came back from lunch, both the dams/canals group and
the Jakarta catchment group had agreed on a plan, and both plans were
acceptable to the conference as a whole. The conference would support the
city’s building of the floodwater dams, and organizations in the dams/canals
group would use the media to target ten to twelve of the largest, best-
financed developments that had not built the canals required in their build-
ing permits and lobby the city administration to either require the develop-
ments to install the canals or fine them to finance city installation of the
canals.
The Jakarta group also was in general agreement that the basic issue was
catchment within the city. The agencies concerned had divided up the vari-
ous tasks. One agency agreed to push for and oversee the promised destruc-
tion of the two 36-hole golf courses the city had promised to destroy,
installation of drainage basins, and restoration of the original topography.
Two other agencies agreed to research developments in the north and west
of the city that were built in violation of the 1999–2000 Master Plan and
to assess in each case the viability of demolition, the possibility and cost of
ameliorating the lost catchment, and the political feasibility of pushing for
either in each specific development. Three agencies jointly took up the for-
midable task of monitoring development plans and building permits that
might be planned for remaining catchment areas in Jakarta and, using Indo-
nesia’s watchdog press, lobbying against such projects. Though there clearly
were not enough hands to do the tasks that had been delegated, much less
90 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

the ones that remained unclaimed, there was a general sense of satisfaction
in the two groups.
The upstream clearing group, however, had come to an impasse, which
quickly involved the entire conference. The division originally arose over
whether the agencies should insist on adherence to the 1999–2000 Environ-
mental Master Plan for West Java. Some members argued that all of the
‘‘green’’ areas marked in that plan should be retained. Others argued that
this approach was no longer feasible and that environmental concerns had
to be integrated with population, poverty, and development concerns.
Anchu rose and began to speak.
‘‘Of the six thousand inhabited islands of Indonesia, Java has less than 7
percent of the land mass but has 60 percent of the population of Indonesia,’’
he said. ‘‘Only 40 percent of Java’s 128 million people are urban; the rest
live in villages and towns and are agricultural. The Indonesian population
program has been very successful for a developing nation: The fertility rate
is 2.6 children per woman—down from almost 7 per woman forty years
ago. But it will be another twenty years, if that, before Java hits the replace-
ment level of 2.1 children per woman, which means that population growth
will be strong in Java. Without quick industrialization, those excess people
will have to support themselves in agriculture, and already these past eight
years we have been importing rice, the basic staple. People need space in
which to build homes and plant crops, and that space must come from clear-
ing forests. We must manage such clearing well, but we cannot simply put
all the forests off limits as if we had a stable population size. Furthermore,
if industrialization is to occur and Indonesia is to benefit from it, the capital
for industrialization must continue to come from the sale of natural
resources such as lumber, oil, and mining. Even the Master Plan has some
areas designated as production forest. Just because that designation has
been interpreted in these last years since the fall of the New Order govern-
ment as meaning that such forests belong to anybody with a chainsaw does
not mean that production forests should be written out of the plan.’’
Anchu sat down, and Elys began.
‘‘We cannot allow the possibility that Java will be left with no forests,
that all of its rivers will be polluted with pesticides and fertilizers from agri-
culture, simply because of population growth. Javanese—whole villages of
Javanese even—have been migrating to other islands for centuries in search
of new land to cultivate; there is no reason to destroy the ecosystem here to
prevent migration within Indonesia. Each of our islands needs to preserve
its own forests and animal habitats. By what right do we put these interests
Must Java Have No Forests? 91

of humans ahead of those of all the other species of animals and plants on
Java? Would Java still be Java without its flora and fauna that figure so
heavily in its cultural symbols, its foods, and its legends? Why should we
preserve forests, animal habitats, and rivers only on large and sparsely pop-
ulated islands such as Papua, Sumatra, and Kalimantan? Should we just
surrender to extinction all the endangered species here on Java? What kind
of environmental policy is that? Whatever plan we have for Java should be
based not on what green spaces can be spared from industrialization, hous-
ing, and agriculture for humans or on what will protect Jakarta from flood-
ing but on what protected spaces are necessary to allow other species to be
self-perpetuating.’’
The two sides were deadlocked. As Iqbal adjourned the meeting, he asked
that both sides from the upstream clearings group bring back the following
month their proposals for a master plan in hopes that agreement was possi-
ble on some aspects. As he walked out of the meeting with Acik, however,
both were depressed.
‘‘If we can’t even agree on whose environment it is,’’ Acik mourned,
‘‘how shall we ever agree on how to care for it?’’

Commentary

The deadlock issue in this case is not new or unique in environmental ethics.
It is the basic question underlying the entire field (as laid out in chapter 1):
What priority, if any, is to be given to humans over other species? Under-
neath a great deal of consensus among environmentalists about the interde-
pendency of the entire biosphere lies a spectrum of positions concerning
the role of humans. Although virtually all environmentalists reject blatant
anthropocentrism, in which the Earth exists to serve the needs of human
beings, most argue that the human species must take precedence over other
individual species—but that humans must use that precedence responsibly.
James Nash, for example, argues that all creatures are entitled to ‘‘moral
consideration’’ but that not all have the same ‘‘moral significance,’’ arguing
against biotic egalitarianism.1 John Hart argues that all living beings have
intrinsic value, not merely instrumental value:

The fact that a part of creation comes to have instrumental value does not
negate the fact that it has intrinsic value. Individual members of a species
might retain their initial intrinsic value until their life ends, not experiencing
92 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

a change in value status until they become food for vultures and microorgan-
isms. Ecosystem integrity and Earth’s greater well-being would result if
humans were to learn to acknowledge and respect the intrinsic value of all
creation, and convert a creature’s value from intrinsic to instrumental value
frugally and responsibly, and only when necessary to sustain life or to enhance
human cultural development.2

An example of rare, responsible conversion of an entire species from

intrinsic to instrumental value might be the eradication of the smallpox
virus or the anticipated elimination of the human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV), in which the negative consequences of the virus for humans out-
weighs their intrinsic value. Environmentalists such as Peter Singer argue
that all sentient species have a right to exist that equals that of humans but
that an individual’s right to exist—for humans and other species—
ultimately is functionally, or instrumentally, based. Thus they reject argu-
ments of intrinsic value for individuals of any species.
Although Nash argues for the greater moral significance of humans, he
nevertheless argues for biotic ‘‘rights’’—in opposition to Holmes Rolston
III, who understands rights as applying only within the human political
community.3 Nash replies that the debate about the value of species and
individual members of species takes place only within the human political
community, and it is necessary to use the language of that community:

The stress on nonhuman rights is a way of saying that all life is sacred or
intrinsically valuable and worthy of being treated as the subject of human
moral consideration. Indeed, the acknowledgment of intrinsic value in nonhu-
man creatures seems to be implicitly an acknowledgment of their legitimate
claims for appropriate treatment from the human community, and, therefore,
of some level of rights and responsibilities. The underlying concern seems to
be human responsibility for nature, and the stress on rights provides an objec-
tive moral basis for this responsibility. . . . Advocacy for the rights of nature
is the contention that environmental concern is not only an expression of
benevolence, but also an obligation of justice—not simply justice to human
interests, but also justice to the interests of other creatures. In Western cul-
tures, rights are important; no rights suggests no moral consideration.4

In Indonesia, little environmental consciousness survives from tribal reli-

gious culture after the relentless missionizing of Hindus, Buddhists, Mus-
lims, and Christians that began almost three thousand years ago. What little
tribal environmental consciousness did survive often is visible only when
Must Java Have No Forests? 93

villagers regard local resources as under their ultimate control and as impor-
tant for sustaining their own lives and those of their children. After Indone-
sia achieved independence following World War II, its resources too often
were controlled by the central government, and today many observers fear
that the present democracy—and its promise of limited local autonomy—
may be too fragile to endure the newest economic recession, coming as it
has on the heels of the 1998 economic recession that brought down the
Suharto government and brought in fledgling democracy. Thus many villag-
ers have regarded massive resource ‘‘harvesting’’ (as in logging of forests)
for the last decade as their only chance to benefit from what originally were
permanent sustainable resources for their communities.
Indonesia is a very religious nation, with a large Muslim majority but
also with significant populations of Christians, Hindus (especially on Bali),
Buddhists, and Confucians. The environment has not been a primary focus
of Indonesia’s religions, although that is beginning to change. Yet even as
religions in Indonesia begin to include the environment alongside concerns
such as religious tolerance and peace, education, and development, they are
hampered because their religious resources for dealing with the environment
are somewhat ambiguous.
Both Islam and Christianity teach an ethic of ‘‘stewardship’’ or ‘‘re-
gency’’: Humans are caliphs, or regents, over the Earth in Islam and stew-
ards in Christianity, charged with managing the Earth well for Allah or
God. The historical development of the role of steward/caliph in both reli-
gions, however, has emphasized management in the interests of humans, to
use and preserve the Earth for the use of all humans now and in the future.
In addition, both traditions have emphasized the superiority of humans over
all other species.
The situation in Indonesia’s other religious traditions is not much differ-
ent. Hinduism, which provides the predominant underlying cultural values
for most of the Indonesian people despite their Islamic faith, retains in ritual
many elements of early nature worship. Forests, in particular, have been
important in supporting meditation, and there is a basic understanding in
Hindu philosophy of the oneness of existence that could form the basis for
an environmental ethics. For the most part, however, creation has been val-
ued for its use worth. Confucianism focuses on social relationships, from
the family to the empire; other than understanding nature as modeling peace
and as conducive to contemplation, it does not offer much with which to
construct an environmental ethics—especially because the Chinese Confu-
cians in Indonesia tend to be urban, middle- and upper-class business and
94 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

commercial investors. Many are Christian as well, with little Confucian cul-
tural tradition remaining in the young.
Buddhism—the smallest of the five official religions of Indonesia (Protes-
tantism and Catholicism are legally recognized as separate religions, and
Confucianism does not have full recognition)—offers the best grounding for
an environmental ethics in its principle of codependent origination. This
principle is tempered, however, by its understanding of the material world
as ultimately illusion and by its history, in which nature has been primarily
appreciated for being conducive to meditation—the path to nirvana. Inter-
nationally, all of these religions are struggling toward an environmental eth-
ics that draws on their traditions and meets the needs of the environmental
crisis. This work is beginning in Indonesia, but it is not yet well developed
and has not influenced public opinion much. However, the high degree of
religiosity of Indonesia, especially the increasing levels of Islamization, indi-
cates that environmentalists in Indonesia should support the development
of religious environmentalism as an avenue to creating environmental
consciousness.
The crux of the debate in this case, however, may not be this founda-
tional question about whether or to what extent humans take precedence
over other species. Rather, it may be the different context of environmental-
ism in Indonesia. There may be a significant difference between environ-
mentalism in a developed nation such as the United States and a developing
nation such as Indonesia. Do the claims of human beings on the environ-
ment carry any more weight when the bulk of that population lives at great
risk than when the bulk of that human population lives comfortably, at little
risk?
In Indonesia and other developing nations, individual survival is more at
risk than in the developed nations. Whereas in the United States only 8 of
every 100,000 women who give birth die in childbirth, in Indonesia 230
women in every 100,000 die in childbirth—less than half of whom are
assisted by trained personnel.5 On the one hand, in the United States—
which has one of the highest infant mortality rates among developed nations
as a result of inadequate prenatal care for poor women6 —6.8 of every 1,000
infants die within their first year. In Indonesia, on the other hand, 34 of
every 1,000 infants die in the first year. In 2007, the last year for which
World Health Organization (WHO) figures are known, more than 91,000
Indonesians died of tuberculosis7—a disease of poverty that has been virtu-
ally eliminated in the United States. These deaths are in addition to tropical
epidemics plaguing Indonesia, such as malaria and dengue fever, not to
Must Java Have No Forests? 95

mention more exotic diseases such as the leptospirosis generated by the

floods.
The per capita gross national income of the United States (2005) is more
than $45,000; that of Indonesia is $3,580. Of course, per capita gross
national income in itself affects access to health care as well as education.
In Indonesia, 11 percent of the population is largely illiterate, and only half
of the youth go on to attend secondary school.
As noted in the case, the population figures for Indonesia show a total
fertility rate of 2.6 children per woman. The 2008 population was 239 mil-
lion people, with a population density of 280 persons per square mile—
1,000 persons per square mile in Java, more than the highest rate in the
most populated European nations. By comparison, the U.S. population in
2008 was 289 million, with a density of 83 persons per square mile. Because
Indonesia’s fertility rate is still well above replacement levels (2.1 children
per woman), the country’s population is expected to be 293 million in 2025
and 343 million in 2050; a disproportionate part of that growth will occur
in Java.8
Indonesia’s hope of providing jobs, health care, and education for its
underserved present population, as well as for its increasing population,
depends on its ability to meet its own basic needs (especially food) and earn
capital. Among its principal methods of earning capital is sale of wood,
sand, and tropical fish and birds. There is a great deal of difference between
arguing that comfortable populations with the highest degree of luxury in
the world should make some sacrifices to accommodate what is necessary
for other species to survive and arguing that to help other species of animals
and plants survive, significant numbers of human beings may die or lack
minimum levels of development that we associate with basic human needs.
Even in the face of dramatic human need, some environmentalists may
argue for other sentient species’ having equal claim to that of humans on
the environment. Certainly, however, many who might cede priority in a
developed context to the survival of other species in the case of the develop-
ing world will reluctantly side with a compromise that gives priority to
meeting basic human needs such as food, shelter, health, and education.
In the United States we might decide that increases in regional levels of
unemployment resulting from the inability to log remaining forests in the
Northwest should be addressed through retraining and/or relocation of
affected workers, whose suffering was not sufficient to justify turning the
remaining forests and the animals and plants whose habitats they comprise
96 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

from intrinsic to instrumental value. We might decide that the level of suf-
fering from malnutrition, high infant and maternal mortality, disease, and
illiteracy was too high, however, to justify a ban on logging in some regions
of Indonesia. When the threat level to human groups increases, the level of
threat that is acceptable for other species seems to rise as well. But to what
level of threat?
Elys’s group raises the issue of migration as the answer to Java’s particu-
lar problem. Should that proposal be interpreted as sheer callousness to the
plight of the landless farmers, or is it an acceptable answer to an unevenly
settled nation of more than 6,000 inhabited islands? Perhaps both. It is true
that Javanese have been settling on other islands for more than two centu-
ries in search of land and businesses. The Dutch forcibly moved 605,000
people from Java to Sumatra to become plantation workers beginning in
1905, and after independence in 1950 the central government resettled 7
million people, mostly from Java and Bali. The resettled population con-
sisted mostly of poor, landless (inexperienced) farmers who often used
unsuitable farming methods and ended up as poor as before. About 10 per-
cent of the resettled were urban poor people from Jakarta, most of whom
could not adjust to the new location and eventually made their way back
home.
Since 1990 government transmigrasi programs have slowed dramatically,
both because family planning programs have been much more effective in
reducing population growth in Java and because transmigration itself cre-
ated many problems. The Javanese have often been resented on other
islands. Indonesia is a multicultural nation par excellence. Its people speak
more than three hundred different local languages, in addition to the
national language of Indonesian, and identify themselves in dozens of eth-
nicities; the religious of the nation are divided among Islam, Christianity,
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—as well as tribal religions (where
they survive). Movement of groups with different ethnicity, language, and
religion from one island to the other—especially from Java, which always
is resented on the other islands for its concentration of wealth and power
and its control of the central government—can be like putting a flame to a
fuse.
Indonesia is now dealing with the global recession that began in 2008,
still recovering from the December 2005 tsunami, the 1997–98 Asian reces-
sion before that, and the aspirations of a poor majority, 29 percent of whom
are under fifteen years of age. Certainly no Indonesian government today
will easily accept a policy of urging Javanese to migrate en masse to other
Must Java Have No Forests? 97

islands. Especially since the end of the New Order government and the sign-
ing of the Autonomy Law (though it has never been fully implemented,
and confusion reigns about how it should be interpreted in various areas),
Indonesians understand local resources—the most prominent being for-
ests—as belonging primarily to the local people. If the central government
were to intervene and give parts of forest in Riau to Javanese, the people of
Riau would protest—and probably would disregard government policies
restricting their use of local forest. Although individual Javanese will con-
tinue to migrate to other islands in search of economic opportunity, large-
scale government transmigration policies are not a real possibility.
What does this mean for the forests of Java? Will the last few remaining
Javanese tigers and orangutans disappear? Possibly. In the eastern United
States many species of plants and animals became extinct in the process of
settlement. While environmentalists attempt to prevent such extinction
from occurring all over the world, local peoples living in poverty object that
it is unfair of the developed world to impose on the poor, undeveloped
nations of the world the burden of preserving global biodiversity when car-
rying that burden results in the perpetuation of poverty and its attendant
evils: high infant and maternal mortality, illiteracy, epidemics, malnutrition,
and unemployment and underemployment.
Yet at a very practical level there obviously are some areas of agreement
possible between the two divisions in the upstream clearings group. First
priority should go to preserving forests that serve the interests of both
humans and other species by preventing flooding and preserving animal
habitats. If the remaining habitats of endangered species on Java are suffi-
cient to preserve those species, then protecting those habitats from further
incursions also should be a top priority. In the 1999–2000 Master Plan, a
common strategy was to indicate a core area of protected forest, surrounded
by a ring of mixed community forest and production forest. As long as the
core area is large enough to sustain the species of plants and animals found
there and the core area can be protected from community and commercial
incursions, such demarcations should continue to be acceptable to both
sides, as they were in 1999–2000. As the case presented in this chapter
indicates, protection of all three types of forest from illegal invasions of
loggers and settlers will depend on enlisting local populations in monitoring
the state of the local forest. The core will be protected only if the production
and the community forests that surround them are protected, if the logging
companies in the production forest carry out replanting policies, and if the
communities abide by the restrictions on clearing of community forest for
98 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

houses or farming. If local populations believe that the benefits of deadfall

wood, gathering, hunting, and grazing small animals in the community for-
est will be recognized and protected for them and for their children and
grandchildren and that they will be hired to do the logging and replanting
in the production forests, then the core forests may remain intact.
The issue of how many protected core areas there should be, and how
they should be distributed in Java, is more difficult. At the very least, efforts
should be made to protect every different type of forest habitat, with some
concern for geographical distribution throughout Java. Community forests
should be available for as many village communities as possible. Production
forests for logging should be in areas where agricultural land is scarce and
needed and where cleared forest would be appropriate for farming or in
areas that can be replanted relatively easily, where erosion from extraction
will be minimal, and where extraction (via roads or rivers) will not cause
incursions into nonproduction areas. (Such incursions have been a signifi-
cant problem in that logging crews have claimed that they could not find,
or got lost finding, areas marked for production and instead logged areas
that were more easily accessed, especially by rivers.)
Notice that what a developed nation would consider an immediate crisis
issue—fouling of the drinking water for a city of 12 million people with
sewage and seawater9 —is ignored completely in this case. There are several
reasons for this. One is that information about seawater incursion is rela-
tively new. Another is that there is general agreement that the only way to
address sewage contamination is to build a sanitary sewer system, which is
entirely beyond the resources of the city or the nation. Jakarta has trouble
securing enough water and already is drawing on the resources of other
West Java areas; it will not be able to avoid using groundwater and is far
from being able to supply water to replace city wells if it were to forbid well
use. The agencies represented at this meeting simply do not have the
resources to take on other issues. They must be selective.
Another reason that the issue of drinking water may not have been
addressed is that the people at this meeting undoubtedly are among those
who can afford to buy bottled drinking water. Indonesia now ranks among
the top ten nations of the world in bottled water consumption (5,600 mil-
lion liters by 2007). Growth in the bottled water market in Indonesia since
1999 has almost doubled, due to a combination of fear of water contamina-
tion and rising middle-class incomes.10 The majority poor, however, cannot
afford to buy their drinking water.
Must Java Have No Forests? 99

Ultimately, the question of how much of Java’s forests will remain at the
end of the twenty-first century—when the Indonesian population is
expected to have completely stabilized and, it is hoped, the bulk of the pop-
ulation will have been lifted out of poverty—is not one that any group can
answer now. It will be answered again and again, in many series of decisions
by the central government, local governments, logging companies, and
innumerable villages across Indonesia, one stand of trees at a time. Environ-
mental consciousness must become one part of the policymaking process in
twenty-first-century Indonesia—a consciousness of the intrinsic value of
every living thing. The decision to regard a forest as having instrumental
value rather than intrinsic value—which in Indonesia today means to log
it—is irreversible. The forest can be replanted, but if the species of plants
and animals that populated it died when their habitat was cut down, the
uniqueness of the original forest is lost for all time. This is a tragedy. It is
not the only tragedy, of course. Dying and hungry children also are tragic,
and like irreplaceable forests, hungry children pass tragic legacies to the
future. The human task is to make decisions in the present that grant as
much equity across the spectrum of species as possible and help create a
future with less tragedy for all species.

Questions for Discussion

1. What were considered the main causes of the 2007 floods in Jakarta?
2. How is the context for public policy decisions regarding the environ-
ment different in the United States than in Indonesia? How is the
task of environmental groups more difficult in Indonesia?
3. Which of the final arguments, Anchu’s or Elys’s, more closely resem-
bles environmental stances within the United States? Why might they
both represent environmental thinking in Indonesia?
4. Why do the authors urge Indonesian environmentalists to involve
religions and religious leaders in environmental issues? What might
these bring to the situation?

Notes
1. James Nash, Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and Christian Responsibil-
ity (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1992), 181.
2. John Hart, ‘‘Salmon and Social Ethics: Relational Consciousness in the Web
of Life,’’ Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 22 (2002): 67–93.
100 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

3. Holmes Rolston III, Conserving Natural Value (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1994), 106.
4. Nash, Loving Nature, 175.
5. Population Reference Bureau, 2008 statistics, available at www.prb.org.
6. Other industrialized nations often have infant mortality rates that are almost
half that of the United States.
7. World Health Organization, www.who.int/GlobalAtlas/predefinedreports/
TB/PDF_files.idn.pdf (accessed August 26, 2009).
8. Population Reference Bureau, 2008 statistics, available at www.prb.org.
9. ‘‘Seawater Intrusion Worsens Drinking Water Quality,’’ Jakarta Post, March
21, 2002, A6.
10. Shushmul Maheshwari, ‘‘Bottled Water Will Keep Indonesian Soft Drinks in
Motion,’’ December 30, 2008, www.rncos.come/Report?IM163.htm (accessed
August 26, 2009).

For Further Reading

Aglonby, John. ‘‘Jakarta to Be Hit by Moves on Illegal Logging.’’ Financial Times,
April 7, 2009. www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1d6de9fc-2309-11de-9c99-00144feabdc0
.html.
Boediwardhana, Wahyoe. ‘‘Community-Based Reforestation: East Java,’’ April 29,
2008. www.planetmole.org/indonesia-news/java.html噛more-3753.
Curwood, Steve. ‘‘Deforestation in Indonesia’’ (article and radio documentary), Sep-
tember 1, 2008. www.pri.org/world/asia/deforestation-in-indonesia.html.
Deutsch, Anthony. ‘‘Death Toll from Jakarta Flood Reaches 50.’’ CBN News,
March 8, 2007. www.cbn.com/CBNnews/100348.aspx.
Forests for the World Campaign, Environmental Investigation Agency. ‘‘The Final
Cut: Illegal Logging in Indonesia’s Orangutan Parks,’’ August 30, 1999. Environ-
mental investigation, available at www.eia-international.org.
Guerin, Bill. ‘‘Politics of Corruption in Indonesia.’’ Asia Times, March 29, 2007.
www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IC29Ae01/html.
Menotti, Victor. Free Trade, Free Logging: How the World Trade Organization
Undermines Global Forest Conservation. San Francisco: International Forum on
Globalization, 1999.
Nurbianto, Bambang, and Theresia Sufa. ‘‘Environmental Damage Unabated.’’
Jakarta Post, March 7, 2002, A14.
Potter, David. NGOs and Environmental Policies: Asia and Africa. London: F. Cass,
1996.
Potter, Lesley, and Simon Bradcock. ‘‘Reformasi and Riau’s Forests: A Weak Gov-
ernment Struggles with ‘People Power,’ Poverty and Pulp Companies.’’ Inside
Indonesia (January–March 2001). Available at www.serve.com/inside/edit65/
potter.htm.
‘‘Pulp Mills Put Heavy Pressure on Forests: Study.’’ Jakarta Post, February 9, 2002,
B11.
World Bank. ‘‘Tackling Corruption in Indonesia.’’ April 8, 2004. Available at www
.worldbank.org.
 six

Buried Alive
Future Generations and Permanent
Underground Disposal of Nuclear Waste

I
‘‘ can think of better things to do in Las Vegas than waiting in this
small conference room,’’ said David, glancing at his watch
impatiently.
‘‘Are you saying that our royal tour of Yucca Mountain this morning
wasn’t worth the trip?’’ replied Stephanie.
‘‘That’s no big deal,’’ continued David. ‘‘During my twenty years with
the Nuclear Energy Institute [NEI] I’ve seen the storage facility many times.
Still, with each visit I’ve become more confident of its function as the deep
geological site for permanent disposal of high-level nuclear wastes. That’s
why I feel this meeting is unnecessary, even absurd. The problem of where
to store spent fuel rods from nuclear plants has been solved. Now it’s time
to get on with the project, not to revisit old debates.’’
‘‘You’re right, the debate is old. People have been arguing the merits of
permanent geologic disposal for forty years, but you must agree that this
meeting adds a new twist,’’ said Stephanie.
‘‘I’ll say,’’ agreed David. ‘‘Not only new but completely bizarre. As repre-
sentatives of the NEI and the Department of Energy [DOE], our assignment
is to make the case of industry and government to somebody who officially
represents future generations. What was the president thinking when he
established an office of advocacy for future generations in the Environmen-
tal Protection Agency [EPA], and what was Congress thinking when it con-
firmed his nonsense?’’

101
102 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘He’s up for reelection next year, of course,’’ said Stephanie, stating the
obvious. ‘‘The elections are a vote of confidence by the public on Yucca
Mountain. If he’s reelected, we’ll inter tens of thousands of tons of spent
nuclear fuel at the desert site. If he loses, the next president may well halt
the project and throw the whole industry into jeopardy.’’
‘‘Sure, but why all the attention to the future? I’ve never understood
that,’’ said David.
‘‘It’s a riveting attention-getter,’’ continued Stephanie, ‘‘and the stakes
are sky high. With the effects of global warming accelerating around the
world, nuclear energy is a perfect way to generate all the power we need
without releasing a whiff of greenhouse gas.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ added David, ‘‘and the industry has responded heroically by put-
ting ten new reactors online in the past decade.’’
‘‘Visibly parading all the highly radiotoxic waste they generate from all
points in the country for burial at Yucca Mountain has given people pause,
though,’’ said Stephanie. ‘‘The media picked up on it big time, particularly
when they were told that the waste would be dangerous for at least ten
thousand years, and some of it for far longer. In their view, Yucca Mountain
is a huge radioactive landfill that we are passing on to our children and
grandchildren and their children and grandchildren pretty much forever, as
history goes.’’
‘‘So the advocate for the future somehow speaks for all those potential
people?’’ asked David, whose background in engineering had ill-prepared
him for these kinds of intangibles.
‘‘That’s exactly right,’’ answered Stephanie. ‘‘She’s a proxy or public
defender for the future.’’
‘‘That description applies to us,’’ David added. ‘‘You and I are as intent
on defending future generations as they are. We believe there are many good
reasons to pursue the nuclear option and permanent storage here—good for
us and good for unborn generations. We’re not sweeping radioactive waste
under the rug to be dealt with by future occupants.’’
Two individuals entering the room interrupted their conversation.
‘‘I’m so sorry we’re late. I’m Carry Delling, principal advocate secretary
from the EPA, and this is Dr. Nawaraj Sharma, who teaches in the depart-
ments of philosophy and anthropology at the University of California at
Berkeley.’’
‘‘Hi. I’m Stephanie Hightower from the DOE.’’
‘‘David Earl, Nuclear Energy Institute,’’ said David, extending his hand.
‘‘Dr. Sharma, don’t I know of you as a distinguished futurist?’’
Buried Alive 103

‘‘Well, you may have come across my name in that regard. It’s my field
of research,’’ said Nawaraj.
‘‘I’ve never quite understood the concept of future studies. How can you
study something that hasn’t happened and doesn’t exist?’’ asked David.
‘‘I get that question all the time,’’ responded Nawaraj. ‘‘Let’s just say I
study a history yet to be.’’
‘‘OK,’’ nodded David. ‘‘It seems like so much science fiction.’’
‘‘I’ll accept that,’’ agreed Nawaraj, ‘‘but with the emphasis on science
rather than fiction.’’
‘‘I’d emphasize the fiction,’’ mumbled David to himself.
‘‘Why don’t we start our fact-finding session?’’ said Carry. ‘‘I understand
we’re scheduled to tour the Yucca Mountain site later today, so our time
together is somewhat limited. Let’s begin with what some people would call
the science fiction of secure permanent geologic storage of radwaste.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ agreed Nawaraj, ‘‘futurists are as interested in what we can’t
know about the future as what we can know. That’s why, as a philosopher,
I’m very interested in understanding the logic behind your overwhelming
confidence in the very long-term safety of Yucca Mountain.’’
The question was tailor-made for David. ‘‘The potential performance
assessment included in the site-suitability report issued by the evaluation
committee back in 1992 gives very positive long-term geologic estimations
for hydrology, volcanism, seismic activities, and other possible vulnerabili-
ties with respect to radionuclide release and leachate transport. . . .’’
‘‘Please, Mr. Earl,’’ interrupted Carry. ‘‘I’m very much a layperson with
respect to these technical terms. My training is in theology, not geology—
African American womanist theology, to be exact. I deal in social oppres-
sion, not seismic compression. And though I make every effort to
comprehend your technical jargon, my role here is to ensure intergenera-
tional equity.’’
‘‘But intergenerational equity has a great deal to do with site integrity,
doesn’t it?’’ asked Stephanie.
‘‘It certainly does,’’ said Nawaraj, reentering the discussion, ‘‘and the
integrity of Yucca Mountain as a geologic repository is exactly the question.
We are working in a time frame not of decades or centuries, in which we
have some confidence in our predictive powers, but in millennia and tens
of millennia—many thousands of years. We have no experience with this
extraordinary time horizon, which is longer than all of recorded history.
Even the pyramids of Egypt were constructed only about four thousand
104 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

years ago. You are burdened with ensuring the integrity of Yucca Mountain
for at least six thousand years longer than that!’’
‘‘You’re being overly dramatic, Dr. Sharma,’’ said David, a bit offended.
‘‘There has been no volcanic activity in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain for
the past ten thousand years. No indication of earthquakes has been discov-
ered either. We’re in the middle of an ancient arid desert with sparse rainfall.
And even in the unlikely case of increased precipitation, hydrological studies
show no indication that water corrosion of the storage canisters and migra-
tion of that water into the very deep aquifer are reasonable concerns.
Besides, opponents frequently overstate the size of the waste to be stored.
Certainly its weight is considerable, in terms of thousands of tons, but the
volume is quite small because nuclear waste is twenty times as dense as
water. We estimate that the entire volume will fit into a cube about fifty feet
on each side. This volume is much easier to protect than one would expect.
I have ample documentation of my claims in these research reports.’’ David
reached into his large briefcase and removed two imposing bound volumes.
‘‘Thanks, Mr. Earl, but I’m quite familiar with the massive technical
research done on the suitability of Yucca Mountain over the past twenty-
five years. Our office has a technical staff that assists us in its familiarity,’’
said Nawaraj. ‘‘Again, my interest is in the underlying logic of these data
and your stated conclusions.’’
‘‘Umm, can you give us an example, Dr. Sharma?’’ asked Stephanie.
‘‘Yes. Your risk estimations for geological activity are based on a predict-
ive model. But geology as a science is explanatory, not predictive. It is very
accurate in describing how a particular geologic feature—a canyon or a
range of mountains—came to be, but it cannot predict precisely where the
next canyon or range of mountains will occur. Efforts to develop a predic-
tive geology for volcanic eruptions or earthquakes are notorious for their
range of error. If we can’t predict when an existing volcano will erupt, how
can we predict the appearance of volcanoes yet to be? And your estimates
of the likelihood of surface water infiltrating the rock, invading the canisters
of radwaste, and leaching into groundwater are based on no experience of
the Yucca Mountain site and certainly on no experience of the behavior of
the geology and hydrology of such sites over extremely long historical peri-
ods. You are merely extrapolating from the present into the far distant
future, and that introduces subjectivity into your conclusions and a range
of uncertainty that is highly questionable. Any futurist will tell you that
such assumptions of uniformitarianism are folly.’’
Buried Alive 105

‘‘Futurists such as yourself have their field of expertise, Dr. Sharma, and
I would never presume to share that experience and knowledge,’’ David
responded politely but with mounting indignation. ‘‘In like manner, perhaps
you should be reluctant to issue hasty and ill-spoken judgments of the con-
sidered conclusions of hundreds of experts in all relevant fields over several
decades of scientific inquiry into the suitability of Yucca Mountain.’’
‘‘In other words, all of this science gives us the range of actual risks, Dr.
Sharma,’’ Stephanie interjected, ‘‘while the layperson can have only per-
ceived risks. I think you know which of these is more accurate and hence
preferable.
‘‘Look,’’ continued Stephanie, ‘‘we all can agree on one fact. Over time,
the radioactivity of the stored material will diminish. In just one thousand
years most of it will carry no more risk for humans than that of uranium
ore, which occurs naturally. If that normal exposure is acceptable now, why
would it not be acceptable in one thousand years?’’
‘‘Let’s see,’’ said Nawaraj, taking a pose of feigned reflection, ‘‘how many
cancers in the United States each year are caused by naturally occurring
background radiation, Ms. Hightower?’’
‘‘I’m not sure,’’ answered Stephanie. ‘‘Several hundred?’’
‘‘I believe the numbers are in the thousands. Are they acceptable?’’ Naw-
araj continued.
‘‘Of course not,’’ said Stephanie, ‘‘but there’s nothing we can do about
it, so we must accept them.’’
‘‘I think your logic is questionable, Ms. Hightower,’’ Nawaraj responded.
‘‘To accept a risk or harm does not mean to sanction or approve of it. What
is normal, such as background radiation, is not necessarily neutral in terms
of value. I run a ‘normal’ risk of contracting lung cancer from secondary
cigarette smoke. Should I accept that risk simply because it is normal? You
also seem to assume that background radiation from geologic sources is
normal because it occurs naturally. Since when do we appeal to nature for
our value judgments?’’
David took the opportunity of Stephanie’s silence that followed this
question to seize the offensive. ‘‘Whatever you may think about our inter-
pretation of the science, one thing is certain: We have identified no credible
mechanisms that would lead to unacceptable radionuclide releases over the
time frame in question. Thus—and here I quote from memory reports from
the DOE—‘the evidence does not support a finding that the site is not likely
to meet the qualifying condition.’ This is all anyone can ask for, given the
incredible complexity of the task, and for most of us it is good enough.’’
106 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘It might be good enough if the stakes weren’t so high,’’ said Nawaraj,
‘‘but when I hear a statement like that, which derives a positive conclusion
from two negatives, I can think of only one thing: an appeal to ignorance.
I’d feel much more secure if your quote had read, ‘the evidence supports a
finding that the site is likely to meet the qualifying condition.’ Instead, you
turn lack of good data and great uncertainty in predictability into a virtue.’’
‘‘Do you intend your condemnation to apply to the scientific enterprise
in general, Dr. Sharma?’’ David asked. ‘‘Because that’s exactly what you’re
proposing. For all of its considerable power, science is powerless to prove
anything. All it can do is incrementally increase the confidence we have in
a theory by testing it over and over and seeking evidence supporting its
contrary—that is, to disprove it. Our confidence in a theory grows with our
failure to dethrone it, but there’s always the chance that tomorrow some-
thing will be discovered that will disqualify it. Yucca Mountain is the most
thoroughly researched geological plot of ground in history. I stand by our
scientific appraisal. We have found nothing to question our confidence in
the theoretical proposition that Yucca Mountain is a safe site for the dis-
posal of radwaste for the indefinite future. The theory is robust. Science has
given us great confidence in the integrity of permanent geologic disposal.
That’s why we unconditionally endorse the word ‘permanent.’ ’’
‘‘Speaking of unpredictability, have you considered the predictability of
human intrusion into the entombed waste?’’ asked Carry.
‘‘Certainly, Ms. Delling,’’ said Stephanie. ‘‘The fundamental premise of
permanent geological disposal is to maximize the isolation of the radwaste
to ensure that intrusion, by accident or intention, will never occur. This is
our responsibility to future generations.’’
‘‘We’ll talk further about our duties to future generations in a moment,
but now I’m concerned with the potential for human compromise of the
storage site,’’ said Carry. ‘‘Once Yucca Mountain is sealed, do we have the
technology for mining and drilling so that we could reenter if we wished?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ answered Stephanie.
‘‘Why wouldn’t future generations possess at least the same capabili-
ties?’’ continued Carry.
‘‘If they do, then one assumes their entry would be for good reason,’’
said Stephanie.
‘‘I can think of several scenarios in which a future society might possess
sufficient technology to breach site containment, yet endanger themselves
by doing so,’’ objected Carry. ‘‘They could be seeking mineral resources,
ignorant of the presence of dangerous radiological materials. There are such
Buried Alive 107

resources documented within striking distance of Yucca Mountain. Or they

could be directed by a totalitarian despot, the future equal of a Stalin or
Hitler, intent on using the radioactive materials for weapons.’’
‘‘Please excuse me, Ms. Delling, but aren’t your scenarios highly imagina-
tive and unlikely?’’ asked Stephanie, in clear disagreement. ‘‘The last three
hundred years have been a record of social, scientific, technological, and
even moral progress. It is more plausible, is it not, to construct our scenarios
of future societies as more advanced than we are and thus better able to
handle the radwaste if they choose to.’’
‘‘Of course my visions are speculative and unlikely,’’ Carry responded,
‘‘but no less likely are your more optimistic images of future societies inhab-
iting Nevada. Who could have predicted a half-century ago that the fastest
growing metropolitan area in the United States would be Las Vegas, here in
the middle of the desert? In truth, human institutions are not very predict-
able even for historical periods of moderate length. I think we must agree:
Our ignorance of the form of future societies that might be affected by the
risks posed by deep geologic disposal of thousands of tons of the most dura-
ble and toxic materials ever produced is close to complete.’’
‘‘Yet the president has given you the power of a cabinet officer to repre-
sent these unknowable, faceless persons,’’ said David, shaking his head
incredulously.
‘‘Yes,’’ said Carry, ‘‘but they are by no means all faceless. Future persons
are being born every moment as the children of our generation. As a libera-
tion theologian who addresses the condition of oppressed and victimized
peoples—including my ancestors who were brought to slavery in this
enlightened and progressive society in which you have such confidence, Ms.
Hightower—I can tell you, these anonymous figures do count morally.’’
‘‘Actually, I agree with you,’’ Stephanie acknowledged, sensing that the
argument had just turned in her favor. ‘‘Our complete lack of ability to
foresee the distant future is a fundamental justification for permanent geo-
logic disposal. We will make every effort to render the radwaste irretriev-
able, even to the point of erecting a pyramid atop the mountain as a warning
to anyone not to dig there.’’
‘‘I can’t see how that would help,’’ countered Nawaraj. ‘‘It’s likely that
the meaning of any monumental structure eventually would be lost—in
which case it might well prove to be an attractor, suggesting that something
valuable lies underneath. Tombs and pyramids of ancient Egypt were looted
frequently and over long periods of time. You can’t assume symbolic conti-
nuity over thousands of years.’’
108 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘I admit the task is difficult,’’ Stephanie said, ‘‘but the fact remains: If
we have any duty to future generations, it is to protect them from them-
selves with respect to our radioactive waste. Yucca Mountain is the best
strategy to fulfill that duty.’’
‘‘Your attitude is very paternalistic, Ms. Hightower,’’ Carry responded.
‘‘I’ll agree to that, but only if you define ‘paternalistic’ to mean responsi-
ble caution and prudent action for the protection of others,’’ Stephanie
responded.
‘‘I’m unconvinced that we have any moral duties whatsoever to future
persons, or at least to those beyond the next two or three generations,’’
David added. ‘‘They are so contingent. I mean, we can’t possibly know who
they will be, what their needs will be, what their values will be. How can
we then take any specific action and have confidence that its consequences
will benefit them?’’
‘‘Most of your concerns are specious, Mr. Earl,’’ Carry replied. ‘‘If I’m
designing a passenger airplane, I know none of these facts about the thou-
sands of passengers who will fly in the aircraft over several decades. None-
theless I have profound duties to design the safest plane possible. And I
disagree that we can’t know the needs of distant future persons. They will
be the same as those of generations in the distant past, as well as our own.
All persons require elemental living conditions in their physical and social
environments that will enable them to flourish. In my estimate, we certainly
do have duties to potential persons, and generally we can know what they
need.’’
‘‘We can’t forget duties to the current generation,’’ replied Stephanie.
‘‘We are in the midst of an increasing crisis—global warming. Nuclear
energy is the most rational response to the urgent need to reduce the produc-
tion of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. We would be discrim-
inating against the current generation not to take full advantage of the
technology. Besides, it’s obvious that the efforts we make to stem those
emissions will greatly benefit future generations. It seems only fair, then,
that disposal of the radioactive waste generated by this effort should be
shared by all generations. It’s a win-win situation, and the responsibility is
distributed equitably. Wouldn’t you agree?’’
‘‘I do not,’’ Nawaraj replied forcefully. ‘‘Although it is true that the bene-
fits will be distributed somewhat equally with respect to global warming,
the risks will not. Future generations will be subjected to the risks of Yucca
Mountain to a far greater extent than we will. Such ‘temporal’ inequity
resembles what we might call the ‘geographical’ inequity suffered by the
Buried Alive 109

citizens of Nevada—80 percent of whom oppose Yucca Mountain. Why

should they bear the burden of potential harm from long-term storage of
nuclear waste just ninety miles from their largest city while everybody else
in the country enjoys only the benefits?’’
‘‘The answer to that question,’’ replied Stephanie, ‘‘was well stated by a
columnist for a Washington newspaper when she wrote that ‘ninety-eight
senators didn’t want the waste stored in their states, but only two senators
didn’t want it stored in Nevada.’ ’’
‘‘Does that make my point or yours?’’ asked Nawaraj.
‘‘Actually, mine,’’ answered Stephanie. ‘‘In a representative democracy
we have ways of distributing the harms of a decision affecting everyone as
fairly as possible. But this distribution is never perfect. There are costs to
the option of nuclear power, but the benefits to be shared by everyone,
including Nevadans, far outweigh those costs—and that’s what makes the
decision morally proper.’’
‘‘I do recall,’’ said Carry, ‘‘that nineteenth-century slaveholders rational-
ized the institution on those very same grounds. And it’s just that kind of
injustice that inspired the creation of my office.’’
‘‘Ms. Delling,’’ interrupted David impatiently, ‘‘I have no training in
either theology or philosophy, but even my engineering mind can see that
your demands for moral perfection are the enemy of the good. Permanent
geologic disposal ensures that the great majority of this generation will
enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy, and concern for the good of the major-
ity is always the ethical ideal.’’
‘‘If that’s true, you’ve just placed yourself in a difficult position, Mr.
Earl,’’ said Carry. ‘‘That great majority is actually all those who have not
yet been born. Members of future generations upon whom the harms of the
risks of this radioactive refuse will fall will vastly outnumber us. We are the
minority dictating to them, the majority, how the benefits and costs of
nuclear energy are to be distributed. The minority enjoys the greatest bene-
fits, while the majority bears the greatest risks. I don’t think your moral
calculations allow for that.’’
‘‘All right, Ms. Delling,’’ said Stephanie, ‘‘let me introduce another possi-
bility that may meet your objections. You are familiar, I’m sure, with the
nuclear industry’s offer to create a legacy trust for future generations. We
will levy a tax on the electricity we generate and use the funds as compensa-
tion to future generations for any burden unjustly imposed upon them by
Yucca Mountain. Would that arrangement be acceptable to your office?’’
110 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘Yes, I am familiar with that proposal,’’ Carry replied, ‘‘and I’m of two
minds about it. On the one hand, it would lessen their financial burden with
respect to the problems caused by storage. On the other hand, in a moral
sense nothing can compensate for injustice, especially for those conse-
quences that result in terrible suffering and loss of life.’’
‘‘Do you favor reparations for the wrongs suffered by African Americans
during the centuries of slavery?’’ Stephanie inquired.
‘‘Yes, I do,’’ answered Carry. ‘‘Entire generations of African Americans
continue to suffer from the social, political, economic, and emotional effects
of that institution, even though they were not born into slavery themselves.
Being a member of that community has enabled me to feel great solidarity
with future generations in this case.’’
‘‘Well, isn’t our offer of compensation with the legacy trust the equiva-
lent of reparations for the unborn whom you believe will be egregiously
affected by our actions at Yucca Mountain?’’ continued Stephanie. ‘‘Isn’t it
reparations paid up front?’’
‘‘Perhaps,’’ replied Carry, ‘‘but the situation is different. Reparations are
one of the few strategies that my community has to rectify the wrongs of
the past. You, however, are using the fund as a tool to justify actions that
may well be harmful in the future. It’s a payoff to future persons in the
place of giving them the power to make decisions regarding these risks for
themselves.’’
‘‘This is exceedingly frustrating,’’ Stephanie exclaimed. ‘‘You tell us what
you would do with the waste that would resolve all of these issues.’’
‘‘I can respond to that,’’ said Nawaraj. ‘‘To maximize the autonomy and
decision processes of future generations, we would advocate a plan that
would store the high-level waste in monitored retrievable storage sites
located throughout the country for the indefinite future.’’
‘‘Isn’t that just denying the problem?’’ asked David.
‘‘Not at all,’’ continued Nawaraj. ‘‘It would allow for the development
of new technologies to deal with the material in better ways than primitive
burial. Most important, it would preserve the options of future generations
to address the risks in their own ways. In other words, retrievable storage,
perhaps in conjunction with your legacy trust, empowers future persons.
Justice demands as much.’’
Stephanie thought for a moment before responding. ‘‘Your position
shares some of the difficulties of our own,’’ she said. ‘‘The retrievable stor-
age canisters could be buried by the same violent geological activity that
you speculate may someday affect the integrity of Yucca Mountain, and
Buried Alive 111

they could be forgotten. Succeeding generations would then be no better

off, and perhaps even worse off than if the canisters were buried here in a
sealed chamber. Another problem is even more interesting,’’ she continued.
‘‘If some future generation actually exercised its power to decide on the
method of disposal, then it would be put in the same position as we are
in—depriving all future generations of their power of choice. Your problem
is that you speak vaguely of preserving the power of decision for all future
generations as if they were contemporaries, when the power actually can be
used only by one generation at a time, with serious consequences for all the
others that follow. How ironic!’’
‘‘Stephanie is right,’’ said David, ‘‘and may I add that the risks of terror-
ism and accidents make the plan unworkable.’’
‘‘Perhaps,’’ Nawaraj admitted, ‘‘but, while the risks are there, they are
no greater than the risks of radionuclide release from Yucca Mountain, and
the great advantage is that our generation meets its overriding obligation of
justice.’’
‘‘But the risks of terrorism and accidents in exposed and vulnerable sur-
face storage are, in our scientifically considered estimate, much greater than
those of permanent underground disposal,’’ Stephanie insisted. ‘‘The moral
perfectionism David alluded to earlier creeps back into your argument
again. You ignore obvious and substantial harmful consequences for the
sake of satisfying an abstract and apparently unconditional obligation to
justice. Your position makes you, in my view, a good person in the worst
sense of the term.
‘‘Concern for justice is one thing we have in common, Dr. Sharma, even
though we disagree profoundly on how to bring it about,’’ Stephanie said.
At that moment they were interrupted by Carry’s associate, who told
them that the car taking them to Yucca Mountain had arrived. The meeting
was concluded cordially, with the promise to meet again the next day.
As they walked out together, Nawaraj turned to Carry.
‘‘It’s interesting how our very different religious commitments—yours to
Christianity and mine to Hinduism—converge on this issue,’’ he said.
‘‘How do you mean?’’ Carry asked.
‘‘Well, you work from a perspective derived from the community experi-
ence of oppression of your people and of African American women. So your
basic moral principle concerns justice for the downtrodden and marginal-
ized, whether they live now or in the future. Am I correct?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ answered Carry. ‘‘And what is your perspective?’’
112 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘It’s rather mixed,’’ said Nawaraj. He hesitated for a moment, gathering

his thoughts. ‘‘As a secular philosopher, I take seriously the ideas of inherent
human worth and dignity and our duty to be harmless. As a Hindu, how-
ever, I take my clues from the idea of reincarnation and karma.’’
‘‘You mean that your actions in this life will determine the conditions of
your next life?’’ asked Carry.
‘‘Yes, and intergenerational justice is achieved this way, by the operation
of the law of karma,’’ Nawaraj replied. ‘‘But with respect to issues concern-
ing future generations, there’s an added twist—a very practical one.’’
‘‘Yes?’’ Carry asked with growing curiosity.
‘‘You see, thanks to a series of reincarnations, each of us will actually be
present in each of those future generations for thousands of years. Hence
we will be the recipients of decisions made today that will affect their well-
being, because we will be numbered among them,’’ Nawaraj explained.
‘‘So this means that if in five thousand years nuclear waste stored at
Yucca Mountain leaches into the groundwater, you and I, as our future
selves, could be at risk from drinking that water,’’ added Carry.
‘‘Exactly,’’ Nawaraj replied. ‘‘We are potential victims of our own
actions. We harvest the harmful consequences of the seeds we sow—or, in
this case, the high-level radioactive waste we bury.’’
‘‘Is this your idea, Nawaraj?’’
‘‘I’ve seen it in several scholarly publications. I must add that because it
encourages a rather selfish motivation for doing good, it does not represent
the highest intentions of Hindu ethics.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ agreed Carry, ‘‘but perhaps we should share your thoughts with
Ms. Hightower and Mr. Earl. It might encourage them to focus their minds
admirably in our direction.’’
‘‘I don’t think so,’’ Nawaraj said. ‘‘They are strongly committed to the
science of deep geologic disposal. I have no doubt that they would be willing
to subject themselves in their future lives to the consequences of their deci-
sions in this life confidently and with no second thoughts.’’
‘‘Well, perhaps we have provided them with those second thoughts,’’ said
Carry.
With that remark they climbed in the car for the trip to Yucca Mountain
and a tour of its deep and cavernous tunnels.

Commentary

When the first nuclear plant came online in 1955, commercial generation of
electrical power by nuclear fission was a dream in progress. That dream
Buried Alive 113

included the potential of abundant and inexpensive electricity that would

be, as one optimist put it, ‘‘too cheap to meter.’’ In one sense the vision has
been realized. According to the NEI—an advocacy organization for com-
mercial nuclear power for whom the dream continues—the 103 commercial
nuclear power plants currently operating in the United States provide more
than 20 percent of the nation’s electrical needs. Two-thirds of Vermont’s
electricity, for example, is provided by nuclear power.1 The average electric-
ity production costs for nuclear generation are less than those for coal, oil,
and gas-fired plants; nuclear power is indeed cheap.
Of increasing importance is the fact that nuclear energy generation
releases no emissions products such as sulfur, particulates, or carbon diox-
ide (a major greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere. Widespread public con-
cerns about the safety of nuclear plants were reinforced by the crisis at
Three Mile Island in 1979 and the meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986, as well
as the monumental costs of decommissioning aging plants. Nevertheless,
mounting environmental concerns and increasing political and security
interests in national energy independence revive the industry’s hopes for an
expansion of nuclear power.

Disposal of Radioactive Waste

At this point the dream enters its potentially nightmarish phase. The NEI
claims that ‘‘the nuclear energy industry is the only industry established
since the Industrial Revolution that has managed and accounted for all its
waste, preventing adverse impacts on the environment.’’2 Accounted for—
perhaps. Managed? For many people this claim is highly questionable and
is the major issue addressed by this case.
In brief, nuclear plants use uranium oxide fuel to generate electricity.
Bundles of metal fuel rods containing the uranium in small ceramic pellets
undergo the atom-splitting process of nuclear fission. The impressive energy
released in reactors boils water, and the resulting steam drives turbine gener-
ators, producing electricity. Every year or two, depleted fuel rod assemblies
are replaced. The major problem is that they have become highly radioac-
tive and must be stored safely and securely. Typically a nuclear power plant
produces twenty tons of spent fuel each year. The combined total of such
high-level radioactive waste (HLRW, or radwaste) produced by the industry
over four decades is more than 40,000 metric tons. Where is it all stored?
Currently each plant is responsible for managing its own HLRW. Most
114 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

store it in nearby steel vaults or concrete containers. This nuclear ‘‘out-

house’’ arrangement cannot continue, however—primarily because of space
limitations and increasing concerns for security and safety.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) was a response to this
emerging crisis for the entire nuclear industry. The NWPA mandates the
construction of a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste. The Act
thereby eliminates consideration of any other option for long-term storage.
An amendment in 1987 went even further by authorizing a detailed scien-
tific study of a single potential site: Yucca Mountain, about one hundred
miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. After three decades and seven billion
dollars, the DOE in George W. Bush’s administration approved the site and
ordered construction of storage facilities to begin, with the goal of making
Yucca Mountain operational by 2010. In a last-gasp effort to block the
project, Nevada filed an objection, forcing Congress to decide the question.
The Senate overwhelmingly approved the plan. This result is not surprising,
because most senators have nuclear plants in their states, and their constitu-
encies express no desire to either continue piling spent fuel rods locally or
to allow their states to become dumping grounds for the nation’s radwaste.
The environmental acronym for this reaction is NIMBY—Not In My Back
Yard. Then, in 2009, the federal government reversed itself. Because of
political opposition and very difficult logistics of safely transporting nuclear
waste across the country, the government decided on local on-site storage
as an interim solution. Kicking the can (or radioactive container) down the
road is no solution. Continuing accumulation of HLNW will force an even-
tual decision.
The ethical issues in this case are localized geographically—Yucca Moun-
tain, Nevada—but not local temporally. Spent uranium fuel is dangerously
radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Other by-products of the fission
process are potent for far longer—hundreds of thousands and even millions
of years. The responsibilities of our generation to provide for safe and
secure disposal of these dangerous materials for vast periods is a unique
ethical and philosophical issue for a variety of reasons.
The initial issue often is the moral considerations of future persons. Some
philosophers have serious reservations about the duties of the current gener-
ation to persons who do not yet exist and whose specific characteristics,
cultural beliefs and values, and preferences cannot be known.3 Moreover,
even if we acknowledge some duties to these persons, how are we to carry
them out? Anything we might do now, even with the best intentions of
preventing harm to future generations, undoubtedly will change the very
Buried Alive 115

identity of individuals who otherwise would be born if we did nothing. This

situation is an interesting philosophical conundrum. Nonetheless, barring
some cosmic catastrophe that wipes out our species entirely, somebody—
known or unknown—is likely to be around in one thousand, five thousand,
or ten thousand years to be imperiled by the radioactive waste deposited by
our generation as a result of benefits we enjoyed from the cheap electricity
it provided. Although we cannot be certain that these same benefits will be
available to persons inhabiting the future, we can be certain that the risks
associated with them will be. To continue our metaphor, our dream could
become their nightmare. Our geographic NIMBY could become their
NIMG—Not In My Generation. This would be a cry of frustration, not
resolution, because Yucca Mountain would already be a reality in their
midst.
Despite this philosophical question, both sides of the issue—proponents
and opponents of deep geologic disposal—generally agree that we do indeed
have duties to future generations to deal with our own waste. The problem
is how best to deal with it. Initially one might conclude that this issue is a
question of science and technology rather than ethics, but that is not the
case. The technical strategy selected to resolve the problem carries subtle
philosophical and ethical presuppositions.
One of these premises is the attitude of paternalism that comes with the
territory of Yucca Mountain. Stephanie and David assume that our genera-
tion is best suited to make the final decision concerning the disposal of rad-
waste. Although this attitude is expressed in the guise that ‘‘this is our
problem, so we must solve it,’’ the effect is to remove the autonomy and
independence of future persons by preempting the decision about how best
to dispose of the material through the irreversibility of permanent and
irretrievable storage. Their competence is called into question without
justification.
When pressed, however, our advocates seem to contradict themselves. In
response to Carry’s question about possible human intrusion into the stor-
age site, Stephanie suggests that future generations may be far more
advanced both technologically and morally than the present generation and
hence fully capable of dealing with such intrusions. Her faith in the appar-
ent inevitability of progress is inadequately based in reason; it is based on a
highly selective and convenient reading of history, as Carry notes in her
reference to the institution of slavery in morally ‘‘advanced’’ Western civili-
zation. Thus one advantage in arguing from our ignorance of the essentially
116 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

unpredictable future is that one can speculate both ways with equal
reliability.

Problems On-site

The presence of subjectivity and ignorance in technical and scientific judg-

ments cuts another way as well. For reasons we discuss in the following, the
scientific analysis or ‘‘site characterization’’ of Yucca Mountain is based in
utilitarian moral theory. That is, decisions are to follow a cost-benefit analy-
sis of the consequences of the act under consideration. In the incredibly
complex situation of long-term storage of nuclear waste, costs are expressed
in terms of risks or probabilities of harmful or beneficial consequences
occurring as a result of the massive project.
A major geological problem is leakage. Someday, some unknown amount
of radioactive material might be released through corrosion of the storage
canisters (whose integrity cannot be ensured for more than three hundred
years, given present technology), resulting in pollution of underground
water sources for the region. Future persons, conceivably ignorant of the
danger, might drink this water and become sick. What are the chances of
leachate migration into the groundwater? No one knows for sure, but scien-
tific inquiry allows for probabilities to be assigned. Such risk analyses are
prone to expression as value judgments in the face of considerable uncer-
tainty. Do geologists really have knowledge about volcanoes, earthquakes,
climate change, and hydrology in the region of Yucca Mountain that can be
extrapolated confidently over thousands of years? Do experts know enough
about these things to offer optimistic assessment of risks?
The troubling answer, apparently, is that only the experts know for
sure—at least, they believe they know for sure. Although the findings of
science are never accepted on the appeal of authority, there is a disquieting
‘‘expertise inference’’ at work in the attitude and claims of the proponents.
It is true that only trained scientists can assign numerical values to the risks
of long-term disposal, but it is not true that they alone are qualified to assess
the acceptability of those risks for other affected groups. Yet Stephanie gives
greater value to expert assessment of ‘‘actual risk’’ than to a layperson’s
assessment of ‘‘perceived risk,’’ suggesting that only experts are objective.
What is safe enough, and what is too risky? Experts do not enjoy privileged
access to wisdom in answering questions concerning the acceptability of
risks, and equity dictates that the judgments of all affected parties count
equally. For example, the logic of Stephanie’s assumption that ‘‘normal’’
Buried Alive 117

risks are acceptable as a working principle for risk assessment fails when
examined by Nawaraj.
Another questionable approach used by advocates of Yucca Mountain
relies on negative premises grounded in ignorance to reach an affirmative
conclusion. After twenty-five years and seven billion dollars, scientific
examination of the site has revealed no reason it would be unsafe; therefore,
it is safe. Having no evidence to the contrary, we conclude that the contrary
is false. A good example is the television commercial for a sleep medication,
which claims that the product ‘‘has not been shown to be addictive.’’ This
approach, oddly enough, is the scientific method. A scientific hypothesis
that is not falsified by repeated experiments or observations is accepted pro-
visionally as robust and true. Note that the hypothesis is not proven. Its
success in fending off refutation simply builds confidence in its likely truth.
This approach explains the odd aphorism that science progresses only when
it rejects theories as quickly as possible. The hypothesis that Yucca Moun-
tain is safe is subjected to inquiries designed to discover facts (e.g., volcanic
or seismic activity in the area) that would defeat it. If none are found, con-
fidence grows in the reliability of the hypothesis. Stephanie and David have
great confidence in the thoroughness and integrity of the long scientific
investigation of the site. Consequently, they are willing to accept conclu-
sions that emphasize what the scientists and engineers did not find. Naw-
araj, however, would feel more comfortable if the conclusion of the site’s
integrity were couched in positive findings. He may be asking for too much.
Given the incredible complexity of the mountain’s geology, the extremely
long time period for which claims of safety and security must be made, the
size of the affected population—hundreds of generations and millions of
individuals—and the irreversibility of the decision, however, it seems that
extreme caution would be of supreme importance. Stephanie and David
believe that such caution has been exercised.
A further issue concerns the intermeshing of science with the utilitarian
approach to ethical judgments. Although science is celebrated for its appar-
ent ‘‘value neutrality’’ and objectivity, scientific methodology is tied so
closely to utilitarian ethical theory that, in cases such as Yucca Mountain,
other ethical approaches are neglected.4 Utilitarian calculations of the moral
desirability of an act depend on the power to predict and assess conse-
quences that would occur (or probably would occur) if an action were
taken. In the absence of predictive power, the approach is blind. Science
provides such power. Thus when science is the only method used to gather
knowledge about a morally relevant situation, the deliberations that follow,
118 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

based on this predictive knowledge, are almost always utilitarian. The risks
of radiotoxic substances buried at Yucca Mountain for millennia and the
harms they might pose for future persons are conclusions drawn from an
evaluation of the facts of geology, hydrology, climate studies, and so forth.
The risks and the benefits are compared, and a decision is made on the basis
of the social utility; that is, the good provided by the action for all affected
persons may be assessed.

Global Warming

In this case, the increasing prominence of global warming weighs heavily

on moral deliberations about the disposition of radioactive waste. David
and Stephanie argue strongly that development of the nuclear power indus-
try is mandatory if we are to slow the progress of global warming and miti-
gate its disastrous consequences. The harms potentially brought about by
permanent geologic storage pale in comparison to those of increasing global
temperatures. If we take no action to develop climate-friendly sources of
electrical energy, the adverse consequences borne by future persons will only
increase. Therefore it is our overriding responsibility to construct as many
reactors as we can. That future generations will be the primary beneficiaries
of these actions is a major justification for taking them.
Even if moderation of the adverse effects of global warming proves to be
a substantial benefit for future generations, the transfer of risks to them still
constitutes a moral problem. The moral situation defined by an unwavering
commitment to permanent geologic disposal of radioactive wastes allows
for a limited number of options carried out in a state of great uncertainty
about the geologic future of the site and the unpredictable character of
human societies hundreds of generations in the future. Stephanie and David
believe they are taking every possible precaution to ensure the well-being of
these people. Thus they feel justified in asking Carry and Nawaraj if they
have a better plan, which they do.

An Alternative
The preferred alternative is ‘‘negotiated, monitored, retrievable storage’’
(NMRS).5 The scientific and technical advantages of NMRS are the same as
its moral advantages. Storing the waste—probably in hardened canis-
ters—in designated sites around the country where they would be main-
tained with heightened vigilance would provide future generations with the
Buried Alive 119

option of deciding for themselves the most suitable method of disposal.

Although future generations would still inherit the risks of the waste, they
also would inherit the power to do what they choose with it. NMRS there-
fore would satisfy our duty to maximize the autonomy of future persons in
dealing with our legacy to them. Granting them active control rather than
passive acceptance of our irrevocable decision for disposal of nuclear wastes
satisfies the demand of procedural justice that everyone should be treated
fairly and given their say in debating actions that may affect them adversely.
In their final conversation, Carry and Nawaraj make explicit the religious
bases for their ethical positions. Carry is an African American Protestant
and Nawaraj a Hindu. Carry’s principle of ethical interpretation is based
on the demands of justice for the poor and powerless, victims of powerful
oppressors. Nawaraj’s principle is found in the role of karma in determining
the appropriate future consequences for one’s actions. Because harms that
come to individuals in a future incarnation are overwhelmingly the just
results of actions taken in this life, there are no innocent victims. Despite
these widely divergent religious foundations for their ethical deliberations,
Carry and Nawaraj agree that future persons are not best served by deep
geologic disposal of radioactive waste.

Questions for Discussion

1. Some philosophers have argued that because future generations do

not yet exist, we have no moral duties toward them. Do you agree
that we do not need to factor them into the long-lasting conse-
quences of our actions? How can you argue that humans who do not
yet exist count morally?
2. Many authorities conclude that alternative energy sources—
including wind, geothermal, and solar—will satisfy, at best, only a
small portion of our energy needs. Without adequate energy, future
generations will suffer. Which is worse from a utilitarian perspective:
bequeathing to them our nuclear waste or denying them the advan-
tages and comforts of abundant nuclear energy by hindering its
development?
3. A major concern in this case is the acceptable level of risk of long-
term nuclear waste deposit. Risk assessment can be made only by
trained scientists. To what extent are you willing to place your trust
in their judgment? To what experts, seen or unseen, do you entrust
120 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

your safety and well-being on a daily basis? How can experts be held
accountable by those who are most affected by their judgments?
4.This case does not address safety concerns associated with the
transport of high-level nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain storage
site. Yet it is clear that the citizens of Nevada are in a situation of
greater risk than the remainder of the country. How can this
increased risk be justified morally—or can it?

Notes
1. Nuclear Energy Institute website, www.nei.org.
2. Ibid.
3. See Robert Heilbroner, ‘‘What Has Posterity Ever Done for Me?’’ New York
Magazine, January 19, 1975, 74–76.
4. Constantine Hadjilambrinos, ‘‘Ethical Imperatives and High-Level Radioac-
tive Waste Policy Choice: An Egalitarian Response to Utilitarian Analysis,’’ Environ-
mental Ethics 22 (January 2000): 48.
5. Ibid., 60.

For Further Reading

De-Shalit, Avner. Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future Gener-
ations. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Goldberg, Jonah. ‘‘Dead and Buried.’’ National Review, April 8, 2002, 36–38.
Hadjilambrinos, Constantine. ‘‘Ethical Imperatives and High-Level Radioactive
Waste Policy Choice: An Egalitarian Response to Utilitarian Analysis.’’ Environ-
mental Ethics 22 (January 2000): 43–62.
Partridge, Ernest, ed. Responsibilities to Future Generations. New York: Prometh-
eus Books, 1981.
Routley, Richard, and Val Routley. ‘‘Nuclear Power: Some Ethical and Social
Dimensions.’’ In And Justice for All, ed. Tom Regan and Donald VanDeVeer,
98–110. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982.
Shrader-Frechette, K. S. Burying Uncertainty. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993.
———. Nuclear Power and Public Policy. Boston: Reidel, 1989.
White, G. F. ‘‘Socioeconomic Studies of High-Level Nuclear Waste Disposal.’’ Pro-
ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 91 (November 1994): 10786–89.
 seven

Water
Economic Commodity and Divine Gift

T
‘‘ he women were very outspoken this morning,’’ remarked one
nongovernmental organization (NGO) director to another over
lunch at a roadside café in Denizli, Turkey. He frowned as he said
it, and his lunch companion, on whose staff some of the outspoken women
worked, responded, ‘‘You have to understand, Cemal, that they see water
as primarily a women’s issue, on which they need to speak up for all poor
women. In their experience, men are the neighborhood leaders that negoti-
ate with the municipal government for services, and the men want electric-
ity, mostly for television. But the women think water is more essential,
because they need water not only for drinking but for cooking, washing
children, doing laundry. And when there is no water near, it is the women
who must walk far carrying water, often very expensive water. They want
to make their needs clear, because they are not sure which is the better
option, municipal water or privatized water supply, for getting accessible
water that is affordable.’’
Cemal, considerably older than his companion, stroked his beard and
responded, ‘‘Well, I’m not sure that either option will give them both access
and affordability, after what we heard this morning. But at any rate, they
would make more allies if they had men make their arguments for them.’’
‘‘Cemal, Cemal, the world is changing. Even in Muslim nations there are
women presidents and prime ministers,’’ his companion reminded him.
‘‘The women on my staff are some of the best workers I have. I expect one
of them will replace me when I finish my contract.’’ Cemal looked skeptical

121
122 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

and, glancing at his watch, stood up abruptly. ‘‘The meeting will reconvene
in a moment, and I am scheduled to preside.’’

The city council of Denizli, Turkey, was to meet in the evening to

vote on a proposed water privatization project from a French company that
had similar contracts in France and Latin American cities, as well as else-
where in Turkey. If the council so voted, the contract would hand over the
municipal water plant and all the water supplies of the city to the French
company for fifty years, along with the obligation to provide water and
sewage service to the city. The company would be granted a monopoly on
these services and the right to decide pricing.
Eleven of the local and regional NGO directors and staffs were holding
the last of a series of local meetings following the May 2008 national con-
ference Supolitik Iletisim Agi (the Waterpolitics Network) that organized
Turkish trade unions and many civil society groups to oppose the new
national policy of broadscale water privatization. It had been hoped that
these local meetings would lead to a unified approach to the proposal,
which was to have its final public hearing and vote later that day, but thus
far there was no agreement. The NGOs represented such a varied set of
interests and perspectives that many did not trust each other, much less the
city council that would make the decision. One of the NGOs represented
the interests of local tourist businesses, two represented Muslim charities,
and the rest were either popular groups active in combating poverty and
empowering the poor or groups focused on particular development issues.
The two most prominent of this latter group were Ucan Supurge (Flying
Broom), a women’s empowerment group, and Environmental Justice, a
regional group working on resource planning and equity, most recently on
freshwater resource planning. The director of Environmental Justice, Cemal
Yilmaz, brought the group back to order following the lunch break.
‘‘To summarize the morning discussion: There was a debate over the
value of tourism to the city, since each tourist is responsible for three to four
times the water usage of a local resident, and yet over one-third of city
employment is dependent on the tourist industry. On the one hand, primary
benefit of privatizing water distribution was presented as access to more
capital than the city could muster to extend water and sewer lines and to
expand capacity for water treatment so as to serve the 40 percent of the
population not yet connected to these services. Local research shows that
these people on the outskirts of the city who have no water or sewer lines
buy water by the liter and pay ten to one hundred times what that same
Water 123

water costs to those who are connected. On the other hand, international
research has been presented that shows a pattern of problems in the initial
contract for privatization, in extensions or renegotiation of contracts, and
in exit procedures, the effect of which is to allow private water companies
to avoid any significant capitalization or risk, to be guaranteed profits at the
15 percent-plus level, and to fail to deliver on extensions of service. Can
we take up the discussion from this point and try to move toward some
agreement?’’
A flurry of hands went up. Afet Oguz, head of the local branch of
AKDER, an Islamic women’s organization, was a controversial figure, even
among the women’s organizations. ‘‘We must make clear to the council that
they must reject any plan to privatize the water system. Water is the gift of
Allah, not a commodity. The Arabic word for water, ‘ma,’ occurs sixty-
three times in the Qur’an. God’s throne is said to rest on water, and Paradise
is said to be ‘Gardens beneath which rivers flow.’ Mohammad (pbuh)
quoted many times the Qur’anic verse ‘We are made from water, every liv-
ing thing.’ Would you have all the mosques put in a meter that requires coin
in order to get water to wash before prayers? Even in the West they are
beginning to see that what belongs to all by the grace of Allah should not
be trusted to a corrupt few, lusting for profit. We must send a message!’’
There was a silence while others tried to find the right words to respond.
In secular Turkey, theological positions in politics were considered both
dangerous and unpatriotic by the ruling elites. Until the AKP (Justice and
Development Party), a moderate Islamic party, recently triumphed in
national elections and began to rule, any attempt to insert religion into pub-
lic space had been considered little short of treason, and for many it still
was. The courts, the army, and the ruling elites in general had been secular-
ist since the beginning of the nation following World War I and considered
Islam the chief threat to a modern, democratic Turkey, even though the vast
majority of Turks were Muslim.
After an uncomfortable pause, Ozu Sahin, who, like the moderator,
Cemal, was from the NGO Environmental Justice, rose to speak. ‘‘We need
to agree on what we think the council should decide, regardless of how
people got to that position. Our staff, too, is opposed to water privatization,
though for very different reasons. We do see water as a commodity, and like
all commodities, it is available in limited quantities. Turkey is blessed with
more water than any of its neighbors, but what we have is increasingly
polluted both from industry and from human and animal sewage. New
pipelines to distribute water and collect sewer water, as well as for treatment
124 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

of previously polluted water, are all necessary and expensive. We need capi-
tal to build increased water capacity, but we need to ensure that procuring
that capital enhances access to water and does not further limit it by raising
prices to excessive limits. We propose—and I think that those with religious
perspectives will agree—that the first priority must go to provision of drink-
ing water to all people. The cost of drinking water must be the same for all,
and it must be low. Following that should be water for animals, water for
washing, water for agriculture, and water for industry. Each use should
reflect conservation concerns.’’
‘‘That’s just fine in principle,’’ retorted Kadir Florina, from a Red Cres-
cent agency that worked with the poor, ‘‘but in many neighborhoods on the
edges of the city, there is only a neighborhood well, which may or may not
have water, and which sometimes tests extremely polluted—’’
‘‘And we know why!’’ Ddris Kaya, from Mor Cati Kadin Siginagi Vakfi
(Purple Roof Women’s Shelter and Foundation), shouted at him. ‘‘In our
neighborhood some of the men are angry at our shelter for abused women
and put dead animals in the well outside our building. They don’t care if
the whole neighborhood gets sick and dies!’’
‘‘Calm, calm,’’ soothed Ruya Nogary, also from the women’s shelter.
‘‘Let Kadir finish—he had nothing to do with those bullies.’’
Nodding to Ruya, whom he knew from some joint projects in the past,
Kadir continued. ‘‘The problems come down to pricing. It is all very well to
say that drinking water should be cheap for all, but one household has three
people only drinking, cooking, and washing themselves, and the house next
door has three people drinking, cooking, and washing but also irrigating a
vegetable garden in the backyard, watering four camels, and selling water
to families in neighborhoods with no well. Now, when water is scarce, the
first house complains that the second is taking more than their share of the
water in the well. If they had city water, there is even less way to keep the
second house from using water meant for drinking, cooking, and washing
for irrigation, raising animals, or selling. It will all have the same price per
square meter.’’
Ozu added, ‘‘Yes, it is at the practical level that the problems come. If
water is free to all, then there is no incentive for conservation. But if water
is too expensive, then people die of thirst. Finding the right price level is
hard enough, but variable prices for different uses would require a very
costly accounting system based on a survey of every building that uses water
to see how many people are there and what nonhousehold functions are
being utilized. And don’t forget that we need sewers as much as we need
Water 125

potable water distribution. Sewers will do even more to improve health than
expanded water access.’’
Muhammad Demir, manager of a luxury hotel in the city and a represen-
tative of the tourist industry, got to his feet. ‘‘I recognize all the problems
that have been brought up. But I think that they can be overcome if the
contract that the city draws up with the company that makes the best offer
includes all these things. The contract should have a plan for expanding
water and sewer service to the newer neighborhoods, a plan with timetables
and schedules. It should list the coliform safety levels required and should
limit the price, at least to the poorest neighborhoods. But we all know that
if the city does not hire a private company to do these things, they will not
get done. How long has the municipal water office done nothing to expand
access, and even allowed water quality to deteriorate? The tourist industry,
which employs directly or indirectly over one third of the population, is
endangered. Last month one tour company that has been bringing busloads
of German and Dutch tourists to Denizli six or eight times a year for many
years took us off their list of cities to visit because of guest complaints at
my hotel. When the guests came in from their day of touring, the water
supply to the hotel had been cut, and our backup system was only large
enough to supply half of them with showers. Businesses like ours are willing
to pay slightly higher rates in order to get a safe, reliable water supply.’’
Ozu replied, ‘‘Yes, we all know that politicians over the years put their
most incompetent deadbeat relatives on the payroll at the water plant, so
the water system has gotten worse and worse. But what is to prevent those
same politicians from either selling the city water contract to the company
that pays the highest bribes or agrees to hire the same incompetent relatives
and friends? These are the very problems that have occurred in other cities
around the world that have privatized.’’
Derek Cemil, who headed one of the popular clinics run by the Red Cres-
cent, reminded the group of the corruption already uncovered in other areas
of Turkey in connection with water privatization: ‘‘In Edirne in May 2008,
nineteen people, including the mayor and representatives of the water com-
pany that had won the contract to manage the city’s water were indicted
and arrested for arranging to inflate the usage records to raise profits. In
[the coastal city of] Antalya, the French water giant Suez pulled out six years
into a ten-year contract after being denied another price hike following 130
percent in earlier hikes and a failure to invest the promised capital in mod-
ernizing the plant.’’
126 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

Tefrat Celik, owner of a gas station in the center city, jumped to his feet.
‘‘Yes, corrupt politicians are one part of the problem. But so are the poor
who expect something for nothing. Yes, water in the river is a gift from
Allah, and free. But the company that builds a plant to filter and clean it
and lay pipes that take it to faraway neighborhoods deserves a fair return
for that investment and labor. There is no obligation to provide piped water
to each house of the poor, just because they are poor. I should not have to
give away gas to every poor person who wants it. Business is business and
shouldn’t have to operate like a charity!’’
Ruya Nogary spoke up, ‘‘But all neighborhoods need to be connected to
the sewer system, and the sewage treatment plant needs to be replaced with
a bigger, more efficient plant that can handle an expanded system. In some
parts of the city and surrounding areas now, the groundwater table is near
the surface, and is being polluted by sewage percolating down. Polluted well
water is a terrible cause of disease and takes a toll on children especially.
Our clinic is periodically overrun with mothers bringing children with
severe dehydration from diarrhea; a significant proportion of them die from
the dirty water. I don’t see a way to build an effective sewer system, with a
sufficiently large treatment plant, without private capital. The city has been
doing well to buy the new garbage trucks to expand garbage pickup to the
edges of the city, but there is no more money.’’
‘‘What does it really matter what we think?’’ Kadir Florina inquired. ‘‘In
the end the national government is going to tell the city council—probably
already has told them—that they should privatize. The AKP seems commit-
ted to privatization—bringing in all these Western companies to replace
municipal services—as one way of convincing the European Union that the
Turkish government’s being Islamic does not mean that it is hostile to the
West and that Turkey should be allowed into the EU.’’
‘‘Like that is going to happen now that they [the AKP] have passed the
headscarf law!’’ scoffed Ddris. She referred to the recent law removing the
former ban on Muslim women wearing headscarves in schools or govern-
ment offices. ‘‘What is the matter with the West? They boast about so many
freedoms, especially religious freedoms, and then support laws forbidding
Muslim women to cover their heads. We do not want to require anybody
to dress in a particular way but only to have the right to choose for ourselves
as individuals. But you can’t convince them of this—I have tried and tried
at meetings of women’s organizations. Some of the other religious women’s
groups get it, but the secular ones can’t even hear the argument. To wear a
Water 127

headscarf to them means enslavement of women, the absence of freedom.

They are crazy.’’
Cemal called them back to order: ‘‘What are we going to say at the hear-
ing tonight? We’re almost out of time.’’ There was silence.
Afet, who had been quiet since her earlier impassioned speech, declared,
‘‘I don’t care that the national government thinks privatization will fix the
water problems in Turkey. We have seen the record of this company and
others like it; they do not fulfill their bright promises. You may not care that
the Qur’an says that water is the right of all, the property of all. But the
poor care. More than the poor care—most of Turkey cares. If you want to
pitch the opposition in terms of its being undemocratic to take what belongs
to all the people and convey it to others who do not have to listen to the
people, instead of saying it violates the law of Allah, fine with me. But the
evidence is clear—these companies need profit for their shareholders, and
they do not earn profits by investing millions in long-term projects such as
water and sewage treatment plants unless they raise rates very high and
quickly. If they do not make a profit, they decamp. So they must be opposed.
And we can rouse the people to mass protest if they only know what is at
stake.’’
‘‘Strange to hear this from you, Afet! Isn’t this your party pushing the
privatization agenda?’’ asked Cemal, not without a small sneer.
‘‘Most of Turkey is Muslim, yet most of Turkey does not belong to the
AKP. I supported ending the headscarf ban, but the rest of the AKP agenda
is not particularly Muslim and is often problematic from an Islamic point
of view,’’ responded Afet.
‘‘Perhaps the safest path,’’ offered Kadir, ‘‘if we think the decision is
already made, is to formulate the safeguards we would want in a contract
with a private company if we think the national government is going to
push the council to go that way anyway. We have all read the research on
problems in other water privatization contracts. What do we need to look
out for?’’
Afet objected, ‘‘This contract will be for forty-nine years! Even if we
could get all the conditions we wanted in the contract, which would never
happen, ten years from now we would need a whole new set of contractual
provisions and would have no way to get them included in the contract.’’
Heads began to turn, looking for some sign of which way to go. What
position should they take?
128 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

Commentary

There is a great deal of agreement that, if energy was the most controversial
and valuable resource in the twentieth century, then water, especially clean
water, will be the most valuable and controversial resource of the twenty-
first century. There are growing shortages of potable water all over the
world. Much of the pressure on the world’s water supply comes from popu-
lation increase. Each additional person added to the Earth’s population
means that more land will be cultivated, some with irrigation, to feed this
new person, more factories will use water in producing shelter, clothing,
and other personal property for this person, in addition to the water he or
she uses for drinking, cooking, bathing, and laundry.
But population increase is not the only pressure. Pollution of water is
also a problem, not unrelated to population levels, but not reducible to it,
either. When human population was much less dense two to three centuries
ago, it was not as important what people did with their garbage or indus-
trial by-products. Pollution was limited to relatively small areas of the
Earth. For example, the Thames in London was part sewer for many hun-
dreds of years, but until relatively recently that pollution was more or less
limited to the London area, which quickly emptied into the Atlantic where
the pollution was absorbed, there being only a handful of large polluting
cities like London in the whole world. But today estuaries all over the world
are as polluted as the Thames was at its worst.
Nomadic peoples around the world moved on once they had exhausted
local resources, and their polluted areas would heal over time before new
human settlements arrived. When ancient cites became unlivable, new ones
were founded—there was always more space, more land, more resources.
But now humans have ‘‘multiplied and filled the earth,’’ as Genesis (1:22)
instructed. Humans can no longer evade the devastation they have created
by moving on to virgin areas.
At the same time, easy access to water in many parts of the world has,
over many centuries, nourished a culture of waste. This culture of water
waste has actually been augmented by historic policies of keeping water
prices very low in municipal systems and subsidizing irrigation in agricul-
tural areas. Consequently, many contemporary people think nothing of
letting the water run in the sink while they wash dishes, shave, or brush
teeth. Automatic lawn sprinklers extend their spray over sidewalks, streets,
and buildings, and field irrigation systems spray over multiacre fields,
during rainstorms and dry spells alike. Most irrigation systems still use
Water 129

wasteful aboveground sprinklers, instead of more efficient underground

drip systems.

Water in Turkey

The issue of water is not a new one in Turkey, which is home to a number
of major rivers and lakes. Most important are the Euphrates and Tigris
rivers, the waters of which Turkey has been negotiating over with Iraq and
Syria for many decades. While Iraq and Syria talk of the need to share these
rivers, Turkey prefers to speak of the need to allocate, as Turkey has been
put in the driver’s seat by virtue of geography. The Turkish portion of the
river is the more elevated and thus more appropriate for damming. Accord-
ingly, Turkey early on negotiated an allocation for Syria that it has always
honored and has similarly had a number of agreements with Iraq, though
the Syrians and Iraqis chafe at being dependent upon Turkish decisions.
Despite the fact that Turkey has more than sufficient water for its present
needs, only 8 percent of its municipalities have water treatment plants, and
25 percent of industrial waste water is untreated. In Turkey as around the
globe, per capita water usage doubles every twenty years.
In 2008 Turkish NGOs attempted to arouse popular concern after Tur-
key agreed to host the fifth World Water Forum in March 2009. The World
Water Forum, held every three years, is controlled by the World Water
Council, a private think tank with close links to the World Bank and private
water multinational companies. Anticipating this Water Forum meeting,
many Turkish NGOs organized under the name Supolitik Iletisim Agi
(Waterpolitics Network) to call a conference for NGOs in Istanbul, ‘‘Water:
Under the Yoke of Capitalism,’’ in April 2008, which was the foundation
of the series of local meetings in the case.
Though water privatization contracts hit a global peak in 1997, with bad
press focusing on claims against companies and cancelled contracts reduc-
ing the number of new contracts after that, water privatization continues.
The World Bank, which had encouraged, and in some cases mandated, pri-
vatization as part of development projects it funded in the 1990s, admitted
in 2004 that its promotion of privatization (of both water and energy) in
developing nations had been excessive due to ‘‘irrational exuberance.’’1 The
current national government in Turkey is pursuing what is probably the
most sweeping water privatization program in the world.
130 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

One of the more interesting facets of the water situation in Turkey is that
the government proposes, as has been done in other nations, to lease the
entire water system—not only the water and sewer plants, but also the
water resources themselves, including rivers and streams, even well
water—to the private companies. Many feel that this is a morally problem-
atic approach, with severe political implications. To whom does the water
in an area—the rivers, lakes, and streams—belong? Various legal systems
treat it differently—most often it belongs to the state, with private land titles
running only up to the shorelines, and sometimes only to 20–40 meters
underground. Various organs of the state, for example, often apportion the
water to various users, whether to individual farmers for irrigation, or to
various provinces along the course of a river, or in the case of the dams
on the Euphrates, between Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. In such cases the state
represents the people as a whole, so that a religious or ethical insistence that
water belongs to the whole community is respected. Ideally, in a democratic
nation, individuals have recourse to the organs of the state if their rights to
water are not recognized. But if the state privatizes not only the delivery
system but the very water itself, then citizen access to the state no longer
supports citizen access to water, because the state has surrendered its owner-
ship and control of water. This can be an ethical issue—denial of the univer-
sal human right to access water—as well as a practical political issue, in that
it means that the private water company is not responsible to its customers.
What can consumers do? The company has a monopoly on all the water in
the area, and people cannot do without water, so they have no alternative
to using the water provided by the private company, regardless of its quality
and cost.
A related issue in water privatization is profit. Municipal water systems
are virtually always money losers, subsidized in various ways by other
organs of the municipality. But the incentive for private companies to enter
the water business is, as in any private corporate enterprise, the potential
for profit. Many feel that it is not appropriate for anyone, including for-
profit companies, to make profit off the need of all people for water. This is
a common stance of NGOs in the Middle East and North African areas,
especially in areas where private companies are becoming important players
in water provision, such as in Jordan and Lebanon; it is an increasingly
common view among Turkish NGOs today. Religious sensibilities often
underline such stances, viewing profit in this case as taking advantage of the
poor.
Water 131

The Case for Privatization

In theory, privatization appears to be a win-win situation. Municipalities

lack capital to build necessary sewers and water treatment plants but have
water. Private water companies have access to capital to build the necessary
plants and distribution centers but need rights to the water. They would
seem to be a perfect match. Privatization has appeared to many, including
the World Bank, as a way to jump-start development in many nations, by
extending infrastructure in nations that do not have the reserves for this,
while simultaneously raising the levels of health and making locales more
attractive to other types of international investment. Because in many poor,
sprawling cities much of the population in the newer outlying areas of the
city does not have access to city water or sewers, they not only live with
poor sanitation that affects general health and especially child mortality,
but they also pay exorbitant rates for bottled drinking water and for water
bought by the liter from trucks in the street. It is not at all uncommon to
see large plastic containers containing water purchased from trucks once or
twice a week, sitting outside shack after shack in shantytowns. Some of
those plastic containers formerly held pesticides, fertilizers, oil, gasoline, or
other chemicals used in nearby industries or agriculture, their new use now
representing a health hazard. Because of these dangers, privatization of
water systems has often been promoted in the name of the poor and their
right to equal access to potable water.
But as the case indicates, both in other areas of Turkey and in municipali-
ties around the world, this perfect match has had major problems that have
as often as not resulted in broken contracts, economic losses, and delays in
expanding and improving access to water. Although corruption has been
one factor, both on the part of municipal and national officials for personal
gain and on the part of international company officials in order to secure
and continue municipal contracts, corruption has not been the primary
problem.

Problems with Privatization

As mentioned earlier, the primary problem with privatization is the differ-

ence between a municipally owned water facility and a private international
water company in terms of their relationship with the water consumer.
When the water facility is owned and managed by consumer-citizens in the
132 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

form of the state or municipality, failure to meet citizen needs can provoke a
number of responses: In a democracy, consumers can vote out the municipal
authorities and demand more responsive management, and in the absence
of democracy, citizens stage public protests and organize against the poli-
cies. When the water facility is owned or leased and managed by an interna-
tional company, consumer-citizens have less leverage in demanding redress
of their grievances. The company is primarily responsible, not to citizen
consumers, but to its stockholders. If it is operating within the contract
with the municipality, it need not even worry about legal intervention in its
operation. But this difference in to whom the water managers are primarily
answerable also influences the policies that management takes. Stockholders
not only demand the highest return possible on their investment but also
want that return to begin more or less immediately. In the water business,
building new treatment plants and sewer and water lines is very expensive
and time-consuming. International companies have demonstrated a strong
tendency to raise water rates initially to help defray the cost of new plants
and extensions of service and to continue to raise rates to finance further
investment. Such rate increases often appear to consumers to defeat the pur-
pose of resorting to privatization: access to private capital.
Inevitably, a lack of contractual checks on company ability to raise rates
has resulted in some exorbitant rate hikes, such as the 126 percent hikes
that Suez’s Aguas de Barcelona charged in Colombia between 1995 and
2005 when it was forced to leave. But abusive rate hikes were not necessar-
ily the most disturbing aspect in the history of some of these privatized
water contracts. During the thirteen years that the French company Suez
controlled sewage in one Argentinean city before losing the contract in
2005, the rate of cases of childhood diarrhea increased by 75 percent. In
2001, Bechtel’s affiliate Azurix was forced out of contracts in Bahia Blanc
and Santa Fe in Argentina after local populations in both cities protested
the government’s finding that water in the system contained fecal bacteria.
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, massive street protests in 2000 ended in contract
cancellation for a Vivendi affiliate, and in 2005 the city of El Alto, Bolivia,
kicked out a Suez affiliate. Both these contract cancellations were due to a
combination of high rates, poor water quality, and undependable services.
In Latin America, an additional problem has been bottled water compa-
nies, of which Nestlé and Danone are the most prominent, who buy rights
to city water, bottle it, and proceed to export it. When Costa Rica attempted
in 2007–8 to impose a tax on exports of bottled water in order to keep its
water resources for its own people, it learned that the terms of CAFTA
Water 133

(Central America Free Trade Agreement with the United States) not only
required Costa Rica to give U.S. companies equal access to water with its
own citizens but also prohibited the taxing of water exports. As a result,
Costa Rica is unable to extend its water services to local communities and
small businesses and sees its municipal water instead exported to other
nations. What is even more perverse is that the same law bases water cost
on level of consumption: The more you use, the less you pay per liter, so
that bottlers export and tourism companies water golf courses and fill pools
with water costing US$.01 per cubic meter, while a Costa Rican rural house-
holder pays US$.19 per cubic meter to the same system.
Clearly, the Turks in Denizli need to learn from the mistakes and naı̈veté
of those nations and municipalities that have been burned in contracts with
international water companies—and multinational treaties—in the recent
past. The terms of the contract are crucial. But there are a number of issues
that cannot be reducible to good legal advice. As should be clear in the
case, there are theological principles to be considered in coming to a clear
understanding about the nature of water resources, and there are many con-
siderations of justice critical to the outcome, in addition to major ecological
concerns.

Ethical Issues in Water Privatization

For many religious persons, and not merely Muslims devoted to the Qur’an,
water is a part of the creation that God/Allah entrusted to humankind’s
stewardship. For all of the faiths that trace themselves from Father Abra-
ham—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—private property regulations must
meet this test of providing basic needs for all. In addition, as environmental
consciousness grows and anthropocentrism is challenged, religious persons
are increasingly admitting the rest of creation into the circle of care that
stewardship teachings have demanded for humans. Thus animals and plant
species are being recognized as having rights to water along with humans.
Environmental consciousness among Islamic scholars has until recently
taken a backseat to many other justice issues involved in a rapidly changing
modern world. As in Judaism and Christianity, much Muslim theology has
been anthropocentric—not only have the needs of human beings taken pri-
ority over the needs of all others in creation, but humans, by default, have
been taken for granted as the decision makers over the disposal of nature.
In the Muslim nations of Arabia (and its near Muslim neighbors, such as
134 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

Turkey or Iran), as in neighboring Israel, the environmental issue with the

most claim on popular consciousness is water, due to the presence of exten-
sive arid and semiarid regions, even deserts, as well as pollution issues from
urban centers, industry, and petroleum extraction. On the issue of water,
secular scientific concerns with both environmental and human needs and
theological concerns with social justice and ecojustice all come together.
Muslims are a people of the book—that is, they look to the Qur’an as
revealing the decrees of Allah and to the sayings and deeds of the Prophet
Mohammed recorded in hadith as implementing or illustrating this divine
will. Thus Islamic revelation comes to Muslims in the form of documents
from the seventh century, addressed to a seventh-century human commu-
nity. The interpretative tradition has been primarily, almost exclusively,
legal. Especially for Sunni Muslims, who are the majority in Turkey, revela-
tion ended with Mohammed, the final prophet, who had the recitation of
the divine Qur’an recorded. The human task since has been to apply that
divine command to the situations at hand. For Shi’a Muslims, conversely,
revelation has continued through the top officials of the clergy, and thus
their tradition is somewhat more amenable to change in new applications
of the inherited tradition. Environmental theology is in its infancy within
Islam as a whole, and there is much suspicion of it, but the environmental
crisis is making itself felt in Islam as in other religions, and issues such as
water involve also issues of justice that have long been a theological staple
in Islam. The current situation is, then, that conservation of water and
redressing water pollution are important issues of sustainability in Islam
primarily for their implications for the welfare of the human community
now and in the future, but we can expect that a growing understanding of
humans as only one part of Allah’s creation will continue to take hold
among Muslims.
To have a right to water does not mean that clean, safe water should be
made available to all human beings in our homes for free. Humans also
have a right to be free from assault and to be secure in their property. But
as a society humans must ensure those rights by taxing citizens to pay for
police and court systems. Similarly, all have a right to prayer, but if they
desire to pray in a house of prayer they must contribute to the building and
upkeep of those prayer houses.
In the same way, we have a right to water, but we must pay to treat it
and have it delivered to us. Because all have a right to water, the cost should
not be prohibitive. It should be set low enough that the poor, by exercising
frugality, can afford what water they need. This is an important point,
Water 135

because in many areas of the world rural peoples have traditionally

obtained their water from local rivers, lakes, and wells, at no cost. But as
these sources become more polluted, those people are shifted into the water
and sanitation systems that have characterized urban areas. Many then pro-
test that what used to be free must now be paid for. Environmentalists point
out that justice seems to demand that polluters should be the ones who pay
to clean up the messes they have made. Often, however, water sources have
been fouled by many different kinds of polluters, from local residential sew-
age, industrial waste, mining runoff, and animal waste from farms, and it is
difficult to apportion responsibility.
Similarly, many urban areas, in both developed and developing nations,
have subsidized their water and sewer systems, keeping the costs to consum-
ers very low. This practice has supported the attitude that water is and
should be almost free. Consequently, when consumers are asked to pay rates
that are closer to the true costs of these systems, there is often consumer
revolt. At the same time, in many developing and some developed nations,
because cost to customers has been kept low and municipal resources are
stretched, urban water systems are severely undercapitalized and thus
unable to extend the water and sewer system to new urban areas of the
poor, where people are forced to pay many times as much for bottled water
as citizens of the older areas of the city pay for city water. Even in the United
States water rates have been kept so low that virtually no municipal systems
have the necessary reserves to upgrade the water treatment systems or
replace aging pipes whose leakage in many older cities wastes 30 to 50
percent of the water treated.
For the poor around the world, government subsidization of some basic
living costs is a good and valuable social practice. In many parts of the
developed world, for example, housing has become so expensive that with-
out government subsidies for affordable housing, rates of homelessness
would soar. In many developing nations, some basic foodstuffs are subsi-
dized, lest the poor go hungry, though there is increasing critique of this
practice as negatively affecting farmers. But for environmental reasons,
across-the-board subsidizing of the cost of water is a terrible practice. It
discourages conservation of what has become an increasingly scarce
resource for which there is no alternative. Subsidizing water production to
keep prices low encourages waste, which makes potable water scarcer,
which increases production costs and therefore the cost of subsidies, while
ongoing waste fuels new cycles of subsidy increases. In fact, this is in some
places the very scenario that brought municipal and state governments to
136 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

seek privatization—the cost of subsidies was no longer affordable and long

ago wiped out any resources that could have been used to upgrade or
expand water services.
There are ways to avoid both subsidizing the general cost of water and
cutting off the poor from access to water. In many poor shantytowns cir-
cling major cities in developing nations, there is a more or less regular pat-
tern to the extension of utilities to new areas (many of which began as illegal
squatter towns). For some years the inhabitants buy water from trucks, and
even small businesses have only the electricity from small generators. Then
negotiations with the city extend power lines to the edge of the settlement
so that those who can most afford it pay for lines to their homes, and the
city extends a single water line to one or two public faucets in the settle-
ment, to which women and children line up to fill buckets. Increasingly
these faucets have spring shut-offs, so that they cannot be left running, but
automatically shut off when there is no longer pressure to open the valve.
Sometimes the leaders of the settlement must assess shares to pay the costs
of this water, and sometimes the municipality covers the cost out of public
health concerns. Accelerating the extension of clean municipal water to
public faucets in these poor settlements would do much to improve health
and general living conditions. As the settlement ages, conditions generally
improve, with the gradual introduction of private water lines, sewers, paved
roads, and houses with windows and permanent walls and roofs. These
improvements arrive both because the settlement is more prosperous and
because it has advanced further up the list of municipal priorities simply by
virtue of its age. Accelerating the pace of providing access to city water—
which in some communities around the globe now takes up to twenty
years—would improve not only health but also general prosperity among
the poor. Low-cost city water would free up funds the poor must now spend
on grossly overpriced water from trucks or in bottles, so that families would
have more money for food or educational fees.
On a related issue, pricing that links lower per-unit price to larger usage,
as in Costa Rica, victimizes the poor while benefitting corporations and
the rich and also violates the equal rights that all persons have to water.
Furthermore, when the price differential is so great that the poor pay fifteen
to twenty times what corporations pay for the same amount of water, cor-
porations have little incentive to conserve, and because their usage is much
larger, the waste is much greater.
Water 137

Environmental Concerns

A number of environmental concerns have arisen within the history of mod-

ern water systems, not all of which are attributable only to private water
companies. For example, leakage of treated water on its way to the con-
sumer is a serious problem. In Wales and the southeast part of Great Britain,
the average system leakage is 23 percent. This is a huge waste of water in a
system where, especially in summer, demand exceeds the total resources of
the system. A parliamentary committee studying this situation remarked,
‘‘Companies have little financial incentive . . . to reach their own economic
levels of leakage. The benefits that companies see from reducing their leak-
age are often very small, largely savings in power and chemicals only. They
do not receive any immediate benefits from deferring the construction of a
new reservoir, etc. and thus in effect there is a market failure.’’2 The water
to be sold from a new reservoir will earn much more profit than the water
saved from reducing leakage, because the labor costs in replacing outdated
pipes are much larger than those involved in new construction. In the same
way, updating water treatment plants themselves to make water cleaner
does not improve the bottom line nearly so much as spending capital to
expand the system to new industrial customers, or bottling it to export,
regardless of the cost to consumers in human and animal disease.
Another environmental issue is the alienation of water from its local envi-
ronment. The city of Los Angeles early in the twentieth century contracted
to buy the water rights to large sections of the lower Colorado River
because its local water supply was not sufficient to support the city’s growth
in the 1930s and 1940s. Mexico City today draws its water from lakes and
rivers several hundreds of miles away, to the detriment of the areas drained.
Many question whether there should be some limits to the growth of cities
that have outgrown local resources such as water and must cannibalize
other regions in order to survive. But how can urban growth be limited
without unjustly privileging some over others? As of yet, no viable, equita-
ble method of limiting urban growth has been discovered.

The Basic Questions

What position should the NGOs take to the city council, and what argu-
ments should they use to support that position? The strong support of the
138 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

national government for privatization makes full opposition to privatization

almost certainly useless. The more important questions have to do with
what kind of privatization contract will be signed. There are a number of
important issues in these contracts, among them the length of the contract,
water quality controls, control of corruption, unsolicited bids, and strategic
misrepresentation.
When the contract is for an extended time (in Nice, France, the Generale
des Eaux has managed the water and sewer system since 1864, and in Barce-
lona, Spain, Aguas de Barcelona [now Suez] has had the water concession
since 1868), there is virtually no possibility of competitive bidding at the
end of the contract, because the company losing the concession can—and
does, successfully—claim retrospective compensation for its investments.
For example, in 1902 AVSA was awarded a ninety-nine-year contract, to be
renegotiated in fifty years, for managing the water system in Valencia,
Spain. At the end of the initial fifty years of the contract, AVSA demanded
EUR 54 million in compensation for investment if it lost the contract—so,
not surprisingly, it was awarded a contract for the further fifty years. When
the reason for privatizing the water system is lack of capital, negotiation
becomes meaningless after a company has managed a system for many
years: The company has all the trumps.
It is difficult to mandate water quality controls in the contract. Schedules
of fines for failing to maintain certain levels of water quality are ineffective
when the company can simply raise water rates to cover the cost of the fine.
This is the perpetual problem with monopolies: Any costs can be simply
passed on. There needs to be some method of ensuring that the cost of fines
is not passed on but is subtracted from profit in some way. Some of the
larger companies are now insisting on guaranteed profit levels of 15 percent,
including demands for ‘‘currency-risk exempt financing.’’ Suez, for exam-
ple, saw its profits in Argentina fall with the value of the Argentine currency
in the early 2000s and began insisting that nations or international donors
take on such risks for them. Suez is not alone. Hall and Lobina’s study of
privatization projects wrote that companies like Suez are now insisting that
projects will be expected to finance all their investments out of their own
cash flow, so profits will not be deployed across the group, and investments
will not be made unless backed by profits from the project itself.3 Thus, at
least with regard to some of the larger companies, the original lure of pri-
vate capital for capital-strapped cities seems to have disappeared.
Corruption is a common expense in governmental projects. Nor is all
corruption necessarily illegal; laws concerning contributions to election
Water 139

campaigns differ widely around the world, and even in the United States the
Enron scandal illustrated the capacity for ‘‘state capture’’ by perfectly legal
but corrupt means. State capture refers to the ability of a company, in
Enron’s case an energy company, to have a major role in setting the basic
rules of the energy game through laws and regulations. A survey of private
companies by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development operating in postcommunist states found that interna-
tional companies were just as likely to attempt state capture as local compa-
nies and were more likely than local companies to offer bribes to effect
capture. One energy case is particularly enlightening for developing nations
considering privatization. During the 1990s, in Indonesia, the Suharto
regime negotiated twenty-seven deals with multinational companies to build
electric generating plants. Relatives and friends of Suharto were given stakes
in the profits with no contribution to the project, and the state electric com-
pany agreed to buy all the electric output of these new plants at 30 percent
higher than the international market price. The Suharto regime fell in 1998,
and the state electric company proposed cancelling these twenty-seven con-
tracts on the grounds that they had been founded in corruption and that it
could not afford to pay the exorbitant prices specified in the contract forced
by Suharto. The companies that owned the plants insisted on claiming com-
pensation for the forfeited profit streams. The U.S. government paid out
$260 million to one U.S. company to cover losses on its risk insurance, and
Enron got $15 million from the World Bank on another cancelled project.
Then both the World Bank and the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Cor-
poration demanded that the Indonesian government pay their insurance
funds back the money that had been paid to the two companies and threat-
ened to hold up any further U.S. or World Bank investment in Indonesia
until Indonesia agreed.4 Ending corruption can be as expensive as corrup-
tion itself.
Perhaps the most basic concern for municipalities and nations consid-
ering water privatization is the initial negotiation—both the need for
competitive bids and the need to examine bids for misrepresentation.
Some of the most controversial projects in the world originated as com-
pany initiatives, proceeded without competition, and ended in higher
prices. Also critical in the negotiation process is discerning loss leaders, or
unrealistic bids, designed to secure the contract, in the expectation of later
raising the pricing estimates after the contract is secured. One global study
of infrastructure projects found that in nine cases out of ten, the actual
140 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

cost of the projects is higher than the original estimate. Nor has underesti-
mation in original estimates changed over a long period of time, as one
would expect, as technical error is corrected; rather ‘‘it is best explained
as strategic misrepresentation.’’5
In the final analysis, then, the NGOs must decide first whether there is a
way to make private companies with municipal contracts answerable to the
public for the quality of service, and if so, how to advise contract negotia-
tions that could ensure such results. But no one has yet suggested adequate
incentives for preventing the waste of treated water in a world with a lack
of clean water.

Discussion Questions

1. What are the causes of the turn to privatization of social services in

the contemporary world? Have there been any discernible trends
within privatization experience? Are there any viable alternatives to
privatization?
2. How compatible are privatization of social services and democratiza-
tion, another contemporary trend around the globe? Where are the
points of tension, if any?
3. Do humans have any ‘‘natural right’’ to water? How would such a
right be based? Do other parts of nature have such a right? How do
those rights compare?
4. What are the problems associated with recognizing a right to water?
With not recognizing a right to water?

Notes
1. World Bank, ‘‘Credible Regulation Vital for Infrastructure Reform to
Reduce Poverty,’’ June 14, 2004, www.cefe.net/forum/Credibleregulation.pdf.
2. British House of Commons, ‘‘Water Prices and the Environment,’’ 7th
report, sess. 1999–2000, HC 597, Select Committee on the Environmental Audit,
House of Commons, November 14 (HOCSCE7), para. 225, www.parliament.the-
stationary-office.co.uk/pa/cm1999900/cmselect/cmenvaud/597/59702.htm.
3. David Hall and Emmanuele Lobina, ‘‘Private and Public Interest in Water
and Energy,’’ Natural Resources Forum 28 (2004): 268–77.
4. ‘‘Washington’s Tilt to Business Stirs a Backlash in Indonesia,’’ Wall Street
Journal, February 12, 2004, 1.
Water 141

5. Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette K. S. Holm, and Soren L. Buhl, ‘‘Underestimating

Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?’’ Journal of the American Planning
Association 68, no. 3 (2002): 279–95.

For Further Reading

Abu-Eid, Abdallah. ‘‘Water as a Human Right: The Palestinian Occupied Territories
as an Example.’’ In Water as a Human Right for the Middle East and North
Africa, ed. Asit K. Biswas, Eglal Rached, and Cecilia Tortajada. Canada: Interna-
tional Resource Development Center/UNU Press, 2008. www.idrc.ca/en/
ev-127192–201–1-DO_TOPIC.html.
Arguedas, Maria Lourdes Arce. ‘‘For a Blue Democracy: Nearly 130 Civil Organiza-
tions Organize to Make Water a Human Right.’’ Latinamerica Press, October
31, 2007, 15.
Biswas, Asit K. ‘‘Water as a Human Right in the MENA Region: Challenges and
Opportunities.’’ In Biswas, Rached, and Tortajada, Water as a Human Right.
Faruqui, Naser I. ‘‘Islam and Water Management: Overview and Principles.’’ In
Biswas, Rached, and Tortajada, Water as a Human Right.
Gruen, G. E. ‘‘Turkish Waters: Source of Regional Conflict or Catalyst for Peace?’’
Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 123, no. 1 (2000): 565–79.
Hall, David, and Emmanuele Lobina. ‘‘Private and Public Interest in Water and
Energy.’’ Natural Resources Forum 28 (2004): 268–77.
Hoedeman, Oliver, and Orsan Senalp. ‘‘Turkey’s Government Plans Sweeping Water
Privatization in Run-up to World Water Forum in Istanbul.’’ Transnational Insti-
tute. www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?&act_id⳱18319&menu⳱05k.
Lobina, Emmanuele, and David Hall. ‘‘Water Privatization and Restructuring in
Latin American, 2007: A Report Commissioned by Public Services Interna-
tional.’’ www.psiru.org.
Public Citizen. ‘‘Water Privatization Backgrounder.’’ www.tradewatch.org/cmep/
Water/activist/articles.cfm?ID⳱9589.
Salazar, Milagros. ‘‘Water More Valuable Than Gold: Peru.’’ Latinamerica Press,
October 31, 2007, 7–10.
Schultz, Jim. ‘‘Another Water Revolt Begins in Bolivia.’’ Pacific News Service. http://
pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id⳱f3 311202b4be2c2 aea1955b.
———. ‘‘The Politics of Water in Bolivia.’’ Nation, January 28, 2005.
‘‘Water Resources Stand at the Heart.’’ Hurriyet Daily News (Turkey), December 3,
2008. www.hurriyet.com.tr/Eenglish/domestic/10458099.asp?scr⳱1.
 eight

Guardian Angels
of Angel Oak
To Till or Keep

A s Zack Compton walked up the steps and into the foyer of the
large white stucco Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church,
the second oldest in the denomination and the mother church of
the South, he recalled its beginnings as a church founded by slaves. He also
reflected on the irony of its location on Calhoun Street here in Charleston.
John C. Calhoun, after all, was the fiery senator who bore much of the
responsibility for South Carolina’s secession from the Union and its militant
defense of slavery. Calhoun was buried in Charleston almost in the shadow
of his heroically proportioned statue sitting on an eighty-foot pedestal in a
park only a block away. As he looked in that direction, Zack noted that the
church’s towering spire was even taller.
Zack found his way to the office of Bishop Adcox, who presided over all
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches in the Charleston Lowcoun-
try, and introduced himself to the secretary. ‘‘Good morning. I’m Isaac
Compton, attorney. I have an appointment at the bishop’s request to discuss
the Johns Island road project as it impacts Grace AME Church.’’
‘‘Certainly,’’ she said smiling, leading him into an office. ‘‘Bishop Adcox
is waiting for you with considerable interest and anticipation.’’
‘‘Mr. Compton,’’ the bishop said, rising from his desk and extending his
hand in welcome, ‘‘I’m so glad to meet you. We obviously have a great deal
to discuss. Perhaps we should start with the front-page story in today’s edi-
tion of the Post Courier. Have you seen it?’’

142
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 143

‘‘I’ve barely had time to glance at the front page, but I saw the headlines,
something like ‘Second Angel Oak Discovered in Church Grove,’ ’’ replied
Zack.
‘‘Exactly,’’ responded the bishop reaching for his copy of the paper, ‘‘and
that discovery will likely complicate our case. I may need your legal exper-
tise more than ever now. Let me sum it up for you,’’ he continued. ‘‘You’re
probably familiar with the Angel Oak on rural Johns Island. It’s a giant live
oak tree estimated to be more than five hundred years old, making it the
oldest tree east of the Mississippi. It has survived hurricanes, the axes of the
Angel Plantation workers, and, recently, the aspirations of developers. The
tree is a Charleston icon; it has never been touched, never will be. Now,
according to this news story, another oak of similar age and size has been
discovered by the county arborist deep in an old grove in which sits our
Grace AME Church on the island.’’
‘‘Actually, I don’t think that tree will make much difference,’’ said Zack,
reaching into his briefcase for his case file. ‘‘True, the Johns Island commis-
sion has an ordinance protecting so-called grand oaks from the chain saw,
even those that edge the asphalt along the narrow two-lane roads on the
island. On River Road, for example, there’s a small cross and flowers next
to many oaks, marking a head-on collision when some speeding, inattentive
driver swerved just enough to fatally impact an immovable trunk. Those
trees are protected even though the road is the fifth most dangerous in the
state. That won’t change. The church grove is different. The county arborist
has conveniently identified more than half of the trees there as diseased and
thus excepted from the ordinance. Because the city, county, and state have
an interest in seeing the construction of a cross-island expressway that
would connect the well-positioned and affluent citizens living on the outer
barrier islands of Kiawah and Seabrook conveniently to the causeway to
Charleston, local ordinances are overridden.’’
‘‘Look, Mr. Compton,’’ said the bishop, ‘‘my primary responsibility is
the church, my flock, and not with the trees, regardless of their age. The
grove is the property of Grace. And the church itself lies in the middle of
the planned expressway. If construction begins, the historic building will be
moved from its present location to God knows where—I use that phrase as
a petition to the divine—and the state will compensate the congregation for
that move and for the loss of the land. I want you to represent our interest
in that settlement.’’
‘‘Then you have no intention to fight the expressway and preserve the
grove?’’ asked Zack, somewhat puzzled.
144 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

‘‘Well, actually, I’m of two minds about this,’’ said the bishop. ‘‘On the
one hand, I want justice served for the congregation. On the other, preserva-
tion of the ancient grove is important too. My role, I believe, is to take my
counsel from the congregation. They should decide. On Sunday, I will visit
the church to preach and to meet with them to reach a prayerful decision
on our legal strategy.’’
‘‘But justice here means monetary compensation, not prophetic justice,
right?’’ said Zack.
‘‘No, not at all,’’ quickly responded the bishop. ‘‘All our decisions are
taken in the light of scripture, interpreted through the guidance of the Holy
Spirit. And, for a church founded in opposition to slavery, social justice is
our absolute concern.’’
‘‘I’m sorry, Bishop, but I’m suspicious of injecting religion into decisions
about litigation. Scripture has no role to play here,’’ Zack averred.
‘‘I certainly beg to disagree,’’ answered the bishop with predictable
enthusiasm. ‘‘Our faith revealed in scripture leaves out no worldly kingdom
or order, not even the court system, from God’s commanding lordship.’’
‘‘Perhaps I misspoke,’’ said Zack apologetically. ‘‘What I meant to say is
that scripture is notoriously ambiguous in its moral guidance. Even as your
prevailing authority, it lends itself to interpretative manipulation. My office
walls are lined with shelf after shelf of volumes containing the laws of the
land—federal, state, and local. My job security comes from applying these
laws on behalf of my clients and in opposition to others whose interpreta-
tion of the same statutes or precedents is unrecognizable to me. It’s the way
I make my living, and it’s the high calling of the nation’s Supreme Court,
with its charge to interpret the Constitution. That task is difficult enough. I
think you’d agree that the Constitution is a simple document compared with
the Bible.’’
‘‘Are you familiar with scripture?’’ asked the bishop.
‘‘Oh, yes,’’ responded Zack with equal enthusiasm. ‘‘Actually my mother
was Jewish. She named me Isaac, not Zachery. She belonged to Beth Elohim,
which, as you may know, was established in 1825 and is the oldest Reform
congregation in the nation. She met my father, who was gentile, while he
attended the Citadel military college across town. He agreed that their chil-
dren would be raised in the Jewish faith. Even though I’m somewhat lax in
my observance, I have some overall familiarity with the Torah and the
Hebrew Bible. So my reservations are not based in ignorance.’’
‘‘Then you know how ancient scripture is applied to contemporary prob-
lems—through inspired and scholarly authorities. In the case of Judaism,
these were the rabbis,’’ said the bishop.
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 145

‘‘Yes, and they were geniuses in deriving general principles from specific
laws, moral injunctions, and historical events in the Bible,’’ said Zack.
‘‘Exactly my point,’’ said the bishop with obvious satisfaction. ‘‘The way
to interpret scripture is to seek out the larger framework of moral wisdom
and revelation that is contained in countless specific passages written over
more than a thousand years.’’
‘‘Perhaps you should have entered my profession,’’ said Zack, ‘‘you
argue well. OK, give me guidance. What does scripture tell you about the
right thing to do in the case of Grace and the grove?’’
‘‘So, I’m to counsel my counselor!’’ exclaimed the bishop, smiling as he
reached for his black leather Bible. ‘‘It’s all here in the first two chapters of
the first book, the book of Genesis, especially four passages. I have them
marked. In the first God makes Adam and Eve in his own image. While
we’re not exactly sure what that means, it certainly means that man is
exceptional, more special than all other creatures that lack that gift. Then
God delegates power to man, commanding him to have dominion over all
creatures, domestic and wild. Later in the story God confers on Adam the
responsibility to ‘till and keep’ the Garden of Eden on God’s behalf. Finally,
Adam is delegated the responsibility to name the animals. That’s a big deal,
because it signifies that, as co-creator, he completed their creation by assign-
ing the essence to each animal.’’
‘‘And what principle or big idea is to be taken from this narrative?’’
inquired Zack.
‘‘That we are deputized, if you will, to be custodians over the Creation,
to govern in the absence of its very transcendent owner, God,’’ responded
the bishop. ‘‘In theology we call it ‘stewardship.’ ’’
‘‘Yes, I’ve heard of this idea,’’ Zach added. ‘‘In Judaism it signifies a kind
of merciful supervision where harm is minimalized and care is given without
reservation. Rabbinical commentaries equate mercy toward animals with
love and pity for innocent children. As it was taught to me, the command-
ment or universal and unconditional duty is bal tashit—‘Do not destroy.’ In
Judaism we like to say that we’re green and compassionate.
‘‘Still, I have problems with the concept,’’ Zack continued. ‘‘I’m not try-
ing to be adversarial here, but the stewardship model you describe seems to
favor us and is very managerial in its style. I guess you could say in capitalis-
tic terms that we’re the executives, the CEO’s of the world. There’s arro-
gance, aggressiveness, exploitation, and even incipient violence in dominion
and subjugation. Given the Christian notion of sin as hubris, or ‘pride’—we
easily get above ourselves—stewardship certainly lends itself to unrestrained
146 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

possessiveness and abuse when applied by sinful humans. The Garden

becomes a barnyard. The animals serve not God but God’s likeness in us,
and we profit from their service.’’
‘‘Agreed!’’ exclaimed the bishop. ‘‘There’s moral tension and challenge
here. We must always be aware of our sinful tendencies, our tarnished
divine image. Responsible stewardship is a goal, not a perfect practice. We
seek to fulfill a vision of benevolent management, where all creatures will
thrive in peace. So the trick is to serve the Lord and not to ‘lord it over’ the
Earth by lack of restraint. Stewardship means that we are responsible to
God for the Creation.’’
‘‘Then let’s be more specific, down where the rubber meets the road,’’
suggested Zack. ‘‘What does your stewardship model say about the ancient
grand oaks in Grace’s grove?’’
‘‘Well,’’ said the bishop, hesitating thoughtfully, ‘‘if our assigned task is
to till and protect the Garden, or in this case the grove, which do we do?
‘Till’ suggests active involvement in the destiny of the trees, and that may
mean their removal. After all, a good gardener will sometimes remove
plants from her garden. Or should we embrace the charge to ‘keep’ or pro-
tect, which would entail preservation of the grove and opposition to the
expressway? At least our choices are limited to a simple two! And what
would you say, counselor, not as our attorney, but through your faith?’’
‘‘Personally, I have no wisdom to convey to you,’’ answered Zack, ‘‘but
our scripture—the Hebrew Bible or your Old Testament—contains numer-
ous passages that overwhelmingly favor mercy toward trees as practical
expressions of bal tashit. These passages have passionately inspired some
rabbis in our Reform movement to do all they can to protect trees from
logging. In California they’re known as the ‘Redwood Rabbis’! I have a
pretty good idea what their advice would be.’’
‘‘Clearly, your preference is for the ‘keep’ clause of the Genesis assign-
ment,’’ the bishop said, nodding. ‘‘You’re invited to come with me to Johns
Island and Grace Church on Sunday, where you’ll hear these thoughts again
reflected in my sermon. After the worship service I’ll meet with members of
the congregation to reach a decision about our legal strategy. Perhaps the
Holy Spirit will be present and contribute as well! I’ll pray for that added
counsel!’’

Following the Sunday morning service at Grace, the bishop received

members of the congregation in the church’s educational building. After
enjoying the traditional coffee and cookies, most left, but about a dozen
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 147

remained to participate in a discussion—some would say disputation—of

their options regarding the grove moderated by their pastor, Lincoln Pierce.
Zack joined them.
‘‘Bishop Adcox, your sermon this morning was inspired,’’ said Pierce,
opening the discussion. ‘‘Your exposition of the choice before us, to till or
keep the garden that is our grove, is clear, sobering, and weighs heavily on
our commission as God’s wardens on Earth. To my mind, the right option
is to exercise our God-given liberty to transform the Earth on our behalf as
God’s children, his emissaries to the fallen Creation.’’
‘‘You mean ‘on God’s behalf’ and not ours, don’t you, Reverend?’’ inter-
rupted Burrell Gilliam, an elderly but feisty retired physician.
‘‘No, Burrell, that’s not my position,’’ Pierce responded. ‘‘Scripture
clearly delegates considerable power and discretion to man. We are very
special, indeed: the only animals that possess souls with the possibility of
spending eternity with our God. Our freedom to pursue that singular goal
is absolute. As God reports in the third chapter of Genesis, the Earth is
cursed. That’s a strong expression. I take it to mean that we have no further
responsibilities to protect the world beyond preserving it for our own sake
as a resource, the employment of which moves us forward toward salvation
for all men. To illustrate what I mean: The settlement we receive for the loss
of our trees should be completely dedicated to the support of our missionary
team in Nigeria. We’ve been commanded by Christ to take the gospel to all
the world. Evangelization is on God’s behalf and the behalf of all those who
come to Christ because of our programs.’’
‘‘Excuse me, Reverend,’’ said the equally feisty Mattie Barden, long-
standing member of the congregation and president of its board, ‘‘three
counterpoints, if you please. First, in the Creation story, God animates
Adam, whom he has molded from the ground, with the divine breath of life.
In another verse, that breath is recognized as animating all God’s creatures,
not just his human ones.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ interjected Zack spontaneously, ‘‘the Hebrew word for God’s
vital breath is nephesh. Um, excuse my interruption.’’
‘‘Thank you, sir,’’ acknowledged Mattie. ‘‘Despite our gift of divine like-
ness, we are still primarily nephesh-infused creatures and only then, if at all,
angels. Second, Christ commissioned us to take the Good News to all crea-
tures who share his breath and not exclusively to men. Finally, with respect
to the cursed Earth, let’s finish the statement. It reads, ‘The ground is cursed
because of you.’ The Earth did nothing wrong. It suffers—how do you say—
collateral damage, because of the sins of the original couple. I think that
148 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

means that we should care and comfort all our brothers and sisters in the
larger Earth community of Christ who are powerless and imperiled, even
trees, who, by the way, are described more than once in scripture as singing
in joy for the coming of their Lord. To put it bluntly, our live oaks are far
more than lumber on a stump or money in the bank, Reverend Pierce.’’
Zack was impressed with Mattie’s knowledge of the Bible. She looked
familiar as well. Then he remembered why: She was the executive director
of the Coastal Conservation Association and well known, to the chagrin of
politicians and developers in the Charleston area. He wanted to hear more
from her, but Pierce was not finished.
‘‘Your lovely point of view is not borne out by the evidence,’’ Pierce
continued. ‘‘Nature is rife with violence. I recall that someone defined ecol-
ogy as the study of who eats whom! At most, nature is God’s instrument of
retribution, his sword to smite the sinful. For example, Hurricane Katrina
fell upon New Orleans, a city known for its decadence. In his power and
wisdom, God uses the catastrophes of nature to vent his anger and fulfill his
will. And if God uses the world, so can we. It is given to us to exploit
according to cost-benefit calculations only. It’s crystal clear in Genesis;
we’ve been issued our marching orders—to subdue and have dominion over
a violent and cursed Earth through forceful rule.’’
‘‘You are an inspired speaker, Reverend,’’ said Burrell, ‘‘but a very selec-
tive one in your examples. After all, who really bore the brunt of divine
wrath in Katrina? The poor and the colored who happened to live in the
lower Ninth Ward that was flooded by the failure of the levees, which
resulted in part because of the destruction of the wetlands along the Missis-
sippi delta. Whose failure of stewardship was it to have neglected those
levees in the first place? It was the political leaders of New Orleans and,
indeed, of Washington, D.C., who are mostly not colored and certainly not
among the poor. I’d like to think that God has better aim than that! Scrip-
ture is clear; justice, not indiscriminate retribution, flows down like mighty
waters. Your example is actually supportive of the concept of justice
thwarted. It seems to me that there can be no justice unless our collective
sins against our fellow man through the destruction of nature are addressed
as a complete package.’’
‘‘Well,’’ said Pierce, ‘‘it actually makes little difference. We have an
appointment with Christ, who even now is on his way in glory to judge each
and every man to determine his eternal status in the final judgment. It’s clear
in scripture that the Earth will have no role in the determination. My only
responsibility is to make sure that I’m ready for that final examination of
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 149

my life. What I do to preserve or destroy trees or even pollute the atmo-

sphere means nothing because God will complete that destruction and take
the saints among us into heaven to be with him eternally.’’
‘‘I’m surprised and disappointed at your selective attention to the Bible,
Reverend,’’ said Mattie. ‘‘Doesn’t Saint Paul, your favorite apostle I believe,
write in the book of Romans that the Earth groans and will be set free from
its bondage by God. Powerful words. If anything’s clear, it’s that salvation
comes not in solitude, one individual at a time, but in solidarity with all of
God’s good yet suffering Creation. God didn’t make a throwaway world.
His peaceful kingdom is coming for all creatures, us and them. I don’t think
that either domination or abandonment is the right approach. If we’re to be
held personally responsible for anything, it will be for our loving care or
callous abuse of God’s own creation of which we are but a part.
‘‘What’s more, Reverend,’’ she continued, gaining momentum, ‘‘there are
embarrassing passages in the book of Job about God’s special relationship
to other creatures. It’s pretty clear that other living things have purposes
known only to God and completely independent of their usefulness to us. It
seems that sometimes the Lord’s engagement with his natural world is none
of our business. It isn’t all about us, and that’s humbling.’’
‘‘Mattie, your defense of the Creation is touching,’’ said Burrell, ‘‘but
don’t you put yourself in the neopagan camp with all those New Age, tree-
hugging pantheists and Wiccans? Nature is not spiritually special, and other
animals, like bears and buffalo, are not our equals or divine superiors, even
though primitive tribes might have thought so. The genius of the Israelites
and their prophets was to recognize that such idols are nothing. In terms of
its divinity, nature is neutral. It’s our gift from God, not to be worshiped or
rescued, but used for our purposes. Our grove of live oaks is not a sacred
grove. It’s a gift of God, pure and simple.’’
Burrell thought for a moment before continuing. ‘‘I do agree with you on
one thing, however. Our environment must be factored into our assessment
of justice denied or achieved for the poor and downtrodden on the Earth. So
the only real question is, do the plans for a cross-island expressway coming
through our grove represent injustice to our little community of the poor
and colored? If they do, then we must fight that injustice. The planned con-
struction is very unpopular with all of us who live on rural Johns Island.
Many folks live on modest incomes. They fear the expressway will open up
the island to development and price them out of their homes. They see the
road as a monument to power and privilege. Maybe the ancient oak just
discovered in our grove is a godsend. Maybe Mr. Compton here can employ
150 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

all his training and ingenuity as a lawyer to use the old tree as a shield
against those people.’’
‘‘You’re carrying my point a little too far, Burrell,’’ argued Mattie. ‘‘I
love my cat, but she’s not divine. I guess my position can be summed up in
the words of that old Methodist hymn we sing in church sometimes, ‘His
eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.’ That a paraphrase from
Jesus, you know. For that matter, God’s eye is on our grove and on the
marshland up and down the coast, and on the great flocks of birds—and
communities of humans—that thrive because of it. What’s more obvious
than our sacred duty to protect and preserve it for our sake, the birds’ sake,
and, of course, for the Creator’s sake? That sentiment is not in the secular
charter of the Coastal Conservation Association, of course, but it’s a large
part of my motivation as its director. Still, I believe we must move from an
ideology of ownership to one of fellowship with the countless beings, ani-
mals, and plants who inhabit the Earth with us. Maybe the trees in our
grove are members of the Grace Church congregation too! Anyway, recog-
nition of our common creaturehood is the only way to cure our disease of
sinful pride.’’
The meeting continued for another hour with spirited opinions expressed
by all. Bishop Adcox concluded the gathering. ‘‘My sermon’s theme of ‘till
or keep’ was a simple choice . . . or so I thought. Now I think differently.
Your expressed opinions are varied and valuable, and still there is no con-
sensus about our grove. We’re going to have to call the Holy Spirit in on
this one!’’ He then gave a benediction, which, Zack noted with satisfaction,
included the petition that both the congregation and the grand oaks in the
grove will know shalom, or a common peace. Then they all went home and
left the bishop with a decision to make on Monday.

Commentary

With the exception of a brief discussion in chapter 1, this volume focuses

on secular and philosophical approaches to environmental issues. Still, we
would be remiss if we neglected the significant historical, cultural, and theo-
logical contributions made by communities of faith to both environmental
problems and their solutions. Other chapters briefly include the perspectives
of Hinduism, Islam, and indigenous societies. None, however, examine the
role of Abrahamic religions in the West—Judaism and Christianity—in our
evolving views of nature and our duties to ecosystems. True, the doctrine of
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 151

Creation has been developed by theologians throughout the two thousand

years of Christianity, and centuries before that in Hebrew rabbinical
thought. The fathers of the Catholic tradition had a great deal to say on the
subject, as did Protestant reformers. In their authority and wisdom lie deep
foundations for a theology of nature.

Christian Responsibility for the Crisis

Yet perhaps the most influential statement about Christianity’s role in the
current so-called environmental crisis comes not from rabbis, popes, or pas-
tors but from a Protestant layman—a Presbyterian—whose conclusions are
more condemnative than complementary. In his 1967 blockbuster paper,
‘‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,’’ prominent historian Lynn
White Jr. places the blame for our condition squarely on the teachings of
Christianity, based in scripture, about the relationship of humans and the
natural world.1 White claims that these teachings are dualistic—humans are
the special creation of God and thus sharply distinct from all other living
beings—and hierarchical—humans are instructed by God to oversee and
dominate the natural world, which is a gift for our benefit and rule. Begin-
ning with the medieval period, wholesale implementation of these doctrines
resulted in arrogant abuse of the Creation, leading to today’s sad situation.
From these historical accounts White concludes that ‘‘Christianity bears a
huge burden of guilt’’ for the present ecological crisis. The fact that White’s
article first appeared in the prestigious journal Science ensured that it would
be read as gospel by several generations of those in the scientific community
as their only exposure to the subject. Their impressions, disseminated first
to students and then to all of us through the popular press, ensure that, even
today, the prevalent understanding of Christianity and the environment is
White’s narrative of the religiously inspired egregious subjugation of the
Earth to human intentions.
It is true that the Christian churches have lagged in developing policies
about the environment and recommending actions to their flocks that would
both correct the impressions left by White’s thesis and address pressing ethi-
cal issues of pollution, loss of natural systems, declining species, and global
warming. Yet, even as an institution in an officially secular society, Chris-
tianity has tremendous potential for making a difference. Fortunately, there
is today a stirring of the churches to give greater priority to the doctrine of
the good and God-given Creation and the duties of the faithful to take care
152 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

of it. But, as we see in this case, those who hold traditional positions do not
voluntarily surrender to new ones easily.

Interpreting Scripture

All of the various Christian theologies of nature, sometimes agreeing, often

conflicting, find their common authority in scripture. Jews rely on the
Torah—the first five books of the Bible—and other biblical material that
constitute the Hebrew Bible. Christians reassign the Hebrew canon as the
Old Testament and add a second collection, the New Testament, which
deals essentially with the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and
responses to him as the Christ. Just the sheer amount of material contained
in these two collections is overwhelming; the Oxford Bible contains more
than fifteen hundred pages, with double columns! Little wonder, then, that
our young attorney, Isaac Compton, views the possible application of scrip-
ture to current issues, including the endangered grove, with skepticism.
Religious scholars have, of course, long anticipated this difficulty and
responded by developing the study of hermeneutics to help. Hermeneutics
is the art and science of interpretation. It applies to everything we read, and
most of what we hear, because very little information goes uninterpreted.
Rather, stories in our newspapers or online, novels, and religious texts are
filtered through the reader’s biases, presuppositions, interests, and view of
the world in order to make sense of them and give them meaning. Given
human nature, no immaculate or perfectly objective and unequivocal recep-
tion of a text is possible. Theologians who seek to understand scripture and
find meaning in it employ hermeneutics to establish principles and rules
that will make accurate interpretation possible, especially when the Bible is
approached for a sense of God’s will regarding contemporary issues, such
as pollution and global warming, that were not on the minds of the original
authors. Or as one theologian puts it, to know God’s will one must have
the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. Our generation would
likely replace the newspaper with the computer, but the problem remains
the same.
In earlier centuries, the hermeneutical task was carried out by scholars
who were thoroughly trained in the principles of interpretation. Their con-
sidered opinions then became authoritative. With the rabbis in Orthodox
Judaism and priests and others in Catholicism, religious authorities con-
tinue today to serve as the media through which the wisdom of scripture is
filtered. Thanks to the founders of Protestantism, such as Martin Luther,
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 153

who said that every man is his own priest, the importance of intermediary
interpreters of scriptural significance was mostly abandoned in favor of the
notion that the individual believer could go straight to the Bible, ask ques-
tions, and find answers with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Obviously,
this method of sola scriptura, or scripture alone, leads to multiple and often
contradictory conclusions, depending on the philosophy and sometimes pol-
itics of the reader and his or her community.
Obviously, one very simple principle of hermeneutics is to mine the rich
and vast resources of scripture for specific verses and passages that shed
light on the issue in question and then hold these up as indicators of divine
will on the subject. Such an approach is both simplistic and dangerous. It is
simplistic because it fails to consider the historical and literary context of
the passage, which is often chosen because it confirms the reader’s position.
It is dangerous because it may recommend conclusions that lead to harmful
actions inconsistent with other important biblical injunctions, such as love
thy neighbor. Hence our neighbors who are victims of discrimination
because of class, race, or gender are very sensitive to justifications of oppres-
sive conduct toward them that are based on specific biblical statements.
Paul, for example, instructs slaves to obey their masters and women not to
speak in church. One would expect that African Americans, whose ances-
tors were slaves, and women, whose freedom has been suppressed in patri-
archal society, would be suspicious of and even hostile to such passages. Of
course, other equally specific passages lend themselves to opposite interpre-
tations and serve to encourage those whose liberty is compromised.
In this case, our characters proof-text their positions with specific biblical
quotations, which they then use as springboards for more sweeping conclu-
sions. Of paramount importance, however, is the fact that each comes to
the Bible with preferred ethical opinions seeking divine illumination and
authorization that, in their own eyes, are provided by the texts. Bishop
Adcox has the theological training that enables him to recognize that this
procedure has its limits. He seeks to go one step further to frame a general
concept or principle that would guide his critical thinking and decisions
regarding the status of the grove. He finds it in the notion of stewardship,
especially as it appears in the Creation accounts of the book of Genesis.
Several verses are, for him, exhibits one through four, providing concluding
evidence for the proposition that God intends humans to serve as responsi-
ble custodians for the Creation. Such a calling preserves our favored status
of possessing exclusively the imago dei, or divine image, and having power
over all the other creatures of the Earth, while concurrently making us
154 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

responsible to the Creator for that over which we have dominion. Even here
the bishop is, so to speak, not out of the woods (or the grove) yet. The ever
insightful Zack reminds him that the very concept of stewardship has its
weaknesses, at least when applied by ethically flawed and incorrigibly pride-
ful humans in ways that favor themselves.

‘‘Till and Keep’’

Even employing all his considerable theological skills, the bishop is unable
to skirt the questions that Genesis poses for him. God, we are told, put man
in the Garden to ‘‘till and keep it.’’ Bishop Adcox interprets the verse to
mean that Adam is instructed to manage and protect the Garden. So far, so
good. Now, however, the inquiring reader is on his own; he must rely on
metaphors to move from Adam the gardener to us. The Garden becomes the
Creation filled with wild and domesticated things, including pre-Columbian
Angel Oaks. Adam becomes all humankind or, more specifically, the congre-
gation of Grace AME Church. ‘‘Till’’ becomes the command to intervene in
nature where necessary. ‘‘Keep’’ becomes the command to preserve nature
where necessary. In the case of the grove, these imperatives are ambiguous,
even conflicting, at least to the mind of the bishop. Should we till the grove
by removing it for the expressway and to the financial benefit of Grace
Church? Or should we instruct our attorney to fight to keep the grove from
the chain saw and bulldozer?

Trees ‘‘Sing for Joy’’

Bishop Adcox may be biased when he directs his attention almost exclu-
sively toward scriptural accounts of human significance. A little additional
investigation would reveal that the Bible has something to say about other
species that figure prominently in our case—trees. Examples abound: ‘‘Then
the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he
comes, he comes to judge the Earth’’ (Ps. 96:12); ‘‘and all the trees of the
field will clap their hands’’ (Isa. 55:12). Of course, the biblical writers are
not speaking literally. Yet responsive trees are not absurdities to them. Trees
do indeed respond to their basic needs to fulfill their nature and thrive. They
exhibit what the philosopher Aristotle refers to as the urge to achieve their
telos, or nature: ‘‘to be all that they can be,’’ as the military recruitment ad
puts it. A tiny acorn becomes a giant oak. The minuscule mustard seed
exuberantly producing a great bush or tree in which birds take their refuge
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 155

is, for Jesus, a proper image of the kingdom of God. In Genesis, the Garden
of Eden includes the tree of life, which confers immortality to those who eat
from it. The exalted status of a great tree as an axis mundi, a ‘‘world pole’’
connecting the heavens with the Earth, is a nearly universal belief. It sur-
vives today in the symbol and custom of the Christmas or Yuletide tree.

Evangelical Beliefs: Human Redemption versus Creation Theology

While the good bishop approaches scripture by consciously looking for the
broader contours of the textual terrain through the coordinates of particular
passages, Reverend Pierce, along with church members Mattie and Burrell,
comes to this task with preferred positions already in mind.
Reverend Pierce is not reticent in his pronouncements based in a position
of uncompromising theological anthropocentrism: We’re it, and that’s that.
Given the advantages of our special status and the right, if not command,
to subdue and exert dominion over all other creatures, stewardship means
exploiting nature unilaterally for our advantage and benefit alone. In addi-
tion, God seems to have abandoned the Creation (Gen., chap. 3), first by
casting a curse upon it and then, in the story of Noah (in chap. 9), giving
many animals to us as food. This was the purpose, we are to assume, for
taking them two by two into the ark in the first place. Animals and trees
thus have only an instrumental value as material resources. Our primary, if
not exclusive, duties are first to ensure our salvation through a personal
commitment to Christ, and then to promote that singular way to all nations.
What’s more, at the end of history with its day of judgment, which is proba-
bly sooner than later, Christ will return. Every soul will be judged, and the
Earth will fall away. There is little incentive in this vision to preserve a world
destined for destruction or even to prevent its diminishment because of our
fouling activities.
Reverend Pierce’s position, known as redemption theology, is held by
tens of millions of Americans who identify themselves as Evangelical Protes-
tants. For these faithful and their emphasis on ‘‘family values,’’ others who
see creatures as possessing intrinsic and even spiritual worth are comporting
with pagans if not acting as pagans themselves; they worship living idols.
Biocentrists and ecocentrists would seem to qualify under this description.
Recently, however, a sizable group of evangelicals have rediscovered cre-
ation theology. This is the idea that the Earth is the good Creation, which,
along with its human inhabitants, is included in God’s ultimate plans. After
all, ‘‘the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,’’ the Bible says. From
156 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

this perspective, our contributions to the decline of this ‘‘fullness’’ through

our degrading activity are sins against the Creator, for which, along with
the violation of family values, we will be judged. Mattie also reminds the
good reverend that his favorite apostle, Paul, includes the suffering Creation
in his list of those who await the coming of God’s kingdom. We have seen
already from the earlier quote from Psalms that trees applaud the coming
of judgment day. We assume that they expect to be included and received
favorably!

The Fellowship of All God’s Creatures

Mattie carries her thoughts even further. While the moderate stewardship
position of Bishop Adcox and the more extreme version of Reverend Pierce
emphasize the special status of humans, the favored species, Mattie draws
our attention to those passages that emphasize our creaturehood or mem-
bership in the greater community of life. We are earthlings, which is broadly
what ‘‘Adam’’ means in Hebrew. Not only are we fashioned from dirt, but,
as Zack reminds us, we also share the nephesh, or vitalizing breath of life
that God confers on all creatures. Her corrective for the attitude of superior-
ity so easily promoted by our appointment as stewards is God’s testimony in
the book of Job. It has to do with the deity’s relationships to wild animals,
relationships that exclude us entirely. God’s attention to animals in places
where we never go is quite a comedown and a remedy for the hubris that
ails us. This realization is a blow to the inflated figure of the entitled ruler
we see in the mirror. It is unlikely that Mattie would deny humans the status
of stewards, but she would reposition our species democratically as the first
among equals who sometimes has to stand in line with other creatures
awaiting our turn to receive divine attention.

Ecological Justice

Another emphasis of these environmentally aware evangelicals and many

other Christians is the connection between the abuse of Creation and the
abuse of the poor and powerless of the world. For the latter third of the
twentieth century, a prominent focus of Catholic theology, especially with
regard to Latin America, has been liberation theology and its prophetic pro-
nouncement that the God of history acts on the side of the poor and
oppressed of the world.2 Christians must seek first for the liberation of these
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 157

communities from social and economic injustice. Now, in the spirit of lib-
eration theology, human rights advocates, concerned sociologists, an-
thropologists, environmentalists, and theologians realize that a powerful
connection applies between the oppression of the poor and the degradation
of the environment. The ecojustice movement, as it is known, recognizes
that the poor, people of color, women (especially in developing nations),
and indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by ecological devas-
tation, as several of our cases studies have sought to examine. Both Mattie,
with her version of biocentric stewardship, and Burrell, with his anthropo-
centrism, agree that commitment to justice is first and foremost for the con-
gregation of Grace Church as it seeks to resolve the status of its oak grove.
It is clear that Mattie and Burrell diverge radically from Reverend Pierce’s
traditional redemptionist position on the theological significance of Hurri-
cane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. His point is judgment of the
individual person; theirs is collective justice. In his mind the Creation is a
disposable instrument of divine retribution. In theirs, the well-being and
integrity of Creation is inseparable from the liberation of the oppressed they
seek.
Even more than their pastor, Mattie and Burrell are true to the long his-
tory of the AME Church.3 The seeds of the denomination were sown by the
Free African Society of Philadelphia in 1787. Mother Emanuel Church was
established in Charleston, South Carolina, only to be burned because of its
association with Denmark Vesey, who, in 1822, organized a major slave
rebellion that was never carried out. Although slave churches were out-
lawed in South Carolina, the congregation continued to worship under-
ground until 1865. We should note that one member of the denomination
was Rosa Parks, whose refusal to surrender her seat on a Montgomery,
Alabama, bus in 1955 ignited a local boycott that came to involve a young
Martin Luther King Jr. and resulted in the civil rights movement. Concerns
with social justice are woven into the history of the church. Mattie and
Burrell simply expand them to include the environment.
Our choice of a Protestant church as the venue for the case is not to
suggest that other branches of Christianity neglect creation theology. Arch-
bishop Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, was
the first major figure in Christianity to declare that degradation of the natu-
ral world is a sin. Beginning with the church fathers, Catholicism has estab-
lished a long tradition of including creation theology prominently in its
teachings, including important papal pronouncements.
158 Maintaining and Managing the Ecosystem

The best-known historical figure who through his words and actions was
an exemplar of ethical conduct toward other living things is Francis of
Assisi. Despite the weighty charges Lynn White Jr. levels against Christian-
ity in his article as bearing ‘‘a huge burden of guilt’’ for the environmental
crisis, he believes that, through serious self-examination, only Christianity
can reorder our spiritual values toward nature and address the crisis in the
West. And whom does he nominate as his candidate for ‘‘the patron saint
of ecologists’’? Francis of Assisi. Thanks to the official actions of Pope John
Paul II, Francis was so designated in 1979. Perhaps Bishop Atkins would
have done well to include these words, probably anonymous but sometimes
attributed to Saint Francis, in his benediction: ‘‘Dear Father . . . guard with
tenderness small things that have no words.’’ Grand oaks are hardly small,
but they have no words and perhaps require guarding or keeping, as the
author of the book of Genesis might say. Or perhaps the members of Grace
Church will reject these Franciscan sentiments and choose instead to ‘‘till’’
their grove by sacrificing the trees for the greater good and human justice.

Questions for Discussion

1. This case significantly focuses on a land issue that involves a Chris-

tian congregation. Does Grace Church have a responsibility to seek
guidance from the Bible, or would it be more appropriate to consider
only secular or nonreligious questions having to do with legal and
government matters? Why?
2. Read the Creation accounts found in the first two chapters of the
book of Genesis. Compile two lists. One should contain verses that
support a biocentric or ecocentric point of view. The second should
contain verses that support a more anthropocentric position. Go
behind the obvious to examine the implications of the verses on each
list.
3. Is Lynn White Jr. right? Is Christianity exclusively to blame for the
ecological crisis? Are other historical factors, such as individualism
and capitalism, important too? In addition to these two, name two
other factors and briefly explain the contribution of each.
4. From the internet, identify two Christian denominations that have
strong positions and programs supporting environmental action. Do
the same for one Jewish institution or organization. Identify one
Guardian Angels of Angel Oak 159

Christian denomination or group with a position that denies or

rejects the importance of environmental issues.
5. Identify a situation in your community that includes issues of social
justice and the environment—a landfill or polluting industry located
near a community of color, for example. What actions are being
taken to resolve the issue? Are professional clergy involved?

Notes
1. Lynn White Jr., ‘‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,’’ Science
155, no. 3767 (1967): 1203–7. Also available at www.zbi.ee/⬃kalevi/white.htm.
2. Christine C. Gudorf, Victimization: Examining Christian Complicity (Phila-
delphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).
3. Emanuel African Methodist Church website, www.emanuelamechurch.org.

For Further Reading

Dobel, J. Patrick. ‘‘Stewards of the Earth’s Resources.’’ Christian Century, October
12, 1977, 906–12.
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. www.emanuelamechurch.org.
Gutierrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.
Hessel, Dieter. ‘‘Christianity and Ecology: Wholeness, Respect, Justice, Sustainabil-
ity.’’ Forum on Religion and Ecology. http://fore.research.yale.edu/religion/Chris
tianity/index.html.
Klein, William W., L. Bloomberg, and R. L. Hubbard. Introduction to Biblical Inter-
pretation. New York: Thomas Nelson, 2004.
Moyers, Bill. Is God Green? www.pos.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/green/watch
.html噛faith.
White, Lynn, Jr.. ‘‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.’’ Science 155, no.
3767 (1967): 1203–7.
 PAR T I II

Restoring and
Re-creating the
Ecosystem
 nine

River Run or River Ruined

Hydropower or Free-Flowing Rivers?

M
‘‘ ove to your left so I can get more of the dam.’’ Dale
could barely hear Karen’s instructions above the roar of
water cascading over the sixty-foot spillway into the gorge
below.
‘‘That’s perfect. Now either smile or look appropriately somber for the
camera,’’ Karen joked as she snapped three pictures in quick succession.
Karen Henson was a writer and photographer for the Coos Bay Courier,
a small daily newspaper whose front-page headlines usually featured local
baseball teams and arts festivals. Neither she nor Dale had made the hour’s
drive and the twenty-minute hike to the lovely viewpoint just above the
Chapman Gorge Dam on the Coquille River for any chamber of commerce
snapshots, however. Karen was working on a series of stories on the rapidly
moving plans of the Coos County Public Utility District, the dam’s owner
and operator, to sell the fifty-year-old structure to the electrical giant
Pacificorp for rehabilitation. A major task stood in the way of the successful
exchange of ownership. The dam was coming up for relicensing proceedings
by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In a hearing the
following week before the FERC investigators, the two parties would make
their case for the deal. They would face passionate opposition from others
who thought the project was little more than a bad idea.
For Karen, this was high drama and well worth several articles in the
Courier, along with profiles of the major players—including Dale. Dale
Laney was a fourth-generation citizen of Coos Bay, a city of twenty thou-
sand people in the coastal basin of southern Oregon. Dale’s father, now

163
164 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

retired, and his father before him once fished the Pacific in trawlers with
large nets, taking in their share of the abundant harvest of coho and sockeye
salmon. As times changed, however, the fishing and logging industries that
fueled the economy gave way to agriculture and tourism. A practicing attor-
ney in the town for more than a decade, Dale had been elected as one of the
three members of the city’s board of commissioners.
Karen completed the photo session and returned along the trail to a pic-
nic table to tinker with her camera and remove the lenses for storage. Dale
remained for a few moments, mesmerized by the rushing water. As she
looked back toward the reservoir, she could see the Klamath Mountains,
sources of the headwaters of the Coquille River, mirrored in the lake’s
waters. The cold, clear streams from the mountains merged into the south
and east forks of the Coquille, and the confluence of the forks formed the
river’s stem about five miles behind the dam.
Dale walked back toward the picnic area to join Karen, who had packed
her camera, and waited for her, warmed by the direct rays of the midmorn-
ing sun on this otherwise chilly April day. Although Karen represented the
media and Dale was a politician, Dale felt at ease with Karen. Karen did
not have the attack personality some journalists had. No spin was necessary
in her presence. In fact, given her considerable knowledge about many
aspects of the town, Dale felt she could learn much from Karen.
‘‘You seem to be enjoying yourself up there,’’ Karen said.
‘‘Yes, lots of good memories here. It’s a beautiful place.’’
Dale had been here before—many times as a child with her family—so
the experience was familiar. She recalled canoeing in the two-thousand-acre
Chapman Gorge Reservoir and hiking down the trails into the gorge below
the dam, where the water rushed by—but with far less power and volume
than must have been the case when the river flowed freely.
From an earlier interview Karen knew how seriously Dale took her
responsibilities not only as a commissioner but also as a citizen who was
genuinely concerned about the beauty of the gorge. Dale was to represent
Coos Bay’s interests at the hearing. She felt conflicted about the issue. She
would prefer to speak decisively, as attorneys do before the court. Life is
not always modeled after the prosecution confronting the defense, however.
‘‘Would Mayor Kelly agree that this is a beautiful place?’’ Karen asked.
Dale smiled. She knew that the question was only partly serious, but
important.
‘‘I’m not sure that Henry and I agree on much of anything—not since
he was elected mayor last year and certainly not after our vote in the city
River Run or River Ruined 165

commission favoring some version of a restored dam but also recommend-

ing severe restrictions on enlarging the structure. He wants to sell the dam
to Pacificorp, double its size, and increase the power production to fifteen
megawatts. I’m afraid that beauty will be the last thing on his mind when
he testifies at the FERC hearing against his own commission.’’
‘‘That is, against you—correct?’’ asked Karen.
‘‘I’m afraid so,’’ said Dale. ‘‘Because I’m an attorney with considerable
experience arguing in adversary proceedings, the other two members of the
commission cordially compelled me to represent them at the hearing.’’
Dale hesitated for a moment, returning to Karen’s earlier question. ‘‘I
think Henry would view the gorge and lake as beautiful,’’ she confessed, ‘‘if
he could see past those dollar signs in his eyes. But you tell me, since you
interviewed him yesterday and I haven’t spoken with him privately in two
weeks.’’
‘‘Well,’’ Karen began, ‘‘I haven’t completed the article. The deadline is
tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll be working late tonight. He did have some
interesting comments. It seems that Mayor Kelly has an informal advisor
prompting him on plans for the dam. Some guy from the Northwest Hydro-
power Reform Coalition, Adam Toolen. Toolen isn’t a big secret. Kelly gave
me his phone number, and I spoke to him. He goes to Portland every year
when the legislature is in session to serve as a lobbyist for the interests of
Pacificorp, Oregon Edison, and others who would like to see every brook,
creek, and river put to work squeezing out kilowatts. Toolen is a true
believer, and his missionary zeal obviously has converted the mayor.’’
‘‘No surprise there,’’ Dale remarked. ‘‘Since this thing came up last
November my mailbox has been stuffed with material from every environ-
mental advocacy group objecting to the plan and every industry institute
favoring the restoration. The packet of materials from the coalition sticks
in my mind. It was the size of a mail-order catalogue.’’
‘‘Then you know their slogan,’’ Karen continued. ‘‘The mayor repeated it
to me half a dozen times: Hydroelectricity is green because it is CCRP—they
pronounce it ‘crip’: cheap, clean, renewable power.’’ She shook her head.
‘‘These people could use a more poetic publicist.’’
‘‘I agree with that. But money is green too,’’ Dale responded. ‘‘Henry
wants the new business, especially from the huge new reservoir that comes
with the taller dam. He has big plans for increasing tourism with new recre-
ational facilities to be built along the expanded shoreline. In addition to
fishing and boating, he sees great promise for the further development of
166 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

agriculture on the coastal basin and an enlarged tax base for roads and
schools.’’
Karen agreed. ‘‘He did emphasize irrigation as one of the major benefits
of the new dam. Toolen obviously had helped him along with another
point. Large reservoirs work well in what he called ‘cyclic climates’ of
flood and drought—which southern Oregon knows only too well—by
impounding water that would inundate the river’s floodplain and storing
it for us when rain doesn’t come, and the added land can then be put into
crop production.’’
‘‘Oh, yes, how can I forget the argument for flood control discussed on
page 213 of their catalogue?’’
‘‘But back to green power,’’ Karen said, recognizing sarcasm when she
heard it. ‘‘Hydroelectricity is a lot cheaper than electricity produced by fos-
sil fuel—as much as 80 percent cheaper. The mayor had some figures from
upstate oil-burning plants to back up that claim. And, of course, there is no
pollution, none at all. Kelly and Toolen got real excited when they talked
about that. It seems like a valid point, doesn’t it? No combustion, no pollu-
tion—including even carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas accused of collect-
ing in the atmosphere and warming the planet. We may not get our river
back, but we’ll breathe cleaner air. For clean kilowatts, hydro sure beats its
only other real competitor, nuclear. Dams are never in danger of meltdown,
and there are no messy toxic fission products to dispose of.’’
‘‘I’m sorry to persist,’’ interrupted Dale, ‘‘but let’s not forget that
Pacificorp stands to make big money from its investment, given the shortage
of energy and the increase in demand in the Northwest—and the whole
country, for that matter. With the price of electricity today, the Coquille is
a river of liquid gold.’’
‘‘Strange, Toolen never mentioned that! Let’s see . . .’’ Karen paused as
she recalled the third letter of the coalition’s acronym. ‘‘ ‘R’ is for ‘renew-
able.’ That’s the easy one, and fascinating too. Driven by gravity, water
from the reservoir turns the generators and then is released to flow to the
ocean, where it evaporates and falls as rain to replenish the reservoir and
begin the cycle again. The sun provides the energy. I don’t think we’re in
any danger of running out of sunshine anytime soon.’’
‘‘You seem to be more excited than an objective reporter should be,’’
Dale said jokingly.
‘‘Perhaps, but you know I’m professionally objective, especially when I
write about the new church softball league or the homecoming parade! And
what about you, Commissioner Henson?’’ Karen reached into her coat
River Run or River Ruined 167

pocket and pulled out a small pad. ‘‘My notes from our interview show that
you favor a new license for the dam too.’’
‘‘Aha,’’ replied Dale with some animation. ‘‘Your notes also show that I
favor only retrofitting the dam, not adding to it. New and more efficient
generators to replace the old ones that were shut down by the Public Utility
District back in 1989 would increase the power output by half again, with
very little additional impact on the environment. We would benefit from
the electricity, which would be distributed locally, and the reservoir would
continue to support recreation and modest irrigation.’’
‘‘Yet isn’t it true that the original construction back in 1955 had a severe
impact on the environment?’’ Karen’s voice indicated that she, too, was
more argumentative, but with the intention of provoking Dale to clarify her
own thoughts on the issues. ‘‘Look at what happened to the salmon runs.
With no way for the fish to get over the dam to their spawning ground
upstream, the salmon population collapsed. And the river downstream from
the dam: no more whitewater rapids and no more lush vegetation. What
about the tidal marshes at Bandon, where the Coquille meets the Pacific?
They were changed permanently by the reduced flow. Then there’s the reser-
voir, which drowned hundreds of acres of forest and displaced the Indians.’’
‘‘No one can deny that all these things happened,’’ Dale responded.
‘‘Back then dams were being built throughout the country. The good citi-
zens of Coos Bay, including my father, didn’t want to be left out of a good
thing. And this gorge was the perfect place to construct a hydroelectric facil-
ity. I’m not being entirely flippant when I say all that is water over the dam.’’
She paused. ‘‘Sure, we should lament the destructive consequences for
the environment. But that was fifty years ago. We simply didn’t know better.
The dam’s production was modest compared to those massive concrete arch
dams—Hoover and Grand Coulee. Still, the four megawatts of electricity it
generated were a big economic boost for the county. The environment has
adjusted. You have to admit, the reservoir adds a lot to the beauty of the
place.’’
Dale shifted topics to answer all of Karen’s concerns. ‘‘And a lot of good
things happened, even to the Indians. Sure, I remember how sad it was, at
least for me, when I first learned about that episode in my high school social
studies class. Several tribes—all small, poor, with no federal tribal status
and little recognition of their reservation rights—were removed from their
traditional lands, which had been broken down into small parcels anyway.
The rising waters of the reservoir inundated most of it. The Coos, Coquille,
168 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

and Lower Umpqua tribes eventually confederated and built a tribal hall on
the six-acre reservation that was finally granted to them.’’
‘‘Nevertheless, they lost a great deal, didn’t they?’’ Karen interjected.
‘‘That’s just half the story—the worst half,’’ Dale continued. ‘‘The Indi-
ans are survivors. They’ve made the best of a bad situation and actually are
much better off today, with two schools on the reservation, roads, and, most
of all, several successful small businesses along the lake—all made possible
by development around the dam.’’
Dale’s thoughts turned assertive. ‘‘I’m caught in the middle, and happy
to be there. I oppose those who want to breach the dam, empty the reser-
voir, and restore the Coquille River to its historic flow. And I equally oppose
those, like the mayor and his coalition advisor, who want to reconstruct
the dam and enlarge the reservoir. Now that would really impact the
environment.’’
‘‘We could leave well enough alone, couldn’t we?’’ Karen asked. ‘‘Allow
the dam to play its role as a pretty waterfall in a park?’’
‘‘And miss the opportunity to help the people of Coos County?’’ Dale
asked incredulously. ‘‘With the price of electrical power soaring and relent-
less pressure in Washington to rely more and more on fossil fuel, especially
coal, how can we fail to act and restore what the professionals call ‘a dead-
beat dam’? Economically and environmentally, it’s the right thing to do.’’
‘‘Being in the middle means being crushed between the extremes,’’
reflected Karen with only slight exaggeration.
‘‘With pithy sayings like that, we know that philosophy is not your call-
ing,’’ Dale said. ‘‘Actually, you’re right. Political moderates alienate almost
everybody. I take solace from the remark you made about me two years
ago, though, when the commission was debating approval of a new high-
rise office building down by the docks. You said I was a ‘radical moderate.’
I liked it then, and I like it now.’’
Karen smiled and looked at her watch. ‘‘It’s getting late, and I know we
both have work this afternoon. Besides, I’m hungry. Want to have lunch at
the barbecue grill we passed on our way up?’’
‘‘Love to,’’ Dale responded, ‘‘but only if they have moderately hot
sauce!’’
Several days later, as Dale walked to her office, she noticed someone
waiting for her arrival. She recognized him immediately: Norman Jenson,
owner of extensive cranberry bogs a few miles north of the city, a friend
of her father, and one of the more dedicated environmentalists in Coos
County.
River Run or River Ruined 169

‘‘Norman, how are you?’’ Dale said, giving him a hug. ‘‘I’m so sorry.
Have you been waiting long? Did we have an appointment?’’
‘‘No,’’ he responded with a smile. ‘‘You know me. I don’t make appoint-
ments. I just show up. Makes a bigger impression.’’ Dale unlocked the door,
and they entered her office.
‘‘Here, please sit down,’’ she said. ‘‘I would offer you some coffee, but
the coffeemaker broke down last week, and I just haven’t replaced it yet.’’
‘‘That’s fine,’’ Norman responded. ‘‘I have something more stimulating
than caffeine, if you can spare a few minutes.’’
‘‘Of course I can,’’ Dale responded as she took the chair next to him.
‘‘Have you seen today’s Courier?’’ he asked, unfolding a copy of the
paper he carried. ‘‘It has a big interview with the mayor. All about how he
plans to endorse the sale of the Chapman Gorge Dam to Pacificorp at the
relicensing hearing next week. I’ve known Henry a long time. That’s why I
never voted for him. But this is the most ill-advised scheme he’s ever pro-
moted,’’ said Norman, obviously agitated.
Dale smiled. Few people were as forthcoming as Norman about poli-
tics—or about any topic. Yet she had always respected his opinions, how-
ever strongly expressed. He backed up his opinions with arguments, often
well articulated. She credited her turn toward the legal field in part to his
influence.
‘‘I know where you stand,’’ he continued, ‘‘and though I disagree, at least
it’s a lot closer to my position than the mayor’s is. Maybe I can convince
you to see it my way.’’
‘‘You are very welcome to try,’’ Dale said, ‘‘but you know it will be hard
to change my testimony at the hearing.’’
‘‘Perhaps, but you can show those regulators on the panel just how dan-
gerous Henry’s position is.’’
‘‘Norman, you and I have never talked about the dam, but my guess is
that you’d like to see it completely dismantled,’’ Dale said.
‘‘I would, indeed,’’ Norman responded. ‘‘You don’t remember what the
river was like before they built the dam. There were rapids in the lower
gorge; lots of deer, moss, and ferns; and small farms above the floodplains.
You could fish for trout along the way, and every year salmon would push
upstream by the thousands. Sure, some of the trout have returned now that
water flows over the dam regularly, but nobody can eat them—too much
mercury.’’
‘‘Mercury?’’ Dale inquired.
170 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

‘‘Yes, last year the state Department of Fisheries found high levels of
mercury in the trout and other fish. They were surprised too.’’
‘‘What was the source?’’ Dale asked.
‘‘According to the report, high levels of bacteria in the reservoir, espe-
cially in the silt that built up behind the dam over the years—the same silt
that should be reaching the marshes at Bandon and supporting all kinds of
life. They even found traces of selenium, which is such a problem farther
south with the dams on the San Joaquin River in California.
‘‘And while we’re talking about fish,’’ Norman continued, ‘‘the salmon
will never return until the dam is breached. There’s no way any new and
bigger structure can leave room for ladders to help the fish around the dam,
not in that narrow gorge. And there are other kinds of pollution too.’’ Nor-
man leaned toward Dale to project his point. ‘‘All that talk about clean
energy is bunk. According to what I’ve read in the literature from that group
Oregon Rivers Unlimited, the decaying vegetation in and around large reser-
voirs gives off greenhouse gases the same as fossil fuels. The Chapman
Gorge project will triple the size of the reservoir, killing thousands of trees
and massive amounts of other vegetation. Sure, it will produce lots of cheap
electricity, but clean and green? That’s just not true.’’
Dale remembered receiving material from the Oregon river group, but
she had set it aside as part of an ever-growing stack of environmental pro-
motion mail that she simply did not have time to read. She was glad that
Norman had done her work for her.
‘‘I know you have work to do, and I appreciate that you’re giving me this
time to have my say. I have a couple of other things to get off my chest.
They won’t take long, and I’ll be on my way,’’ said Norman, almost
apologetically.
‘‘Look, I don’t see you very often, and mixing important business with
pleasure is the best way I can think of to spend any hour of my day,’’ Dale
responded.
‘‘I’m a member of Friends of the Bay, a group that looks out for the
health of Coos Bay and the estuaries nearby. This area includes the mouth
of the Coquille at Bandon. The marshlands there are very special places.
They survived the damage from the original construction at Chapman
Gorge, but the new plans to control the river almost entirely with a taller
dam are deeply worrisome to my group. The salt water from the ocean
combines with the freshwater from the river to form a very nice place that
is full of nutrients and attractive to all kinds of wildlife. Choking the river
will create a tremendous imbalance, beginning with saltier water and a
River Run or River Ruined 171

reduction in nutrients, not to mention serious increases in chemical toxins

from the silting of the reservoir we’ve talked about already and fertilizer
and pesticide runoff from larger irrigated croplands. Chapman Gorge is
only fifteen miles from the Pacific—as close to the ocean as any dam its size
in the country. No one knows precisely the effects of the larger dam on these
estuaries. We do know they will be destructive.’’
They were interrupted by someone opening the office door. It was Dale’s
first appointment of the day. She invited the lady to come in and take a seat,
while she and Norman stepped outside.
‘‘I apologize for taking up so much of your time,’’ Norman said, ‘‘but I
have one final point. All that extra electricity—where do you think it’ll go?
Not here; we don’t need it. It’ll go to Eugene, Portland, Seattle, and even,
God forbid, California. The mayor seems to think that all those new tourists
and the jobs they’ll bring to the county are worth it, but the Coquille Con-
federation of Indians won’t like it. They lost much of their traditional land
with the first dam, and they stand to lose much more now. They’ve already
come out against the deal. In fact, the confederation president told me that
where’s there’s a dam, there’s a tribe underneath. And the small farmers
downstream—how will they compete with the big agricultural industry
when so much more water is there for irrigation? It’s not just a matter of
clean energy to fight global warming or to save the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge from the oil companies or for cheaper potatoes and corn or to power
our home computers. It’s about local folks who stand to lose even as they
gain, and the marshes and the river, which are declared more beautiful even
as they’re destroyed. I know that sounds crazy, but think about it.’’
‘‘Did you ever consider running for mayor, Norman?’’ Dale said with
some seriousness. ‘‘You’re very persuasive.’’
‘‘Thanks, my dear. Your dad raised a great daughter and an attorney
who actually listens! But I won’t know for sure if you’re persuaded until
you act on it. A lot of folks will be at that meeting. They need persuading
too.’’
They hugged again and said goodbye, and Norman walked away.
Dale hesitated before returning to her office and her waiting client, but
her mind remained on Karen’s article in the Courier and Norman’s power-
ful arguments. A new and enlarged dam would have serious effects on the
Coquille River environment. Yet despite their addiction to development and
profits, the mayor and his Pacificorp lobbyist did have their points. The
project would contribute to easing the larger crisis of energy, particularly in
reducing pollution and generating renewable energy. She had to smile when
172 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

a cherished mantra of the environmental movement jumped into her mind:

‘‘Think globally, act locally.’’ Dale realized that she faced a conflict of both
imperatives. Perhaps being in the middle was her attempt to balance the
two and bring about the greatest justice for the Indians, the forests, the
estuaries near Bandon, and the larger Earth beyond her hometown. Or per-
haps not.

Commentary

This case is an interesting mix of issues—politics, economics, ecology, con-

sumption, and social justice—each with a range of morally significant
options that carry benefits and harms. Nonetheless the case, complex as it
is, can be approached by focusing on a single set of possible actions regard-
ing the future of the Chapman Gorge Dam. Should this ‘‘deadbeat dam’’
provide the foundation for an ambitious enhancement of its electrical gener-
ating capacity, as the mayor of Coos Bay and his lobbyist advocate? Should
it be improved but not enlarged, as Dale prefers? Or should it be razed,
unleashing the Coquille River to run free again—the option preferred by
Norman, the passionate environmentalist?

Dams in America
Before entering this fray, we should examine the larger context of the place
of dams in recent history. For much of the twentieth century, the United
States engaged in a concerted effort to dam as many rivers as possible.
Beginning with Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, Grand Coulee on the
Columbia, and the massive Tennessee Valley Project during the Great
Depression, Americans sought to utilize the potential of stored water to
generate electrical power, irrigate crops, control flooding, and slake the
thirst of growing cities, especially in western states. Bruce Babbitt, secretary
of the interior during the Clinton administration, once said, ‘‘On average,
we have constructed one dam every day since the signing of the Declaration
of Independence’’—an amazing total of 75,000 dams of all sizes, shapes,
and functions. About 2,300 of these dams are hydroelectric facilities.1
That age is over. Most rivers with hydroelectric potential have been
dammed, and the environmental movement has raised the collective con-
sciousness about the damaging consequences of dams on riverine systems
and the surrounding natural landscape. Indeed, the trend has been reversed,
River Run or River Ruined 173

with several smaller dams breached in recent years to restore natural flows
in the rivers they blocked. Advocates of natural rivers now take the oppor-
tunity provided by relicensing hearings to make their case for decommis-
sioning of larger dams. The FERC exercises this authority every thirty to
fifty years for individual projects. Fifty years ago there were few complaints
when the original Chapman Gorge Dam was constructed. Today, however,
with the emphasis on diminishing salmon populations—caused in large part
by the loss of their river runs and spawning areas and the radical alteration
of the landscape—this dam probably would never have been built.
What is true for the United States is not yet true for the rest of the world.
Forty percent of irrigated land worldwide relies on water provided by dams,
which also generate nearly 20 percent of the world’s electricity. No wonder,
then, that developing nations are engaged in massive projects to conquer
their rivers. About 60 percent of the Earth’s large rivers have been affected.
The trend is likely to continue unabated as this percentage grows much
larger.2

Benefits and Costs

The benefits of large dams are irresistible. In addition to generating cheap
electricity—often in great quantities—and other benefits, such as water for
expanded agriculture and domestic use and flood control, dams often create
large lakes that enhance tourism and its supportive business enterprises. For
people like Mayor Kelly, whose minds and values are shaped by economic
concerns, these benefits are paramount. In this utilitarian attitude, a rising
reservoir raises all boats in that everyone derives some material advantage
from the improvement of the dam. This is true even for the Indians—
although, as we will see, the benefits they receive come with a much greater
cost than those enjoyed by most of the citizens of Coos County. We should
recognize that the mayor is simply carrying out the responsibilities of his
office in promoting the new dam. He is charged with protecting and devel-
oping the economic well-being of Coos Bay.
The advantages of hydroelectric power also include helping the environ-
ment—or so maintains Mr. Toolen, who represents the hydropower indus-
try. Rushing water, impelled by gravity, powers turbines and generates
electricity. Because gravity generates no pollution, the process is perfectly
clean. Through the hydrologic cycle of evaporation and rainfall, the water
eventually returns to the reservoir to repeat its trip through the turbines.
Clean and cheap, abundant and renewable—hydroelectricity has no rival.
174 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

In a vigorous and growing economy, the demand for energy also is growing,
taxing the ability of energy industries to provide it in abundance. Although
alternative energy sources—such as wind, photoelectric, geothermal, and
hydrogen technologies—show considerable promise, the United States con-
tinues to rely heavily on fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas, and coal, for
its generation of electricity.
Pollutants from fossil fuel combustion damage the atmosphere and cause
serious health risks. They are heavily regulated by the federal government.
Most people agree as well that the major by-product of fossil fuel combus-
tion, carbon dioxide—released into the air in millions of tons annually—is
a primary greenhouse gas. Every kilowatt generated by hydroelectric facili-
ties, especially during periods of peak demand, saves the release of these
pollutants from fossil-fueled plants, which otherwise would be stoked to
their maximum production.
As Norman points out, this picture is incomplete. Certainly, production
of hydroelectricity is pollution free, but when the larger context of the reser-
voir is included, the picture is less cheery. Decaying vegetation is its own
source of carbon dioxide and methane. A taller dam means a larger lake,
and for some time following its construction the vegetation inundated by its
rising waters will produce these gases. Their release into the atmosphere
must be factored into the savings in fossil fuel pollutants prevented by the
use of the dam’s electricity.
Pacificorp is to ‘‘big electricity’’ as Exxon is to ‘‘big oil.’’ Despite the
green rhetoric of its representative, Mr. Toolen, one can imagine that the
company’s essential interests are in producing and marketing an increas-
ingly scarce but greatly demanded product. This is not to say, of course, that
the company has no environmental sensitivity, but suggests that its social
responsibilities are subordinated to its profit interest, as is necessary in the
competitive market. By emphasizing the ‘‘CCRP’’ promotion of hydro-
power, Pacificorp can gain additional leverage with the state legislature and
the citizens of Coos Bay and be well received at the FERC hearing. This is
not to imply hypocrisy on the part of Toolen or the industry he represents.
It is the business of business to contribute to the greater material welfare by
providing an essential service within a free-market system. By acting com-
pletely in its own self-interests, as well as those of its stockholders, the
industry would defend its actions as producing consequences that benefit
the larger community.
River Run or River Ruined 175

Who Pays? Who Benefits?

Whatever these advocates of the larger dam claim about its favorable conse-
quences for tourism, the bottom line, and the general welfare, this kind of
thinking raises serious moral questions for human and nonhuman life—
questions that broadly concern justice. The Indians represent several of
these issues of justice. The history of the interaction of the local tribes with
the federal government is not a happy one. The former struggled for decades
to attain recognition as tribes, thereby receiving the legal reservation rights
that accompany that status. More than three hundred Native American
communities in the United States enjoy tribal status, with others in various
states of application. Some smaller tribal groups are legally nonexistent in
the eyes of the federal government because they refused to enter into treaties
with the United States in the nineteenth century. The small tribes around
Coos Bay originally were marginalized by their invisibility; as a result, some
of their traditional lands were parceled out, with ownership passing to
farmers and others. Confederation was somewhat helpful, but it failed to
give the tribes the power to have their interests fully recognized. The new
dam project would result in the disappearance of yet more of their land
beneath the expanded reservoir.
Although Dale grants that the predicament of the tribes and the historical
treatment of them are reprehensible, she seems to emphasize the other half
of the story. The Indians have done well with businesses related to the Chap-
man Gorge Reservoir. Economically, they have improved their condition
with jobs, new roads, electrification of their community, new schools, and,
one would expect, improved health care.
The ethical concerns go beyond this happy ending, however. One con-
cern highlights a weakness in the utilitarian approach of recommending
actions with consequences that bring the greatest benefits to the greatest
number of persons who are affected by the action—the so-called principle
of utility (see chapter 1). The catch is that the ‘‘greatest number affected by
the action’’ does not necessarily include all who are affected. Utilitarianism
simply requires that the most preferable moral action maximize the average
good for everyone who is affected. There is no obvious insistence that this
good, the benefits of that action, or the costs of achieving it should be dis-
tributed equally to everyone involved. Some may receive more benefits than
others for no good reason, in violation of the principle of distributive jus-
tice. Some may be required to bear greater costs than others, even if they
also receive benefits, in violation of the principle of contributive justice.
176 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

With respect to the tribal federation, both principles are violated,

although one could argue that because the tribes received considerable eco-
nomic benefits from the original dam and stand to receive additional bene-
fits from its enlargement, the requirements of distributive justice are met.
The Indians might beg to disagree, however. This is not the case with con-
tributive justice. No other group involved in the construction of the dam
paid so dearly for their benefits. The small farmers and perhaps the fisher-
men will join the Indians in paying further for reconstruction. The farmers
will find themselves in a less-than-competitive position with the inevitable
growth of agribusiness, given the abundance of irrigation water promised
by the new dam. The fishermen, whose livelihood vanished with the precipi-
tous decline in salmon stocks, will now surrender all hope of recovery if the
Pacificorp purchase is approved. The tribes lost their traditional hunting
lands—and with them a good part of their culture. Even the development
and improvements brought by the dam as blessings contributed to this cul-
tural impoverishment. These costs are not incurred by the non-Indian com-
munity of Coos Bay—certainly not by most others in Oregon and the
Northwest who will profit from CCRP hydropower from Chapman Gorge.
Apart from the inequitable distribution of costs and benefits, another
question of justice is to be found here, again affecting primarily Native
Americans, small farmers, and fishermen. All business transactions carry
some degree of risk; such is the nature of capitalism. With Pacificorp and
the city of Coos Bay, these risks, which appear to be minimal, are well
understood, factored into future strategies, and mitigated in various ways
by good business practices. These groups are the voluntary risk takers.
Questions of justice concern the involuntary risk takers: the Indians, farm-
ers, and fishermen. These groups, which are most at risk from the plans for
the dam, also have the least say in their destinies and less control over the
negative possibilities that accompany the risks. Indeed, ‘‘risk’’ is too weak
a term here because it is virtually certain that these groups will suffer from
the new dam. This combination of loss of control over their future com-
bined with vulnerability brought on by the outcomes of decisions made
without their contributions results, once again, in a frustration of justice.
Norman makes the additional point that the electricity generated by the
new dam is not needed by Coos Bay. Instead, Pacificorp will export it to
other regions. Likewise, the vast amount of produce from expanded agricul-
ture is more likely to be consumed in Los Angeles than in southwest Ore-
gon. Despite the economic advantages that remain in Coos Bay, these
River Run or River Ruined 177

consequences of regional, national, and international corporations harvest-

ing resources of particular areas for consumption elsewhere represent a real-
location of benefits and raise an additional question of justice. In developing
nations it represents a far greater problem than in the United States because
of increased poverty among greater numbers of people living around the
impacted area, lack of responsible governmental oversight, a willingness to
put development first at all costs, and the need to pay off large international
debts.

The Importance of Virtuous Behavior

Dale is impressed by Norman’s point and reflects on the irony of the envi-
ronmentalist mantra, ‘‘Think globally, act locally.’’ Restoring and expand-
ing Chapman Gorge Dam will bring inevitable impacts, good and bad, upon
the people and natural environment of the Coquille River watershed and
the marshes at Bandon. If Toolen is to be believed, however, the CCRP
benefits will be enjoyed by all Americans and, indeed, by peoples of the
Earth, as well as the Earth itself as a planetary ecosystem. Considerable
pollution will be avoided by the increased availability of hydroelectricity.
With Chapman Gorge online, and with other alternative energy sources,
perhaps even the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge would be spared the dam-
age of invasive drilling for the extraction of oil.
Quite possibly, Norman—despite his enthusiasm for the natural environ-
ment of Coos County—feels conflicted in advocating a position that would
cancel out this global good. Perhaps not. He could argue that if all our rivers
ran free and the conduct of Americans reflected that value, we would not
need either the oil or the hydropower in the first place. There is something
to be said for this position. Americans—and, increasingly, humanity at
large—define themselves largely in terms of material pursuits. We have an
insatiable appetite for power sufficient to liberate us from material limita-
tions. ‘‘Know no limits’’ is the bracing claim of one credit card company.
Our consumption of energy and goods is fueled by overriding consumer
values that often conflict with traditional values of the good citizen.
This kind of discussion can turn sermonic quickly because it is a shift
from the ethics of utilitarianism and even human dignity and justice to an
ethics of virtue. What counts is not what one does but who one is. Virtues
have to do with standards of excellence in human conduct that classically
have included temperance and fortitude, or what we would call today mod-
eration and discipline. Virtue ethics also includes a willingness to subordi-
nate personal desires for the good of the larger community—the expression
178 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

of the time-honored virtue of civitas. This virtue certainly is not encouraged

by the prevailing philosophy of radical individualism or that of a free-mar-
ket economy, with its insistence on increasing consumption of material
goods as an expression of personal fulfillment. Another revealing commer-
cial slogan: ‘‘Some things are priceless; for everything else, there’s Master-
Card.’’ Yet every commercial that ends with this bit of wisdom begins with
a happy family or personal event that would not have been possible without
the credit card. Despite the warm conclusion, it seems that one can charge
even priceless experiences.
Political advocates of expanded use of fossil fuels to meet growing energy
needs want to maintain the ‘‘lifestyle’’ of Americans. Norman and many
others would recommend otherwise. A good dose of constraint and conser-
vation would reduce levels of energy consumption and therefore the need
to build thousands of additional power plants. In other words, there is a
direct relation between our energy crisis and our collective character as a
people.

The Costs to Nature

The costs of enlarging the dam are not limited to humans. The salmon and
the saltwater marshes also stand to lose. Dams in the Pacific Northwest
have had a major impact on the natural production of salmon. When the
fish are denied access to their natural spawning grounds upriver from the
dams, the levels of their historic populations plummet. So-called fish ladders
or artificial waterfalls by the dams ease the problem only slightly. Even if
some fish are successful in reproducing, the smolt—immature salmon the
size of minnows—depend on the river current to carry them downstream.
They often lose their way in reservoirs or are killed while passing through
turbines. Hatcheries offer some remedy, but biologists are concerned with
the reduction of the gene pool of some species in the process of artificial
reproduction. The danger, of course, is not only to the livelihood of fisher-
men but also to the diversity of the sea as species of salmon continue to
appear on the endangered species list.
Wetlands on the deltas of rivers affected by dams fare no better. They
depend on the nutrients swept downriver and on the flushing action of the
river to maintain the variety and quality of plant and animal residents.
Diminished flows alter radically the makeup of the wetlands and open them
to invasions by opportunistic or exotic species, as well as to accumulation
of toxic pollution from nearby towns and cities.
River Run or River Ruined 179

All in all, dams are deceptively simple. They are huge concrete and
earthen plugs that create lakes and generate power. Their repercussions,
however—good and bad—are many. And they raise serious and complex
moral questions, as the characters in this case realize only too well.

Questions for Discussion

1. Hydropower is clean, cheap, and renewable. These characteristics

are economic and environmental requirements for an energy source.
Why, then, are many environmentalists opposed to hydropower?
2. Local Native American tribal communities are among those who
apparently would profit most from a new Chapman Gorge dam.
Why do they oppose it?
3. While new dam construction is under attack in the United States,
huge projects are under way in many developing countries. Through
Internet research, identify three such projects. What are the moral
issues with the dams in these cases?
4. Dale wants to maintain the old dam. Her position lies somewhere
between removing the old dam entirely to establish a free-flowing
Coquille River and constructing an even larger dam. Do you accept
her arguments for the status quo? Give reasons for your opinion.

Notes
1. American Rivers website, www.americanrivers.org.
2. ‘‘Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making,’’ World
Commission on Dams report, November 16, 2000, available at www.dams.org/
report (accessed February 12, 2003).

For Further Reading

Boyle, Robert. ‘‘Can You Spare a Dam?’’ Amicus Journal 20 (Fall 1998): 18–26.
‘‘Dams and Dam Removal.’’ American Rivers website, www.americanrivers.org.
‘‘Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making.’’ World Com-
mission on Dams report, November 16, 2000. Available at www.dams.org/
report.
180 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

Lowry, William. Dam Politics: Restoring America’s Rivers. Washington, DC:

Georgetown University Press, 2003.
Reisner, Marc. ‘‘Coming Undammed.’’ Audubon, September–October 1998, 58–66.
Robbins, Elaine. ‘‘Damning Dams.’’ E: The Environmental Magazine, January
1999, 14.
United States Society on Dams website, www.uscid.org/⬃uscold/.
 ten

Nature Creates Deserts Too

Addressing Desertification in China

A s Lin Xu walked out of the provincial office building to start

his long bus ride home, he was preoccupied with worry. At the
next meeting he and others would discuss a proposed government
plan for addressing desertification in the Sanjiangyuan. Two years earlier he
had left his job as assistant manager of a small factory outside Beijing to
move back to his native Qinghai Province because his parents were old and
needed him. His father was a herder on the Tibetan plateau and could no
longer travel the long distances required to find winter forage for his herd.
Neither of his parents wanted to leave Qinghai, and he was the only son, so
it was his job to take care of them. He had not even tried to convince them
to come live with him; his two-room apartment in the city was too small
for them and Lin’s own family, and they would have been miserable in the
middle of the industrial area. So he had moved his wife and son to his par-
ents’ village and again become a herder, as he had been before he left home.
Last year he had been chosen to represent a group of local villages at a
meeting that was part of the government’s attempt to assess the agricultural
environment in northwestern China. At that meeting Lin had described the
desertification as racing, not creeping, across his area of Qinghai. This rapid
desertification forced the herders to leave their contracted allotments in the
wintertime—because the allotments no longer had enough grasses to sup-
port the herds—and move the herds into other counties; there had even
been sporadic violence. He recognized that this process only advanced the
desertification, both by overgrazing of the areas not yet desertified and by

181
182 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

allowing the rats to multiply and further degenerate the abandoned grass-
land, but he insisted that the herders had no alternatives. They lived just at
subsistence level already. Population levels had been dropping for more than
a decade as young people left to find work elsewhere. Now the desertifica-
tion had become so severe that many of the lakes, rivers, and wells had
dried up. For the past two summers Lin’s village had had to buy water
trucked in from a spring five kilometers away.
As a result of Lin’s participation in that meeting, he had been appointed
to another committee composed of government officials in agriculture and
environment from all of the provinces that were part of the Sanjiangyuan,
the three-rivers area of northwestern China—the area that formed the head-
waters of the Yangtze, Yellow, and Lancang (further south called the
Mekong) rivers. One-quarter of the water in the Yangtze, half of the water
in the Yellow, and 15 percent of the water in the Lancang originated in the
Sanjiangyuan area—at least it had, until the intensification of desertification
in the 1990s.
As Lin participated in the work of the Sanjiangyuan environmental plan-
ning committee, he learned that desertification was a massive problem in
China. Deserts occupy one-third of Chinese territory and grow by 2,400
square kilometers per year. More than 110 million people live in areas
affected by desertification, and people in other areas are increasingly
affected as well by the vicious sandstorms that blow off the desert areas. A
desert dubbed ‘‘the heavenly desert’’ is now only 70 kilometers from
Beijing—and moving closer. The rate of desertification in China, the experts
said, is eighteen times the world average.
In these meetings Lin learned about several ways that the people of his
village were increasing the local desertification. When their contracted graz-
ing lands were no longer sufficient for their herds, most were forced to
reduce the size of their herds. To make up for the lost income, many became
facai diggers. Facai is a black moss that grows in the barren hills and is a
popular food in south China. They also dug up the grassland for licorice
root—a basic ingredient in many Chinese folk medicines. With land cover
already sparse, such digging, he was told, accelerates desertification, though
without it half the local populations would starve in the winters. Until the
water ran out, some of them also were cultivating small gardens, even
expanding them as other income sources dried up. Abandoned cultivated
areas also contributed to desertification because there was no longer any-
thing to hold the topsoil in place.
Nature Creates Deserts Too 183

What now had Lin worried was the plan that the experts were devising
for the Sanjiangyuan area. Although many of the experts agreed on what
should be done for specific areas, they disagreed on general goals. One of
the problems was that desertification seemed to have many different causes,
and one of them seemed to be climate change.
Some of the environmental officials from the State Environmental Protec-
tion Agency had argued that nothing should be attempted to reverse the
general pattern of desertification caused by climate or climate change, both
because such efforts were largely doomed to failure and because attempts
to reclaim these lands would eat up China’s limited resources, which were
better saved for reclamation efforts that had a chance of success. Instead,
they argued, efforts should be channeled into reversing the desertification
that was caused or accelerated by human activities. The environmental
officials emphasized sustainability: Efforts should go toward restoring land
that could then be self-sustaining without additional inputs to continually
restore it.
Agricultural officials, conversely, emphasized China’s need to reclaim as
much usable land as possible—not only farmland and pasture but forests as
well. They pointed out again and again that China has one-quarter of the
world’s population but only 7 percent of the world’s arable land and that
since 1949 one-fifth of that arable land had been lost to desertification and
erosion. China’s forest coverage is only 13.9 percent—about half the world
average—and rapid deforestation, which had been halted by government
decree only the previous year, had contributed to desertification. One-third
of China is now desert—more than twice its amount of arable land. For
these officials, sustainability could not focus only on sustaining resources
and animal habitat; it also had to include sustaining the entire popula-
tion—as well as sustaining economic growth.
The environmental officials objected that such thinking had been respon-
sible for the ‘‘reclamation’’ in the northern province of Heilongjiang, in
which thousands of young soldiers and revolutionaries between the 1950s
and 1970s had turned the wetlands of Heilongjiang into farms to produce
food for China’s masses. The aggressive agricultural development turned
millions of hectares of swamps, marshes, and forests into farms, but by the
1990s the devastating consequences were clear: The area, which once had
served as a sponge to hold and slowly release water that otherwise would
cause floods, became subject to tremendous erosion that silted up the rivers
and caused the most destructive flooding ever recorded. The weather
184 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

changed, hailstorms battered the area, and native bird and animal popula-
tions disappeared. Now large parts of Heilongjiang were being reclaimed
again—this time back to wetland—at a cost of billions of yuan. Land use,
they concluded, must be based first not on the needs of the human popula-
tion but on the soil, climate, and natural contours of the land.
Lin and the two other representatives of local populations in the Sanjian-
gyuan area thought that sustainability also should include sustaining the
local population. Lin did not think that the needs or desires of the human
population were the only criteria for resource planning, and he accepted the
need for state regulation. In fact, he had argued with many of his neighbors
who thought that the government plan should focus on restoring the local
herding economy. His parents’ friends had insisted that the local culture
was based on herding and spoke of the large herds that they and their par-
ents had maintained over many years; these herds had provided an adequate
income for whole families.
‘‘When the herds were large,’’ Lin’s old neighbor, Hui, had repeated,
‘‘only a few children left for the cities. Most stayed here and took over their
parents’ herds.’’
Lin did not think such times would return soon. He was afraid that if
government efforts to improve the pastureland were successful, the local
people would simply increase herd size until the land was once again
degraded and then supplement their income from smaller herds by digging
up the facai and licorice root—and the cycle would repeat itself. Yet he also
was afraid that, although the plan might be good for the land and good for
the future of China, it might not provide for the present and future welfare
of the peoples who lived in the Sanjiangyuan.
Both of the other two Qinghai village representatives were Muslim, and
they felt this fear even more strongly. They spoke of greater suffering among
their people, extending over generations. They told stories of the great fam-
ine of 1929—in which their grandparents had seen cannibalism—and the
famine of 1960, in which they had been forced to eat tree bark and seeds to
survive. If the new plan called for enforcement of bans on herding and grass
digging, many villagers would be forced to starve. Muslim residents of
Qinghai had even less trusting relations with the government than the rest
and would not easily accept such regulations.
The night before Lin was to leave for the next meeting, he confided his
worries to his wife, Mu, as she prepared an herbal tea for his father’s persis-
tent cough. ‘‘I don’t understand how the committee can hope to draw the
lines accurately between the different areas,’’ he said. ‘‘The experts are clear
Nature Creates Deserts Too 185

that a few areas have been desert for many generations and that climate
change has been expanding in those areas. For most of the areas, however,
we have no idea when they became desert or whether they became desert
because of climate change or human activities, so how can we know what
parts are reclaimable and which are not?’’
‘‘But surely the people who live there know how the state of the land has
changed between their own time and that of their parents and grand-
parents,’’ Mu suggested.
‘‘Not really. They focus on a bad weather year or famines—dramatic
events that stick out in their memories or in the stories of the elders. They
can tell how the size of their herds decreased from generation to generation,
but the degeneration of the land is so gradual that they only know the year
that there was so little grass that they had to slaughter much of their herds.
Many of the allotments were deliberately cut up to include both dry and
grassy areas; it was easy to miss the gradual shrinking of the grassy areas.
And they weren’t aware that as the grass gradually decreased, they failed to
reduce herd size, so they overgrazed the land. It seems almost impossible to
distinguish the natural from the human causes of desertification. So how
can the experts making this plan possibly know where it can be reversed
and where not?’’
Mu sighed. ‘‘Why are you so anxious about this? You are not responsible
for the plan. It will not be you who will be judged on whether it succeeds
or not. It is up to the experts to decide.’’
‘‘But what they decide will determine whether there are any people left
in this region of Qinghai when our son is grown,’’ he said. Mu was silent,
unwilling to upset Lin by reopening their disagreement over returning to
Beijing after his parents died, as she preferred. She wanted to resume her
work as a pharmacist’s assistant and to send their son to the better schools
that were available in the city.
When Lin arrived at the meeting the following afternoon, he saw a huge
map of Qinghai on the wall, with vivid colors demarcating the new pro-
posed sectors of the environmental plan. As the vice-governor explained,
the center of the new proposal was a nature reserve of 31.8 million hectares,
covering parts of sixteen counties in southern Qinghai. Twenty-five closed
areas, totaling 6.2 million hectares, were to be protected areas for the
endangered wildlife that live there, which included thirty species of birds
and twelve animal species. No logging or other human activities were to be
allowed in the closed areas. Lin noted that this area included the reserve
patrolled by the famous game warden Zhaba Duojie. Zhaba had worked to
186 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

stop gangs of armed men in four-wheel-drive pickup trucks from hunting

the endangered chiru antelope for the soft fur under its chin that is used to
make shahtoosh shawls. Trade in the shawls is outlawed globally, but on
the black market such shawls sell for as much as $10,000. On November 8,
1999, local officials announced that Zhaba had committed suicide by shoot-
ing himself in the head. Environmental experts in the capital became suspi-
cious, especially after they learned that there were three bullets in Zhaba’s
head, and the case became infamous throughout China.
The vice-governor continued, explaining that the closed area of the
nature reserve also contained several sectors that had been logged and
required immediate replanting of trees as well as degraded grasslands that
required action to control the rat population and that then would be seeded
with native grasses. The plan included the building of an ecological research
and monitoring station in the reserve and enforcement of the ban on human
activities.
Circling this closed center zone of nature preserve would be a 5 million
hectare buffer zone, designed to be half open and half closed. The open
areas would be available to herders for grazing of sheep and cattle in limited
numbers that would be monitored and adjusted annually. Outside this sec-
ond zone was to be a 20.6 million hectare multifunction test zone to be used
for scientific experiments and tourism.
All three of the village representatives immediately checked to see in
which sector their own areas were located. They all discovered that their
villages were in the multifunction test zone, and their questions to the plan-
ners focused on these zones.
‘‘What does multifunction test zone mean?’’ Lin asked. ‘‘Will we be
allowed to herd as in the past? What about our grazing allotments?’’
The answers from the officials were neither clear nor reassuring.
‘‘It depends,’’ they said, ‘‘on the condition of the land in specific areas of
the allotments. Most of the allotments were able to sustain herding in recent
decades, so they probably can be restored relatively quickly with a tempo-
rary herding ban of only a couple of years—if funding is available to plant
trees as windbreaks, for rat control, and for reseeding large barren areas.
While the bans are in place, families will receive maintenance food supplies.
But it all depends on the level of funding; we may have to concentrate the
funding on a few areas for a few years, and then move the funding to other
areas. Local officials will have to decide if herding is to be allowed in areas
that are designated for reclamation for which funds are not yet available,
but if there is herding the numbers will be strictly controlled. And, needless
Nature Creates Deserts Too 187

to say, all grassland digging will be forbidden, and herd size will continue
to be controlled on the basis of the condition of the land after it is restored.’’
At the end of the meeting, Lin waited for his bus with the two Muslim
village delegates. All were upset at the news they had to take back to their
villages. The Muslims especially were distrustful of the promise that the
government would send food supplies to sustain the people while the ban
on herding lasted. ‘‘We know what will happen,’’ said one. ‘‘The first ship-
ment will arrive late, the second later, and the third not at all. It will enrich
some bureaucrat.’’
Lin acknowledged that this scenario was possible. He was even more
concerned about whether his local land would continue to support the pres-
ent reduced population, much less the former levels of population that his
people hoped for. If the number of sheep and cattle that could graze on each
allotment must decrease to stop the cycle of overgrazing, the allotment sizes
would have to increase for people to be able to earn enough to support their
families, especially with a ban on digging. That meant that there would be
fewer allotments—perhaps many fewer, if not all of the previous allotments
were restorable. Fewer allotments meant fewer families.
Lin wondered how the officials—those who would decide which sections
of allotment could be reclaimed and which couldn’t—would make that deci-
sion. In his former factory, such decisions about productivity had always
required a baseline for comparison, but here he saw no useable baseline.
Each of the farmers in his village knew his own allotment and could have
selected without much trouble the parts that until recently had been among
the most fertile, even if the borders of such areas were unclear. Would the
bureaucrats who were drawing up the rules choose to reclaim these parts
that had been lost only recently? Would they even have any idea which parts
had been fertile until recently—or could be again? Nothing was said at the
meeting about conferring with the allotment holders before working out the
rules of the local plans. As he climbed on the bus for the long ride home, he
wished that he had more faith in the experts or in the wisdom of the govern-
ment. Instead, he reassured himself that if worst came to worst, he and Mu
were educated and employable, and they could pack up his parents and take
them back with them to Beijing if they had to.

Commentary

Global analysts are clear that China has made tremendous strides in indus-
trialization in the past quarter-century. Yet this progress—which has raised
188 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

the standard of living throughout China and eliminated the massive famines
that, until recently, killed millions of people every few years—came at a
high environmental price. Eight of the ten international cities with the most
polluted air are in China. Much of south China is faced with a massive
water shortage, and before most logging was halted in 2000, China had lost
millions of hectares of forest. This synopsis of environmental concerns does
not even mention problems with garbage, toxic waste, and endangered ani-
mal and plant populations. Not until the mid-1990s did China begin to face
the extent of its environmental quagmire. The first step was to seek funding
to research the extent of the problem and begin monitoring. By 2000 several
projects had begun. But global climate change has increased the burden on
China’s attempts to halt desertification by further raising temperatures in
many of the semiarid areas of China, hastening the advent of desertification.
Urban issues, not desertification, generally take top priority in China. To
the extent that the government does need to satisfy the peasantry, it looks
primarily at the more densely settled rural areas. The Sanjiangyuan proba-
bly got the attention that it did because of concern over China’s rivers. Not
only were the major river systems increasingly given to silting and flooding;
long stretches of major rivers were actually drying up. The Sanjiangyuan
was a likely place to begin addressing the silting and the loss of water. Envi-
ronmentalists pointed out that restoring forests and grasslands would not
only hold the soil in place so that it did not erode and silt up the rivers,
causing flooding, but also would help to attract rain clouds and restore the
original rainfall cycle.

Unclear Origin of the Problem

The Sanjiangyuan project is distinct from many of the current environmen-

tal projects in China today precisely for the reason that Lin points out: The
problem is not simply one of human destruction or pollution; it is a complex
web involving the interaction of natural destruction with human destruc-
tion, without any clear line of demarcation. For example, we know that
although geography and weather patterns can aggravate pollution, human
activities create the pollution, and we can test to detect which human activi-
ties in particular produce the problem. Faced with desertification, we have
evidence of climate change that seems to have begun long ago, as well as
overgrazing, logging, and widespread grass digging. We cannot even be sure
that the desertification that began hundreds of years ago in the Sanjiang-
yuan was not itself initiated by overgrazing. We simply do not know. This
Nature Creates Deserts Too 189

lack of knowledge is very worrisome for Lin, who was trained in a scientific
mind-set. He wants a baseline—a constant to which all the subsequent
experimental results can be compared. The case exposes what some people
might regard as the soft underbelly of environmentalism: the fact that it
is not entirely science driven. Yes, ecologists use experimentation, measure
results, and make comparisons. But we do not always have the data that
would be ideal. In this case, the project has drawn the specific boundaries
of the three zones arbitrarily, without a baseline study or historical data.

Precautionary Principle versus ‘‘Sound Science’’

The reason for haste is the acuteness of the destructive processes, which
could be seriously advanced in the years such studies would take. In many
ways, this haste is an application of the precautionary principle—which
calls us, in situations of serious risk in which there is not yet great clarity
about the exact destructive process, to act in ways that are most likely to
protect the biosphere. It may later turn out that some measures taken on
the basis of the precautionary principle were unnecessary. This outcome is
considered to be better, however, than refraining from action until the
causes of an environmental problem are clear, only to find that it is too late
to save the threatened parts of nature.
In many situations around the world, the precautionary principle has
become the rallying cry of environmentalists, whereas ‘‘sound science’’ has
been the slogan of those who favor economic development. Both sides agree
that when an environmentally dangerous activity is identified and confirmed
it should be stopped. The differences arise when a destructive consequence
has been identified but the activity that causes it has not been identified
definitively. Environmentalists use the precautionary principle to argue that
initial steps must be taken on the basis of the present state of scientific
knowledge, without waiting for definitive results. Advocates of sound sci-
ence insist that until definitive results are in there are only guesses and that
these guesses are too unreliable to be the basis of social decisions that affect
the welfare of large numbers of people.
In this particular case, it is not clear how the committee could even go
about obtaining the data that would be necessary for sound science to ren-
der a definitive result. Some of the most important missing data are historical:
When did desertification begin in the Sanjiangyuan, and under what condi-
tions? Was it being overgrazed? Were there any human activities that could
have contributed to desertification at the time? In the decades since, what
190 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

human activities have been present, at what levels, and did any of these
activities correlate with increasing levels of desertification? There is simply
no way to obtain this information from the past.
In fact, Lin has failed to note—and the committee has failed to explain—
what will occur in the multifunction test zone. The intention for this huge
zone is that different sections of it will be monitored for different kinds of
interventions. For example, the initial condition of several sections will be
assessed, then one of those sections will remain unchanged as the control, a
second will have one type of experimental intervention, a third yet another
type of intervention, and so on. Within five to ten years, scientists should
have some clearer ideas about the different elements in the destructive proc-
esses. They can test to discover the level of herding at which grassland dete-
riorates; under what conditions rats multiply fastest; and under what
conditions, if any, digging for roots is not destructive.
Some kinds of experiments will be more difficult because they require a
huge scale. Testing to discover what size replanted forest one needs to
restore rainfall patterns to an area requires beginning with many thousands
of hectares of replanted areas. This criterion represents a huge expenditure,
given the possibility that it may turn out to be impossible to restore previous
rainfall patterns. Lin is worried that his village may be prohibited from dig-
ging and may be forced to drastically reduce herd size—at great cost to
individual families and the village community in general—when it is not
clear that such measures will prove effective in restoring land. The cost of
such measures is evident not only in individual and local sacrifice, however;
such measures also can cost the nation of China millions of yuan that could
be used to provide food, schools, and health care for Chinese who now lack
these basics. Yet what is the alternative? Can China allow desertification to
continue to destroy thousands of square miles of land every year?

Environmentalism in China

Environmentalism has been one of the most interesting new movements in

China in the past decade or two; compared to other nations, China had a
late start. At the level of government, environmental concerns long took a
backseat to the drive to industrialize, to modernize, to export. Given Chi-
na’s history and the global political system, this dynamic is understandable.
It also is typical of the governments of developing nations. China’s involve-
ment with environmentalism, however, is different from the experience of
Nature Creates Deserts Too 191

other developing nations with regard to nongovernmental organizations

(NGOs) and religion.
The Chinese government continues to be largely intolerant of NGOs and
religion. No foreign NGOs are allowed to operate in China, and native
groups that in other nations would have set up as NGOs have been forced
to find other organizational frameworks. Given China’s recent openness—
even warm invitation—to capitalist ventures, most fledgling environmental
organizations have incorporated as for-profit agencies even though they
never make any profit. Some have remained informal research groups that
feed their findings to news media outside China. Others have made use of
the increased freedom of the Chinese media to focus on specific environmen-
tal problems and have had great success with prompting government offi-
cials to intervene to protect specific animals and habitats, to deal with
corruption that prevented implementation of environmental laws, and to
institute new research.
The Chinese government’s lack of tolerance for NGOs is related to its
intolerance for religion. The government has never particularly enforced
atheism and has been especially tolerant of native Chinese religions—as
long as they are private, largely domestic religions, without public or institu-
tional aspects. The arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of thousands of
Falun Dafa members since the late 1990s is believed to be prompted by their
organized challenge to the monopoly of the Chinese government in terms
of social control. The government will not tolerate other organizations
mediating between the government and its citizens. People can believe in
their god(s) and worship as individuals or in their families, but religion must
stay out of the public forum.
The treatment of NGOs in China stems from this same policy of
unchecked government control. In many developing nations, NGOs wield
tremendous power, especially when they are networked and can present a
united front to the government. The fact that many NGOs in developing
nations are funded by different institutions—often from a variety of differ-
ent developed nations—and implement the policies and reporting rules of
their funders tends to undermine effective networking, though exemplary
networks exist in some areas of the world (e.g., South America). The reason
NGOs wield such power within developing nations is that in many cases
they have come to exercise some of the normal functions of government,
which the local government is too poor or weak to carry out. In much of
the developing world, for example, NGOs are the primary source of health
care, especially in the areas of infant and maternal health, family planning,
192 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs. Many NGOs have con-
sistently better demographic data for their urban districts than does the gov-
ernment. In many nations NGOs are much more knowledgeable about the
needs and status of the majority poor than are government agencies. In fact,
many government agencies are largely dependent on NGOs for funding,
supplies (e.g., government family-planning programs), and data. Education
is another area in which NGOs play essential roles in developing nations,
especially religious schools.
The typical pattern is for environmental NGOs to take the same general
shape as NGOs that have been working on health, nutrition, human rights,
family planning, job creation, and housing in developing nations. Most are
funded, at least in part, by foreign—sometimes international—agencies.
This outside funding helps cover not only operating costs but also project
costs. This is one reason for the influence that environmental NGOs wield:
They can go to the governments of developing nations and say, ‘‘We have a
plan for restoring this 25,000-hectare area of grassland so that it will again
support thousands of people and animals, and we can supply 75 percent of
the funds necessary, if you will agree to continue monitoring the area to see
that it is not overgrazed again.’’ China, however, has not tolerated other
groups’ influencing public policy, so it has banned NGOs.
Chinese hostility to religion and NGOs has eliminated two of the most
potent pillars that environmentalism has had in much of the developing
world. At the grassroots level, religion has been the single most important
impetus to environmental activism around the world. Among indigenous
peoples, traditional religious mythology and rituals support attitudes of rev-
erence for and connection to nature—which, in the context of varied envi-
ronmental crises, easily translate into environmental activism. In the United
States, Native American tribes and the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) have been partners in a long list of lawsuits seeking redress of envi-
ronmental destruction. One of the best known was the 1996 Isleta Pueblo
v. City of Albuquerque decision, in which the federal district court agreed
with the Pueblo tribe and the EPA that the city of Albuquerque, six miles
upstream from the Pueblo reservation, could no longer pollute the water to
such a degree that the Pueblo could not use it for religious ritual purposes
or farming; instead, the city had to spend $300 million to upgrade its water
purification system to ensure that the water downstream from Albuquerque
was as clean as the water upstream from Albuquerque.1 The tree-hugging
women of South India, the Gikuyu Green Belt movement in Kenya, and the
Amazon tribes’ fight against botanical piracy and oil exploration in their
Nature Creates Deserts Too 193

region are only a few of the many examples of indigenous religion, with its
sacred connection to a particular god, a particular people, with a particular
habitat, supporting the protection of the biosphere.
In China, both Buddhism and Taoism could offer significant support to
environmentalism if they were allowed to have a public role. Forests play a
major role in Buddhism. Buddha himself retreated to the forest for medita-
tion, achieved enlightenment under a Bo tree, and ordered his monks to
spend the rainy season months in forest retreats. Buddhist monasteries fre-
quently sit amid forests, and the forest is understood as conducive to medi-
tation. Although this understanding of nature as useful for the human task
of meditation grants nature only limited standing, the Buddhist principle
of codependent origination reflects the basic environmental principle: the
interconnectedness and interdependence of all creation.
In many ways Taoism is a nature religion. Its basic tenet urges humans
to imitate nature and its harmony. In Taoism nature is more than simply a
support for human spiritual awareness; nature is understood as enspirited—
as having a reality of its own with which humans can commune and from
whom they can learn. The folk elements of Taoism are especially imbued
with this sense of nature as alive and communicative. Although the different
elements of the biosphere are distinguished, there are no sharp divisions
between humans (living and dead), animals, plants, streams, and oceans.
Reverence for the whole and for all the elements that make up the whole is
necessary.
For China’s many peasants, folk Taoism meshes well with the awareness
of and respect for nature that is common among farmers. But the lack of
organization in Taoism—the lack of any centralized system for training Tao-
ist priests or for effecting the Taoist traditions passed down in families—
makes it difficult to bring the environmentalism that is implicit in Taoism
to the foreground. This resource remains largely untapped.
The Confucian tradition works against environmentalism in a variety of
ways, perhaps most centrally by supporting what has been a traditional
Chinese characteristic: accepting the government’s authority in many areas
of life that in other societies are considered private or under the authority
of other bodies. But one important way this acceptance of governmental
authority in private, even familial, life has benefited the environmental
movement involves the success of the one-child policy in China. Few other
governments in the world could have successfully imposed a limit of one
child on their urban population and two children on their rural population.
Yet the Chinese people accepted both the necessity of the limitation and the
194 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

authority of the government to impose it. If the one-child policy (which

began in 1979) had not been implemented, the world would now have an
additional billion people or more, and the environmental situation in China
would be much worse than it is now. In other areas of environmental policy,
however, the combination of the breadth of authority entrusted to the gov-
ernment and the enforced absence of other social institutions in China
means that environmental protection there must rely almost exclusively on
the government: Either the government must take the initiative in environ-
mental protection or the government must be carefully prompted to imple-
ment environmental protection.
This is not to say that there are no individual initiatives regarding the
environment. Some government agencies (e.g., health and family planning
clinics) have encouraged local environmental actions such as litter collec-
tion, tree planting, and composting. In some places there are the beginnings
of neighborhood recycling programs. The general citizen tendency, how-
ever, is to wait until the government has given some directions for action.
Lin’s wife, Mu, is typical in this regard. She does not understand why Lin is
so worried. After all, the plan is the government’s responsibility, not his,
and government officials will be held responsible for any failures. Given this
attitude among many Chinese, it is a good thing that in the past decade the
Chinese government has shown greatly increased interest in its environment
and in serious efforts to preserve and restore it.

Questions for Discussion

1. Why is desertification a serious issue for China?

2. How had the local herders added to the problem of desertification?
3. Compare the impacts of desertification with the impact of the new
plan for addressing desertification for the local herders of Qinghai
Province. Which does Lin Xu prefer, and why?
4. What is the role of the government in environmentalism in China,
and how is it unusual compared with the government role in other
nations?
5. Why is Lin Xu worried about the potential efficacy of the plan to
restore the Sanjiangyuan? What does he think is its vulnerable point?

Note
1. When the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 1998, the lower court
decision stood. See D. D. Ford, ‘‘State and Tribal Water Quality Standards under
Nature Creates Deserts Too 195

the Clean Water Act: A Case Study,’’ Natural Resources Journal 35, no. 4 (1995):
771–802.

For Further Reading

Bezlova, Antoaneta. ‘‘Environment—China: Desertification Eats into Productive
Land.’’ Environment Bulletin, May 31, 2000. Available at www.oneworld.net/
ip52/may00/07-29-003.htm or IAC Expanded Academic Index 1998–.
Casey, Michael. ‘‘Warming Saps China’s Goal of Taming Deserts,’’ June 19, 2007.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19232648/.
‘‘China’s Ecological Environment Is Worsening.’’ Asiainfo Daily China News,
December 4, 2001. Available at IAC Expanded Academic Index 1998–.
‘‘China Tackles Environment-Damaged Longest Inland River.’’ Xinhua News
Agency, July 25, 2000. Available at IAC Expanded Academic Index 1998–.
Jing, Zhang. ‘‘Environment—China: Province Curbs ‘Aggressive’ Agriculture.’’
Environment Bulletin, May 12, 2000. Available at IAC Expanded Academic
Index 1998–.
Li, Changsheng. ‘‘China’s Environment: A Special Report.’’ EPA Journal 15, no. 3
(1989): 44–47.
Ng, Isabella, and Mia Turner. ‘‘Toxic China.’’ Time International 153, no. 8 (1999):
16–17.
Pocha, Jehangir. ‘‘China’s Growing Desert.’’ In These Times, October 13, 2006.
www.inthesetimes.com/article/2849.
Wang, Chenggang. ‘‘China’s Environment in the Balance.’’ The World and I 14, no.
10 (1999): 176–84.
 eleven

Rewilding
Restoration of Degraded Ecosystems

B
‘‘ ut Professor Wu, my father says that the restoration of the
parcel will be beautiful, like a golf course, and his company will
pay for it,’’ Jenny exclaimed, without even raising her hand to be
recognized by her biology teacher.
‘‘Yes, yes,’’ said Richard Wu. ‘‘I know what the Carson Corporation is
proposing to do to make the prairie pretty once they’ve finished extracting
the ore. For a moment, however, consider the project from the point of view
of a budding ecologist: Is that what we want as the fate of a pristine and
original grassland ecosystem?’’
Richard—known as Rick to most of the citizens of Bentonville, a small
college town in the middle of the northern Great Plains—was a popular
young biology professor on the state university extension campus. Since
joining the faculty four years earlier, all he had wanted to do was to teach.
His popularity and expertise, however, had pushed him to the center of a
controversy he would rather have avoided. Jenny’s father, a senior corpo-
rate vice-president for an international mining company, was on the other
side.
‘‘But think about it, Mr. Wu,’’ Jenny persisted. ‘‘The company owns the
mineral rights to all that land outside of town, including the Omaha parcel.
They’ve been mining in this part of the state for two generations. That’s
why Bentonville prospers so much. Until now nobody has complained.’’
‘‘Your logic probably would earn you an A if this were a class in corpo-
rate public relations,’’ Rick responded, ‘‘but we’re studying environmental

196
Rewilding 197

science, and for the next few weeks we’ll be looking at prairie ecology. Now,
once again, what would an ecologist say about a plan that would destroy
one of the last remnants of a historical prairie grassland by digging up the
zinc ore underneath and then replacing the surface with a carpet of fairway
grass?’’
‘‘But Professor Wu . . . ,’’ Jenny protested plaintively before she was
interrupted.
Elaine, sitting behind Jenny, also forgot classroom etiquette and blurted,
‘‘The ecologist would see nothing but a green desert.’’
‘‘Ah,’’ Rick responded. ‘‘That answer is right, so your sin of interruption
is forgiven—if, of course, you apologize to Ms. Ritchner.’’
‘‘Sorry, Jen. Last Saturday the four of us on my class project team
assigned to survey the biodiversity of the Omaha parcel counted fifteen spe-
cies of tall and short prairie grasses. We haven’t identified all of them, but
the ones we recognize are all native. If the mining takes place, they’ll be
gone, replaced with one kind of turf.’’
‘‘And what would that mean?’’ prompted Rick.
‘‘It would mean that the variety of grasses would be zero, and what’s
worse, all the life that depends on these native species would vanish too.
What a loss!’’ Elaine exclaimed.
‘‘Yes, scientifically your prediction is correct, but to call it a ‘loss’—well,
that’s a moral and political judgment. Although I’d prefer to stick to the
science, it’s hard to avoid the politics.’’ Rick sighed and confessed, ‘‘That’s
why I reluctantly agreed to head up the citizens’ committee opposing the
mining project.’’ Then he added humorously, ‘‘Why did I drop that course
in public speaking while I was at UCLA?’’
After class, Jenny approached Rick in the hall. ‘‘I still think that mining
that land is good for everybody, but this course has taught me that the
prairie we never pay much attention to is, as you said, a rich and diverse
community of thousands of species of plants and animals. It seems wrong
to destroy it. I think Dad and I are going to have a talk,’’ she said with the
smile of a young woman who knows that she can easily get the loving atten-
tion of her father for her opinions.
Rick held out little hope that anything would come of the Ritchner family
dinner conversation. He focused instead on the long list of parties he had to
call over the next several days as he marshaled opposition to the Carson
Corporation plan to mine five hundred acres of prairie outside of Benton-
ville. The area included the fifty-acre plot of original grassland—the Omaha
parcel—that had been deeded to the city several years back by a cattle
198 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

rancher who had preserved it from grazing because he thought it was special
too. Rick knew that Carson had the law on its side, but he also knew that
many of the good and prominent citizens of Bentonville were opposed. He
also was in contact with several major environmental groups whose
response was very encouraging. Rick hated controversy and dreaded the
prospect of going to court as the plaintiff in a suit to halt the project. He
would, though, if it meant preserving the Omaha parcel.
So he was surprised when the phone in his office rang two days later.
‘‘Professor Wu, this is Harry Ritchner. My daughter is in your biology class.
Do you have a moment? I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.’’
‘‘Of course,’’ said Rick, bracing himself slightly for the contentious con-
versation he was certain was about to follow.
‘‘Jenny can be quite persuasive. I hope she pursues a career in law,’’
Ritchner began. ‘‘She set me to thinking about those grasslands in the mid-
dle of our proposed mining site. I hadn’t realized how strongly people like
you felt. Carson has tried to be a good citizen and neighbor throughout the
state and here in Bentonville. We want to continue that tradition. I’ve spo-
ken to the central office. We agree that the environment is important and
that we have some responsibility for it. So we intend to go further than
simply reclaiming the land following the mining operations. Carson will
pay for the restoration of the Omaha parcel. I mean by that completely
reconstructing the area so that it resembles the original as closely as possi-
ble. We want you to advise us on it, and it seems to me that it will make a
wonderful long-term project for your classes for some time to come. Carson
thinks this is a fair, even generous, offer—a real win-win situation for us,
the community, and the grasslands.’’
Rick sat back in his chair—stunned, relieved, and confused. He realized
that Ritchner was waiting for his response, which initially was a spontane-
ous ‘‘Wow.’’ Recovering his composure, he continued, ‘‘You’re right, sir,
Carson’s offer is generous. We can talk again, but I feel the responsibility to
report back to people in the community who have expressed concern.’’
‘‘Of course,’’ Ritchner agreed. ‘‘I’m confident that their response will be
as positive as yours. In any case, this is what Carson intends to do. Keep me
informed, and have a good day.’’
Rick’s day was very good—until he walked into his biology class and
shared the news with his students. Then he learned why he had felt that
earlier confusion when Ritchner called.
‘‘Yes, Jose, you have a comment?’’
Rewilding 199

‘‘God made the Creation, and we’ve destroyed most of it. We don’t have
the decency even to preserve fifty little acres as God made them. That’s
wrong.’’
‘‘Terry?’’
‘‘Look, it took thousands, even millions, of years to make the grasslands
through evolution. Now we want to do it all over again in three or four
years. Sure, the new system will look and act like the old one, but it’ll be a
fake, a forgery—like a copy of a masterpiece of art.’’
‘‘Jose, you want to conclude your comment?’’
‘‘Terry’s right-on. Isn’t actually making something and calling it ‘wild’ a
contradiction? I mean, being wild means not being created or managed by
humans. How can you have a wild artifact? Let’s face it, we would be doing
this for ourselves, not for nature. You can’t respect nature by destroying it.
No area can be wild unless it’s left alone. We have no right to disturb, much
less destroy, any more wilderness.’’
Rick hadn’t expected this. ‘‘OK, one more comment,’’ he said reluctantly,
in recognition of the rising debate. ‘‘Robert.’’
‘‘I really disagree. I’m not worried about God or evolution, Professor
Wu. This is a great opportunity to restore nature. And, more importantly,
even to improve it.’’
Robert held up his copy of Aldo Leopold’s famous book of essays, A
Sand County Almanac. ‘‘You told us this was a wonderful book, and it is.
Leopold says that we have a duty to protect what he called the ‘integrity,
stability, and beauty’ of ecosystems. He also believes that humans have a
duty to restore, manage, and even improve on ecosystems.’’
‘‘Improve! How do you improve on nature?’’ Jose exclaimed loudly,
throwing up his hands.
‘‘Let’s calm down,’’ ordered Rick. ‘‘It’s becoming a little ‘wild’ in here.
Continue, Robert.’’
‘‘Why can’t we take the Omaha parcel and make it richer and more
abundant than the original? Let’s put in thirty species of grasses. As long as
Carson foots the bill, let’s add some sand hills and wet depressions and
divert a creek or two to flow through it. These features will attract all kinds
of wildlife that aren’t in the parcel now.’’
Jennifer waved both arms, seeking permission to speak. Rick couldn’t
deny her. After all, she had started all of this with her candid talk with her
father.
‘‘Robert’s right. All we’ve talked about in class is biodiversity as the sin-
gle most important feature for the health of an ecosystem—Leopold’s integ-
rity, stability, and beauty. If biodiversity is a good thing, then more
200 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

biodiversity is even better. I think God would approve. After all, the Bible
says that Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden to till and keep
it. The Omaha parcel is our garden. Who’s to say that we can’t improve on
evolution? We’re not producing a counterfeit; we’re making a new ecosys-
tem in the style of the old one. I think you’re wrong, Terry. One day the
parcel will be wild again because it will be a healthy ecosystem functioning
in the way God or nature intended. What else could ‘wild’ mean?’’
Rick left his class that day more confused than ever. Out of the mouths
of babes, he thought, recognizing the irony of a situation in which his stu-
dents were teaching their instructor. For a course in environmental science,
the discussions were becoming decidedly philosophical and theological
and—because of their consequences for the future of the parcel—very politi-
cal as well.
Rick walked over to the Prairie Resources Institute, a research center
on campus funded primarily by the state agricultural commission. He was
working closely with Ben Gilman, the institute’s director—the only real
ecologist in town and Rick’s expert confidante on the Omaha parcel. Now
would be a good time to have a talk.
‘‘Ben, do you have a few minutes?’’ asked Rick, leaning through the
doorway to Ben’s office.
‘‘Rick. Hi!’’ said Ben with obvious pleasure as he swiveled his chair away
from the desktop computer and its screen filled with data from a current
project. ‘‘I got your message about Ritchner’s offer. Been meaning to return
your call, but we’re pushing a deadline to get a report to the ag commission
for a legislative subcommittee, and I’ve had no time. No time, that is, until
now. Come on in.’’
‘‘Thanks,’’ Rick said as he sat down. ‘‘Ben,’’ he began, ‘‘I’m confused.
Initially, I was tremendously elated with Ritchner’s offer for Carson, and,
frankly, I still think it’s the best—perhaps the only—way to go. But I’m not
as sure as I’d like to be. Politics is a lot messier than science—and I’m a
scientist, not a politician.’’
‘‘I know exactly how you feel; I feel that way almost every day as I write
these reports for the commission,’’ Ben said with a sympathetic grimace.
‘‘But you’re not here for confession or therapy, right?’’
‘‘Right,’’ Rick agreed. ‘‘I’m here to learn what you think about the offer.’’
‘‘Well,’’ Ben said, ‘‘I don’t like it, for several reasons. One concerns the
Carson Corporation and another the loss of an original and irreplaceable—
that’s right, irreplaceable—patch of wilderness.’’
Rewilding 201

‘‘This sounds familiar,’’ Rick said. ‘‘About an hour ago I heard some-
thing like that from my students.’’
‘‘Then you may hear it again from me,’’ Ben said. ‘‘First, Carson’s offer.
As an international mining company, they’re good at destroying things.
Their operations in metallic ore extraction—zinc, copper, and bauxite—in
North and South America are notorious for the mess they leave behind.
Look at what happened in central Arkansas. For fifty years Carson strip-
mined vast areas of pine and hardwood forestland for bauxite. Sure, after
the ore was depleted and they left they made an effort to carpet the area
with grass—much of which died because of the pollutants dumped in the
soil from on-site chemical conversion of ore into alumina. The place now
resembles a patchy green-and-brown moonscape, complete with craters.
The fact is, the Carson Corporation is a massive and efficient machine dedi-
cated to the destruction of the land. Its promise to restore the Omaha parcel
is part of that mentality. Fifty acres out of five hundred—hardly a costly gift
to the good people of Bentonville.’’
‘‘Well, perhaps I’m an innocent romantic,’’ Rick said, ‘‘but I believe that
Ritchner’s intentions are true. He seems to sincerely have the best interests
of the parcel, the school, and the town in mind.’’
‘‘Sure, Ritchner’s heart is in the right place,’’ Ben agreed. ‘‘But the corpo-
rate headquarters? You can bet that their generosity is derived from the
bottom line. They want the publicity, and I guess that’s OK. But I’m con-
cerned that they will use this project to green their public image and reputa-
tion as an environmentally sensitive company and to blunt criticism the next
time they gouge out a wild place anywhere in the world. I think that corpo-
rations use restoration as a way to ease their conscience and an excuse to
destroy wilderness.’’
Ben clasped his hands just below his chin in a posture of concentration
and continued. ‘‘The real bottom line for us is that by accepting his offer
and all the advantages it brings to the parcel and the college, we’re partners
in this destruction.’’
‘‘Everything you say is true,’’ agreed Rick, ‘‘but look at it pragmatically.
Apart from accepting Carson’s offer, our only other alternative is to go to
court to stop the project. Let’s say we win. Carson would surely appeal. If
the judgment were reversed, Ritchner would be forced to withdraw the offer
to restore the parcel. The law doesn’t require restoration. At best we’d likely
get the green carpet treatment, in the worst sense of the term. If they didn’t
win on appeal, the legal precedent would slow similar projects in the United
States. But how many Omaha parcels are out there? My guess would be
202 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

very few. The decision would have little or no effect in South America or
Africa, which welcome investment and jobs. We’d have our fifty original
acres, and that’s about all.’’
‘‘Original? Yes, and that’s pretty important,’’ said Ben, ‘‘and this leads
to my second point. ‘Restoration’ is not an accurate term. It suggests restor-
ing the original by healing the damage, just as a physician would restore the
lost function of a patient’s arm or leg. After Carson does its thing, though,
the parcel won’t have the equivalent of an arm or a leg. The mining opera-
tion will require local shafts, so the topsoil and subsoil may survive, but the
company’s roads and buildings will certainly degrade the ecosystem beyond
recovery. So restoration really means re-creation or complete reconstruction
of the ecosystem, literally from the ground up. The original Omaha parcel
will be gone forever, and in its place we will see, at best, a similar but brand-
new system. You may as well allow them to bulldoze the parcel and com-
pletely start over on some other part of the prairie that’s more convenient
and closer to the university.’’
Rick frowned and then launched his counterpoint. ‘‘I agree that the loss
of the original is tragic, but look at the opportunity we have to give it
rebirth. Not perfectly, I know. A precise replica is impossible because we
have no catalogue of the bacteria, fungi, soil invertebrates, insects, and spi-
ders that prosper in the parcel. Some won’t return, and new ones will move
in to take their place. With Carson’s money, however, we can enhance the
system by adding to the variety of species and make it richer, more robust,
and a wonderful laboratory and educational resource for the college. We
can even introduce endangered species of grasses and animal and give them
sanctuary.’’
‘‘Rick,’’ Ben responded with some frustration in his voice, ‘‘you’re like
those people at NASA who would ‘terraform’ the planet Mars by giving it
an atmosphere and introducing oceans and plant and animal life. They see
it as an improvement on the original barren red planet. Isn’t Mars good
enough? Can’t we leave well enough alone? Good or not, nature is nature.
Our attempts to reconstruct nature are not only unnatural—nature, almost
by definition, is self-composing and goes on its own—they also are acts of
domination. Humans are creatures, not lords. Domination is, well, tacky.’’
Here we go, Rick thought, wishing that he also had stuck with that
course on environmental ethics at UCLA. ‘‘Why is it unnatural for us
humans to change the natural landscape? Don’t we count as natural too?’’
Rick glanced up at a framed painting on Ben’s wall depicting several
Indians riding on horseback in a buffalo hunt. The scene triggered another
Rewilding 203

thought. ‘‘For thousands of years, our predecessors here on the Great Plains
would burn the grasses regularly to drive the buffalo or antelope closer in
the hunt or to flush out rabbits and other animals. As nomads they unwit-
tingly transported seeds that were indigenous to one part of the Plains to
another part, where they established themselves as exotics, perhaps driving
out less competitive local species. Maybe some of the grasses we want to
save in the Omaha parcel were introduced by the Indians. Does that make
them less than ‘natural’? My point is this: We’ve been changing nature for
millennia—not as alien invaders intent on domination but as an indigenous
species doing its natural thing.’’
‘‘I agree,’’ said Ben. ‘‘The Indians were limited in what they could do,
however, and even limited themselves because of their spiritual sense of
respect for natural beings. We’re not limited, and Carson certainly sees the
land very unspiritually—as a commodity. Some self-restraint would be a
virtue, don’t you think? And some respect for this rare jewel of a remnant
of the original Great Plains would help too.’’
‘‘OK, OK,’’ Rick sighed. ‘‘I came here for enlightenment, but you hand
me a dilemma. Do we pursue preservation of the original parcel, taking
Carson to court if necessary, and possibly lose the offer of restoration? Or
do we accept the offer and try to restore—excuse me, re-create—the ecosys-
tem, using Carson’s big money to improve on the original?’’
Ben leaned back in his chair. ‘‘Which horn of that dilemma do you
choose to impale yourself on?’’ he asked.
Rick smiled and continued. ‘‘I’m inclined to believe that accepting the
generous grant is the best decision. But your arguments are powerful, Ben.
I remember what my grandmother, who came to California from China in
the early 1900s, told me as a child about the traditional principle of wu wei.
This phrase translates into something like ‘take no unnecessary action’ in
an intrusive or invasive sense. ‘Let a sleeping dog lie’ is probably how we’d
put it. Here it would mean, ‘Leave the Omaha parcel alone.’ That tradition
is almost gone, even in China, but I wonder if it remains valid in a larger
and perennial sense. Does it apply here?’’
Rick excused himself from the conversation with Ben, saying he had to
return to his office to pick up a set of papers to grade that evening and
return the next day. When he arrived, another message from Ritchner was
waiting. He played it back. ‘‘I wanted to let you know that the corporate
headquarters informed me today that the mining project will begin as soon
as possible, even as early as next month. Our offer still stands. How would
you like to come to dinner here at my home this evening? We—and I mean
204 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

the three of us, including Jenny—can work out some further details on the
restoration of the Omaha parcel. We need to submit a budget quickly.’’
Rick didn’t return the call immediately. He needed to think during his
walk home from his office. As he walked across the campus he ran into five
of his students from the biology class on their way to the parcel to count
species—this time arachnids. They were very excited about the research.
Soon he would have to report to them his decision for or against Carson’s
offer. He knew he had all the scientific information he needed; no list of
species of spiders would help. Unfortunately for this biologist, the issues
went far beyond the mere collection and analysis of data. Ritchner had to
have a decision soon. Rick could certainly use his grandmother’s counsel
now.

Commentary

The origin of restoration ecology, as the science of rehabilitating or recon-

structing degraded landscapes has come to be known, is relatively recent.
Some historians have traced its beginnings to the efforts of Aldo Leopold
more than forty years ago to restore a natural prairie and pineland commu-
nity on his farm in Wisconsin, which he and his family lovingly called the
‘‘Shack.’’ In recent decades environmentalists, recognizing that we were
diminishing natural landscapes at an alarming rate, have turned their atten-
tion to healing the land as well as preserving it.
Although restoration ecology is a science, it shares many features with
the profession of engineering, including functions of design and construc-
tion (or reconstruction) of broken landscapes. Indeed, early efforts were
attempts by civil engineers to reconstruct the likeness of degraded land-
scapes—especially those deeply scarred by strip-mining—by using the same
bulldozers and backhoes that had been used in the original acts of destruc-
tion. Restoration is not merely surface reconstruction, however; in addition
to returning the cosmetic appearance of the landscape, it also seeks to re-
create, to the greatest extent possible, the dynamic functional relationship
between the living and geologic components of the original. Thus restora-
tion ecology is a true basic science as well as an applied science. There is
much to be learned about the essential character of landscapes in the effort
to return them to their natural states.
There also is much to be learned in ethical reflections on such projects.
Experience from the medical sciences has shown that many advances are
Rewilding 205

accompanied by novel moral quandaries. This dynamic also is true of resto-

ration ecology. Although environmental ethicists have long debated the
morality of radically altering pristine landscapes for human benefit, there is
little debate concerning the desirability of restoring them once they have
suffered degradation. Fundamental and often novel issues do arise, how-
ever, with regard to the motives and goals of these efforts. They begin with
an examination of the very words we use to analyze issues in restoration
ecology and to argue positions concerning them.
Americans have a well-deserved reputation for being pragmatic and
action oriented; we value results over reflection. We derisively liken abstract
philosophical analysis to the mythical pugilist who reflected so much on the
theory of boxing that he never threw the first punch. Arguments about
words are dismissed as useless semantics. This impatience with analysis
itself often is a vice rather than a virtue, however, because pragmatically,
confusion about the meaning of ideas can lead to muddled thinking, wrong-
headed decisions, and, ultimately, poor results. This case in restoration ecol-
ogy is an example of the power of words and their meaning in scientific and
political discourse. Discussions revolve around several ideas—particularly
nature and wilderness—and the values associated with them. The positions
of the participants often are dictated by their understanding of these funda-
mental terms. They demonstrate that confusion, even about everyday
words, is a persistent danger, because even the most innocent of terms car-
ries the weight of numerous definitions. For example, any good dictionary
has at least a dozen meanings for the word ‘‘nature,’’ many of which are
shared with the entries for wilderness. ‘‘Natural’’ has more than twenty.
The moral desirability of the restoration of disturbed or destroyed natu-
ral areas is determined, in part, by the understanding of these concepts of
wilderness and nature in the debate. No one in our case argues from purely
pragmatic or ecological terms that the Omaha parcel should be mined and
then restored because we have the means to do so or that it should remain
untouched because we do not have the capability to restore it. Both sides
seem to agree that a viable prairie ecosystem that resembles the original and
perhaps even improves upon it in some ways can be rebuilt. The primary
disagreement is about the ‘‘natural’’ or ‘‘unnatural’’ restoration and
whether it is suitable and proper with regard to what those words mean.
We note here, by way of disclaimer, that this case, like all idealized cases,
is constructed as an educational device. The two positions—preservationist
and restorationist—are represented by purists who present their arguments
in unambiguous terms. Admittedly, one does not often find such purity in
206 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

the real world. Many restorationists sympathize with preservationists and

make every effort to protect the historical continuity of a natural commu-
nity even as they restore it, and many preservationists applaud the good
intentions of those who rebuild degraded landscapes. For all of his ambiva-
lence, at least Professor Wu is well informed by the tidy positions of each
camp; like the reader, he must deliberate the merits of each side and arrive
at some decision. Fictionalized cases offer ideal situations that encourage
the use of critical thinking skills; such skills will prove useful in muddled
real-world situations. In this sense they are ‘‘deceivers yet true,’’ to proof-
text our point with a biblical phrase.

The Preservationist Position

The preservationists—those who want to save the parcel from the Carson
Corporation’s bulldozers—subscribe to specific values to be found in an
account of ‘‘nature’’ and the ‘‘natural’’ that emphasizes the autonomy of
ecosystems. In a truly natural state, an ecosystem is the result of a long
period of unbroken historical development or evolution. It also is spontane-
ous or wild; it goes on its own, influenced minimally, if at all, by human
intrusion. Jose and Terry represent the preservationist position. They argue
that even the best intentions at restoration are wrongheaded because nature,
by definition, cannot result from acts of human fabrication. Where is the
wildness in that? A restored Omaha parcel might resemble the original, but
it would be a manufactured replica—or worse, a forgery. Only the historical
original can be truly wild and natural. If the essence of nature is pristine or
virgin independence and if the continued existence of natural places is our
moral duty, then we should fight for the preservation of the parcel.
The preservationist position is dualist. It assumes that human culture and
wilderness are entirely separate and incompatible realities. Thus the irresist-
ible expansion of human civilization into nature (e.g., the American frontier
experience) is cause for lamentation because it portends the end of nature
as a region free from human incursion. Many thinkers have argued that
this understanding of nature itself is a social construct—an idea that raises
numerous problems, especially because it promotes the notion that most
human activity is unnatural and that culture, with all its problems and cri-
ses, is inferior to nature, a blight on creation.
In this case, Ben is a preservationist and a dualist, but his emphasis is
based on a deep suspicion of the motives of the Carson Corporation to act
in a virtuous way. Perhaps if he were pushed to reflect further on the matter,
Rewilding 207

Ben would confess that he harbors reservations about the inherent good we
often attribute to persons. Individuals, he might concede, can be good in
their interpersonal relationships; Ritchner is an example. But institutions?
Not so. They tend to be exploitive and self-serving, perhaps as representa-
tive of the prideful human tendency to see ourselves as superior and domi-
nant. The ghost of Murray Bookchin, whose perspective of social ecology
is introduced in chapter 1, looks over Ben’s shoulder and whispers into
his ear. For Ben the questions have to do with institutional arrogance and
dominance and personal virtue and character.

The Restorationist Position

The other side—the restorationist position—is represented by Robert,
Jenny, and, to some extent, a conflicted Professor Wu. They define ‘‘natu-
ral’’ and ‘‘wild’’ in entirely different ways that allow for Carson’s offer of
reconstructing the parcel after the zinc ore has been extracted to be a realis-
tic option. For the restorationist, that which is natural functions naturally—
that is, just like the original. An ecosystem is a dynamic, self-contained, and
integrated community of many living and nonliving components. The his-
tory and evolution of the system are immaterial. Its origins and whether it
was constructed or self-evolved matter less than its richness and healthy
functioning. This process definition of the natural allows not only for resto-
ration but also for improvement. Robert’s enthusiasm for adding new spe-
cies to the parcel and modifying its geologic layout is inconceivable for the
preservationists but consistent with the restorationist notion of complex
natural order.
Note that the perspective is ecocentric and not biocentric. The restora-
tionists do not argue that the components of the system are themselves
reconstructed. The species of wild grasses, other plants and animals, and
soil—the good citizens of the prairie community—are not assembled by
human hands. They are reintroduced into the degraded site and encouraged
to come together to reproduce the original functional integrity of the ecosys-
tem. Therefore the restored Omaha parcel is properly described as natural
in that it is not artificial but synthetic, and synthetic nature is true nature,
to be valued for its own sake.
Restorationists see no difficulty with human involvement in nature.
Anthropogenic activity—that is, change brought about by human action—is
not illicit intrusion into wilderness. It is itself natural. In expressing his posi-
tion to Ben, Rick makes the point that the Plains Indians altered the ecology
208 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

of the prairie for thousands of years. Homo sapiens, a primate species, may
be more ingenious, constructive, and collectively powerful than any other
(although some scientists claim that bacteria, not primates, rule the world),
but it is no less natural for its evolutionary success. Indeed, lest we declare
ourselves secure in triumph over Darwinian natural selection, we should
acknowledge that our foolish fouling of the global ecosystem eventually
may result in reducing us to an endangered species. In any case, restoration-
ists dismiss the dualist position by erasing the distinction between nature
and culture.
This continuity between nature and culture does not mean that there are
no important distinctions to be made between other creatures and ourselves.
Nature is spontaneous; humans are reflective. Nature is nonmoral. Humans
are decidedly and inescapably moral. That is, our species is responsible for
its actions in ways that do not apply to the rest of nature. This sense of duty,
of right and wrong, simply comes with the territory of living in culture. It
is as natural to us as speed is to the cheetah. Ben’s preservationist position
is sensitive to this dimension of human life. He questions the intentions of
the Carson Corporation and sees in the restorationist project an expression
of the universal human tendency to impose our preferences on nature wher-
ever possible. How prideful and presumptuous we are to believe that we
alone know better and can do better. In Ben’s eyes, this assumption of
dominion and the inherent right of humans to interfere whenever they
please is, ironically, at the core of even the restorationist position.

The Importance of Metaphors

Finally, to return to the pragmatic role that the understanding of words
plays in arguments and judgments with which we began, we note the impor-
tant place of metaphors. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a com-
parison is made or implied between two unlike things. Metaphors are
powerful expressions in thought. They shape discussion and disclose new
insights that are otherwise unavailable. Several metaphors are central in this
case. Terry describes the act of restoration as a forgery—a very negative
characterization. In this metaphor, nature or evolution is the artist, and our
restorative efforts are suspect in that they intend to replace the original par-
cel with a copy and pass it off as somehow equal to the original. The impli-
cation is that this is a deceptive act and hence less than virtuous.
Jenny counters with the image of the garden. The Omaha parcel is a
garden, and we are responsible gardeners who plant and till. Gardens imply
Rewilding 209

gardeners. Within this perspective, humans have a logical connection with

nature. The garden has the additional advantage of being a biblical image
from which the three monotheistic religions that take the Bible seriously
(Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) derive their common doctrine of humans’
God-given responsibility as stewards of nature. We were put here to mind
the garden, deputized by God as stewards or custodians of the creation.
Ben argues from the metaphor of medicine when he likens the process of
restoration to the reparative technology of the surgeon and draws conclu-
sions that are unfavorable to restorationists. In the case of the Omaha par-
cel, the patient dies (the parcel is destroyed by the mining). In this medical
model, restoration therefore is impossible.
The seriousness with which we take our metaphors indicates the power
of the verbal and social construction of nature. Thinking and, consequently,
the actions that arise from thoughts are shaped and directed by language
and other aspects of culture. Nature has an independence from culture such
that, when left alone, it goes on its own. Not so for human attitudes and
perceptions of nature. We construct a vision of nature, objectify that vision,
and build part of our world on it. When visions clash, debates begin.
In chapter 1 we quote Aldo Leopold’s famous dictum, ‘‘A thing is right
if it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic commu-
nity. It is wrong if it tends otherwise.’’ In the case presented in this chapter,
Robert notes the ambiguity of this duty. Preserving those features of the
Omaha parcel would mean fighting all efforts to plow it under. Yet these
three values also can be recovered and even enhanced through the opportu-
nities offered in the restoration of the parcel. As noted earlier, Leopold him-
self approved of managing the land with active efforts to improve it. One
wonders what his council to Professor Wu’s class would be.

Questions for Discussion

1. This case pits restorationists against preservationists. Does this

opposition always arise in environmental issues? Is it possible to be
both a restorationist and a preservationist and be consistent in your
position?
2. (Hint: Recall Bryan Norton’s pragmatic environmental ethics in
chapter 1.)
3. Using a good dictionary, find the entry for ‘‘nature.’’ Which of the
numerous definitions of ‘‘nature’’ best fits the restorationist’s posi-
tion? The preservationist’s?
210 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

4. What role does history play in the development of an ecosystem? In

your judgment, is it necessary for an ecosystem to have a history to
be authentic?
5. What is wrong with terraforming the planet Mars?

For Further Reading

Callicott, J. Baird. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philoso-
phy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999.
Cronon, William, ed. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1995.
Eliot, Robert. ‘‘Faking Nature.’’ Inquiry 25 (March 1982): 91–93. Reprinted in
Louis J. Pojman, ed., Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application,
81–85. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1995.
Katz, Eric. ‘‘The Ethical Significance of Human Intervention in Nature.’’ Restora-
tion and Management Notes 9 (1990): 235–47.
Oelschlaeger, Max. The Idea of Wilderness from Prehistory to the Age of Ecology.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.
Peterson Anna. ‘‘Environmental Ethics and the Social Construction of Nature.’’
Environmental Ethics 21 (Winter 1999): 339–57.
Pojman, Louis P. Global Environmental Ethics. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield,
2000.
Scherer, Donald. ‘‘Evolution, Human Living, and the Practice of Ecological Restora-
tion.’’ Environmental Ethics 17 (Winter 1995): 359–80.
Soule, Michael, and Gary Lease, eds. Reinventing Nature. Washington, DC: Island
Press, 1995.
Stone, Christopher. Should Trees Have Standing? Los Altos, CA: Kaufmann, 1974.
 twelve

Planning for Climate Change

T he city council for the sister cities of Tampico and Ciudad

Madero, Mexico, had been in special session for two days. Most
of the continuing business items had been dealt with, and now the
planning director, Adolfo Gutierrez, a tall, dignified man near retirement
age, was on his feet to address the members of council and their staffs: ‘‘We
all know of the various economic problems that face us. The world has
entered a period of global recession. Our already high unemployment rate
has doubled in just the last quarter, and we can expect that to rise over the
next year before it gets better. As the recession deepens into depression in
Europe and the United States, our tourist business steadily drops. Even
before this we faced a series of challenges, beginning with global climate
change and the high levels of air pollution in our city. We have talked about
both of these issues in the past, and, contrary to what you might expect, I
propose that now is the time to put a plan in place to address both these
issues.
‘‘We all know that the principal cause of global climate change is
increased levels of carbon dioxide [CO2] production. In our city, we have
four main sources of carbon dioxide: (1) the fleets of older cars and two-
stroke motorbikes that clog our streets; (2) the city’s dilapidated and pollut-
ing diesel buses, not to mention the many private buses that transport our
population; (3) the utility plant, also outdated and unnecessarily polluting;
and (4) the factories, especially Pemex, the national oil company. We have
felt helpless to do much about any of these, as both the city and the majority
of its citizens are without capital.
‘‘We have all seen what the industrialized nations are doing to combat
the economic recession: putting money they don’t have into infrastructure

211
212 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

that addresses both long unmet needs and the challenges of shifting from an
inefficient fossil fuel–based economy to a more mixed one that will lower
the carbon emissions that fuel global warming.’’ Murmurs spread as adja-
cent council members turned to each other with alarm on their faces. ‘‘No,
I am well aware that while Obama can borrow billions for his schemes, we
cannot. But the much higher gas prices in 2008 brought in millions of addi-
tional tax monies from the Pemex plant, which more than balanced some
of our losses from the tourist industry, and left us with some few millions
of pesos. Your planning office wants to propose some coordinated plans
that will help cool the city, improve fuel efficiency and lower particulate
matter, as well as improve mass transit as the first stage of developing a
modern mass transit system. I will yield the floor to my staff now, who will
explain the proposal. First is Carmen Delora, of the Parks Commission.’’
‘‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We in the Parks Commission
have a very limited budget, as you know. But I am happy tell you that we
have recently been awarded a grant from the Cooler Earth Foundation of
$1.2 million, for which we applied to the central government for a matching
grant. The grants are to plant shade trees all over the city. As some of you
may have noticed, about a decade ago the Parks Department agreed to
requests from the Tourism Department to plant palm trees, as the majority
of our foreign tourists come from colder climates and understand palm trees
as emblematic of sunny vacations and recreation. While well-intentioned,
this shift from shade trees to palm trees, both in terms of replacing old,
dying trees and in terms of new plantings, has contributed to the loss of one
of our most potent cooling forces: shade trees. Our plan is to plant about
thirty-five thousand shade trees, ranging in size from two to four meters
high, each year for the three years of the grant. We will aim for a variety of
somewhere between three and six species of tree, aiming for hardiness and
maximum shade. Our research department has chosen three appropriate
species and is looking for more. The biggest problem with tree planting is
not buying them or planting them, but getting them enough water over the
first three years so that they do not die. This is considerably easier to do
using the new heavy plastic sacks with tiny holes in the bottom that allow
water to flow to the soil over the roots slowly over a period of about a
week. We look to buy one for each tree.
We have worked out a schedule for filling the sacks by water truck about
every eleven to fourteen days. With these plastic sacks, we will not have to
buy more spraying trucks in order to water all new trees every few days, as
in the past. We have purchased a few more large tanks that will fit on the
Planning for Climate Change 213

back of existing Parks Department trucks and are trying to coordinate with
the fire department to be able to fill these tanks at the fire hydrants near all
the fire houses instead of having all the trucks return to the Parks Commis-
sion headquarters two or three times a day for refills. Depending on the
success of our efforts, we think we can lower the ambient temperature at
least one degree within five years.’’
As the council chamber filled with applause, Adolfo replaced Carmen at
the podium and introduced Maria Escobar, of the Transportation Office, as
the next speaker.
Maria, a stocky woman in her early forties with a shy smile that became
more confident as she made her presentation, began, ‘‘We propose to raise
the annual tax on fossil-fueled vehicles based on their pollution capacity.
Two stroke motorbikes, most trucks, and SUVs would all have roughly dou-
ble their present annual tax, with small efficient cars only paying a small
amount more. We will use the tax money to buy new electric buses like the
new ones many of you have seen in the capital. I calculate that we can afford
to buy three of the new buses immediately with the windfall Pemex taxes,
and with the increased vehicle taxes we could pay for four such buses every
year.
‘‘But our major proposal is that the city borrow the money to begin con-
struction on a light rail system—the first piece would run from Boulevard
Costero at the Pemex plant on the eastern coast along Calle Alvaro Obregon
onto Calle Francia/Avenue Madero, continuing to the end of Boulevard
Tampico Mante at the northern edge of the city. We would have to put
small parking lots along the route, so that people who rode their bicycles,
motorbikes, or cars to the train stop would have a place to leave them. And
we would have to have a guard who gives out tickets to those driving into
the parking lot and collects them from those leaving, in order to prevent
thefts. We already have a bus lane along most of this first route that is wide
enough for two trains, so we would not have to buy more land for the rail
line itself, only for the parking lots.
‘‘We know we can get some international funding for this, but it would
also entail much debt. This would only be the first line. Our transportation
engineer believes we need a second line to bisect the cities. The second
would begin at Altamira Street in the south, run up Calle Miguel Hidalgo
in the west to the intersection of Boulevard Adolfo Lopez Mateos at the
airport. We estimate we can build the first line in three years, and the second
in two years, if the financing can be made to fall into place without causing
delays. But even so, our system would need to be expanded to serve the
214 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

outer rings of the city we will have by 2035. Even the first lines will
undoubtedly involve a great deal of debt.
‘‘As the new electric buses come online, we will need to not only assign
them the most congested routes but also, when we have enough electrics to
completely cover the routes, we must ban private buses from those routes.
As ridership rises on the metrorail system, replacing polluting cars, motor-
bikes, and buses, CO2 production in the central city will drop dramatically,
along with other polluting gases. But we will also have to impose pollution
controls, at first banning only the worst performing vehicles—the ones that
put out choking clouds of particulate matter. We have been drawing up a
phase-in program that would give buses two years to meet basic pollution
controls, trucks three years, and passenger cars four years. By the fifth year
we would expect to be able to both raise the standards a little and further
reduce the tax rates on the least polluting vehicles in each class.
We understand that this is going to impose hardships. It will only work
if from the beginning we can ensure that there is an affordable alternative
for every bus, truck, and car that is banned from the streets and that, as the
rail line is completed, we can keep the rail commuting cost equal to or less
than the costs of previous types of transport. We are looking for seed money
from international groups that could be used to pay for both vehicle testing
stations and their equipment, and low-cost loans to bus and truck owners
who need serious repairs in order to meet the new standards. Our people
have to be able to get to work, to clinics, to markets. Marco Rodriguez will
now explain the plan for the rail system.’’
‘‘Hello! For those of you who do not know me, I am Marco Rodriguez,
assistant transportation director for the city. We are looking at a number of
light rail systems and have pretty much narrowed the choice to three. All of
these are not only among the least expensive but are also created for cli-
mates like ours where it is not absolutely necessary to heat or air-condition
the cars, and where the cars will run on rails at street level, as in the old
system that used to exist in Mexico City and the new systems in Brazil.
There will be rail yards at either end of the line. We have already bought
about eight to ten acres for rail yards at three of the four rail ends; the
fourth is impossible, as all the land is owned by Pemex. We will have to see
if we can work out something with them in return for their not needing so
many parking lots as more workers use the rail system. We made the land
buys through a variety of agents, very quietly, and got the land very cheaply.
Later land buys for expansion will be more expensive, as speculators will
be able to guess where we are going to want to put new lines and parking
Planning for Climate Change 215

lots. Two of the three rail cars we are interested in use rubber tires, which
would keep down the noise of the rail system. We are trying to find out
from other municipalities that use these systems with rubber tires how the
maintenance costs compare with metal wheels. A couple of cities in Brazil
use them, and we are waiting for their data. Are there any questions before
we go on?’’
Almost every council member’s hand was raised, and staff members were
passing notes to their council members about what to ask. The first to be
heard above the tumult was Berta Montoya, one of the younger women
members of the council: ‘‘This sounds like a huge project, one that will leave
us with tremendous debt at a time when we are not sure how our city or
our country will survive the next years. How would we pay many millions
in debt if the depression continues, if the world economy doesn’t recover?
Shouldn’t we be less ambitious until we see how the depression proceeds?
This seems reckless!’’
Other council members signaled their agreement. But Bernardo Trepana,
a commissioner who owned a local car dealership, took the floor next to
answer her: ‘‘This is just the time to do such things, if we can find the
necessary loans. Many of our people are out of work, and this plan will
mean hiring people not only to build the rail lines and the parking lots but
to man the testing stations and guard the cars and cycles. Also, we all know
that wages are falling. Never again will it be so cheap to build this system
as when so many are out of work. The global recession has shut down
factories all over the world. The cost of materials—the metals, plastics,
wire, all the materials—is way down, and so I think the companies making
these light rail cars will offer real deals on them in order to entice buyers.
Once the global economy recovers, the cost will go way up again. I think it
is a brilliant plan!’’
‘‘You would think it is a brilliant plan—I bet you think to get a piece of
the money, Bernardo,’’ accused Jaime Campo, another council member.
‘‘We all know that you own a lot of land around the city and that your son-
in-law works for the planning office! But most of us are more concerned
with staying out of debt, for ourselves and our city!’’
Before Bernardo and Jaime could get into an argument, Marco took the
floor again. ‘‘Peace, please! We have a major proposal on the floor here and
many people who want to address it. We need to be polite to one another
so that we can cooperate. It is the least that the people can expect of us
when so many of them are suffering in this present economic climate.’’
216 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

Juan Mendes spoke up. ‘‘We have heard some ideas about raising taxes
and spending them on electric buses and also that the land for the initial rail
depots at the ends of the first line has been bought. But we know almost
nothing of the proposed costs of this huge plan. What are you asking of us?
How can we vote on a project if we don’t know the cost of any part of
it, the timeline for completing it, even the capacity of the system you are
proposing?’’
Marco responded, ‘‘I have two different types of answer. As for more
information, yes, we have much more than we have given you so far, but
probably not nearly enough to satisfy many of you. We will give you the
data for what we have thus far. But we are asking you to commit to support-
ing this plan, despite what we realize is a very great risk. In order to make
this project happen, we must convince a number of investors, beginning
with the central government, but also including the World Bank and some
foundations, that we can and will complete this project, and that it will be
a demonstration project for other cities around the world. Our city is not
sustainable—it will not be livable if it continues to grow as it is now. It is
becoming more and more polluted, its streets more and more congested.
The health of children and the elderly is already affected, and the pollution
worsens every year. We are one, admittedly small, part of the global warm-
ing that threatens our planet. The congestion impedes transportation of
workers and materials from one part of the city to another, discouraging
companies from locating here, and raising all the costs of operating here.
We will reap back in health care savings and in increased efficiency much of
the cost of this investment. We want to be a part of the solution to global
climate change.’’
Francisco Sarmiento broke in. ‘‘But cars, trucks, buses, and motorbikes
are only part of the pollution in the city. What about Pemex? What about
the utility plant and all the factories? Why pick on just this part of the
problem? Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper just to set some antipollution
standards and enforce them?’’
Maria responded, ‘‘Yes, we could set some standards. But Pemex, as you
well know, is state-owned, and it will take time to get the government to
invest in cleaner refinery technologies now that the price of gas is down so
much. And if we impose higher standards on our other businesses, many of
them would simply move outside our enforcement area, and we would lose
the employment they provide. We can’t afford to be left with only Pemex,
especially in the middle of a recession with low demand for gas and oil.
This way, we can go back to these companies when we have reduced the
Planning for Climate Change 217

transportation time for their workers and their deliveries and work with
them to use restored profits to reduce their pollution. One step at a time.
And as for the utility plant, that is another big investment that will need
external funding. Right now, it will have to be enough that the recession
itself is depressing production at Pemex, in the utility plant, and at most of
the other plants as well. Depressed production is depressed pollution. But
perhaps the biggest reason to begin with transportation is that if global
climate change is going to be averted, the people at large have to be a part
of the solution. Just dealing with the corporate or governmental sector is
not enough. We need ordinary people to both see how they are affected,
and how they can make a difference.’’
Adolfo Gutierrez returned to the microphone. ‘‘This is only the initial
presentation on this project. It is a huge one, of monumental importance to
us, and we did not expect to take a vote on it today, or even at the next one
or two or three meetings. But we would like all of you to look at the infor-
mation that my staff are handing out now. These are the best estimates of
the population increases in the city over the next fifty years and the pro-
jected increases in both particulate matter and CO2 production, along with
some other pollutants. We have been trying to catch up with the population
increases in the city for many decades now, trying to build more roads, more
housing, more electric lines, more schools and hospitals, water lines, phone
lines, sewer lines, and always more factories—always more. And yet this
system we keep extending is not sustainable in many ways—it uses more
energy and more water than we should be using and creates ever more pol-
lution of air, water, and even soil. At some point we need to stop and begin
to reverse the process. In our opinion, the biggest risk is to continue to
extend this unsustainable system. So we ask you to read the statistics we
have gathered and tell us whether we should proceed with what admittedly
is a gamble—a new transportation model for the city—or continue trying
to expand the present system.’’

Commentary

There are many different aspects to this case. Though the vast bulk of cli-
mate experts agree that humans have caused an important part of the cli-
mate disruptions and rising temperatures in our world, principally through
emissions that trap gases in the atmosphere where they are heated by the
sun, there are still some holdouts who insist that whatever temperature rise
218 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

is occurring is part of a natural recurring cycle and not the result of human
action. Though virtually all experts agree that humans could do something
to mitigate the climate change trend that has already begun, there are differ-
ences about how that mitigation should be approached and how effective it
can be. There is increasing consensus that, if present rates of climate disrup-
tions continue unchecked, the Earth will eventually become unsuitable for
many forms of life now present, including human life.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, an international environmental treaty written
at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, nations were assigned target reduction
rates for CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfur hexafluoride, with indus-
trialized nations pledged to reduce these by an average of 5.2 percent over
the 1990 levels. The United States refused to sign the agreement, which was
a major obstacle to its success, as the United States produces a quarter of
these gases on Earth. In the years since 1992, scientific evidence for climate
change, including the melting of polar ice and glaciers around the world
and weather disruptions on every continent, has escalated steadily. The
warming of the oceans has endangered some oceanic populations, from
polar bears to coral reefs. But these gases not only have global consequences
in terms of warming (rising oceans, coastal flooding, increased desertifica-
tion) but also pose serious implications for local populations faced with air
pollution. The incidence of asthma and other lung diseases has been increas-
ing all over the world; Mexico City has some of the most polluted air in the
world, contributed by vehicle exhaust, industrial smokestacks, and utility
plant emissions, all trapped by the air inversions common to the location.
Children in cities such as Mexico City have the diminished lung capacity of
persons many times their age who breathe healthier air. This is why the
planners in the case point out that some of the costs involved in shifting to
mass transit and lower emission vehicles will come back to the municipali-
ties in diminished health care costs.
Mexico is an oil producer. It is not a large exporter, because its supplies
are only slightly larger than its own consumption. Mexican oil is govern-
ment owned and controlled. And because Mexico has had its own supply
of oil, like other oil-producing nations it has not been forced to conserve
energy for fear of being unable to afford to supply its own energy needs.
The absence of pressure to conserve oil has produced in much of Mexico,
over the decades, an indifference to waste. All over the world in the last five
decades, concern about energy waste has been principally based in concern
about cost; for those for whom energy is low cost or even ‘‘free,’’ there has
Planning for Climate Change 219

been little incentive to conserve. This has exacerbated the problem of fossil-
fuel air pollution in Mexico.
It remains to be seen if these joint cities can procure the size loans they
need to implement the light rail system at the center of this antipollution
plan. For our purposes here, we will not consider the economics of this
scenario, but will instead concentrate on two questions: Does this plan
begin at the optimum place to positively impact greenhouse gas emissions
and the quality of air in Tampico/Ciudad Madero, Mexico? Do the steps in
the implementation plan—testing motor vehicles for pollution, pegging
license taxes to pollution level, refusing licenses to the most polluting, and
putting into place first a north–south light rail line, and then an east–west
one—seem likely to ameliorate the quality of municipal air without causing
undue hardship to citizens? That is, these proposals will be evaluated both
in terms of their measurable efficiency in reaching the desired goal and in
moral terms of the level of justice they provide to all the agents involved in
the changes.

Efficiency and Justice

Efficiency in the use of resources is not solely a technical matter. It is an
important aspect of an ethical evaluation too. All resources are limited—
human resources and natural resources alike. All should be used in ways
that are sustainable, equitable, and contribute to the health and welfare of
all living systems. Waste of resources that are both limited and necessary
for life is immoral. While we are accustomed to understanding efficiency as
a criterion of judgment in capitalist systems, we often do not recognize it as
an ethical criterion. But efficiency in more traditional religious and philo-
sophical systems has often been called prudence, defined as the use of good
judgment in practical matters. In Christianity, prudence is the first of the
four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
Justice is a different perspective from which to evaluate the ethics of pro-
posals and systems. While equity demands that resources not be showered
on one person or group at the expense of another, justice demands that
persons receive what is due them, which can be based either on their value
as persons (and thus the same as equity) or on the value of their contribu-
tions or participation. For example, two coal-fired utility companies, one
that has spent millions to reduce its level of air pollution and one that has
ignored its emissions and the consequences thereof, should not in justice
be paying the same tax rate to rectify air quality. Payment rates should be
220 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

proportional to the damage the industry does. Justice is an important part

of every community, in that if the citizens do not perceive justice at work in
their community, they do not feel secure. In the absence of feeling secure,
each citizen attempts to protect only his or her own interests, with no con-
cern for justice for others, so that the common good of the community,
which rests on these feelings of security and commitment to the common
good, disappears from sight and consideration.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union has instituted an initial
market for carbon trading, under which companies buy and sell rights to
pollute. Industries that have reduced their carbon footprint can sell the pol-
lution they saved to other industries who have not, and the system is man-
aged so that there is ongoing financial pressure to reduce one’s emissions
so as to eliminate the need to buy pollution credits (which are constantly
contracting, to push the system toward reduction of pollution). The United
States is considering establishing its own carbon trading system. This trend
is a move toward having the prices of items produced reflect the full price
of their production, including the atmospheric clean-up costs. Ideally, it
incorporates both justice and efficiency. Most developing nations such as
Mexico are far from being able to establish carbon markets, but this city
council is attempting to move in this same general direction, with the addi-
tional problem of needing to avoid increasing the cost of transportation for
the poor majority of its commuters.

Impacting Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Some of the most obvious questions about the efficacy of this plan were
voiced immediately by council members. Why not begin with emissions
standards for the Pemex plant, which is by far the largest polluter in the
area, even larger than the utility plants combined? The answer is twofold.
First, to the extent that Pemex is nationally owned, the Mexican govern-
ment would almost certainly exempt it from any local pollution standards.
To even attempt to impose such standards would involve the city in expen-
sive and time-consuming legal battles that would be difficult to win. Second,
any attempt to impose such (costly) pollution controls on Pemex might well
institute a relocation of the plant outside the sister cities, not only causing
the loss of the single largest local employer but also significantly reducing
the business of the second largest employer, the port facility that ships
Pemex oil products.
Planning for Climate Change 221

The principal reason for not beginning with the utility plants is apparent.
They are owned by the municipality itself, and the funds for new smoke-
stack scrubbers would have to come from the municipal budget.
But the argument that it is appropriate to begin with the most complex
element in the pollution mix—the one to which most individual citizens
contribute—is an interesting one. It argues that the global climate change
crisis cannot be effectively dealt with by governmental and corporate policy
changes alone, that the different populations of the world need to buy into
the solution by changing their lifestyles. Most of us in the United States have
had to adjust to the dwindling of the fossil fuel supply in little things—
buying unleaded gas, recycling, installing more efficient and more expensive
lightbulbs, driving smaller cars—but bigger things are coming, such as more
vegetarianism, permanent water conservation regulation, and at least in
some places, mass transit replacing many personal vehicles. As people adjust
to each of these changes, they become more aware of the need for these
changes and more ready to accept other, newer, and more challenging
changes. While changes in building codes, for example, can ensure that
more homes and offices use more efficient heating and cooling systems with
better sealed windows and doors to conserve energy, if these are the only
systems on the market, the consumer does not become a conscious part of
the conservation process. We need both the systemically adopted changes
whose only impact on consumers is financial and the kinds of changes that
involve the personal efforts of individuals who thereby become agents of
new changes in an ongoing process of energy conservation and ecological
preservation.
There are many questions to ask about mass transit systems such as the
light rail system proposed here. In order to be financially feasible, rail sys-
tems must draw on high-density populations. If the population is too spread
out, the cost of reaching the mass of potential commuters becomes exorbi-
tant. Thus zoning regulation must be coordinated with the planning for the
rail system. If rail systems are to be self supporting they need to attract a
variety of different classes of commuter. The poorer citizens must be able to
afford to commute, and the cost in time and money of continuing private
transport must greatly exceed that of the rail line for those who are better
off. Most new rail lines must be initially subsidized while ridership builds.
It will help to build ridership if parking in the commercial areas becomes
expensive. For example, Pemex and other large employers might be per-
suaded to charge employees for parking in their lots, and street parking
could be metered. Traffic congestion that greatly expands travel time also
222 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

persuades many commuters to take the train. Municipal officials should not
expand lanes for rush hour traffic, but should, where possible, dedicate
lanes to commercial traffic: delivery vans and trucks, semis headed out of
the city, and other vehicles with the more expensive commercial license tags.
Light rail does not move commercial deliveries, and it would be counterpro-
ductive for the municipality to antagonize businesses to move out of the city
due to impassable traffic congestion.
Also important to successful light rail systems are adequate policing,
good lighting, and ease of ridership. Personal security and theft are para-
mount concerns. Tickets or tokens should be readily available at all loca-
tions. Some cities allow venders of all kinds to sell rail tokens; others install
vending machines for tickets or fare cards near entrances. All of these will
be important in the personal decisions that local citizens make that affect
the success or failure of this proposed system.
There are also larger political and financial issues that will concern sav-
vier citizens. Two of these are the potential for corruption and the terms of
the loan agreements. Whenever governments are spending large amounts of
money, there are always individuals and corporations that attempt to cut
themselves into those projects. This was alluded to in the case when Ber-
nardo, the owner of a car dealership, spoke up in favor of the timeliness of
the light rail proposal. He was accused of being self-interested, in that he
was known to be heavily invested in real estate in the area and to have a
relative in the planning office. Persons situated as he is often stand to gain
huge contracts and awards from government projects. In the developed
world, ethics demands that the contracts and purchases for such projects be
open and transparent, the jobs bid out, the lowest bidder of equal or better
quality chosen and held to that bid, with overrun costs limited and
explained publicly. It should not be taken for granted that the relatives or
friends of politicians make fortunes from contracts, sales, or employment in
these projects. Permitting such practices erodes confidence in the political
system, in justice, and in the ability to trust others in the community. Mex-
ico, like many other poor nations, has been battling official corruption for
many years, much of it based on the low salaries paid to most government
officials, which makes them vulnerable to bribery and the use of extortion.
Corruption breeds lack of trust in government, and the explosion of drug
lords, drug violence, and drug-based police and political corruption of the
last two decades has escalated this lack of trust. Justice demands that all
bidders begin on level ground, with no special advantages due to either
relationships or kickbacks.
Planning for Climate Change 223

The negotiation of the loan for the light rail system is also critical. Many
developing nations, including Mexico, were encouraged, by banks that had
more money to invest than they knew what to do with, to take out huge
loans for development projects in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of those proj-
ects by the end cost many times what they were worth due to corruption
and mismanagement. The world economy soured in the mid-1970s, so that
repayment slowed and interest rates increased on each loan renewal. The
size of the original debts ballooned under higher interest costs, and for more
than thirty years debt repayment took huge portions of many poor nations’
annual income, acting as a major obstacle to development. Finally the non-
payment of loan payments and the threat of national bankruptcy by major
debtors such as Mexico and Brazil convinced lender nations to forgive parts
of the debt.
The city council should be very careful in its calculation of costs, obtain-
ing the best advice it can from Brazilian cities that have already installed
light rail and not relying only on the data offered by the vendors of rail
systems. It should consult a variety of funding sources, obtaining as many
outright grants as possible and the best possible rates and terms on the
loans. Systems need to be maintained, and it will be important to locate
nearby parts suppliers and get training for locals in maintaining the rail
system and cars. All of this comes under the virtue of prudence. These prac-
tical considerations in working toward greater sustainability in our environ-
ment remind us that in environmental ethics, as in most areas of social
ethics, the virtue of prudence will play a major role, and intention, which is
often held to be of paramount importance in personal ethics, is of much less
importance. It does not matter much that a politician intended transparent
honesty if his ineptitude in writing laws and contracting loans allows mas-
sive graft and corruption. It hardly matters how much one venerates nature
if one’s actions contribute in a major way to the death of life on this planet.

Questions for Discussion

1. What makes the decision facing the council members an ethical one?
2. What parts of this proposal are aimed at sustainability? Is the pre-
cautionary principle at work in this planning?
3. Do you agree with the argument that it is best to begin with environ-
mental projects that will involve the general population, rather than
only government and corporations?
224 Restoring and Re-creating the Ecosystem

4. Is it true that, in social ethics questions, consequences can be more

important than intention? Why or why not? How is this different
from decisions in personal lives and relationships?

For Further Reading

Broome, John. ‘‘The Ethics of Climate Change: Pay Now or Pay More Later.’’ Scien-
tific American, June 2008, 96–100, 102.
Guess, George M., ed. Managing and Funding Urban Public Transport Systems: An
International Perspective. Budapest, Hun.: Local Government and Public Service
Reform Initiative, 2008.
Hensley, David A. ‘‘Sustainable Public Transport Systems: Moving towards a Value
for Money and Network-based Approach and away from Blind Commitment.’’
Transport Policy 14, no. 1(2007): 98–103.
Kirby, Alex, and Jasmina Bogdanovic, eds. Kick the Habit: A U.N. Guide to Climate
Neutrality. Nairobi, Kenya: UNEP, 2008.
Musil, Robert K. Hope for a Heated Planet: How Americans Are Fighting Global
Warming and Building a Better Future. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 2009.
Winston, Clifford, and Vikvan Maheshri. ‘‘On the Social Desirability of Urban Rail
Transit Systems.’’ Journal of Urban Economy 62, no. 2 (2007): 362–83.
 PA RT I V

Ecosystem Interventions
Aimed at Innovation
 thirteen

Improving on
Natural Variation?
Genetically Modified Foods

B
‘‘ ut, Dad, think of the long run!’’ Kyle Deaver protested to
his father as they sat in the cab of their 2001 pickup on the way
to the feed and grain. ‘‘Even if you don’t care about the principle
of biodiversity, you must care about the birds and the butterflies! There are
studies that already show a decline in bird and butterfly populations from
using genetically modified seed.’’ Kyle was a fourth-generation farmer in
Midland, Missouri, home from agricultural school for a few weeks of sum-
mer vacation.
‘‘So you’ve told me, son,’’ Jack Deaver replied. ‘‘But you admit that the
findings are very preliminary, that long-term studies haven’t been done yet.
What I do know for sure is that if I use this, or some other genetically
modified organism [GMO], I don’t have to worry about the insects eating
the corn crop, because as soon as they chew a leaf, or an ear, they die before
reproducing. And with a GMO crop, I can use less herbicide and apply it
anytime the weeds begin sprouting. I don’t have to time it so it doesn’t
damage a particular stage of crop growth. That means the GMO corn is
easier to take care of and less expensive to grow. You’ve been against heavy
pesticide and herbicide use; I thought you’d applaud these GMO crops.’’
‘‘No, Dad,’’ Kyle said. ‘‘The results of our experimental fields at school
point to high potential for reducing both plant and animal diversity as a
direct result of these GMOs. Ours were initial experiments; more controlled

227
228 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

comparative studies will be done next year. But ours are not the only stud-
ies—there are studies in England, on the Continent, and lots in the United
States. It’s the same issue as the animal predators, Dad; it’s wrong to destroy
everything that eats, or crowds, or could eat, our crops or stock.’’
The year before, Kyle had managed to persuade his father to support the
forest service’s reintroduction of wolves and foxes into neighboring areas
of Missouri. Kyle tried to explain: ‘‘It’s the other end of the same food
ladder, Dad. If we kill all the predator animals, then there are no controls
on the numbers of deer, rabbits, raccoons, and other small animals. And if
all the weeds that grow in our fields are killed, then key foods for inverte-
brates and birds disappear. If all the insects that eat our crop die, then the
birds that need insects to feed to their chicks will die out.’’
‘‘But son, from my side it’s not the same thing,’’ Jack replied. ‘‘I may lose
a calf every year or so if we have wolves in the area, and I can take that if
it’s so important to you. But you’re telling me I should share my crop with
the weeds and the insects. With prices so low, I don’t have much choice—
lowering the cost of herbicide and pesticide by planting genetically modified
corn may be the only way to make anything at all from some of these fields.
I sure won’t make a profit if I let the weeds and the bugs get them or if I
pay through the nose for pesticide and herbicide to kill them.’’
‘‘No, you need to control the bugs and the weeds, not eliminate them,’’
Kyle argued. ‘‘It’s the same idea as the field boundaries. You didn’t cut down
all the trees between the fields to make one huge field without borders; you
kept the tree lines, the fences, and the hedges. That was the right thing to
do; it left places for the birds, the squirrels, the field mice, and the insects,
and it acted as a windbreak, protecting topsoil. You did it for the long-term
health of the land. GMOs don’t support the long-term health of the land.’’
‘‘Kyle, I encouraged you to go to ag school, and I want to use some of
the fancy stuff they teach you there. This farm will be all yours in another
six or seven years. But I have to think about how to make it support us for
these next few years. This fall your sister is getting married, and that’ll be
some expense. We’ll be lucky if the baler gets through to fall, and the price
of gas is expected to get over $3.50 a gallon this summer. So if you want to
persuade me, tell me how I can make a profit on this crop by using some
other regime. OK?’’
Jack stopped speaking as they drove into the parking lot of the feed and
grain. Kyle followed his dad into the store, swearing softly.
After taking out their list and getting their order filled, Jack and Kyle
turned to leave and were stopped by a neighbor, Lee Martin. Lee greeted
Improving on Natural Variation? 229

Jack, asked Kyle about his school year and what he was learning, and then
brought up his reason for accosting them.
‘‘I heard last night that you’re going to use some of that GMO corn seed
in your fields along State Route 13. That true?’’ Lee asked.
‘‘Yeah, Kyle here’s trying to talk me out of it, but I can’t see my way
clear to making a go of it any other way,’’ Jack replied.
‘‘Well, that’d be a real problem for me,’’ Lee said, ‘‘because you know I
got the thirty-five acres on the other side of that road. You know I stopped
raising feeder pigs last winter; prices were just too unstable. But I just got
certified organic and got a contract to sell all my corn, beans, and tomatoes
to a supplier of organic groceries to Midwest cities. If you plant GMO corn,
there’s no way to keep your pollen from contaminating my organic corn. If
your corn pollinates some of mine, I’ll have put all the work into growing
organic—all the extra weeding, especially—and it’ll still test hybrid, so it’ll
only command the same prices you get, not the higher organic prices. You
and I been good neighbors for a lot of years now. But I can’t let you ruin
me. Don’t force me to go to the law over this, Jack.’’
‘‘Lord, Lee, I never had any idea this could affect you!’’ Jack said. ‘‘I sure
don’t want to cause you any trouble. We heard a rumor that you were look-
ing into organic farming, but I never really thought about what that would
mean.’’
Jack turned to his son. ‘‘Kyle, you know this stuff; does this really mean
that Lee and I could never grow the same crop, part organic, part GMO?
That could be a real problem, seeing as how this is corn country.’’
‘‘Lee’s right, Dad,’’ he said. ‘‘He’ll get a hybrid result if you grow GMO
corn across the road. Corn pollen is heavy and doesn’t travel nearly as far
as some other pollen, but it will certainly move 500–1,000 yards. High
winds and bees will carry some of it even farther. The only way for you to
use GMO and Lee to be organic is if you never plant the same crop in any
proximity.’’
Jack looked at Lee. ‘‘Can’t you put the beans or the tomatoes in that
field, and the corn in your field over by the creek? That way it would be too
far away for my pollen to get to it—and it would be generally upwind from
my corn anyway.’’
‘‘No,’’ Lee replied, ‘‘I have to put the tomatoes by the creek—not just for
the water but because there are three neighbors raising different kinds of
GMO tomatoes, and to keep mine away from them I have to put the toma-
toes on the field in the center. I can’t put everything in my center field—
something’s got to go on the perimeter.’’
230 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘Yeah, I got the same kind of problem. Not every piece of land will do
for any crop,’’ Jack said ruefully. ‘‘I need to think about this some, Lee, and
talk with the boy. We got a couple weeks to work this out. I’ll get back to
you soon. And our greetings to Sally and the kids.’’ Lee said he’d drop over
during the next week, and all three left the store.
On the way back to the farm, however, Jack complained loudly that the
pollen should be Lee’s problem, not his, and that if Lee wanted to experi-
ment with some newfangled fad, he should take responsibility for making it
work and not expect his neighbors to take on that burden.
‘‘Who does he think he is, threatening to sue me for raising corn?’’ Jack
said. ‘‘Anyway, those organic crops bring in lots higher prices than regular
crops; Lee will be able to afford to take some losses.’’
Kyle interrupted his father as they were turning into the lane toward the
barn. ‘‘Dad, I bet his margin isn’t any better than yours. The suppliers who
distribute organic foods take a much bigger cut than even our processors
do—they claim it’s because the costs are higher to cultivate a new market.
Whatever the reason, you can’t assume he’s making much more than you
are, once you figure in his higher costs.’’ His father merely grunted, as he
opened the pickup door and stalked into the house to eat lunch. Kyle fol-
lowed more slowly, mulling over the problem in his head.
That evening at dinner Jack related the encounter with Lee at the feed
store to Lucie, his wife, and his two daughters, Millie and Susan. Lucie
taught seventh grade at the local middle school, and Millie was a high
school senior celebrating her last month of the school year. Susan was about
to graduate from the local community college and be married in late Sep-
tember. All three listened intently as Jack complained that it should not be
his responsibility to protect his neighbor’s experimental crop from damage
that occurred because of the normal operations of nature.
‘‘But Dad,’’ Millie interjected, ‘‘that’s not what you said last year when
Bill Perkins started raising pit bull pups next door to the middle school
recess yard. You said then that because it was the nature of pit bulls to
attack strangers, nobody had the right to raise them near a public area,
especially one with kids. Remember?’’
‘‘That’s not the same thing, Millie,’’ Jack snapped. ‘‘I’m not raising any-
thing that is dangerous in itself.’’ Kyle softly snorted but said nothing.
‘‘Jack,’’ Lucie said, ‘‘are these genetically modified crops safe? I know the
corn is feed corn, not for humans, but we eat the meat from the animals
that eat the corn. Just a month or so ago there was a big news story about
how one of the processing plants had to recall a whole lot of taco shells
Improving on Natural Variation? 231

because they had been mistakenly contaminated with GMO corn that was
being milled for some other use. If GMO corn is so safe, why did they have
to recall those taco shells?’’
‘‘The simplest explanation is that food products for humans are moni-
tored under food and drug laws, which are the strictest product controls on
anything,’’ Jack said. ‘‘If that particular GMO crop had been approved for
animal feed but got accidentally mixed with corn meant for humans, then
of course they had to recall the taco shells. GMO corn might be approved
for human consumption in the future—the process takes longer for human
food.’’
‘‘But, Dad, if we eat the animals that eat the GMO corn, don’t we get
whatever is dangerous in it?’’ Susan asked.
‘‘No,’’ Jack replied, ‘‘not if they are eliminated in the digestive processes
of the animal.’’
‘‘But you don’t know for sure that they are, Dad,’’ Kyle said. ‘‘You know
that virtually all of the GMO crops that you’re considering use the antibi-
otic ampicillin as a marker for the genetic modification on the DNA strand.
There are a lot of questions even about the effect of the antibiotic marker:
What does it do to a herd of cows or pigs to have antibiotics in their feed
constantly? The current evidence suggests that they will develop resistance
to that whole family of antibiotics—and it’s the most common kind. What
happens when those animals get sick? And that problem is only with the
marker, not even with the modification itself.’’
Lucie looked disturbed by this information. ‘‘Doctors have been trying
to stop giving people so many antibiotics because germs have developed
resistance to many antibiotics, which means they don’t work well when you
need them,’’ she said. ‘‘This seems to work in the opposite direction—
flooding healthy animal bodies with antibiotics!’’
‘‘Lucie,’’ Jack explained, ‘‘I hear you, but you have to be careful. Even if
a cow does develop resistance to a family of antibiotics—and we don’t even
know that they will from GMO feed—that still wouldn’t mean that eating
the beef will pass on that resistance to people. Resistance isn’t a substance
that accumulates in the food chain.’’
‘‘Says you, Pop, but there’s no proof of that either,’’ Kyle insisted. ‘‘You
actually think that this Novartis Maximiser GM corn can ever pass the
safety tests for human consumption? I’d be very surprised. Besides the ampi-
cillin marker, it’s been modified for all sorts of production reasons that have
nothing to do with consumer health or nutrition reasons. It includes a gene
232 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

that is poisonous to the corn borer, it’s tolerant of the toxic herbicide glufos-
inate, and it has the ampicillin in it. Does that sound like a good prospect
for human food? That’s besides all the problems it causes for other farmers
and the environment.’’
‘‘So you all tell me,’’ Jack said, ‘‘if you’re so sure I shouldn’t plant the
Novartis Maximiser GM corn, what should I plant in those fields that will
allow us to eat next winter and to pay for Susan’s wedding, Kyle’s tuition,
and Millie’s driving lessons? Are you really so concerned about this seed—
seed that has been approved by the government and that no existing studies
show is dangerous for domestic animals and the people who eat them—that
I should buck the central trend in U.S. agriculture and risk our livelihoods
to do it?’’

Commentary

This case does not demand that we completely accept or reject the entire
technology of genetically modified crops or even genetically modified foods.
The decision to be made is whether to plant this particular kind of geneti-
cally modified corn on these particular fields this year. Kyle is concerned
that early tests of the first genetically modified crops, among them this type
of corn, have shown some deleterious effects on butterfly and bird popula-
tions—implying the possibility of effects on other insects and birds. Lucie is
concerned about the possible effects of inserting antibiotics into feed corn,
which may cause a resistance to antibiotics that could move through the
food chain through animals to people. One of the latest theories involving
GMO crops is that they may be a principal cause of the death of bee colo-
nies throughout North America, now that the majority of agricultural seed
in the United States is genetically modified. The Deavers’ neighbor is con-
cerned that his organic corn will be cross-pollinated with their genetically
modified corn and will then not test organic. In that case, he wastes all the
extra labor organic crops require and must sell his crop at the lower price
that nonorganic corn receives. Application of the precautionary principle in
this case clearly would lead to at least postponing, for a season or two, a
decision to plant GMO corn. Yet, as Jack points out, the dominant model
of agriculture, supported by corporate research and U.S. government regu-
latory bodies, has adopted GMO crops and insists that there is no evidence
of danger in their use.
Improving on Natural Variation? 233

Genetically modified food today involves new methods of modifying the

genetics of a crop or animal. All domesticated seeds and animals have
genetic modifications; they have been selectively bred, generation after gen-
eration, to produce some uniform characteristics and to suppress others.
This was traditional genetic modification. Today when we speak of geneti-
cally modified food we are talking about food that has been modified in
the laboratory within a single generation of that food, generally by gene
splicing—taking a gene from one strand of DNA and inserting it into the
DNA of another species. Many of the goals of traditional methods of
genetic modification remain goals of the new technologies as well. Scientists
seek modifications that allow crops to resist drought and pests, grow larger,
be easier to harvest, pack and transport without damage, and resist
spoilage.
At the same time, there are some aspects of the new technology for alter-
ing food strains that are entirely new. With gene splicing, scientists can take
a characteristic of one plant that could not be either cross-pollinated or
grafted onto another species of plant and include it in the genetic makeup
of that plant, in a single generation. Many scientists regard this new technol-
ogy as a tool, for example, for reclaiming desertified land through new
drought-resistant, ground-cover plants that resist erosion or for developing
new fast-growing trees for logging that can save old growth forests. The
possibilities seem limitless. Interestingly, on the issue of genetically modified
plant and animal species, environmental motives propel both proponents
and opponents.

Health Concerns

Most though not all of the opposition to genetically modified crops today
emerges from health concerns. Many people note that for a variety of rea-
sons, many not yet clear, allergic reactions to various foods—some poten-
tially fatal—are on the rise in the human population. Many persons are
allergic to substances such as nuts, shellfish, eggs, milk, certain families of
fruits or vegetables, and untold individual foods. However, a person who
knows that he or she is allergic to nuts, for example, does not know what
part—which gene or gene complex—in nuts triggers the allergic reaction. If
every different food producer can move genes from one food to another, the
gene in nuts to which I am allergic also may turn up in strawberries, broc-
coli, or potatoes. We cannot prevent widespread health dangers from such
allergies because there is no practical way to test the entire world population
234 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

for all possible genes that could cause allergic reactions in them. Labeling
modified foods with the names of added genes cannot be effective because
people do not know which particular genes might affect them. Thus the
effect on human health is incalculable, especially if some scientists are cor-
rect that the rise in food allergies is a response to exposure of specific popu-
lations to new varieties of foods through globalization. In that case, an
increase in the genetic variation of foods would not only complicate safety
for people with food allergies but actually increase the number of persons
who have food allergies.
The issue of antibiotics as markers in the GMO crops is related to regula-
tions proposed in September 2002 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administra-
tion (FDA) for the use of antibiotics in animals that are used for human
food. The deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine
reported, ‘‘We have substantial evidence now that resistant pathogens do
form in treated animals and can be transmitted to humans through the food
supply. From a public health perspective, that risk has to be minimized.’’1
Most of the health concerns about genetically modified foods focus on
the precautionary principle. We simply do not know what the health effects
of any of the modifications are, even in the relatively short run, and we
know even less about the long-term effects. In the past, when selective
breeding introduced new varieties of food, the new foods were eaten by the
relatively small local populations who bred them. It usually took genera-
tions for new varieties to spread to other peoples in the same region or to
other regions. The slowness of this process allowed for communities to test
the new foods and discover any deleterious effects not only for human
health but for the land, local animals, and surrounding plant life. In some
cases, this slowness also may have allowed for gradual adaptation of the
human digestive tract to the new food.

Scale and Speed of Genetic Modifications

In contrast, genetically modified food today is introduced by huge multina-
tional seed companies for planting on millions of acres of land at the same
time. The high cost of developing new seeds dictates a company’s interest
in widespread distribution as quickly as possible to recover research costs.
Because the new seed has been developed by corporations with an eye to
the market, it usually offers advantages that appeal to broad numbers—as
in this case: Jack is attracted to the pest resistance bred into the seed and to
the seed’s imperviousness to herbicide at all stages of growth. Thus the
Improving on Natural Variation? 235

research and marketing system of GMO crops today ensures that modifica-
tions are introduced on a massive scale with maximum effects.
Although the dilemma Jack faces at an individual level—how to make
sufficient profit on his crops to afford tuition, driving lessons, and a wed-
ding, in addition to regular expenses—is both difficult and yet easy to iden-
tify with, this is not the only level at which this issue of GMO foods can
be considered. After all, Jack does not say that he has been losing money;
presumably he can still make a go of his farm by continuing the methods
that have served him in the past. He can observe how his neighbor, Lee,
does with organic farming and perhaps convert one of his adjacent fields
and crops to organic the following year, in conjunction with Lee. Jack
clearly is under long-term pressure, but there does not seem to be any imme-
diate crisis.

Capitalism and Environmentalism: Food Subsidies

A longer range issue in agriculture without which it is impossible to consider

GMO foods or the situation of American family farmers concerns farm sub-
sidies in developed nations. Almost all developed nations give farmers sub-
sidies for growing crops. Without them, virtually no farmers could make a
living in farming in the developed world because they must compete on the
world’s food market with farmers from Ghana, Peru, Vietnam, Madagas-
car, the Philippines, and other poor nations—all of whose farmers earn only
a pittance for their crops. In the European Union and the United States, for
example, it is not unusual for a farmer to earn more in subsidies than he
does for selling his crop on the market. The U.S. farm bill that passed in
July 2002 included increased farm subsidies for a larger number of crops,
and under the levels set in that bill, farmers in 2007—a banner year for
grain, soybeans, and cotton prices—picked up an additional $5 billion in
direct crop subsidies from the government. Developed nations pay these
subsidies because they do not want to be dependent on other nations for
basic foods. In cases of war, natural disaster, or other disruption of world
trade, food dependency can be very dangerous, even for rich nations.
Yet food subsidies violate the free-trade policy that has dominated U.S.
and European foreign policy for decades. Nations are not supposed to pro-
tect vulnerable producers within their borders, regardless of the type of pro-
duction. Within the capitalist theory that rules world markets, the only
nations that should be food producers are those with comparative advan-
tage—that is, those that can produce food most cheaply. Under comparative
236 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

advantage, all products should be produced by those who can produce them
most efficiently. Because rich countries cannot produce food efficiently, they
should buy their food from those that can and instead produce goods and
services in which they have comparative advantage. Rich nations refuse to
accept food dependence, however.
Poor nations tend to be unindustrialized and export raw materials such
as food. They resent the food subsidy policies of rich nations because those
policies keep food sales from poor nations to rich nations relatively small
(because the subsidies keep farmers producing food in rich nations) and
depress the price of food by keeping the demand from rich nations out of the
world market. Yet as many economists, the secretary general of the United
Nations, and many politicians from developing nations have pointed out,
poor nations are not allowed to protect their own vulnerable businesses
(usually young industries) in similar ways. When they attempt to do so they
are accused of violating free trade standards and are refused access to mar-
kets in rich nations, as well as loans and other financial necessities by the
rich nations and multinational institutions controlled by the rich nations
(such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and others).
In terms of environmentalism, the issues of food subsidies and compara-
tive advantage are important for the concept of sustainability. An important
question within environmentalism is, what is the size of the unit that should
be sustainable? When we say that practices must be sustainable, do we mean
sustainable for the Earth as a whole, or do we mean for smaller units—local
communities, nations, regions, continents? Capitalist economic theory—for
example, the concept of comparative advantage—assumes that every area
has one or at most a few economic products in which it can successfully
compete against all other producers in the world and will concentrate on
producing that product or products and that corporations continue to grow
by swallowing up smaller, less competitive corporations until they are few,
huge, and global. We see this process in agriculture: Some areas of the Mid-
west grow little besides corn and hogs; some nations of Southeast Asia and
East Asia concentrate on wet rice production. In some areas known for a
predominant crop, the produce nevertheless may be sufficiently varied and
keyed to the local diet that the region is self-sufficient in food and still able
to export some food. In other areas—especially where monoculture patterns
involve nonfood crops such as cocoa, tobacco, coffee, rubber, cotton, tea, or
flowers—monoculture for export may not only make impossible a balanced
ecosystem and food self-sufficiency, which is key to sustainability, but also
may cause significant levels of hunger.
Improving on Natural Variation? 237

Most environmental analysis has focused not on a single global ecosys-

tem but on regional ecosystems. For example, the groundbreaking book
by Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the
Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future,
lays out the case for regional units that are both environmentally sustainable
ecosystems and human communities that are self-sufficient in the basic
requirements of life.2 The authors are clear that every local ecosystem
should be sustainable; that is the only way to ensure that the global ecosys-
tem is sustainable. Furthermore, the distribution of agriculture around the
globe generally is considered to promote plant biodiversity—though that is
not automatic and requires ongoing attention and protection.
Thus environmentalism weighs into the debate on farm subsidies on the
side of the subsidies, at least in the short run. Humans are a part of the
ecosystem—one species among many—and if their local ecosystem is to be
sustainable it must be able to satisfy their basic needs for food and shelter,
energy, health care, and education without compromising the existence of
the habitats and species that share that ecosystem. Agriculture, industry,
mining, and other productive forces—along with all of the disproportionate
human impacts on the world—must be both minimized and widely distrib-
uted throughout the world. No single area can afford the environmental
impact of all of the industry, all of the mining, all of the agriculture, even if
the processes for these activities are made less destructive. Of course,
another critical factor in this equation is the size of the human population.
Many scientists believe that the carrying capacity of the Earth has been
reached, if not exceeded, and that sustainability must include maintaining
if not decreasing the size of the human community.
Environmentalists’ support for food self-sufficiency as a part of regional
sustainability therefore legitimates Jack’s concern that his farm continue to
be economically sustainable. There should continue to be U.S. farmers, even
if some food can be more cheaply produced elsewhere. Justice and the sus-
tainability of other regional ecosystems demand, however, that subsidized
farmers in rich nations reduce their crop size to the size of their domestic
market, so they do not flood the world market with food that is priced
below the cost of producing it. For example, in spring 2002 Indonesian
poultry farmers staged protests all over the nation, demanding that Indone-
sia ban imports of U.S. chicken legs. In fact, Indonesia was unable to ban
U.S. chicken leg imports without risking serious retaliation from the United
States and international market forces. The problem was that chicken
breasts in the United States were selling for more than $2.50 per pound,
238 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

but there was considerably less demand for chicken legs, so producers were
‘‘dumping’’ the legs abroad for $.10 per pound. Indonesian chicken farmers,
who typically earn less than $350 per year, produced chicken at about $.67
per pound (considerably less than the $2.50 that white meat chicken was
selling for in the United States) and could not compete with the U.S. chicken
price of $.10 per pound. These producers were being displaced from their
own chicken market by U.S. poultry farmers, who were selling chicken at
considerably less than their cost to produce it. If all the Indonesian farmers
stop growing chickens, who will feed Indonesia when U.S. tastes change or
shipping costs make these sales impractical?
Present world prices for many types of food are at or below the cost of
producing them even in the poorest nations of the world. Thus farmers in
poor nations give up farming or turn to nonfood crops such as tobacco,
coca, and poppies. The world’s food supply becomes unstable.
GMO crops have the potential to offer poor farmers and poor nations
great benefits, but within the present system of agriculture the likelihood
is that they actually will produce great disadvantages. The modifications
introduced into seed will be those that benefit the producers of the seed who
control the modification process. The modifications introduced in the green
revolution of the 1970s and 1980s illustrated this dynamic very clearly. Seed
companies introduced new seed that offered higher yields and greater resis-
tance to pests and blight, as well as some varieties that required less water
and were more resistant to drought.
These advantages were real for farmers everywhere. Yet poor farmers
could not benefit to the same extent, and in the end they often were forced
out of farming. As yields rose, land became more valuable, and tenant farm-
ers were forced off lands their families had worked for generations. Because
the new seed was hybrid and therefore sterile, seed had to be bought for
every planting; the seed from the previous harvest was not capable of
sprouting. Besides buying seed, poor farmers were obliged to buy fertilizer
because the new seed required much heavier doses of fertilizer than the old
seed. Many farmers were forced into debt to buy seed and fertilizer, and
some lost their farms to debt. In most areas of the world the green revolu-
tion was of principal benefit to farmers with capital; it forced many of the
poorest farmers out of farming. Many people question whether GMO mod-
ifications to seed portend similar consequences.
Other aspects of the green revolution may be relevant to the conse-
quences of GMO crops as well. In many nations the green revolution led to
drastic decreases in biodiversity, with serious potential dangers for the
Improving on Natural Variation? 239

human food supply. The use of hybrid seed virtually eliminates possibilities
for mutation—that is, for new ‘‘accidental’’ variations in seed. At the same
time, companies have developed and patented relatively few new varieties
that are planted in millions of acres. All of the crops that use the same seed
will have the same vulnerabilities to pests, drought, temperature change,
and other variables.
If GMO crops are to be planted, it will be important to develop many
different varieties and to ensure that no single type of seed predominates in
any given area. Such a policy would not only protect the human food supply
from local devastation but also could protect the local environment from
too great an impact from any one type of seed. If one type of GMO corn is
toxic to monarch butterflies, another type inhibits ovulation in swallows,
and another type shortens the life span of earthworms, then even if it is
decided that these destructive consequences are warranted by the situation
(a very questionable assumption), none of these seed types should be
planted in more than a few fields in any one area, so that no individual
species is threatened. The effects should be monitored, and if earthworms
appear to be losing ground in one area, the type of seed that threatens them
should be discontinued in the region, at least until the earthworm popula-
tion reestablishes itself.
As is so often the case with new technologies, the technology itself may
be morally neutral. There may be genetic modifications of plants that ulti-
mately are beneficial at all levels. Our problem is identifying which genetic
modifications they would be and ensuring that only those modifications are
introduced into the environment. The task of discrimination seems so
immense that many people are tempted to draw the line at genetic modifi-
cation itself, labeling ‘‘naturally’’ occurring plants as good and ‘‘artificially’’
produced plants as evil. Such a division seems not only simplistic but ahis-
torical, in that it ignores the major environmental intervention that humans
made in domesticating plants and animals—a process that continues today
all over the world, of which the new GMO products are but one small part.
Instead of focusing on the method, perhaps the more important questions
to ask are those that examine not only the consequences of specific uses of
the technology but the desired ends to which those technologies are put. For
example, some of the objections to GMO food in Europe, where objections
are almost universal and very strong, are that GMO food, in addition to
being dangerous to both human health and the environment, is ‘‘American’’
food—which is understood to be poor-quality food, low in taste and nutri-
tion, and produced to meet yield, cost, and transportability criteria rather
240 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

than taste and nutrition criteria. In fact, on April 14, 2009, Germany
became the latest of a number of European nations to ban what was until
then the only GMO crop permitted, Monsanto’s genetically modified corn.
Some commentators have suggested that what needs to happen around
this issue is social decision making. Food is a very personal thing in the lives
of human beings, important not only for sustaining individual human life
but also for linking human beings together in webs of production, exchange,
and consumption (e.g., family dinners). Just as all persons have a responsi-
bility to protect the biosphere, all persons have a right to be included in
decisions about their food supply—decisions about trade-offs between cost,
taste, variety, safety, and environmental impact.

Questions for Discussion

1. Why is Kyle opposed to his father’s planting genetically modified

crops?
2. How will Jack’s planting GMO crops affect his neighbor’s organic
farming?
3. The use of antibiotics in animal feed to prevent the diseases that
accompany contemporary intensive farming methods has been
shown to have what consequences? How does the debate over GMO
feeds relate to this question?
4. Jack probably would be surprised to hear that his farming helps
deprive hungry farmers in poor countries. What legal/political/eco-
nomic mechanisms connect Jack’s farming with the hunger of poor
farmers in developing nations?

Notes
1. Marc Kaufman, ‘‘FDA Seeks to Limit New Antibiotics Used in Farm Ani-
mals,’’ Miami Herald, September 16, 2002, 14A.
2. Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb Jr., For the Common Good: Redirecting
the Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future. Bos-
ton: Beacon, 1989.

For Further Reading

Amos, Brit. ‘‘Death of the Bees: GMO Crops and the Death of Bee Colonies in
North America,’’ March 25, 2008. www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context
⳱va&aid⳱8436.
Improving on Natural Variation? 241

Barling, David. ‘‘GM Crops, Biodiversity, and the European Agri-Environment:

Regulatory Regime Lacunae and Revision.’’ European Environment 10, no. 4
(2000): 167–77.
Daly, Herman E., and John B. Cobb Jr. For the Common Good: Redirecting the
Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future. Bos-
ton: Beacon, 1989.
Firbank, Les G., and Frank Forcella. ‘‘Genetically Modified Crops and Farmland
Biodiversity.’’ Science 289, no. 5484 (2000):1481–82.
Hart, Kathleen. Eating in the Dark: America’s Experiment with Genetically Engi-
neered Food. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002.
Human Genome Project. ‘‘Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms,’’ April 2007.
www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml.
Hunt, Stephen, and Lynn Brewer. ‘‘Impact of BSE on Attitudes to GM Food.’’ Risk
Decision and Policy 6, no. 2 (2001): 91–103.
Isaac, Grant. Agricultural Biotechnology and Transatlantic Trade: Regulatory Barri-
ers to GM Crops. Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CABI Publications, 2002.
Jauhar, Prem P. ‘‘Genetic Engineering and Accelerated Plant Improvement: Oppor-
tunities and Challenges.’’ Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture 64, nos. 2–3
(2001): 87–91.
Jordon, Carl F. ‘‘Genetic Engineering, the Farm Crisis, and World Hunger.’’ Biosci-
ence 52, no. 6 (2002): 523–29.
Kaufman, Marc. ‘‘FDA Seeks to Limit New Antibiotics Used in Farm Animals.’’
Miami Herald, September 16, 2002, 14A.
Martens, M. A. ‘‘Safety Evaluation of Genetically Modified Foods.’’ International
Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health 73, no. 9 (2000): 14–18.
Matthews, J. H., and M. Campbell. ‘‘The Advantages and Disadvantages of the
Application of Genetic Engineering to Forest Trees: A Discussion.’’ Forestry 73,
no. 4 (2000): 371–80.
Peters, Christian. ‘‘Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: Who Stands to Benefit?’’
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 13, no. 4 (2000): 313–27.
Pinstrup-Andersen, Per, and Ebbe Schioler. Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and
the Global Controversy over GM Crops. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2001.
Poitras, Manuel. ‘‘Globalization and the Social Control of Genetic Engineering.’’
Peace Review 12, no. 4 (2000): 587–93.
Uzogara, Stella G. ‘‘The Impact of Genetic Modification of Human Foods in the
21st Century: A Review.’’ Biotechnology Advances 18, no. 3 (2000): 179–206.
Watkinson, A. R., R. P. Freckleton, R. A. Robinson, and W. J. Sutherland. ‘‘Predic-
tions of Biodiversity Response to Genetically Modified Herbicide-Tolerant
Crops.’’ Science 289, no. 5448 (2000): 1554–57.
Willis, Lynn. ‘‘Who Regulates Genetically Modified Crops?’’ Today’s Chemist at
Work 9, no. 6 (2000): 59–68.
 fourteen

Nature Red in Tooth,

Claw, and Bullet
Hunting and Human Presence in Nature

A
‘‘ nd this is the classic western rifle—the Winchester lever-
action 30–30,’’ Earl said as he lifted the rifle from the rack of more
than ten hunting pieces. ‘‘Over here is a Belgian-made 12-gauge
shotgun, for wing shooting, and right next to it are the Tikka ‘Whitetail
Hunter,’ 338 caliber, good for pronghorn antelope too, and a Ruger 17,
perfect for varmints.’’
‘‘I assume by wing shooting you mean birds. ‘Whitetail’ are deer, and
‘varmints’—what are varmints?’’ Janet asked, more from curiosity than real
interest.
‘‘Varmints are undesirable animals: crows, coyotes, prairie dogs, and the
like. They don’t do anybody any good. Because of their growing numbers
and nuisance habits, whitetail deer will soon qualify, in my opinion,’’ Earl
answered.
Janet turned and caught the eye of Alex, her fiancé, who was standing
next to her on this tour of the ranch household. The two had flown out to
this ranch near Kiowa in the high plains of eastern Colorado at the invita-
tion of Miriam and Earl Gleason, Janet’s aunt and uncle, for a family gath-
ering and celebration of their upcoming marriage. The Gleasons ran a large
ranch—two thousand acres and four hundred head of cattle, with a few
sheep. It was an enchanting place, with rolling hills and meandering creeks
lined with lush grass and majestic cottonwood trees. Except for the fact that

242
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 243

the ranch’s ‘hired hands’—real cowboys—negotiated the prairie on mecha-

nized off-road vehicles rather than horses, the ranch would have felt like
home to Teddy Roosevelt a century ago. It also was rich with wildlife,
including birds, deer, and those varmints Earl pursued with his passion for
hunting.
Alex was not a hunter. He was born, raised, and educated in Philadel-
phia, where his father taught veterinary medicine at Temple University. Alex
was not smiling.
‘‘Keep your cool, dear,’’ Janet whispered as she grasped his arm.
‘‘Remember, we agreed not to push the issue.’’
Restraint, however, was not the commanding strength of Alex’s charac-
ter. So he pushed the issue. ‘‘You kill a lot of these animals, Earl?’’ he asked.
‘‘I prefer ‘taking’ to ‘killing,’ ’’ said Earl. ‘‘I take a couple of whitetail
each fall season, dozens of doves, and as many coyotes and prairie dogs as
time permits.’’
‘‘Do you sometimes think of the pain and suffering your ‘taking’ inflicts
on these individuals?’’ Alex continued.
Earl was silent for a moment. Earlier Janet had mentioned her fiancé’s
sensibilities, for which her uncle had little appreciation. He had heard that
people from Philadelphia often were this way. Restraint was not his strong
suit either, but the wisdom of his sixty years tempered any inclination to a
hasty response. ‘‘A couple of things, Alex. I’m an ethical hunter, and my
aim is quite good. Most of the animals I take don’t know what hit them.
Without my intervention, they would die of predation, disease, injury, and
starvation anyway. Given their great numbers, the few I take actually are
the lucky ones.’’
‘‘Perhaps that is true for you,’’ Alex responded, ‘‘but it’s surely not true
for a great majority of hunters, especially those who pursue their prey in
woods where a clear shot is difficult. I understand that up to 30 percent of
animals are injured and flee, only to die in great suffering and anguish.’’
‘‘Well then, those hunters—back in Pennsylvania, I presume—ought to
do better and try harder,’’ Earl said. ‘‘Here, let me show you something.’’
Earl picked up a small book from a coffee table as the three sat down for
what each knew would be an extended conversation. Janet hoped for the
best. ‘‘This little book—Beyond Fair Chase by Jim Posewitz—says it all.
It’s the bible of ethical hunting. I understand that more than two hundred
thousand copies have been sold. He writes that an ethical hunter is ‘a person
who knows and respects the animals hunted.’ Good hunters won’t put
themselves in a position where they are likely to cripple an animal, and if
244 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

they do, they’ll track it down as quickly as possible. That kind of consider-
ation is the very meaning of ethical hunting.
‘‘Besides—and this is an important point to me,’’ Earl continued, ‘‘when
in doubt, I always give the animal the advantage. Without such challenge,
hunting would be a worthless pursuit. I’m an avid bow hunter.’’ He gestured
to the imposing bow next to the rifles on the rack. ‘‘The difficulty increases
tremendously with archery hunting. When the hunter has to get within forty
yards for a shot, the advantage lies with the animal.’’
‘‘But that is my point exactly,’’ said Alex. ‘‘Although the chances for
escape are greater than with high-powered rifles with telescopic sights and
ranges of a half-mile, the chances of crippling are much greater with a bow.’’
‘‘Well, of course, a great deal depends on the expertise of the bow hunter.
But look closely at my bow. It is a compound bow with pulleys, wheels, and
wires to multiply its propelling power. A good clean hit is always lethal,
and, as I said, I’m a good marksman.’’
‘‘Whatever the weapon of choice, crippling happens often,’’ Alex
insisted. ‘‘Ethical or not, the end result doesn’t change: if not injury and
slow death, then sudden death—but death just the same.’’
‘‘OK, suffering is sometimes involved, and obviously dying,’’ Earl agreed.
‘‘But offsetting that is the great pleasure and profound satisfaction hunters
get from hunting—and believe me, it’s greater than any urbanite can
appreciate.’’
Earl realized that he was getting personal by evoking this stereotype and
changed the thrust of his argument. ‘‘Janet tells me that you’re an environ-
mentalist; you belong to the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, and all that.
You must understand the roles various species play in an ecosystem and
the havoc that overpopulation of any one species can bring to the natural
order.’’
‘‘Sure. But the species that is bringing the most havoc through overpopu-
lation is the human species,’’ said Janet, overcoming her reluctance to speak
for fear of souring the mood of the family celebration.
‘‘Perhaps, but let’s stay on the subject—hunting,’’ replied Earl. ‘‘The
numbers of deer, elk, and other animals have always been kept in check by
predators. Those predators—including wolves, cougars, and grizzly bears—
are gone or nearly gone from much of North America. Our species must
respond by replacing them. We are the new ‘apex predator.’ Without hunt-
ers in the field, can you imagine the destruction of habitat?’’
‘‘Of course, these predators are missing in action because we first wiped
them out as competitors to our own predatory behavior,’’ said Alex. ‘‘In
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 245

the early part of the twentieth century the Forest Service encouraged the
elimination of wolves in New Mexico for the sake of more abundant deer
for hunters. It succeeded; now the wolves are entirely gone. The result, of
course, is that our sins against the wolves were visited upon the deer. Their
population exploded. They depleted their habitat and died in great num-
bers. This is hardly ethical hunting with respect for the animals.’’
‘‘Deer can be culprits too,’’ responded Earl. ‘‘I’ve read where the white-
tail deer in Virginia have become so numerous that they are reengineering
the woodlands environment. Through browsing, they clear the understory,
making survival difficult for many songbirds that nest in grass and bushes.
It works both ways.
‘‘Besides,’’ Earl continued with another thought, ‘‘wolf reintroduction
results in the killing not only of pesky deer but also elk, moose, and, of
course, domestic animals. My own cattle and sheep are at risk. Who’s best
suited to control the deer or elk and rescue the songbirds in Virginia or
Colorado? My guess is that most folks out here would prefer hunters. They
buy licenses, shop at outdoor stores, and otherwise help the economy. Hunt-
ers also can be regulated. Free-ranging wolves cannot—unless, of course,
one hunts or traps them.’’
‘‘I’m sorry, Uncle Earl, but this apex hunter image is so, well, macho,’’
Janet said. ‘‘Once again, our species—or the male portion of it—first con-
quers nature by wiping out its natural managers, the large predators, and
then uses those empty ecological niches as an excuse for human control.
Women have seen this routine over and over, but in other contexts.’’
‘‘Women are hunters, too, Janet,’’ said Earl, coolly.
‘‘Your niece also grew up in Philly. She’s a feminist,’’ said Alex breaking
a small smile. ‘‘A major problem with your position of top predator is that
wolves and the like prey on the individuals of a herd that are easy to catch—
the sick, weak, and slow. That process is the very essence of Darwin’s natu-
ral selection. Hunters turn this process upside down, though, by killing the
largest and most majestic animals—the ‘trophy’ animals whose genes are
important to keep the population viable and robust. There’s something very
unnatural and unhelpful about this kind of selection.’’
‘‘That might be true for elk and moose,’’ Earl said, ‘‘but it’s not true for
deer, because their massive numbers ensure the survival of a very large gene
pool. Anyway, it’s obvious that even the numbers of elk are burgeoning.
The situation has changed so much that natural selection is no longer exert-
ing effective restraint.’’
246 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘What about doves, quail, pheasant?’’ Alex countered. ‘‘These species

are mostly without the overpopulation tendencies of the large herbivores,
and none of the resulting problems. Yet I see that you enjoy hunting them
as well. That impressive Belgian shotgun you showed us for wing shooting
is quite an investment.’’
‘‘True,’’ Earl said, ‘‘but there are hundreds of millions of doves. Their
species is in no danger. And I do eat those I take. Nothing goes to waste. So
take your energy and passion to all those fast-food places that serve up tens
of millions of chickens that are massively produced with great suffering in
factory farms like those in Arkansas, where the refuse from the production
plants fouls the rivers of the Ozarks. Then we can talk about the doves and
quail.
‘‘Look,’’ Earl continued, ‘‘the most important benefit—far more impor-
tant than any of these—that hunting brings is the preservation of habitat.
Sport hunters like to point out that they have never contributed to the
extinction of a species, but they do contribute to the preservation of many
species.’’
‘‘How can that be true?’’ interrupted Alex. ‘‘You know the story of the
passenger pigeons—how they were probably the most abundant bird on
earth in the 1800s until they were wiped out by hunters. Perhaps ‘harvested’
would be the better word. And the buffalo: killed by the millions by hunters
with nothing more in mind than to make a few bucks selling the hides.
They’re not extinct, but they were close to it.’’
‘‘Before you become too agitated, young man, recall that I used the term
sport hunter. You’re talking about market or commercial hunters. Today we
refer to them as poachers and hold them in great contempt. Don’t confuse
what I do with what they did.’’ Earl made his point powerfully without
raising his voice. Then he continued.
‘‘I belong to several hunting organizations and, yes, the National Rifle
Association too. They all work for the preservation of habitat. Wetlands
are a good example. They are vanishing rapidly, thanks to drainage and
development. Populations of game birds for whom the marshes, bogs, and
estuaries are home are declining in numbers at an alarming rate. Hunters
have political and financial clout. They fight for the preservation of these
places right along with the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society.’’
‘‘That’s admirable, sir,’’ said Alex, ‘‘but environmentalists try to save
habitat for the sake of their inhabitants. You do it for the sake of killing
those inhabitants.’’
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 247

‘‘ ‘Taking,’ son, ‘taking,’ ’’ corrected Earl. ‘‘Besides, what’s the difference

if the resulting benefits are not only to the species of game animals but also
to species hunters have no interest in? If the habitat remains intact, all the
plants and animals in it profit. How can a mere difference in intentions
make any difference at all when so much good comes from our actions?
Actually, these habitats often contain endangered species of plants and ani-
mals, so actions that preserve habitat for common game animals may avoid
the extinction of these other species. In other words, sport hunters have not
caused the extinction of any species, and they may prevent the extinction of
many species. That’s a trade-off even the most avid environmentalist can
live with.’’
‘‘Excuse me for interrupting,’’ said Miriam as she entered the room.
‘‘Lyndon’s out front. He has something to show you.’’
Janet and Alex exchanged glances again. They knew that Lyndon, the
foreman of the ranch, had ridden out in the early morning to round up some
strays that had wandered through a breach in the fence. As they left the
house and walked up to the flatbed truck used for heavy hauling parked in
the driveway, they saw the carcass of a large pronghorn antelope and Lyn-
don with a smile on his face and a rifle in his hand.
‘‘He’s a big buck,’’ said Lyndon. ‘‘Caught him by surprise drinking from
the cistern at the north fence. I’d taken my 30–06 along just in case, and I
got real lucky. He was too big to carry on horseback, so I took the truck
out to get him. Now, I need some help with the cleaning.’’
Lyndon was a true cowboy. He viewed the off-road vehicles with con-
tempt and rode a horse instead. Teddy Roosevelt would have celebrated his
self-reliant, free-ranging spirit. He even wore chaps, boots, and spurs. They
were not for show; they functioned admirably in the prairie environment.
He was skilled with the rifle, branding iron, and lasso. Yet his complete
characterization of the American cowboy belied his education—an
advanced degree in history from Colorado State. He wrote a thesis on the
impact of the Great Plains on American culture. That was thirty years ago,
however, and for the past twenty-five he had lived out the results of his own
academic research.
Overwhelmed by this scene, Alex and Janet would have preferred to
exchange the subject of hunting for a discussion of the family celebration of
their engagement. For Earl, however, and for Lyndon, flushed with excite-
ment, that was not to be. After dinner the conversation turned once again
to hunting.
248 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘Lyndon, not far back you and I were talking about why we hunt and
what we get out of it,’’ Earl said. ‘‘You made some insightful points that
might be worth sharing with our young guests.’’
‘‘Which ones in particular?’’ Lyndon asked.
‘‘Well, you said that taking a large game animal is a ‘peak experience,’ ’’
Earl prompted. ‘‘What did you mean by that?’’
‘‘It’s hard to explain—and deeply spiritual. That moment of taking is
magic for me. There’s exhilaration, to be sure, and a sense of accomplish-
ment, but it goes way beyond that—way beyond winning the lottery or a
major sports event. I can’t point to any comparable experience, not in my
life,’’ Lyndon said.
‘‘This is that ‘soulful’ part of hunting I’ve always heard about,’’ Janet
said, ‘‘and please excuse me if I’m skeptical. Hunting is an expression of a
primal bloodlust. It satisfies the instinct of aggression so that we can all live
together without bringing violence to one another. We don’t need that outlet
now, though, and even if we did there are other, more preferable, ways of
satisfying it. Killing animals and calling the pursuit ‘sport hunting’ suggests
to me that all claims to peak or spiritual experiences are pretenses.’’
‘‘I think your term ‘primal’ is important here, Janet,’’ Lyndon responded.
‘‘You’re familiar with the claims of the emerging science of sociobiol-
ogy—or evolutionary psychology, as it’s sometimes called. For thousands of
years we were hunters. The feelings and behavior that made hunters success-
ful became coded in our genes. Indeed, one could argue that certain emo-
tions and even our intellect are evolutionary adaptations of the successful
hunter in those primal times.’’
‘‘Funny, I don’t sense those emotions,’’ Alex said.
‘‘Ever hunted?’’ Earl asked.
‘‘Um, no,’’ Alex admitted.
‘‘Then you wouldn’t recognize the hunting instincts, would you?’’ Earl
said.
‘‘I recognize them as bloodlust,’’ Alex responded. ‘‘And the animal—the
antelope you shot? It never had any say in the matter. True spirituality
doesn’t require victims.’’
‘‘Actually, the more appropriate term, in my opinion, is blood sacrifice,’’
Lyndon said. ‘‘Only a true urbanite could miss the deeper significance of the
hunt. Out here we call the 99 percent of Americans who never get more
than fifty feet from their car in a wilderness setting ‘ninety-nine fiftiers.’
Hikers, seeking the serene beauty of some majestic landscape, never notice
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 249

the constant perishing that drives all life and its presence in all natural set-
tings. We deny death in human society, so we are forced to deny it in nature.
It’s the urbanite, not the hunter, who lives under false pretenses.
‘‘And the antelope I took today,’’ Lyndon continued, ‘‘is special—a gift
to me for which I am deeply indebted and appreciative. It’s not about me.
I’m just a part of the puzzle or a larger performance or ritual in nature that
I can’t explain.’’
‘‘This discussion is far too romantic for me,’’ said Janet. ‘‘Let me put the
question another way. What’s the difference between animals killing ani-
mals and humans killing animals?’’
‘‘Whoa,’’ responded Lyndon. ‘‘Your question is very biased. Humans
don’t kill animals. Humans kill other animals.’’
‘‘Why is that change important?’’ Janet asked.
‘‘Because our urge to hunt and our meat-eating preferences are part of
our animal—not cultural—nature,’’ said Lyndon. ‘‘There is no difference
between animals killing animals and humans killing animals. We’re animals
too.’’
‘‘Does that fact justify hunting, or make it right?’’ Janet asked.
‘‘Morally speaking, that question doesn’t make sense,’’ answered Lyn-
don. ‘‘Moral principles do not apply to nature. Nature is nonmoral. It
would be absurd to hold any animal responsible for its actions. What is
done in nature is natural—it just is. No moral judgment can be made about
it. That includes our behavior when we are acting in nature according to
our place as animals.’’
‘‘Lyndon,’’ Janet continued, ‘‘your argument is, in fact, a justification for
hunting and killing. What you’re saying is that it is reasonable for humans
to imitate the behavior of animals and thereby escape the moral realm
altogether.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ said Alex, echoing his fiancée. ‘‘If nothing is right or wrong in
nature, then hunting is in some funny way permissible. In fact, anything is
permissible.’’
‘‘I don’t believe that,’’ Lyndon said, ‘‘and I don’t know any thoughtful
hunter who does. All animals—and plants too—live by the strict laws built
into their instinctive natures by evolution. Hunters abide by those same
laws. Abuse of game animals is a violation of those laws.’’
‘‘Back to emotions,’’ Alex said. ‘‘Do you feel any sadness when you stand
over the antelope you just killed?’’
‘‘I’d be lying if I said no,’’ Lyndon answered candidly. ‘‘There is a sense
of guilt. I wouldn’t be fully human if I didn’t feel that. Within the natural
250 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

context, though, guilt may be out of place. Anyway, it helps me appreciate

the animal and respect it.’’
‘‘How can that respect mean anything?’’ asked Alex incredulously.
‘‘We bring the animal home and eat it. That’s how we honor it. Letting
the carcass go to waste is the greatest disrespect,’’ Lyndon said. ‘‘And it’s
far more respect than urbanites show cattle, chickens, and other domestic
animals slaughtered by the millions for their ovens and grills.’’
Alex decided prudently to pursue another line of argument.
‘‘Back to your point about following our animal natures. That seems
absurd. We don’t base our moral principles of honesty or justice or loyalty
on what animals do or on what we could do when we act like animals, so
why should we imitate predatory animal behavior in hunting and killing
game?’’ he asked.
‘‘They’re not the same thing,’’ Lyndon replied, a bit frustrated with his
back-East acquaintances. ‘‘Those principles are part of our human culture
and make up our moral lives in relation to one another. Animals have noth-
ing quite like it.’’
‘‘I hear you saying that humans are the same as animals in nature and
yet different. Is that right?’’ Janet asked.
‘‘That’s right,’’ Lyndon answered, ‘‘and wisdom is being able to tell the
difference and conduct ourselves accordingly.’’
With that remark, both sides of the debate silently decided to call it a
draw. The hour was late, and tomorrow friends and family would appear
early for the all-day celebration.
As Janet passed the rack of rifles and bows, she reflected on Lyndon’s
remark. ‘‘You know,’’ she said to Alex, ‘‘if killing and dying are so much a
part of nature, perhaps we should refuse to participate in it at all. Is that
possible? We certainly can’t redesign nature and rid it of its violence, though
our zoos and parks try to do just that. Still, we want to affirm nature—but
does that mean affirming stalking and killing like Uncle Earl and Lyndon
do? Are we above nature when we object to hunting, or only above
ourselves?’’
Alex looked at her with a hint of surprise and smiled. ‘‘Well, if those are
your thoughts, we’ll have a lot to talk about on our honeymoon.’’

Commentary

Only a small proportion of Americans—about 10 percent—ever hunt.1 Yet

hunting introduces issues that go beyond mere numbers. The sport is an
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 251

American tradition. It is associated politically and culturally with the gun

culture in America, as well as with the country’s celebrated roots in rugged
independence and self-reliance. In his great work of poetry, Leaves of Grass,
Walt Whitman credits the advance of the frontier in the nineteenth century
to the broad axe, not the rifle.2 Many hunting enthusiasts today would beg
to differ. In their memory and imagination it was the musket, the Sharpes
repeating rifle, and the lever-action Winchester that truly won the West.
Hunters are a powerful minority. The relentless lobbying of the influential,
ideologically entrenched, and sometimes embattled National Rifle Associa-
tion reflects their power. Even the 10 percent minority who hunt translate
into more than 20 million hunters—a significant special-interest constitu-
ency and a sizable population added to the woods and fields during hunting
season.
The animals these millions kill—or, as Earl prefers, ‘‘take’’—also number
in the millions: 200 million animals each year. About half are birds—mainly
doves (50 million), quail (25 million), and pheasant (20 million). Small ani-
mals, such as squirrel and rabbits, account for 25 million killed.3 The larger
animals command the most attention from opponents and the public, prob-
ably because they are large. Their deaths by rifle and by bow and arrow
are visually more violent than those of doves instantly shot out of the sky.
Moreover, we relate to our mammalian relatives more easily than to our
avian relatives. The sheer numbers are unnerving as well: Four million deer
are taken annually, along with twenty thousand black bears.4 Yet hunting
advocates are quick to point out, as Earl does, that these numbers do not
tell the whole story. Thirty million deer forage in the woodlands and open
meadows of America, many in sprawling suburban communities, and as
many as 8 million black bears share their habitat.5 Both species are doing
quite well—their numbers are growing despite the ubiquitous seasonal pres-
ence of their potent enemy, the human hunter.

Moral Opposition to Hunting

Opponents of hunting are quick to point out that these numbers miss the
point entirely. For them, hunting is a morally suspect and unnecessary sport.
The death of even a single dove, whitetail deer, or black bear is one too
many. Their arguments are many. The inherent violence of the sport is a
major objection. If hunting is a sport, it is a blood sport akin to the slaughter
of the Roman circus or gladiatorial combat. If it were a true sport, both
sides would be evenly matched. As the one pursued (hunting, by definition,
252 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

means to pursue), the animal is always on the defensive. The roles of hunter
and hunted are seldom reversed.
The object of the hunter is to stalk and then use a weapon, usually a rifle,
to take the life of a helpless animal. The fact that guns are the weapons of
choice in crime and violence in American cities is not lost on opponents of
hunting. What pleasure and satisfaction can come from such activity?
Tracking and shooting a deer with a high-powered rifle must be in its
essence cruel and sadistic, associated with some primal joy of inflicting pain.
Or it is an ego trip in which the hunter is bent on domination and conquest,
and the trophy head hung on the wall instructs all who see it that the hunter
is superior and powerful. How can hunting be considered a sport?
Closely related to the perceived sadistic pleasure of the hunter are the
pain and suffering inflicted on the prey. Even if it escapes the bullet the
animal will experience fear and terror. More important is the high rate of
crippling noted by Alex. Crippling occurs when an animal is injured in the
hunt and successfully evades the hunter, only to die a slow and painful death
from its wounds, starvation, or predators. Estimates of the rate of unre-
trieved animals vary considerably but sometimes approach 30 percent. So-
called ethical hunters strive to reduce or eliminate crippling by taking only
clear shots and maintaining their marksmanship skills. Ammunition is
expensive, however. Few hunters can afford to hone their skills on a target
range before entering the woods for the real thing, and the average hunter
is in the field only five to seven days each year—hardly ample experience to
determine a clear shot. Many novices, bent on achieving their legal limit,
often ‘‘shoot from the hip’’ and injure rather than kill their target.
Another argument sometimes voiced by opponents of hunting is that
hunters, a small portion of the citizenry, are unfairly subsidized by public
funds. The Animal Rights Handbook, for example, claims that federal and
state wildlife agencies, aided by our tax dollars, maintain artificial habitats
where deer and other animals are encouraged to overpopulate to provide
targets for the benefit of hunters.6 The very name—state fish and game com-
missions—betrays their purpose. This practice, opponents claim, is an abuse
of public funds.
It is no surprise that few of the philosophers discussed in chapter 1 who
argue for the moral value and considerability of animals approve of hunt-
ing. Peter Singer objects on the basis of the unnecessary suffering that hunt-
ing brings to sentient animals, although he does approve of hunting within
subsistence cultures—the Inuit, for example. Paul Taylor opposes hunting
because it violates several principles that derive from his biocentric ethic.
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 253

Two of these principles are noninterference and fidelity. Noninterference

means that humans should let natural systems and individual animals alone
whenever possible to pursue their own fulfillment. Fidelity entails the
duty—framed in negative terms, as a prohibition—not to deceive animals
in the wild. Fishing, trapping, and hunting violate both of these duties in
that they interfere with and betray the animal.7

The Response of Advocates

Hunting advocates are quick to respond to each of these charges and char-
acterizations as distorted and unjust. Hunters do not seek to inflict pain and
suffering on game animals. Second only to a successful kill is the avoidance
of such suffering. The ideal is instant death. To achieve this goal, ethical
hunters will train and sharpen their skills in preparation for going into the
field. The problem of crippling remains difficult. Hunters argue that the
more powerful rifles—those that fire high-velocity projectiles accurately
over long distances—reduce the incidence of crippling dramatically. Ironi-
cally, however, the use of these rifles also reduces any advantages the animal
might have to detect the hunter and escape successfully. Earl seems to be
caught in this dilemma when he promotes bow-and-arrow hunting.
Although this primitive weapon gives the animal a fighting chance, its use
may result in frequent incidences of crippling.
Several points can be made with respect to the term ‘‘sport hunting.’’
Agreeing with their opponents, apologists for hunting have reservations
about the word ‘‘sport’’ as well. Although many sports have fervent devo-
tees or fans, ‘‘sport’’ suggests recreation or pastime—a leisure activity that
passes time in the absence of more serious or pressing pursuits or work.
Unlike many sports, advocates argue, hunting is not a trivial pursuit
intended to satisfy trifling interests. Dedicated and thoughtful hunters do
not regard themselves this way. Characterizing themselves as sport hunters
places them on the defensive and at a disadvantage with their critics.
Moreover, the very foundation of hunting lies in the challenge of the
pursuit. Ethical hunters hold in contempt those who bait deer and bear to
approach for an easy shot. Nothing, however, tarnishes the image of the
hunter like artificial hunting. Private game ranches with fences and exotic
animals and birds released from pens so that paying customers can shoot
them at will are offensive to most hunters. Every advantage should be given
to the animal. Even with its disadvantages, bow hunting is intended to do
just that.
254 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

Hunting advocates respond to the accusation that public monies subsi-

dize their activities with figures of their own. They point out that of the
millions of people who enjoy wildlife-related outdoor activities, only hunt-
ers pay for the privilege. Hunting and fishing licenses, duck stamps, and
excise taxes on the purchase of hunting equipment fund as much as 75 per-
cent of the annual income of government wildlife agencies, according to
some estimates.8
Other contributions of hunters include protection of habitat. Earl points
out that environmentalists and hunters have a powerful common interest in
the preservation of wild areas as habitat. Politically influential and wealthy
hunting organizations recognize the importance of protecting natural areas
as habitat for game animals. Because nongame species—such as plants,
frogs, and birds—benefit from the same habitat, environmentalists stand to
gain from the hunters’ advocacy. The unusual coalition between two groups
whose philosophies are irreducibly incompatible is possible because they
agree to set aside their differences at the practical and political levels to
achieve a common purpose. Earl’s comments on this alliance represent the
pragmatic approach of Bryan Norton discussed in chapter 1. Anthropocen-
trists, biocentrists, and ecocentrists can work together to achieve real-world
interests in a common goal or project.
Nevertheless, the choice to work closely with one’s sworn enemies is dif-
ficult, especially for some biocentrists for whom animal suffering and death
at the hands of recreational hunters is cruel and indefensible. Norton’s prag-
matic approach is a win-win situation only if such sacrifices are accepted.
The ecocentrist and especially the biocentrist must agree to pursue their
purpose within the rules of utilitarian calculations. To preserve the great
diversity of species in a hunting refuge as well as the lives of many individual
animals, other animals—game animals—must bear the cost. Harm brought
to deer and ducks by hunters pays off in the benefits of a healthy habitat—a
marsh or woodland—for thousands of other resident species.

Humans: In or Outside of Nature?

Other philosophical issues play a powerful role in the justification of hunt-

ing. Anthropocentrists have no difficulty offering such a justification:
Humans are superior. We have a right to lord it over other species and to
kill them at our pleasure, with no duties to the animal save those to our-
selves (e.g., preserving a species of animal from overhunting for the sake of
future game). Religious reasons sometimes are offered. Chapter 9 of the
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 255

biblical book of Genesis makes this attitude clear: ‘‘The fear of you and
dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth . . . into your hand they
shall be delivered (9:2),’’ and ‘‘Every living thing that moves shall be food
for you’’ (9:3).
Several contemporary apologists for hunting prefer to argue, however,
from a position that includes the hunter within rather than beyond nature.
Earl follows this line of reasoning when he identifies with the apex predator.
This is the ‘‘king of beasts,’’ whose role is to patrol the ecosystem of which
he is an integral part—preventing overpopulation; taking the weak, sickly,
and slow; and otherwise managing the system and sustaining its well-being
with Darwinian efficiency. Alex quickly recognizes the contradiction
entailed in this account of the hunting vocation. Hunters, he says, stalk the
biggest and best of a species: the trophy animals—those favored by natural
selection. This ‘‘unnatural selection’’ hardly works to the benefit of the nat-
ural system. Hunting advocates respond to this embarrassing insight by
drawing attention to the fact that those millions of game animals taken
annually do hold down populations. Without hunters as a limiting force,
many disastrous consequences would follow, including decimation of crops,
increased incidences of disease in animals as well as between animals and
humans, habitat destruction, and massive die-offs. If this were to happen,
the new managing predators probably would be feral dogs and cats whose
growing numbers already put birds and small animals at risk—in addition
to the increased dangers of rabies and other zoonotic diseases they would
bring.
The apex predator argument does not get to heart of the matter, which
Janet characterizes as ‘‘soulful.’’ Advocates of hunting ultimately turn to
atavism in the justification of their pursuit. Hunting, the argument goes,
must be experienced to be understood. Its opponents do not know what
they are talking about when they condemn the activity as arbitrary and
capricious, cruel and sadistic, a psychopathological distortion of the healthy
individual psyche. Urbanites—Earl’s ‘‘ninety-nine fiftiers’’—have no experi-
ence with animals in the wild, only with pets or zoos. They have lost touch
with primal instincts and virtues that are revived in the stalking and taking
of game. Our ancestors were not born near supermarkets. Hunting was a
fundamental pursuit of humans for tens of thousands of years. Those drives
still lie deep within us, aroused when we take to the woods with rifle and
bow.
Opponents of hunting often wonder if nonlethal means could be used to
stalk and take the prey. Perhaps a camera could provide a different kind of
256 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

shot for the hunter—one just as satisfying. It would not be the same thing,
however. Killing is integral to hunting. The killing of an animal may trigger
a fundamentally mystical peak experience of unity with the world of nature
and result in self-fulfillment. Unlike the urbanite, whose abstract vision is
of nature without death, the hunter understands that nature cannot be truly
experienced without encountering death. Hunting affirms the mortality of
all creatures and participates in the prey-predator relationship that drives
evolution. Certainly, the experience is not without some unease and even
guilt. Guilt was not absent in primal subsistence hunters. They atoned with
ceremonies honoring the animal—perhaps processing its soul into the
womb of the maternal Earth, to be born into another body. The modern
hunter atones by consuming his take. Deer becomes venison when served at
the table, where it is more than merely meat. Eating the animal gives mean-
ing to its death and avoids the mortal sin of waste. Indeed, eating animals
that we kill is an act of respect for all of nature and its good order.
Hunting advocates point to hunting as an expression of virtue, not vice.
Discipline is involved, as are patience, courage, and respect. Of course, there
are exceptions. Some hunters are insensitive slobs whose intentions are
domination and slaughter. Many hunters, however, describe the hunt as an
event requiring great honesty and personal integrity. Because hunting is
mostly a solitary endeavor, the expression of these virtues is impelled not
extrinsically by reward, recognition, or praise from others but intrinsically,
as the spontaneous expression of a person’s character.
Holmes Rolston III is an environmental philosopher who has wrestled
with these philosophical and spiritual claims for hunting. His thoughts are
represented by Earl and Lyndon. The human species lives both within cul-
ture and within nature. Our cultural life consists of our personal and social
relations with others and the moral obligations that follow from those rela-
tions. Human institutions reflect these distinctly human principles and val-
ues. Yet we are animals as well, and some of our activities, including eating,
belong to our animal nature. Why should we follow the dietary habits of
animals in nature, however, when we don’t model our other social and
moral values—marriage, honesty, justice—on animal behavior? Because,
Rolston argues, these are cultural values, unique to us. Eating is different.
It is ‘‘omnipresent’’ in nature and applies equally to all omnivores. We have
no duty to remake the order of nature. We may continue as omnivores. Nor
do we have any obligation to remake our own animal natures—the product
of eons of evolution—when it is appropriate to express them. Stalking and
killing prey is an expression of that nature. Not only is it mostly outside the
Nature Red in Tooth, Claw, and Bullet 257

realm of moral value—because nature is nonmoral—but it also is an act

expressing the essential character of our species. Rolston senses the dialectic
and even the contradiction of hunting. The exhilaration and the guilt are
both present. The former derives from our place in the ecosystem, the latter
from our place in culture. To affirm both as legitimate responses to killing
is to embrace the tragic contradiction built into the world.9

Questions for Discussion

1. Many ecocentrists, including Aldo Leopold, condone hunting. Are

they consistent in their position?
2. Peter Singer, the famous advocate of animal liberation discussed in
chapter 1, focuses his attention on the suffering of domestic and fac-
tory-produced animals. Can his arguments for the moral value of
animals be applied without modification to animals in the wild?
What would Singer say about saving a deer from a stalking cougar?
Are the balance of nature and maintenance of the food chain addi-
tional factors that must be considered? Explain.
3. Nature is driven by predator-prey relationships. The human species
evolved in nature and satisfies the requirements for survival by adap-
tation, just as any other species does. If hunting, therefore, is a natu-
ral human predatory activity in nature, how can it be criticized or
condemned?
4. Tens of millions of animals are struck and killed by vehicles on high-
ways each year. These road-kill numbers approach the numbers of
animals killed by hunters. Is it logical to oppose hunting but not
oppose automobile transportation?

Notes
1. James A. Swan, In Defense of Hunting (San Francisco: HarperCollins,
1995), 3.
2. Walt Whitman, ‘‘Song of the Broad-Axe,’’ in Leaves of Grass (New York:
Literary Classics of the United States, 1982), 330–31.
3. Swan, In Defense of Hunting, 8.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 266.
6. The Animal Rights Handbook (Venice, CA: Living Planet Press, 1990), 83.
258 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

7. Paul Taylor, Respect for Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1986), 174.
8. Swan, In Defense of Hunting, 159.
9. Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics: Duties and Values in the Natural
World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 78–93.

For Further Reading

Felsinger, Alex. ‘‘Alaska to Kill over 75% of Wolf Population in New Aerial Hunt,’’
March 18, 2009. www.planetsave.com/category/antienvironmentalism.
Huang, Lily. ‘‘It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny.’’ Newsweek, November 12,
2001, 49.
Leopold, Aldo. ‘‘The Varmint Question.’’ In The River of the Mother of God and
Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, ed. Susan Flader and J. Baird Callicott, 101–12.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Lofton, Robert. ‘‘The Morality of Hunting.’’ Environmental Ethics 6 (Fall 1984):
241–49.
Posewitz, Jim. Fair Chase: The Ethic and Tradition of Hunting. Helena, MT: Falcon
Press, 1994.
Regan, Tom. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1983.
Rolston, Holmes, III. Environmental Ethics: Duties and Values in the Natural
World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
Swan, James A. In Defense of Hunting. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995.
Taylor, Paul. Respect for Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Western, Samuel. ‘‘Fair Game.’’ E: The Environmental Magazine 10 (July–August
1999): 16.
 fifteen

Understanding
Xenotransplants
Crossbreeding Humans or Advanced
Domestication of Animals?

I
‘‘ ’m just not convinced,’’ Hassan said to his friends. Liz, Jason,
Nirad, and Hassan were all first- or second-year residents who had
met for lunch across the street from the university hospital, where
they had all just completed rounds on the kidney transplant floor. They had
been discussing Liz’s announcement that she was planning to specialize in
urology—specifically, kidney transplant surgery.
‘‘But Has,’’ Liz protested, ‘‘you’ve seen the stats on transplant life expec-
tancy—especially with kidneys. Life expectancies are constantly rising,
along with quality of life. How many thousands of people who had end-
stage renal disease are now living almost fully normal lives ten and even
twenty years posttransplant? And heart and liver success rates are continu-
ing to rise. Like kidney transplant patients, they have fewer and fewer com-
plications as the steroid dosages continue to decrease. There’s no reason to
doubt that in another five to ten years the success rates of heart, lung, liver,
and pancreas transplants—and even these new intestinal transplants—will
have improved beyond all recognition. What kind of reservations can you
possibly have when you compare that to the deaths these patients would
otherwise experience?’’

259
260 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

Hassan had just begun the first surgical rotation of his residency; he was
working in the transplant clinic under Dr. Ross, under whom Liz was begin-
ning her second year of residency.
‘‘One of my cousins had a kidney transplant five years ago because of a
birth defect,’’ Hassan confided. ‘‘Within two weeks she had a rare and rag-
ing staph infection, and she spent six weeks in the hospital to get it under
control. In these five years she has spent about a third of her time in the
hospital. The prospects don’t look any better for the rest of her life, basically
because with the immunosuppressant drugs they can’t fully eliminate that
infection. I don’t have all the details; I have tried to stay away from the
medical side as well as I could after checking that her surgical staff was
reputable. If I got involved, my whole family would expect me to pull off a
miracle and save her. But I do visit Suha. She’s now a fourteen-year-old
ghost. She has no hope that she will ever be well; even in weeks when she
feels well, she expects the infection to recur. She has no plans for the future.
She has virtually no friends left because she takes no interest in their plans
or activities. She doesn’t think she will ever marry or have a home or career.
A few weeks ago, the staff told the family that the treatment for the infec-
tion had damaged the transplant kidney and that she will be back on dialysis
waiting for a second transplant within the year. When I visited that night,
Suha blurted out to me that she wishes she would die because then she
wouldn’t have to worry about what will happen to her when her parents
die and there is nobody to take care of her. Her social circle is her parents,
the staff at the transplant clinic, and the nurses and aides at the hospital.
‘‘You know we have lots more like her. You saw Mrs. Morrow this morn-
ing—the same story in a middle-aged woman two years posttransplant. Her
husband had to quit his job, just like my aunt did with Suha, to take care
of her, to take her for the doctor appointments, for labs, to secure and
supervise her drug supply—the whole routine. In Suha’s case, my aunt was
working for college funds for the other three daughters, who will now have
to work and go part-time to community colleges because it is all the family
can do to pay for Suha’s bills that insurance doesn’t cover. Or what about
that baseball player at the university? Right after his transplant he got Guil-
lain-Barré, spent six months totally paralyzed on a respirator in ICU, six
months in rehab, will never have more than partial use of his hands and feet
again, and still faces a second transplant. These people can live for decades
in this half-life, destroying the lives of everyone who cares for them. My
aunt and uncle have no life other than caring for Suha.’’
There was silence for a moment, and then Jason spoke up.
Understanding Xenotransplants 261

‘‘Well, yes,’’ he said, ‘‘there is a small group of transplant patients who

succumb to serious diseases from immunosuppression, but you know cases
like your cousin’s are rare, and people who are not immunosuppressed also
can contract these same diseases. Remember that big cop in ICU last year
who came down with Guillain-Barré after a bout with the flu that weakened
his immune system?’’
‘‘Of course nontransplant patients also succumb,’’ Liz responded, ‘‘but
these diseases are a lot easier to treat successfully if the patient is not immu-
nosuppressed. I’ve met only three or four patients who, given a choice
between dying without the transplant and taking these risks with one, chose
not to transplant—and those were all kidney patients who were doing well
on peritoneal dialysis, on which they could hope to live out a pretty normal
life span.’’
‘‘That’s right,’’ Hassan said, ‘‘but that’s my point. Why don’t we put
more people on peritoneal, and keep them there, instead of steering every-
one to transplantation? Nine hours a night hooked up to a machine, with
comparatively few drugs to alter body chemistry or damage other organs. I
know that lots of our patients wouldn’t have the discipline, couldn’t handle
the responsibility of peritoneal, but my point is that we don’t even support,
much less encourage, the ones who could. We shunt them into the high-tech
hemodialysis and transplant list path.’’
Nirad, the quietest one in the group, chimed in. ‘‘I agree with you, Liz,
but I think I see Has’s point too. Organ transplantation is like the HIV
cocktail in that it’s not a cure, just a way to maybe survive a fatal disease
for longer, without curing it—and the treatment creates problems of its
own. I wish that mechanical organs like that new grapefruit-sized implant-
able heart with the external battery pack that Dr. Sacks is testing works
out and could be the first mechanical organ. Then we could avoid
immunosuppressants.’’
‘‘That’s a great hope,’’ Jason said, ‘‘but as you well know, it’s not likely.
The heart, like all the other organs, performs many different functions in
the body; many of them we don’t fully understand. Just because we can get
a machine to mimic the pumping action of the heart, or even a few other
functions, doesn’t mean it will replace all the functions of the heart. We’ll
still be medicating the hell out of those patients. That’s why the mechanicals
are being treated as stopgap measures to keep people alive until we have
transplants for them.’’
Liz smiled and reminded them of Dr. Grenville’s lecture about the future
of xenotransplants, which they had heard the week before.
262 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘Imagine yourself ordering kidneys and hearts from pigs genetically

designed to share some human DNA so they don’t acute-reject!’’ she
exclaimed. ‘‘I had no idea that pigs were so close to the human genotype,
though I suppose we must have learned that in genetics. Grenville seems to
think that pig organs would not only solve the problem of insufficient trans-
plant organs; he also reported that animal research indicates that the
amount of immunosuppression can be reduced drastically by prepping the
organ recipient with the donor pig’s bone marrow. By the time we all com-
plete our various residencies, these xenografts may be the center of trans-
plant surgery, instead of just stopgap experiments on dying patients with no
other options, like that Baby Fae who got the baboon heart in the early
1980s.’’
Hassan made a face. ‘‘Among all the mammals,’’ he said, ‘‘why did it
have to be pigs that were most suitable? None of my people would ever
accept pig organs. If it’s too dirty to eat, we certainly can’t make it part of
our bodies.’’
Nirad laughed along with the others. He and Hassan were American-
born Hindu and Muslim, respectively, and frequently had been forced to
explain particular beliefs and practices of their traditions to the others. Then
he got serious.
‘‘I can appreciate the irony, Has, but there’s a deeper problem. Many
millions of people in India—virtually all the higher Hindu castes—are vege-
tarian, and that vegetarianism is based on ahimsa, the principle of not harm-
ing any living thing. When you add the Jains, as well as the many Buddhists
who refuse to eat animals for the same reason, to Muslims and Orthodox
Jews who object to pork, you have a significant portion of the world’s popu-
lation that almost certainly will not accept these xenografts for religious
reasons. If we are really researching a solution to diseased organs, its ethics
shouldn’t offend the religious sensibilities of half the world. This isn’t just a
problem in other nations, or with religion. Even in the United States many
people have a problem with using parts of any other species in the human
body, whether by ingestion, testing, or grafts. It seems to me that it’s cross-
ing a dangerous boundary that is not meant to be crossed.’’
‘‘But Nirad,’’ Jason responded, ‘‘hasn’t that point been made against
every major advance in medicine, including all surgery, blood transfusions,
up through radiation and chemotherapy and human organ transplants?
Opponents of all those procedures have demanded that we not cross some
boundary—usually one they felt that God himself had deliberately insti-
tuted. I really can’t take that argument seriously anymore.’’
Understanding Xenotransplants 263

‘‘Nirad,’’ Liz teased, ‘‘I had no idea that you were an animal rights
defender. How did we miss that about you? Is it related to Hindu reverence
for cows? Is that it?’’
‘‘No,’’ Nirad snorted, ‘‘I’m not traditional enough to be against xeno-
transplants because of the injury done to any individual pig—or even cow!
I know some people would be, but if I have to kill an animal to save a
human I can do that without a qualm. It seems to me, though, that crossing
human and nonhuman species is dangerous stuff at a bunch of different
levels. Who decides how much human DNA in a pig makes that pig human?
Could we be creating ‘semihumans’? Remember The Island of Dr. Moreau?
Even if standards were set, we have seen how researchers’ constant need to
push the envelope eventually leads somebody to ignore the standards. It’s
perfectly clear to me that the reason research has turned to animals is that
researchers think there are too many ethical problems in securing human
organs to accommodate the need for them, and they hope to avoid these
ethical problems by turning to animals. But when they give human genes or
DNA to these animals, or vice versa, they create another whole set of prob-
lems. The ethical issue of how we distinguish human from animal once we
start mixing them is only one of the problems.’’
‘‘I have a hard time taking the Dr. Moreau tableau seriously,’’ Jason said.
‘‘It was just fantastic fiction.’’
Liz responded with a chuckle. ‘‘Oh, I don’t know, Jason, it seems to me
that that’s what they said a hundred years ago about Jules Verne’s Nautilus,
which prowled the bottom of the sea! Yesterday’s science fiction really has
been a pretty good predictor of our world in lots of ways.’’
Hassan spoke up. ‘‘But seriously, guys, look at all the things we are con-
stantly finding that go wrong in human transplants, things we thought we
understood; some of them we didn’t have a clue about until thirty years
after we started doing transplants. Like that new research about kidney
patients who constantly reject one donor organ after another. Only now is
it discovered that the scar tissue that causes the rejection is not part of the
rejection response to the donor organ but a part of the patient’s body’s
response to surgery! We know a lot more about the human body than about
any other mammal—what unknown reactions would we be importing with
the organ, reactions we know nothing about?’’
‘‘But we’ve learned about these occasional but real problems in humans,’’
Liz said, ‘‘and we would learn about new ones from animals and find out
how to treat them, too, in time. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it’s true.’’
264 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘Yes, science will solve all problems, including the ones it creates,’’ Has-
san mocked.
Nirad responded to Liz more seriously. ‘‘All right, we’ve learned how to
deal with importing human viruses like cytomegalovirus in transplants. We
now know that about 40 percent of the population is CMV positive, and
the rest CMV negative, and when the CMV status of the donor and the
recipient don’t match we have a prophylactic drug treatment that prevents
CMV disease while the positive body or organ converts the other to posi-
tive. A lot of people lost their lives, or were left disabled by conditions like
blindness, before we learned that one. But animal organs carry a whole new
world of viruses and infections that we don’t even recognize, much less
know how to test for or treat. Inevitably we would import these viruses into
transplant patients, even if these donor pigs are raised in sterile conditions.
‘‘After all,’’ he continued, ‘‘look at hospitals, which have the most rigor-
ous conventions on cleanliness and sterility—and remain some of the easiest
places in the world to become ill. Some of these pig diseases will certainly
produce mortal complications; others might not threaten the lives of the
patients, but if those patients have children, do they pass on these diseases
to their kids? Then they are out there in the gene pool. Or do we sterilize
transplant patients to make sure they don’t reproduce? Wouldn’t that be
wonderful!’’ he concluded sarcastically.
‘‘That’s a scary thought,’’ Liz admitted. ‘‘We could be introducing whole
new diseases, even epidemics, into the human population. We already know
that humans are susceptible to many animal diseases, like HIV and mad
cow disease. Sometimes the diseases that cross over are more dangerous to
humans than they are to the animals from which they come.’’
‘‘That’s a big one to consider,’’ Hassan said, stroking his chin. ‘‘What
about cloning and stem cell research? Don’t I remember hearing a series of
reports last year touting them both as potential sources of hope?’’
‘‘Yeah, but by comparison with animal xenografts, both of them are
pretty far off in the future,’’ Liz answered. ‘‘Stem cell research was delayed
for years by the Bush rules. And now it looks like the new administration is
going to limit government money to stem cell research that uses donated
excess embryos from fertility clinics.’’
‘‘And even those limitations do not make it moral!’’ Jason interrupted.
Everyone knew that he came from a family involved in the Right-to-Life
movement. ‘‘Embryonic stem cells are taken from fetuses that are aborted,
a real moral problem in itself. But some researchers want to deliberately
Understanding Xenotransplants 265

create embryos with the intention of destroying them by removing the stem
cells. How can that not be murder?’’
‘‘If it’s not murder to have, or perform, an abortion, then it isn’t murder
to create and destroy embryos, however unfortunate—not to mention polit-
ically dangerous right now—it is,’’ Liz retorted. She and Jason had gone
head to head on the abortion issue several times before.
‘‘We can argue the morality of abortion until Nirad’s cows come home,’’
Hassan said, ‘‘but in terms of the politics it’s clear that even under the new
administration there are serious objections to funding research that creates
and destroys embryos to obtain stem cells—and maybe there should be.’’
Hassan looked to Jason, who was ready to jump in on the point. ‘‘Regard-
less of those objections, on the science alone, do you think cloning and stem
cell research are a long way from answering the need for organs, Liz?’’
‘‘Further off this month than before,’’ she responded. ‘‘Anybody read the
latest research on cloning?’’ When no one replied, she explained, ‘‘We all
know that the rates of success in animal cloning are low, but the latest
report says that in the animal species where researchers have had the most
success, the success rate is between one and three in a hundred live births,
depending on the species—and that many of the live births are short-lived
and not healthy, either. Interestingly, one of the biggest problems seems to
be anomalies in various types of tissue, especially organs, that soon cause
death. Growth and development usually don’t occur normally; the research-
ers suspect the problem is that the programming of an adult cell by the egg
takes place in minutes or hours, instead of the months that sperm take to
develop or the years that eggs take to mature. In the speed, they think,
mistakes are made, and those mistakes don’t always show up till later.’’
‘‘Guys, you can’t seriously be thinking about cloning whole people as a
source for organs!’’ sputtered Jason. ‘‘Regardless of these technical prob-
lems, you know the size that a fetus would have to be before any of its
organs would be usable for transplant—it would have to be virtually full-
term, and even then many organs would not be large enough for adults.
You can’t be talking about creating people who are identical to living
human beings and treating them like cars in a junkyard, raided for spare
parts!’’
‘‘I didn’t mean to imply that I approved of this use,’’ Liz said defensively.
‘‘Of course it would be impossible to use intelligent sentient clones for parts.
But some researchers have now been able to clone individual organs in mice,
without the whole body.’’
266 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘Well, maybe cloning just a kidney or heart would be OK,’’ Hassan said.
‘‘But not taking parts from a cloned human body. Anyone who looks just
like me and has all my DNA should be treated with the same respect I am,
even if he is born without a higher brain. It’s too damn dangerous. Brain
death is one thing in comatose patients. I don’t want anything to do with
taking hearts out of conscious, sentient beings with fully human DNA. How
big a step is that from raiding mentally retarded or even mentally ill people
for organs?’’
Liz shrugged. ‘‘I didn’t say it was a good idea,’’ she said, ‘‘and I do have
some qualms about cloning whole humans too. But if the technology for
cloning individual organs could be perfected, we could just clone the organ
we need. Stem cell research isn’t really so much about replacing worn-out
organs. Instead, it offers hope of reducing the number of damaged organs
that need replacing. The use of stem cells, if applied early enough in the
disease process, could cure or at least retard organ deterioration in several
specific diseases. Imagine what a cure for diabetes—or even a way to retard
kidney disease in diabetic patients—could do to reduce the need for kidneys!
The present supply of stem cells looks to remain fairly limited, though, so
it’s hard to imagine any widespread impact on the general population in the
near future even if stem cell treatment is proved successful in these new
applications.’’
‘‘The supply is limited because they come from aborted fetuses,’’ Jason
said. ‘‘Tell it like it is. To increase the supply to treatment levels rather than
just experimental levels, it won’t be enough to salvage more stem cells from
dead fetuses; we also would have to abort more fetuses. Gruesome, huh?’’
‘‘OK, Jason, we get the point,’’ Hassan said. ‘‘We probably would need
artificial sources of stem cells. That’s why the xenotransplants look so
attractive to those of us who like pigs.’’
‘‘I don’t know how I feel about xenotransplants,’’ Nirad said. ‘‘I don’t
think I’m uneasy because my culture reveres cows, though maybe I have
absorbed the ahimsa principle of no harm to any living thing so deeply that
I’m not conscious of it. I am uncomfortable using anything living as if it
were merely a thing that we humans can transform or manipulate in major
ways. If it would be wrong to eliminate the whole species, then isn’t it also
wrong to transform the species in a fundamental way to meet our desires?’’
‘‘Do you mean to say that I can take a kidney from the eighteen-year-old
brother of a dialysis patient to save the patient’s life, but it would be wrong
to take a kidney from a pig to save that same life?’’ Liz asked. ‘‘That makes
no sense to me. If we are relatives of the pigs in evolutionary terms, and
Understanding Xenotransplants 267

human relatives exchange organs for the good of the whole society, then
why is it wrong to take organs from our animal relatives? Don’t many
native peoples understand themselves as descended from their totem ani-
mals? Wouldn’t we just be acknowledging that kind of relationship?’’
‘‘I don’t think that one will wash, Liz,’’ Jason said, ‘‘because the way I
remember totems, the totemic animal could not be eaten or killed by the
member of the totemic group as a way of honoring the ancestral animal. In
the totemic system, we are the descendants who owe reverence to the ances-
tral animal.’’
‘‘But lots of indigenous peoples have hunted and eaten animals, even
though they understand them as related to humans, haven’t they?’’ Liz
demanded.
‘‘Yes. You know,’’ Nirad remarked with a glance at her plate, ‘‘if you
really did understand pigs as relatives, I think you would feel differently
about ordering pork ribs for lunch.’’ Hassan chuckled, and Liz acknowl-
edged the hit. Nirad continued, ‘‘But people in India, for example, would
explain eating animals in the past by saying that primitives saw no other
way to sustain their lives—but that more civilized peoples realized that the
relationship between species forbids using other species when we have other
means of sustaining our lives.’’
‘‘But we don’t have other means!’’ Liz insisted. ‘‘These patients die with-
out transplants.’’
‘‘I don’t know, Liz. I’m not much for animal rights,’’ said Jason, ‘‘but I
do think there is a difference between hunting animals when you are hungry
and creating animal factories, either the ones we already have to produce
veal, chicken, salmon, and so forth or the new factories that xenotrans-
plants are creating. Native hunters take only one deer out of the herd that
runs free and ask for its forgiveness for the necessity of killing it to feed
their people. They revere the animals. The scale that our society works on
has already taken many animals out of their natural habitats to domesticate
them and breed desired genetic changes into them, reducing and controlling
genetic diversity within species. Now we’ve moved them into factory farms
and laboratories, making the animals we eat even more invisible. We don’t
think of the chicken breast in the grocery as an animal; we ignore the condi-
tions under which they are produced, and the result is that animals don’t
have the sacredness they have had for the native hunters. We would be self-
consciously further changing who the animals are and in the end making
them just things—in the same way that embryos and fetuses have become,
to a lot of people, just things to be used.
268 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

‘‘And you know, I have to wonder if animals really are the answer to the
organ shortage. The technologies involved here are all patented, and the
companies that own the patents plan to earn billions. Did you know that
the majority of investors in these xenotransplant companies are the drug
companies that make immunosuppressants? They plan on charging thou-
sands of dollars—most accounts say about $10,000 apiece—for these pig
organs. That’s in addition to the $15,000 to $20,000 a year transplant
patients already spend on labs and drugs. Even if U.S. insurance companies
eventually cover these xenotransplants, most of the people in the world will
be shut out by the cost.’’
Liz was clearly frustrated. She paused a moment, then began, ‘‘I don’t
understand how you can take that position, Jason,’’ she said. ‘‘Vaccinations
were too expensive for much of the world in the beginning, but now we
have global immunization for lots of diseases. The fact that companies want
to make up their research costs plus some profit should not condemn the
technology. Of all of us, you are the most broken up when you watch
patients die waiting for transplants, and you oppose both stem cell research
and cloning for religious reasons. Now you want to reject xenotransplants
as well? Are you telling me that all three of you would rather abandon
promising research and just let people die? You could sit down by patients’
bedsides, with their families all around, and tell them that you prefer to
preserve the sacredness of animals and let these people die?’’
‘‘No,’’ Hassan said, ‘‘I haven’t taken a position on this. I have some emo-
tional feelings about the use of pigs that are clearly inherited, and I hear the
arguments of Nirad and Jason, but I am a doctor, and if these xenotrans-
plants work, and I have a patient with no other options that will let him or
her live, then I’m probably going to go with xenotransplants. But I am
uneasy about it.’’
‘‘I don’t think that any of us are sure of where we stand,’’ offered Nirad,
the philosopher in the bunch. ‘‘Part of it comes down to how we understand
life, Liz, and personal identity and the place of the individual and the human
species in the world. We have to care not only about preserving this individ-
ual life of ours but living it so that when we are reincarnated we will return
with a better karma, and into a better world. It’s just hard to know what
will make the world we return to better.’’
‘‘Amen to that,’’ concluded Jason, as they gathered up their coats and
headed to their homes.
Understanding Xenotransplants 269

‘‘Remember, Liz, we have an 8 am consult with Dr. Levine on 15,’’ Has-

san said. Liz made a face and replied, ‘‘Right! Like Levine’s ever been on
time in his life!’’
They all laughed as they sauntered to the parking garage.

Commentary

This case raises a variety of issues within environmental studies, beginning

with how we understand the basic elements of the environment. If environ-
mental preservation is a goal, does that mean preserving species as they are,
including our own? How do domesticated animals fit into such a picture?
Does genetic engineering of human animals as well as nonhuman animals
violate the principle of environmental preservation? How important are the
historic boundaries between species, and how should they be interpreted?
As in virtually all cases of conflict within environmental ethics, disputants
reach radically different conclusions depending on whether they incline
toward understandings of the environment as a habitat to be preserved for
the use and support of the human species as de jure or de facto steward of
the biosphere or toward understandings of the human species as on par with
any other species in terms of its role and rights within the biosphere.
These are not the only factors that influence stances on xenotransplants,
however. Religious and spiritual attitudes toward death, religious under-
standings of tradition and its role in religion, and various approaches to risk
assessment also affect stances on xenotransplants, as do personal experi-
ences of and attitudes toward animals. Because trends in organ transplanta-
tion form the basis of the perceived need for replacement organs for which
xenotransplants are being promoted as the solution, we should begin with
an overview of the present context concerning organ transplantation.
In the more than thirty years that organ transplants have been performed
on a significant scale, success rates—measured in years of survival—have
increased dramatically. Meanwhile, as average life spans have lengthened,
the demand for replacement organs has increased dramatically all over the
world. In 2009, in the United States, 84,000 persons were in end-stage
organ failure and on the waiting list for organ transplantation. The demand
for replacement organs exceeded the supply by an average ratio of four to
one. In the less developed world, the availability of the technology, trained
personnel, and means to afford the procedure are so rare that the vast
270 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

majority of persons who could benefit are never even identified and put on
lists.
Throughout the developed world, attempts to increase the availability of
donated human organs have been varied and numerous, but evidence sug-
gests that it is impossible to increase the rate of cadaver donation to meet
the need. Many societies have religious or cultural taboos—often based on
understandings of spirit/soul as embedded in the physical body—against
surrendering a part of their body to another, accepting a part of another’s
body into theirs, or facing judgment and resurrection with missing parts.
Some societies fear the recently dead: They not only fear that the spirits of
family dead would haunt and curse them for allowing their organs to be
given to others but also would fear accepting organs that might be accompa-
nied by malevolent spirits of the dead. Although there are new strategies for
live organ donation, such as linked exchanges between extended families
with needy family members, live donation obviously is possible only for
paired organs. Thus the search for other sources of replacement organs has
expanded.

Attitudes toward Death

The young doctors in this case are concerned with various strategies that
are intended to meet the demand for replacement organs. The discussion
begins with recognition on the part of Hassan that donor organs are not a
cure for disease but merely a treatment—that requires suppression of the
body’s defensive immune system, which itself creates other risks for the
patient. All four of the young doctors in this case have undergone extensive
medical training devoted to defeating and postponing death in their
patients. By discussing the case of his cousin Suha, Hassan begins to ques-
tion whether preserving life through such interventions is always for the
best, noting that the quality of life of his cousin, and even that of her par-
ents, is not satisfactory.
The others respond that such tragic cases are the minority. Liz supplies
the clincher, undoubtedly true: Given a choice between certain death from
heart, liver, or lung disease and life with a relatively small risk of chronic
illness, the vast majority of people choose life with risk. Should this fact
settle the issue?
For decades there has been critical discussion within Western medical
ethics of a pervasive demonization of death, as if death were not part of the
life cycle itself but an enemy to be defeated by modern medicine. Many
Understanding Xenotransplants 271

people have charged that although medicine should have the dual task of
curing patients who can be cured and caring for those who can’t, our medi-
cal ethos has overemphasized curing, to the neglect of caring for persons
who cannot be cured. Medicine has been too oriented toward perfect health,
perhaps inculcating intolerance of all forms of debility and an unwillingness
to recognize, prepare for, and accept death—especially the death of the
young—as a part of our lives. From the perspective of such critiques, a
recognition that all living beings experience both birth and death could
serve to relativize the demand or need for replacement organs and help us
see that what is at stake in these questions, on the one hand, is an additional
span of life for a given individual who has a particular quality of life and,
on the other hand, some intervention in the environment that inevitably
affects all other living beings as well. The choice is not best understood in
the simplistic terms of (human) life or death. One need not posit the equality
of all species to understand them as irretrievably interconnected.

Animal Organs
Until recently, diseased organs have been replaced with mechanical or chem-
ical supports, such as dialysis machines and drug treatments, or with human
organs from cadavers or living (usually related) donors. Elaborate systems
have evolved to support organ replacement technologies, including hospital
training facilities for doctors, nurses, and various types of medical techni-
cians; government and private insurance programs to fund transplant
programs; drug research and testing programs to develop improved immu-
nosuppressant drugs; and elaborate systems for creating and maintaining
lists of potential recipients and distributing available organs with as much
equity as possible.
All of these systems inevitably affect other species in the biosphere; the
recordkeeping alone utilizes paper and computers that require lumbering,
mining, and the chemical industry, all of which affects forests, streams, air
quality, and animal populations. As serious as some of these effects have
been in specific areas of the world, however, they have been largely indirect.
With a potential turn to xenotransplants as the solution to the shortage of
human replacement organs, the impact on the nonhuman biosphere becomes
direct.
This direct impact, in fact, already has occurred in some small areas of
human medicine. In addition to the experimental, temporary use of animal
organs in attempts to preserve life until human organs can be procured,
272 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

surgeons have been using some animal tissue—most often valves from pig
hearts—to repair heart valves in humans. These transplants have not occa-
sioned the same extent of questioning as the prospective turn to organ trans-
plants has engendered, largely because the risks to humans seem much
lower. The valves are prepared (irradiated) so that they are not living tissue;
recipients do not require immunosuppressant drugs, and there is no risk of
infection from the animal. This is not necessarily the case with the more
recent transplantation of pig pancreatic cells into human diabetics in order
to produce insulin. The first such transplantation had been successful for
more than a year at publication time.
Yet although traditional medical ethics has not raised problems with such
xenotransplants, from an environmental ethics perspective the situation is
quite different. Whether the issue is heart-valve tissue transplants or whole-
heart transplants from animals to humans, the transfer potentially affects
not only the lives of individual members of both species but also the lives
and living conditions of both species. It also has the potential, perhaps even
the probability, of influencing human attitudes—and later actions—toward
other animal species. Before we can examine the potential impact of trans-
planting pig organs into humans, it may be necessary to survey the role and
condition of the domestic pig in the contemporary world because, as the
case suggests, most people know very little about their own food supply
systems.
Pigs have been domesticated since at least the mid-Neolithic period,
which occurred eight to ten thousand years ago. In many parts of the world
the pig served as symbol of both fertility and abundance, often with reli-
gious significance. Sows typically have large litters of piglets (eight to
twenty) who grow very quickly, forage for themselves after early weaning,
and reproduce relatively quickly. Many other animals domesticated for
meat-eating purposes regularly produce only one, or occasionally two, off-
spring at a time and bulk much more slowly.
Pig production in the developed world has been radically transformed
over the past century and a half. As the percentage of the population
engaged in farming has shrunk from more than 90 percent to less than 10
percent, and as the world’s population has more than doubled, pig produc-
tion has shifted toward a factory model—as has production of poultry, cat-
tle, sheep, salmon, and other forms of protein. Free-range food animals are
rare and expensive. The typical food animal is bred on a precise schedule
for specific genetic traits, inoculated, fed feed laced with growth hormones
and antibiotics, reared in huge numbers of densely packed animals, and
Understanding Xenotransplants 273

slaughtered en masse on a schedule determined by the rate of weight gain

divided by the cost of feed and the momentary price of pork at the
slaughterhouse.
Although some ecologists question whether humans had any right to
domesticate animals—and thus to appropriate another species for our own
life—others raise questions not about domestication per se but about this
shift to factory farming. Some people find factory farming revolting, in that
it removes the last vestiges of freedom from animals—even the freedom to
move, to mate as they will, and to associate with the animals they choose.
Others point to more systemic problems. The recent outbreak of hoof-and-
mouth disease in the United Kingdom—indeed, even the outbreak of mad-
cow disease (bovine spongiform encephaly, or BSE) there—and the difficulty
in controlling it there and throughout the world have raised additional ques-
tions about the ecological impact of factory farming.1 Many ecologists sug-
gest that farming has been too reliant on economic principles, such as the
economy of scale and comparative advantage, and not attentive enough to
ecological principles such as maximization of diversity and the precaution-
ary principle. Economy of scale has pushed farmers increasingly to concen-
trate the numbers of animals on their farms, and in many areas comparative
advantage has concentrated pig (or poultry, cattle, or sheep) farms close
together, often near processing plants, to cut down on transportation costs.
The density of animals and concentration of farms were primary reasons
that hoof-and-mouth originally was so difficult to contain.
High animal density typically creates problems with animal wastes. For
example, when Hurricane Floyd flooded huge pig and turkey farms in the
Carolinas in September 1999, it washed millions of gallons of animal
wastes into nearby streams, wells, and coastal waters, endangering
humans and animals and lowering oxygen levels, producing plant and ani-
mal kills. High animal density also creates problems of disease spread,
which is why factory farmers have turned to lacing animal feed with pro-
phylactic doses of antibiotics.2 These antibiotic diets have now created
antibiotic insensitivities in many herds. Such antibiotic insensitivity is dan-
gerous, in that these families of antibiotics will be useless in combating
new infections, which will then have no barriers to infecting whole herds.
Furthermore, there is some question about the effect on humans of eating
diets consisting of meat from animals living on antibiotic feed. There is
recent evidence that antibiotic insensitivity can be passed through the food
chain to humans (see chapter 14).
274 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

The economic need to maximize weight gain in animal farming has

encouraged selective breeding; not only are whole herds impregnated by
a single boar on many farms, but some large factory networks artificially
inseminate all breeding stock from a very small number of prize boars. The
effect has been to decrease genetic diversity at the same time that diversity
in diet, living conditions, and even geography have been drastically
decreased. In epidemiological terms, disaster waits in the wings.
Into this context, we now have the possibility of a new form of pig pro-
duction facility. The companies involved in the development of xenotrans-
plants insist that they are raising and will raise the animals in environments
that are as close to sterile as possible. Individual animals are inspected and
go through periods of quarantine before admission to the factory herd.
Herds of animals are totally isolated from each other, their barns closed to
outside contaminants and regularly disinfected, their food laced with antibi-
otics. All efforts are being made to protect the human recipients of the
organs.

Risk Assessment
As in so many areas of environmental ethics in which we do not have agreed
upon principles or standards to rely on, we must begin at the other end—not
applying principles or standards to specific situations but examining partic-
ular situations to see if we can tease out foundational principles and stan-
dards from our responses to these particular situations. This process is not
really bad. In fact, it is how accepted principles and standards came to be
accepted in the first place—by being teased out, one piece at a time, from
the dominant responses to series of particular cases. The greatest disadvan-
tage of this method of deriving principles is that it is such a slow process,
because the principle must be tested and refined in a variety of situations
before it comes to be regarded as consistent and reliable by the majority. In
the meantime, situations continue to develop. Sometimes harmful practices
can be reversed later when the necessary refinements in principles and stan-
dards (as in law) have been developed, but reversals in living systems some-
times are impossible. The difficulty of reversing the damage from various
types of innovations (not all of which are introduced by humans, of course)
is the reason that the precautionary principle is fundamental to environmen-
tal ethics. Wisdom is incremental, so the pace of intervention in environ-
mental systems should be slow, matched to the growth of knowledge and
wisdom.
Understanding Xenotransplants 275

In the case of xenotransplants, the unknown risks are numerous. We

have an initial set of risks we inherit with the factory farm model of meat
production—risks to the animal species itself as well as to the human food
supply—from the decrease in diversity and the density of production. A
policy of pig factories to produce transplant organs for humans adds at least
three additional risks: the risk to recipients of contracting porcine disease;
the risk of importing into the human germ line porcine anomalies, including
disease; and the risk of altering human attitudes toward pigs—and animals
in general—negatively, in ways that affect other human actions toward
animals.
Clearly, our society makes great, if unspecified, distinctions even between
domestic animals in terms of what treatment is acceptable. Animals that are
raised for meat are treated very differently from those raised as pets:
Humans have been convicted and sentenced to years in prison for doing to
household cats and dogs what is routinely done to food animals or labora-
tory animals. Is it cruel to pen animals so closely that they have no freedom
of movement? To raise them indoors, without access to sun or sky? To cause
them unnecessary pain? Our society usually avoids the question of whether
animals have any rights that restrain legitimate human needs or desires in
any way. We are willing to condemn humans who inflict deliberate, gratu-
itous pain on pets or wild animals, but we have little or no objection to
scientific systems for killing, confining, or causing pain to animals to accom-
modate relatively unimportant human desires—such as in testing cosmetic
compounds.
Our moral expectations of humans and our understandings of how
human action, identity, and relationality are connected combine to tell us
that humans who torture animals are dangerous to humans. Prohibitions of
animal cruelty, then, are not always based on an attitude that accepts animal
rights, attempts to protect animals, or recognizes any analogy between
human-human and human-animal relationships. Frequently people who do
espouse rights for individual animals are dismissed as sentimental, often
fanatic, and ultimately not practical.
Conversely, perhaps the greatest achievement of the environmental
movement to date has been its ability to persuade many people to accept a
systems approach to the environment, and this shift has been changing the
way many people understand the rights of animal species. Enactment of the
Endangered Species Act, for example—despite controversy over some of its
applications—was possible only because many Americans gradually became
276 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

alerted to the way in which each species fulfills a set of functions that inter-
lock with the functions and existence of other species, even when some of
those interlocking functions remain a mystery. The human species, like all
species, is dependent on the health of the biosphere as a whole, so it is
dependent on all the species that make up the biosphere; in that way we do
owe something to each species, if not necessarily to each member of every
species. Each species has rights that inhere in it as a part of the whole that
is necessary for any species to exist. We have debates on how critical it is
that this particular rare species of earthworm be preserved when its preser-
vation entails great hardships for specific groups of humans, but we do not
dispute the indispensability of earthworms, termites, snails, or even the ani-
mal families humans consider to be the lowliest and most insignificant, even
grotesque.
It should be noted that for most of our society environmental thinking is
thinking about nature or about the wilderness and does not include domes-
tic animals or factory farms. In the division between ‘‘humans’’ and
‘‘nature,’’ we have largely appropriated domesticated animals to the human
side. Although the division between humans and the rest of nature clearly
is not ultimate but is humanly constructed in a variety of senses, there is
some truth in this perception that pigs and other domesticated animals
cleave to the human realm as much as or more than to the realm of created
nature, because through domestication we have transformed the pig and its
role in the environment. The domesticated pig looks different from the wild
boars that roamed the forests and fields of the Neolithic landscape (and still
do in rare places), has been genetically altered through deliberate breeding,
and performs a radically different ecological function. Should the shift to
the factory farm, and perhaps to the pig organ factory, be understood sim-
ply as refinements on the original domestication of the pig? Can we—should
we—sustain this division between a human realm and a realm of nature and
decide that, because we successfully took the domesticated pig out of nature
thousands of years ago, we can now use the pig as we like without affecting
‘‘nature’’?
One argument against abstracting the pig from the rest of nature because
of its domestication is that, in this case, the fact that the animal in question
is the pig is accidental. Were it not for immunological issues, the animal
could have been chimpanzees or various apes that also are undomesticated,
who were the prime candidates as organ donors. Can one doubt that in that
case the argument for using chimps would have ignored domestication—
that as long as we did not seriously impact the chimp populations in the
Understanding Xenotransplants 277

wild, growing chimps in organ factories would not be appreciably different

from growing chimps to use in testing laboratories?
Perhaps the best reason for not abstracting the pig from the rest of
nature, however, lies in recognizing the power and resilience of language
and its role in shaping the way we think. The language we use and the
categories it contains reflect a preenvironmental milieu. We understand
‘‘pig’’ as part of the category ‘‘animal,’’ and we have been taught to under-
stand ‘‘animal’’ as part of a graded continuum of life. For many people,
deity inhabits the top of a pyramid, followed by humans; for nonreligious
people, humans are at the pinnacle, followed by animals, plants, and inani-
mate objects. We still use language such as the ‘‘animal nature’’ of humans,
by which we refer to what we perceive as our baser nature. More biological
language, in which we refer to ourselves as mammals, or as animals among
other species of animal, has been slow to catch on. Privilege is seldom relin-
quished voluntarily.
Human attitudes do change, however, and they are changing. One of
the things that changes our attitudes is making decisions that affect our
experience. There can be little disagreement that meat eaters and vegetarians
experience animals differently. If we experience pigs not only as food but
also as reservoirs of human replacement organs, this perception will affect
the way we understand the species; because we reason by analogy, it will
affect the way we understand other species that we also classify as animals.
Will it influence us to regard pigs and other animals as relatives, or will it
influence us to see them as things to be used? What difference does it make?
Is the difference only a moral and aesthetic difference that is unique and
limited to humans, or would it affect human actions toward the rest of the
biosphere—and thus the welfare of other species?
Some environmentalists have suggested that Americans and others facing
environmental issues need to rethink the way we treat risk. They say that
the model of risk assessment we are most familiar with comes from busi-
ness, and the risks it measures and compares are the risks of losing or gain-
ing capital. Clearly, as individuals and businesses, we frequently weigh the
risks of how much we could lose against how much we could gain in a given
situation and decide what level of risk to assume. Because it is impossible in
a capitalist economy to gain much without some degree of risk, capitalist
economics teaches us to be risk takers, at least to some degree. Sometimes
the costs entailed by business decisions are the costs assigned to human life
and health, as with product liability. The goal is to limit financial losses
278 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

from death and injury caused by defective products to amounts that are less
than the costs of attempting to remedy those defects.
The military has long used risk assessment methods, where the risks are
losses of personnel and materiel and the gains are control of territory or
enemy personnel and materiel. In a war, every action and inaction entails
risk, and the extent of the risk often is devastating. Generals calculate how
many lives must be risked or sacrificed to achieve particular objectives. In
much the same way, public health officials understand themselves as being
in a war to save lives against an implacable enemy that periodically mounts
devastating offensives. In public health as well, calculations are made of
where and how to repel the invader with the least cost—but the calculations
may not be accurate, and resulting losses could be catastrophic.
Some people argue that xenotransplants raise some of the same issues as
genetic engineering in the germ line (that is, genetic changes that are passed
down to subsequent generations). The risks in such a move are massive not
only because we do not know the magnitude of negative consequences but
because once instituted, the negative consequences become morally impossi-
ble to contain. That is, if we were to discover that persons with xenotrans-
plants, and their offspring, constituted a risk to others, they could not be
eliminated or forcibly sterilized; even lifetime quarantine would be morally
questionable.
The risks in the foregoing cases involve loss of lives to war and disease
and loss of money. These risks are serious, and their effects may linger past
the time of the persons who made the initial decision to take the risk, to
invest the money, to declare the war, or to fund disease treatment equally
with research for a cure. But the dead get buried, epidemics die out, the
living eventually rebuild their lives, new money is earned, and new invest-
ments are made.
In the case of the environment, decisions such as the proposed strategy
to use pig organs in humans could introduce new diseases into not just the
recipient generation but generations to come. No real risk assessment is
possible because we do not know what we might be risking. There might be
slight—almost zero—risk to present and future generations, or there might
be tremendous risk to present and future generations.
The business model suggests that only the risk we can measure counts;
in this case, if companies are sufficiently insured to weather lawsuits if prob-
lems develop from pig organ transplants, then they should proceed if the
prospective profits offset these insurance costs. Within the environmental
model, the precautionary principle demands that intervention be limited to
Understanding Xenotransplants 279

known risks that can be measured. In short, the environmental approach to

risk assessment requires a great deal more knowledge to justify intervention
and tends to justify much lower levels of risk. Are the American public and
the world willing to slow down the pace of innovation to obtain more
knowledge with which to do more accurate risk assessment, or is the fast
pace of change, and the hope it engenders in many people, one of the bene-
fits for which we as a people are willing to accept higher levels of risk?

Religious Perspectives

There are several different ways to classify the reactions of world religions
to the issues in this case. Because xenotransplants are such a new possibility,
no major religion has a developed position regarding them, but most reli-
gions do have very complex understandings and attitudes toward the
human species and animal species.
Many indigenous religions have been forced by their environmental cir-
cumstances to be aware constantly of their dependence on other species and
have understood themselves to have kinship relations with them. Although
the discussion in this case questions how meat-eating peoples could regard
animals as kin, from the perspective of many indigenous religions these two
facets of life are not incompatible. Group life always requires some element
of sacrifice; in some cultures—of which Inuit groups are the best known—
sick elderly individuals who could no longer contribute to communal life
but only consumed group resources walked out onto drifting ice floes to die.
Most cultures have made heroes of those who sacrifice their lives, as in war,
to protect the rest of the society. In the same way, many hunting societies
thank their brother and sister animals who die at their hands for the sacrifice
they have made to the cause of ongoing life. Some of these societies, such as
the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest, focus their celebrations of the new
year around paying homage to the animal species on which they have
depended in the past year, in hopes that the Master/Mistress of those ani-
mals will continue to send the animals to be hunted.
The sacrifice of individual animals as organ donors might be understood
in the same way, but from this same perspective it also might be rejected—
not because of the killing of the animal but for at least two other reasons.
First, the conditions under which the animals must be raised to be appro-
priate donors would be offensive to many indigenous religions because
those conditions would greatly alter the natural environment, and hence the
nature, of the animal. Second, for many participants in indigenous religious
280 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

societies—the Navajo, for example—incorporating the body parts of dead

animals—like dead humans—would induce fear and trembling, in that the
spirit of the dead animal/human would be expected to roam the Earth and
haunt the living, instead of retreating peaceably to the next world.
Among the major world religions, Buddhism in some ways comes closest
to sharing the perspective of indigenous religions because it understands all
that exists to be interrelated. However, Buddhism traditionally has focused
more on escape from the cycle of death and rebirth than on the concerns of
this material world, which it understands in terms of illusion. Furthermore,
Buddhism shares with many Eastern religions an appreciation of passivity,
in contrast to the Western emphasis on action and intervention in nature.
Moreover, central to the Buddhist ethic is nonviolence to all living things;
although Buddhists are not necessarily vegetarians, monks are not allowed
to kill animals to eat or to accept meat that has been killed for them. The
most likely Buddhist response to xenotransplants, however, would be not
opposition to the means employed or the consequences to either species as
much as incomprehension about why we should attempt any major and
potentially disruptive interventions in nature to foil the pattern whereby old
or sick persons die of organ failure. The goal of life, as Buddhists under-
stand it, is not to prolong life but to use life well and escape the cycle of
birth, death, and rebirth by discovering nirvana.
For Hindus the central issue in xenotransplants is likely to be ahimsa—
the principle of doing no harm to any living being. Symbolized by the status
of cows in Indian society, ahimsa has long been a central ethical imperative
for individuals in Hinduism and recently and understandably has become
central to Indian environmental thinking. Indian society has been very open
to technological innovation—as India’s role as exporter of computer scien-
tists, engineers, and other technology personnel and its popular adaptation
of diagnostic procedures such as sonograms attest. Some of these technolo-
gies can conflict with allegiance to ahimsa, as when millions of people use
sonograms to diagnose fetal sex and abort female fetuses. Among India’s
1 billion people, however, many would see the death of the xenotransplant
donor animal as morally problematic.
Although Islam developed in a natural environment that constantly
reminded humans of their dependence, from its very origins Islam has been
very focused on nature as given to humans by Allah for their use. Humans
are understood as caliphs, or deputies of Allah, and should not abuse that
role by destroying the resources Allah has entrusted to them. Because the
Qur’anic perspective focuses on the relationship between Allah and
Understanding Xenotransplants 281

humans, support for a Muslim environmental ethic today tends to be

grounded in the care and preservation demanded by human status as Allah’s
deputies rather than any intrinsic value in nonhuman creation. By itself, this
ethic might lead Muslims to favor xenotransplants. Furthermore, although
Islam teaches of a judgment after death and eternal rewards and punish-
ments at that judgment, historically it has taken very seriously the material
conditions of humans in this life rather than focusing on the next. Therefore
Islam could be expected to take seriously the sickness and impending death
of persons who need transplant organs.
Yet Muslims are forbidden to eat pork, which is understood as a dirty
animal, not worthy of ingestion. Therefore xenotransplants might be theo-
retically acceptable in Islam, but Muslim authorities probably would not
accept pig organs. When new technologies achieve ends that are important
within Islam (e.g., new reproductive technologies that relieve infertility)
they tend to be accepted by religious authorities even when they have not
only emerged from Western societies but are used there to fill ends that are
unacceptable in Islam (e.g., new reproductive technologies to allow single
women to reproduce). In such cases the technology is accepted, but often
with conditions that adapt its use to Islamic values—as when imams have
insisted that the materials used in in vitro fertilization be from a man and
woman bound together in matrimony. In contrast, new technologies that
intervene in Allah’s creation toward ends that are not important in Islam
often are understood and rejected as Western and degenerate (e.g., cloning).
Such a response is more likely in this case because of the use of pigs: The
identity of the animal might color judgments of the procedure itself.
As in Christianity and Islam, Judaism’s primary approach to the environ-
ment is through an ethic of stewardship: The Earth is the Lord’s, and the
Lord has entrusted its care and use to humans. Biblical texts develop at great
length a conservation ethic—primarily within an agricultural framework,
without much reference to nonagricultural contexts. Judaism was the first
of the Semitic religions to forbid the eating of pork, and though only one
segment of contemporary Jews still mandates observation of the Jewish
dietary laws, at least for that segment—and probably for many more—
incorporation of pig organs would be problematic. But Judaism has been
very open to technology in general and in particular to life-saving technolo-
gies in modern medicine. Action that is necessary to save life takes priority
over virtually all other commands of Jewish law.
Thus there are many different perspectives on the use of xenotransplants.
It is likely that the judgments of many people, including many religious and
282 Ecosystem Interventions Aimed at Innovation

environmental communities, ultimately may depend on balancing advan-

tages and disadvantages—after these factors have emerged more clearly
than they have at present. Especially important will be how successful xeno-
transplants are (the quality and quantity of life that they give to recipients),
how accessible they are to the bulk of the global population, how much
human genetic material is transferred to the animal and vice versa, how
successfully the modified organism can be isolated from the domesticated
version, and what degree of suffering the process is understood to entail for
the animals involved.

Questions for Discussion

1. Why are many scientists looking to other species, especially pigs, for
transplant organs? What advantages do these species offer?
2. What are the various risks of xenotransplants, and which of them
seems to be the most significant? To whom or to what is this risk
posed?
3. Are you convinced by Liz’s arguments? Why or why not? How is the
nature of her arguments different from the arguments of Nirad?
What is the role of emotion in each of their arguments? To what
extent does emotion have an appropriate role in moral reasoning?
4. How important do the environmental concerns implicit in this case
loom against the human medical concerns? Is that appropriate?
What might an environmentalist add to this debate among doctors?

Notes
1. The spread of BSE has been traced to the practice of using rendered animal
products to lace animal feed, so that if an animal with BSE is rendered and used in
animal feed, the animals that receive the feed could develop the disease, and those
receiving that feed that are rendered (often, those that fail to thrive and therefore
are more likely to have some form of disease) continue to spread the disease. The
use of animal products in feed was developed to speed growth by raising the protein
intake and thus shortening the time before the animal could be slaughtered (and
lowering costs).
2. In Denmark, concern over antibiotic levels in food animals recently led the
government to fund experiments comparing the costs of disease in factory farm
herds raised with and without prophylactic antibiotics; these experiments found that
if farmers adopted thorough disinfectant washings of barns between herds and wore
Understanding Xenotransplants 283

coveralls that prevented them from carrying germs between barns, deaths and
weight gains remained the same between antibiotically treated herds and those with-
out, with some advantages to those without.

For Further Reading

Almond, Brenda. ‘‘Commodifying Animals: Ethical Issues in Genetic Engineering of
Animals.’’ Health, Risk and Society 2, no. 1 (2000): 95–105.
Balzer, Philipp, Klaus Rippe, and Peter Schaber. ‘‘Two Concepts of Dignity for
Humans and Non-Human Organisms in the Context of Genetic Engineering.’’
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 13, no. 1 (2000): 7–27.
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. On Human Ethics and Stem Cell
Research: An Appeal for Legally and Ethically Responsible Science and Public
Policy. 1999. www.stemcellresearch.org.
Check, Ericka. ‘‘Diabetes Trial Stirs Debate on Safety of Xenotransplants.’’ Nature,
September 5, 2002, 5.
Coghlan, Andy. ‘‘Saved by a Pig’s Heart? It Won’t Be Long before Xeno-organs
Undergo the First Human Trials.’’ New Scientist, November 29, 2008, 8–10.
Denner, J. ‘‘Is Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus (PERV) Transmission Still Relevant?’’
Transplantation Proceedings 40, no. 2 (2008): 587–89.
Heeger, Robert. ‘‘Genetic Engineering and the Dignity of Creatures.’’ Journal of
Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 13, no. 1 (2000): 43–51.
Marcotty, Josephine. ‘‘Pig-Tissue Transplants Explored for Curing Diabetes.’’ Star
Tribune Minneapolis, February 2, 2009. www.ajc.com/eveningedge/content/
health/stories/2009/02/02/pig_tissue_transplant_diabetes.htm.
Munro, Lyle. ‘‘Future Animal: Environmental and Animal Welfare Perspectives on
the Genetic Engineering of Animals.’’ Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics
10, no. 3 (2001): 314–24.
Parker, William, Shu S. Lin, and Jeffrey L. Platt. ‘‘Antigen Expression in Xenotrans-
plantation: How Low Must It Go?’’ Transplantation: Baltimore 71, no. 2 (2001):
313–19.
‘‘Pig Organ Risks.’’ New Scientist, May 14, 2005, 5.
Singer, Peter. ‘‘Transplantation and Speciesism.’’ Transplantation Proceedings 24,
no. 2 (1992): 728–32.
Takefman, Daniel M., Gregory T. Spear, Mohammad Saifuddin, and Carolyn A.
Wilson. ‘‘Human CD59 Incorporation into Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus Par-
ticles: Implications for the Use of Transgenic Pigs for Xenotransplantation.’’
Journal of Virology 76, no. 4 (2002): 1999–2002.
 Appendix
Using Environmental Case Studies
in the Classroom

C ase study method has a long history in Western ethics, begin-

ning with the development of medieval casuistry within Christian
moral theology and spreading in the twentieth century to many
different areas of ethics, religious and secular—especially professional eth-
ics.1 Within environmental studies today, case study method is one of the
most common, effective approaches to environmental ethics, for several rea-
sons. Many case studies acquaint readers with particular situations in which
the environment has been or is being threatened or damaged, thereby pro-
moting environmental awareness. In addition, the fact that case studies
explore a particular situation in some depth, examining a variety of differ-
ent interlocking sets of relationships within the nonhuman environment and
between humans and the rest of the environment, means that case study use
contributes to the development of deeper knowledge of the complexity of
ecosystems and the difficulty of treating any one element of an ecosystem—
or, for that matter, of the entire biosphere—without impacting the rest of
the system. Thus the case study method in environmental ethics helps to
dispel the individualistic, unintegrated approach that is common among
American university students in favor of an approach to problem solving
that is more social, more systemic, and more open to interdependence.
Perhaps the most important reason for the prevalence of the case study
method in environmental studies concerns the youth of that field. In most
fields of ethics there is an established body of principles that is applied to

285
286 Appendix

particular situations in case studies. The existence of this body of principles

does not make their application to the case cut-and-dried; more than one
principle may apply to the case, and those multiple principles may push
resolution of the case in conflicting directions. Many sets of principles are
not hierarchically ranked, so one must decide in specific situations which
ones take priority. Sometimes the appropriateness of a principle to a partic-
ular case can be unclear, as when a code of behavior that is clear and appro-
priate in general is proposed for a minor; for a mentally ill person; or for a
person with language, cultural, or other communication obstacles. Even
well-developed areas of professional ethics have cases that are engrossing
because they are difficult to decide.
Environmental ethics, however, is a budding field. Although we can point
to the writings of Aldo Leopold in the late 1940s, until Rachel Carson pub-
lished Silent Spring in 1962 there was little public awareness or reflection
within which an ethic could develop.2 The extreme youth of environmental
ethics in comparison to other areas of ethics—such as sexual ethics, the
ethics of war, or medical ethics, which were treated in ancient religions and
philosophies—means that the foundational principles and concepts are still
in the process of development and argumentation. The youth of the field of
environmental ethics offers students the possibility of participating in the
process of formulating, testing, and refining the foundational principles that
will characterize environmental ethics in the next decades—perhaps even
centuries and millennia.

Principles: Not Revealed, but Discerned through Testing

People often assume that ethical principles do not have to be discerned but
have always been known because they were somehow revealed from on
high. If we examine the vast majority of ethical principles that guide behav-
ior in the various areas of human life, however, we find that very few, if
any, represent infused knowledge. Most represent wisdom that has been
learned the hard way, through long processes of trial and error. Although
some of the most basic and universal ethical statements (the Golden Rule,
love your neighbor) are found in religious and philosophical teachings all
over the world, the form those ethical imperatives take in specific areas of
life are seldom spelled out in divine revelation. The imperatives remain very
general. That very generality gives them universal applicability.
Using Environmental Case Studies in the Classroom 287

As we have seen, in environmental studies there is an ongoing need to

develop relevant principles and norms because so many of the existing
anthropocentric principles and norms that are applied to the environment
have been shown to be grievously and destructively inadequate. Although
those values, norms, and principles for dealing with the environment and
the mythical and literary sources from which they come in the industrial
West often appear particularly inadequate, those from other cultures or
times, though often more cognizant of the interdependence of all forms of
life, can seem irrelevant to and irreconcilable with the prevailing structures
of human life in our late modern world. Human societies inevitably rely on
experience, one specific case at a time, for developing and refining principles
and norms. Case studies in environmental ethics not only present situations
that test the principles and norms (such as those in chapter 1) that have
been proposed to date in the discipline, helping to further refine them but
also force readers to grapple with new situations that may inspire the pro-
posal of new principles and norms that will then be tested and refined in
later cases. Thus case studies constitute not only the experiments through
which hypotheses are tested and refined on the way to becoming theories
but also the steps in the process by which a particular theory continues to
develop on the way to perhaps becoming the paradigmatic lens through
which the environment is interpreted.
Many teachers of ethics are clear that case studies teach analytical and
critical-thinking skills. Many also find, however, that students can become
so bogged down in the specifics of the cases that without supplementary
materials on theory they emerge from their studies without a sufficient grasp
of the body of theory in the field. Such a criticism is particularly frequent in
Christian and other religious ethics where the body of theory (e.g., Christian
ethics/moral theology) is so extensive. New ethical areas such as environ-
mental ethics, which are long on information about the environment and
short on inherited, developed theories about values and priorities within the
environment, are therefore ideal for case studies. Not only is there no large
body of theory that could be obscured by the data, but, in fact, systematic
questioning of the data is the very process through which new prototheory
is discovered, tested, and refined. Thus, although the case study method
always offers students the opportunity to participate in decisions about
which principles apply to specific situations, and in what priority, the case
study method in environmental ethics today offers students the opportunity
to participate in the very formulation of the foundational principles of the
field. It is difficult to imagine a more participative model of education.
288 Appendix

Good Case Studies

A good case study is complex because life situations are complex. If the
conflicts in the cases were easily resolved, they would not be interesting,
much less absorbing. There would be nothing to talk about—everyone
would agree about what should be done. There also would be nothing to
be learned because none of our assumptions or interpretations would be
challenged. Good case studies are challenging and engaging precisely
because they are complex.
Environmental issues and conflicts develop amid other conflicts, tensions,
and differences, all of which affect the actors in an environmental case.
Sometimes the motives and intentions of individuals in the cases who sup-
port attractive options nevertheless seem unclear or unsavory. Students
often will take particular stances within a case study not only because one’s
worldview is anthropocentric and another’s is ecocentric but also because
of personal factors such as regional, gender, class, racial/ethnic, occupa-
tional, or other characteristics and experiences that influence students’ reac-
tions to the agents and situations in the case. Decisions in environmental
ethics have rippling consequences in many areas of social life, in economic
aspects of production and distribution, and in health care and intimate life-
style issues such as the style and efficiency of flush toilets in our homes.
Anticipated outcomes are important influences on our decisions; very few
of us are pure deontologists with regard to our incomes, health, or lifestyles.
One of the more important roles of an instructor who is using case studies
is to remind students to be aware and self-critical of the effects of their
own social locations and the attitudes they learned in those locations. An
occasional question along the lines of, ‘‘Who speaks for——in this case?’’
can be very effective in reminding students of the limits of their own per-
spectives and experiences and calling them to grapple with alien perspec-
tives and experiences.
Yet our propensity to be influenced by our life experiences and ascribed
characteristics should not simply be dismissed as bias. The designation of
bias should be reserved for disproportionate privileging of our own experi-
ence that deafens us to the expressed experience of other groups whose
needs are equal to or greater than ours. All members of society must repre-
sent their own experiences if sharing our own situations and perspectives
is to allow us as a society to make decisions for the common good. Our
representations of our own experience must always be tempered, however,
by openness to the representations of others.
Using Environmental Case Studies in the Classroom 289

Using the Case Method

Precisely because there are so many different things going on at the same
time in a good case, cases can be used in a variety of ways. Much will
depend on the questions the instructor presents to the class regarding the
case. The general tendency of undergraduate students in cases is to focus
whenever possible on the personal relationships in the case. This is espe-
cially true when the relationships in the case are those that are most impor-
tant in the lives of most students: sexual relationships, familial relationships,
personal friendships. Undergraduates respond disproportionately to per-
sonal relationships both because this individualist focus is culturally norma-
tive in the United States and because most students feel more experienced
in and knowledgeable about personal relationships than they do about poli-
tics, economics, technology, or ecological systems. They feel comfortable in
discussing what individuals should do personally in dealing with a lover, a
parent, or a boss. Many students feel comfortable discussing individual
options vis-à-vis conserving the environment, such as decisions about auto-
mobile gas mileage, water conservation in the home, and whether to eat
meat or not. For cultural reasons, they are more likely to identify with Kyle,
the ag student, than with his farmer father who wants to plant GMO corn,
and more likely to identify with Josh and Bernie, the returning KU alumni,
than with their former teacher, Frances, who insists that sacrificing the com-
mon good is a human duty.
One way to attempt to overcome such identifications is to role-play in
the classroom. The ‘‘River Run or River Ruined?’’ case, for example, lays
out three stances—removing the dam altogether, enlarging the dam, and
refitting the dam to be more efficient but leaving it the same size—each of
which has its own set of advantages and supporters. Although some stu-
dents will take positions immediately, discussion of the alternatives will
allow many students to move from an uncommitted stance to identification
with one of the alternatives. Role-playing often can be added to a case by
extending the time frame. The class presumes, for example, that the staff of
Medios Nuevos has one more meeting to decide what stance their Peruvian
delegate should take at the POPs conference or that Anchu, Acik, Elys, and
the other NGO reps will decide on how to affect Jakarta flooding, and the
different roles can be played by class members. It then becomes the responsi-
bility of specific individuals to speak for the different positions.
Most instructors feel the necessity to lead students away from an exclu-
sive focus on personal issues and to force them to deal with more social,
290 Appendix

structural, and policy issues. What should the public policy decision about
the environment be in this situation? the instructor asks. Most students find
these questions difficult. Many are uncomfortable even beginning a discus-
sion. They say things such as, ‘‘Well, I have my own opinion, and everybody
else has their opinion, but there’s no way to tell who is right, so there’s no
sense in talking about it. We’ll disagree, and that is OK.’’ They are suspi-
cious of propaganda and public relations methods of building support. Such
skepticism can be a strength in class discussion because it can furnish the
basis for critical approaches. When such suspicion leads to complete cyni-
cism about how public policy gets made, and about possible alternatives,
however, it becomes problematic. Instructors can chip away at this cynicism
by pointing out within the cases not only how much American and other
attitudes throughout the world have changed toward aspects of the environ-
ment over the past half-century but what steps contributed to that change—
the studies and reports, the scholarly meetings of scientists, the government
conferences, the newspaper and magazine articles, and the formation of citi-
zen action groups that kept up pressure for all the above. There have been
major improvements in air and water quality in the United States since the
1970s as a result of regulation. On a global basis, although there has been
no movement on CO2 or greenhouse gases in general, the 1987 Montreal
Protocol on banning the chlorofluorocarbons that were destroying the
ozone layer has stopped that deterioration, and some progress has been
made on ocean dumping. Many developing nations have begun conserva-
tion programs for wildlife and animal habitats, and some have begun to
turn their attention to urban industrial problems such as air and water pol-
lution. A global problem that was virtually unrecognized fifty years ago,
climate change, is now widely understood as a serious threat to the future
of life on the planet.
Although student preference for personal rather than public policy
approaches to cases can be problematic, student interest in individuals and
personal relationships does have some uses in the classroom, as well as some
real relevance to ethics. In many case studies it is appropriate to deal not
only with policy issues but also with character issues. This approach is often
called virtue ethics. We all want to live in a society that is just and healthy,
peaceful and sustainable. We also want to live in a community made up of
persons with good character, persons we can trust and depend on, persons
we can love and expect to love us in return. So when we make decisions, in
these cases or in real life, we need to do the right thing and do what helps
make all the people involved, including ourselves, good people. Doing the
Using Environmental Case Studies in the Classroom 291

right thing and doing what makes good people often are overlapping and
not so different. There are cases, however, in which it is necessary to ask to
what extent taking the proposed step—for example, approving xenotrans-
plants—affects the character of humans and their attitudes toward the rest
of the biosphere. Character is important because it can never be divorced
from agency. What we do affects who we become, just as who we have
become affects what we choose to do, in a never-ending spiral.
Attention to character issues can be accomplished easily within role-play-
ing. Another way to teach the cases is to have students read and discuss the
case before they read the commentary. They would then discuss the case
again after they have read the commentary, being careful to note what
aspects of the case they had missed or what new aspects or approaches they
had discovered that the commentary failed to treat.
Some instructors have guided their classes through several cases and then
divided the class into writing groups, with instructions to create a case study
on the basis of some real-life local environmental issue. Each member of the
group attempts to represent a major group in the local community within
the chosen environmental conflict and to get their perspective into the text
of the case. Such an assignment has the advantage of demonstrating to stu-
dents the relevance that environmental ethics has to their own lives, as well
as encouraging students to consider new forms and levels of civic
responsibility.

The Problem of Language in the Classroom

Students often are frustrated by the lack of adequate language in classroom

discussions of environmental ethics. They become aware, suddenly, that the
words they are using have implications and attitudes attached to them that
they do not wish to invoke, implications and attitudes that give them pause
and make them search—in vain—for more adequate language. In deciding
between the interests of humans and (an)other species, for example, stu-
dents quickly realize that they are accustomed to using rights language and
concepts in conflict-of-interest situations between humans but that,
although they have well-developed theories of human rights with which to
work, they have no consensus on theories of the rights or value of other
species or whole ecosystems. The anthropocentrism of ethics to date has
permeated all of its principles and theories, as well as the very language it
uses, but this inadequacy often is invisible until we are faced with the
292 Appendix

demands of a particular situation in a case study. The inadequacy of inher-

ited ethical approaches for working with the environment invariably forces
students to deal with the anthropocentric bias by constructing new lan-
guage, concepts, and principles that are answerable to broader constituen-
cies and reflect more social, more interspecies perspectives.
Our conceptual framework for all of reality in the West has been very
theologically based: Humans have understood themselves as unique among
the creatures of the world because we are made in the image and likeness of
God. That likeness to God has been variously defined in terms of mind, the
ability to reason, the aptitude for agency and for self-conscious subjectivity.
Both temporality and materiality, which humans have been understood to
share not with God but with other creatures, were understood as lesser,
eclipsed not only by the eternity and transcendence of God but also in
humans by the higher purposes of the human soul/mind. For classical theol-
ogy, the good and perfect (God) was characterized by permanence, stasis,
hierarchical order, and discreteness. What was temporal, material, con-
stantly changing, and interdependent was flawed and lesser, created to serve
the higher. The more temporal, material, changeable, and interdependent
an entity was, the lower it ranked in the hierarchy of reality. Thus, in the
worldview inherited from the Western religious traditions, the human spe-
cies was of higher value than, and in charge of, the rest of creation. Carolyn
Merchant, in The Death of Nature, explains how this theological view
underlay the foundations of modern science in thinkers such as Francis
Bacon:

Due to the Fall from the Garden of Eden (caused by the temptation of a
woman), the human race lost its ‘‘dominion over creation.’’ Before the Fall,
there was no need for power or dominion, because Adam and Even had been
made sovereign over all other creatures. In this state of dominion, mankind
was ‘‘like unto God.’’ While some, accepting God’s punishment, had obeyed
the medieval strictures against searching too deeply into God’s secrets, Bacon
turned the constraints into sanctions. Only by ‘‘digging further and further
into the mine of natural knowledge’’ could mankind recover that lost domin-
ion. In this way, ‘‘the narrow limits of man’s dominion over the universe’’
could be stretched ‘‘to their promised bounds.’’
Although a female’s inquisitiveness may have caused man’s fall from his
God-given dominion, the relentless interrogation of another female, nature,
could be used to regain it. As he [Bacon] argued in The Masculine Birth of
Time, ‘‘I am come in very truth leading to you nature with all her children to
bind her to your service and make her your slave.’’3
Using Environmental Case Studies in the Classroom 293

Thus modern science was understood as salvific, in that it restored that

which had been lost to sin—human dominion over nature—and in so doing
also restored the original likeness between humans and God: dominion.
A review of the early scientists and philosophers of science illustrates the
fact that nature—all of creation—was understood, especially by Protestants,
as disordered and deformed by human sin. Thus it was not surprising that
Protestantism was more engaged in the early development of modern sci-
ence—understood as controlling and harnessing chaotic nature—than
Catholicism, which understood the effects of the Fall more conservatively
and salvation as a matter of divine grace building on the foundation of
nature (human and other). As the scientific revolution developed, of course,
it shaped the worldview of Protestants and Catholics as well as Jews and
other socioreligious groups in the West.
Images of nature as disordered, chaotic, and therefore threatening perme-
ated Western thought. The only good land was land that had been cleared,
planted, and homesteaded—civilized. Wilderness came to designate places
of dark, danger, and violence. The most basic characteristics of the bio-
sphere came to hold the least value. The dynamism of the biosphere was
interpreted in terms of profligate fertility, disordered chaos, and unstable
temporality. Its interdependence was interpreted in terms of weakness, of
contingency, and its complex diversity was interpreted as proof not only of
disorder but of deliberate and irrational willfulness. Today this modern,
theologically based scientific paradigm, this lens for interpreting the uni-
verse—particularly the biosphere—is dissolving under the impact of greater
attention to, and more data about, the environment of Earth. This paradigm
is not eradicated, however; it retains a great deal of power, much of it
embedded in the meanings of everyday words and the boundaries they
evoke for the people who use them. For example, when we use the word
‘‘human’’ or ‘‘human being,’’ or even ‘‘human species,’’ for most of us there
is a major boundary line between humans and all other species of animal—
even humans and other mammals. Although most of us accept the theory
of evolution as more or less historical, we do not have an evolutionary per-
spective that understands humans as part of a common animal spectrum, in
contrast to plants or other elements of the ecosystem. In the same way,
despite our acceptance of evolutionary theory, we have tended to read evo-
lution backward into the past rather than forward into the future. Thus
many people regard the human environmental task as one of preserving
the present by preventing any change or development within the natural
world—as if this strategy did not contravene the evolutionary process.
294 Appendix

In some ways we are in the midst of reclaiming our language from the
modernist paradigm and refashioning our interpretive paradigm. Many
people in our society still think of wilderness as space not yet utilized, a
commodity to be used, a resource to be transformed to fill some human
function, such as suburban housing, highways, parks, agricultural fields or
malls, and utility plants. Increasing numbers of people in our society, how-
ever, see wilderness as an image of richness, diversity, interdependence,
equilibrium—and as a planning norm for land whose alternatives require
justification. More and more people are beginning to think in terms of eco-
systems and to conclude that using human convenience as the deciding fac-
tor in all policy decisions about the Earth has pragmatic and moral
problems. We may be uncomfortable with programs to reinstate a wolf pop-
ulation in our region of the country, but more and more of us can under-
stand that ecosystem equilibrium is impossible when the top predators have
been eliminated.
What this means for us today in environmental ethics is that the same
words may have very different connotations to different persons in our soci-
ety. For example, to some people the phrase ‘‘the human animal’’ may still
evoke theological discussions of ‘‘man’s lower, bestial nature,’’ with hints
of savage violence and uncontrolled sexual drive, whereas for others the
same phrase may evoke an understanding of humans that recognizes all
other living creatures as entities with whom we are related and interdepen-
dent and for whom we share responsibility. A cleared, planted field may
represent beauty, order, fertility, and human productivity to some people
and the loss of wetland and the hundreds of species that inhabited it to
others. In environmental cases, this variety of images, associations, and
emotions evoked by the very language we use complicates discussion and
agreement.
All of this makes the environmental ethics classroom a very complicated
scene to navigate, much less to manage. Generally it is helpful to point out
to students at regular intervals the difficulties with which they are wrestling
and the reasons such wrestling is difficult. Most students have more patience
with themselves and others when they understand the nature of the para-
digm shift within which they are working, the lack of adequate language,
and the range of positions that individuals can and will occupy in the shift
from an anthropocentric ethics to a more open systems approach to the
environment.
Often it works well to encourage compromises on the use of language,
so that the class does not waste time rehashing the same disagreements over
Using Environmental Case Studies in the Classroom 295

language usage in each new case. For example, a recent class agreed after
discussion that references to ‘‘human’’ would not entail assumptions of
more value than was assumed to inhere in animals or other living things,
though arguments for the greater value of individual humans or the human
species were acceptable and would be judged on their own merits, in general
and in specific case situations. That is, students opted to try to use language
in as value-neutral a way as possible (recognizing that full value neutrality
is impossible), while they acknowledged that it was essential to tackle the
value question directly, in explicit arguments.
One area that was not settled cooperatively in this class was the admissi-
bility of the word ‘‘creation’’ as an alternative term for biosphere or uni-
verse. Nonbeliever students thought that the use of the word ‘‘creation’’
privileged faith and traditional values and priorities; believer students
insisted that the concept of deliberate and satisfying creation is the ultimate
foundation of all value in the material world. In other classes in the past,
this issue too has been successfully compromised.

Notes

1. Richard B. Miller, Casuistry and Modern Ethics: A Poetics of Practical Rea-

soning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
2. Aldo Leopold, ‘‘The Land Ethic,’’ in A Sand County Almanac (New York:
Ballantine, 1970 [1949]), 237–63; Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Faw-
cett, 1962).
3. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scien-
tific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980).
 Index

abortion, 265, 266, 280 scenario discussion, 143–44, 146,

absorption qualities, land. See water 147–48
absorption animal diseases, 255, 264, 273, 275,
academic study of cases. See case study 278, 282n1
method animalistic natures, human
accidents in hunting, 248, 255–56
chemical, 52, 66n1 language considerations, 277, 294
nuclear, 113 Animal Liberation (Singer), 9
Adam and Eve creation story, 23, 145, animals
147, 154–55, 156, 200, 209, 292 cloning, 264, 265
ahimsa, 262, 266, 280 food chain illustrations, 228, 244–45,
aid, environmental improvement 250, 255
support. See subsidies, environ- hunting commentary, 250–57
mental improvements hunting scenario, 242–50
air pollution, 39, 211, 214, 216, medical experimentation, 9, 275
218–19, 220–21, 290 moral standing/value and rights, 4,
AKP, Turkey, 123, 126, 127 9–10, 43, 133, 249, 250, 254–55,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 192 275, 277
allergies, food, 233–34 Native American values, 35, 42–43,
alternative energy. See renewable energy 149, 267, 279
altruism, 5 pesticides’ effects, 56, 59, 62
AME (African Methodist Episcopal) protection plans, 185, 275–76, 290
Church, 142, 157 See also endangerment and extinction,
ampicillin, 231, 232 species; factory farms;
anarchy, 17 xenotransplants
ancestors, influence animal-to-human transplants. See
African Americans, 107, 153 xenotransplants
Malagasy culture, 71, 73–74, 76, anthropocentric (classical) ethics, 3,
78–79 4–7, 16, 36
Native American culture, 35, 43 extended, 7–11
ancient trees language biases, 291–92, 295
scenario commentary, 154–58 limitations/problems, 287

297
298 Index

anthropocentric perspectives Beyond Fair Chase (Posewitz), 243

developing nations’ concerns, 61–62 Bible. See Genesis, book of; Romans,
ethical quandary examples, 19, 20, 91 book of; scripture
hierarchy, 277, 292 bicycle transportation, 33–34, 39–40,
hunting, 249, 254–55 213
as mainstream values, 15, 36–37 biocentrism, 8, 11
religion and history, 23–24, 133, 147, ethical quandary examples, 19, 20,
148–49, 151, 155–56, 254–55, 292 149, 156, 157
scenario illustrations, 30–36, 41, hunting violations, 252–53, 254
42–43, 207–8, 254 moral extension, 11–12, 15
antibiotics, 231, 232, 234, 273, 282n2 Native American values, 35, 43
applied philosophy, 19 United States perspectives, 62
Aquinas, Thomas, 26 biodiversity protection and challenges
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 8 and animal farming/breeding, 267,
Argentina, 132, 138 273, 274, 275
Aristotle, 11–12, 154 and data collection, 63, 202
atheism as state policy, 191 and genetically modified organisms/
automobile use foods, 227–28, 232, 237, 238–39
future responsibilities and changes, grasslands scenario, 197, 199–200,
221 202
pollution and climate change, 39, Indonesia commentary, 97, 99
211, 213, 214, 219 Madagascar commentary, 77–78, 79,
scenario illustrations, 33–34, 39–40, 80–81
75 Madagascar scenario, 71–72, 73, 74,
SUVs, 75, 213 76
autonomy, 36–38 biotic mechanisms, 13–14
ecosystems, 206 birth defects, 57, 58, 62
entymology, 37 birth rates
and moral minimalism, 38–40, 41 Indonesia, 90, 94, 95, 96
and social capital, 44 Madagascar, 76, 79
axiology, 24–27 Bolivia, 132
Azurix (company), 132 Bookchin, Murray, 16–17, 207
botanical piracy, 63, 192–93
Babbitt, Bruce, 172 bottled water, 98, 131, 132–33, 135
Bacon, Francis, 292 bow hunting, 244, 251, 253
bans, organic toxins Brazil
history, 50–51, 52, 55, 59–60 debt, 223
Peru/developing nations, debate international conferences, 218
commentary, 59–66 light rail, 214, 215, 223
Peru/developing nations, debate illus- bribery. See corruption and bribery,
tration, 52, 54, 55, 57–58 municipal services
baseline challenges, research, 63, 187, Buddhism, 22, 93, 94, 193, 262, 280
188–90 building codes, 86–87, 221
bee colonies, 232 burning, agricultural technique, 72, 73,
Bentham, Jeremy, 5, 9 74, 77–78, 203
Berry, Wendell, 22 bus transportation, 211, 213, 214, 216
Index 299

buy local movement, 31 scripture interpretations, 152–54

by-products, toxic, 50 and stewardship, 93, 144–46,
147–49, 150–52, 153–58, 209
CAFTA, 132–33 virtues, 177–78, 219
Calhoun, John C., 142 city growth, 137, 216, 217
Callahan, Daniel, 38, 39 civic duty, 40, 41, 291
Callicott, J. Baird, 8, 14, 15 civil rights movement, 157
cancer, 105 civitas, 41, 44, 177–78
carbon dioxide/emissions. See green- classical ethics, 3, 4–7
house gas emissions extensions, 7–11
carbon footprints, 32, 39, 42, 220, 221 climate change, 217–18, 290
carbon trading, 220 desertification and, 183–84, 185, 188
cars. See automobile use planning for, commentary, 217–23
Carson, Rachel, 286 planning for, scenario, 211–17
Casebolt, Carl, 23 See also global warming
case study method cloning, 264, 265–66
classroom use, 285–95 coal burning
ethical principles and testing, 286–87 economic reasons, 75, 77
‘‘good’’ examples, 288, 289 pollution, 174
history, 285–86
Cobb, John, 237
cataloguing, ecosystems, 63, 202
collective identity, 30–31, 35
catchment areas, water, 84–87, 88–89
Colombia, 132
Catholic theology, 151, 152, 156–57,
colonial influences
293
French, Madagascar, 72, 75, 79
See also Christianity
Indonesia, 92–93, 96
cattle, 73, 74, 78
Spanish, Peru, 65
Chapman Gorge Dam
Colorado River, 137, 172
commentary, 173–79
Columbia River, 172
scenario, 163–72
charcoal use, 75, 77 commodity privatization. See privati-
chemical accidents, 52, 66n1 zation, utility services
chemical companies, 59–60, 65 community vs. individual values
child and infant mortality, 94, 97, 131 civitas, 41, 44, 177–78
China, 183, 191–94 Native American values, 30–31, 35,
DDT usage, 52 42–44
desertification scenario commentary, scenario commentaries, 38–39,
187–94 40–44, 220
desertification scenario illustration, scenario illustration, 30–36
181–87 comparative advantage, 235–36,
environmentalism, 190–94 237–38, 273
industrialization and pollution, 39, confrontation. See litigation and
187–88, 190 confrontation
chlorofluorocarbons, 290 Confucianism, 93–94, 193
Christianity consensus
culpability, environmental challenges to, 91
destruction, 151 practical environmentalism as means,
ethics history, 22, 285, 287, 292 19–20, 254
300 Index

consequentialism, 4–5, 6 religious perspectives, 21, 23, 145,

conservation 147, 149, 151, 154–56, 199, 200,
future needs, 221 209, 292
oil/energy waste, 218–19 See also nature
water, growing priority, 134, 221 cultural issues. See endangered cultures;
water issues, 124, 128–29, 135, 137, indigenous groups; religion and
221 ecology/environmentalism; relo-
water pricing scenarios, 124, 135 cation of peoples
consumer economy cytomegalovirus, 264
American values, 79, 177–78
individualism dangers, 31, 36–37, 41 Daly, Herman, 237
nature views, 294 dams
contracts, privatization, 122, 123, 125, hydropower vs. natural rivers
127, 129, 131, 132–33, 138–40 commentary, 172–79
corn, 229–31, 232, 239, 240 hydropower vs. natural rivers
corporate social responsibility, 198, 201 scenario, 163–72
corruption and bribery, municipal Indonesian development scenario, 87,
services 88–89
Indonesian development scenario, 86, Middle Eastern water supply, 129,
87 130
infrastructure improvement contracts, renovation and enlargement, 163,
222, 223 167, 168, 172
privatization contracts, 125, 131, U.S. history, 172–73
138–39 Danone, 132
Costa Rica, 132–33, 136 data and research
cost-benefit analysis baselining challenges, 63, 187,
consequentialism as, 4–5, 6 188–90
nuclear wastes storage, 116 case studies, 286
costs issues pesticides-related, 58
electricity sources, 113, 166, 173 species and ecosystems, 63
energy usage and waste, 218–19 DDT
family/small farms, 228–30, 232, dirty dozen chemicals, 50
235, 237, 238 malaria control, 51, 52, 58, 59, 60
mass transit implementation, 211–12, The Death of Nature (Merchant), 292
213, 214, 216 debt
organ transplants, 260, 268 farmers, 238
pesticides and pest management, infrastructure/environmental project
51–52, 55, 60–61, 62, 64, 66 commitments, 213–14, 215, 219,
water usage/access, 122–23, 124, 223
125–26, 128–29, 130, 131, nature of third world debt, 177, 223
132–33, 134–36 deep ecology, 15–16, 91
See also subsidies deer, 244, 245, 251
creation deforestation
classroom discussion and language, Chinese desertification, 183, 188
292–93, 295 farming technique, 72, 73, 74, 77–78
Index 301

Indonesian development and industry, disease. See animal diseases; immuno-

87, 90, 93, 97–98 suppression and effects; infectious
Madagascar rates, 74 diseases, water-borne; viruses
dehydration, 126 displacement. See relocation of peoples
democracy disposal, nuclear waste. See nuclear
autonomy within, 37 waste disposal
municipal control, 130, 132 distribution of goods. See ecojustice
dengue fever, 84, 94 diversity. See biodiversity protection and
deontology, 6–7, 8, 10, 19 challenges
Department of Energy, 114 divinity. See God
depressions, economic. See recessions, domesticated animals, 267, 272–74,
effects 275, 276
Descartes, René, 18 natural genetic modification, 233, 239
desertification See also factory farms
China, commentary, 187–94 drainage. See catchment areas, water;
China, scenario, 181–87 flooding; water absorption
developed nations drinking water. See bottled water; water
farm subsidies, vs. developing, sanitation and access
235–36 drug companies. See pharmaceutical
global warming responsibilities, 39 companies
pesticides development and transi- Dutch colonialism, 96
tions, 50, 51–52, 54, 55, 56–57, 58, duty
59–60, 66 human nature, 208
developing nations individual vs. community scenario
dam projects, 173 illustration, 32, 34, 35, 41, 42
ecosystem cataloging, 63 Kantianism, 6–7, 10
environmentalism awakening, nuclear waste storage scenario illus-
190–91, 290 tration, 106, 108, 112
farm subsidies, vs. developed, 235–36 Passmore on, 8, 26
global warming responsibilities, 39, sacrifice, 35, 42, 279
216, 220 dysentery, 84
nongovernmental organization aid,
191–92 Eastern Orthodox Church, 157
organic pollutants elimination East vs. West, environmental trends,
commentary, 59–66 22–23, 280
organic pollutants elimination ecocentrism, 8–9, 12–15
scenario, 49–59 ethical quandary examples, 19, 20,
water sanitation, 98, 290 41–42, 207, 254
development, illegal, 84–85, 85–87, 88, See also deep ecology
89, 90 ecofeminism, 17–18
diarrheal diseases, 126, 132 ecojustice, 6, 18–19, 156–57, 219–20
dietary customs, 262, 280, 281 liberation theology, 61–62, 119,
digging and desertification, 182, 184, 147–48, 156–57
187, 188, 190 personal responsibility, 32–33, 38–39
‘‘dirty dozen,’’ organic pollutants, 50, rights and, 92
51, 54, 55, 59, 66 sustainability, 19, 219, 237
302 Index

ecojustice (continued ) Madagascar, vs. species scenario,

tribal relocation, 175–77 70–77
water access issues, 122–24, 125–26, See also indigenous groups
130, 132, 133–36 endangered ecosystems. See ecosystems
economic costs. See costs issues Endangered Species Act, 275–76
ecosystems, 13, 14 endangerment and extinction, species
case study approaches, 285 Chinese protection, 185–86, 191
cataloging, 63, 202 ecosystem cataloging, 63, 202
ecocentrism cares/focus, 8–9, 12–15, Endangered Species Act, 275–76
199, 205–7 from global warming, 218
ethical coverage ranges, 3 hunting and, 246, 247
grasslands restoration, commentary, Indonesian dangers, 97, 99
204–9 pesticides, 56, 62
grasslands restoration, scenario, rainforest protection commentary,
196–204 77–78, 79, 80–81
humans as members, 22, 237, 244, rainforest protection illustration,
254–57, 276, 294 71–72, 73, 74, 76
Madagascar preservation United States history, 97
commentary, 77–81 energy privatization, 129, 139
Madagascar preservation scenario, Enlightenment thinking, 7, 24, 37, 293
68–77 Enron, 139
Peru, 56, 63 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
regional perspectives, 237 lawsuits, 192
ecotourism, 79 pesticides data, 58
education programs epidemics, 94, 264, 278
natural pest management, 53–54 erosion
nongovernmental organizations, 192 Chinese desertification, 182–84, 188
pesticides use/handling, 49, 52–53, farming exacerbation, 66
54–55, 57 Indonesia, 84–85
population management, 76 ‘establishment’ environmentalism, 15
efficiency, 219–20 ethical egoism, 5, 16
egalitarianism, species. See deep ecology ethical hunting
egoism, 5, 16 commentary, 252–54
electric companies, 163, 165, 166, 174, scenario illustration, 243–50
176 subsistence societies, 252, 267, 279
electricity Euphrates river, 129, 130
energy privatization, 129, 139 European Union
fossil fuel sources, 174 carbon trading and Kyoto Protocol,
hydroelectricity, 165, 166, 167, 171, 220
173–74 farm subsidies, 235
nuclear-generated, 112, 113 GMO food opinions, 239–40
shantytown extensions, 136 Stockholm Convention on Persistent
electric vehicles, 213, 214, 216 Organic Pollutants, 50, 52
endangered cultures Turkey consideration, 126
Madagascar, vs. species commentary, evangelism, 147, 155–56
77–81 evolution, 199, 200, 249, 293
Index 303

excavation and extraction, fuels/ores. Indonesian population and devel-

See mining opment, 84–86, 87, 90, 93
expressways, 143–44, 149 Indonesian protection ideas/sugges-
tions, 90–91, 97–98, 99
facai (moss), 182, 184 rainforest protection, 71–72, 73,
factory farms 74–75, 75–76, 79, 80–81
animal rights and safety, 267, For the Common Good: Redirecting the
272–73, 275, 276, 282n1–2 Economy toward Community, the
food perspectives changes, 246, 267 Environment and a Sustainable
pollution, 246, 273 Future (Daly and Cobb), 237
farmers’ markets, 31 fossil fuel energy sources, 174, 212
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission See also automobile use; mining; oil
(FERC), 163, 173 companies and producers
Francis of Assisi, 158
feminism. See ecofeminism
free market economy, 235–36
fertility rates. See birth rates
autonomy within, 37
fidelity, 253
contra to civitas, 177–78
fish and game commissions, 252, 254
free range animals, 272–73
fishing industry
free-trade policy, 132–33, 235–36
dams, changes, 164, 167, 169–70,
French colonialism, 72, 75, 79
173, 176, 178
fuel rods, 113, 114
endangered species, 62, 63
future considerations, nuclear waste,
pollution damages, 56, 62, 169–70
101–12, 114–17
flooding
future studies, 103–4
2002 and 2007, Indonesia, 83–84,
94–95
garbage collection and sanitation, 84,
control via damming, 166, 173
126, 128
deforestation and development
gasoline prices and taxes, 33, 212, 216
causes, 84–89, 183, 188
Genesis, book of, 23, 128, 145, 146,
folk religions, 191
147–48, 153, 154–55, 158, 209,
food allergies, 233–34 254–55
food and drug laws, 230–31, 232, 234 genetically modified crops/foods
food chain commentary, 232–35, 238–40
antibiotics in, 231, 232, 234, 273, scenario, 227–32
282n2 genetic engineering, 233, 269, 278, 282
pesticides in, 56, 59, 62 See also stem cell research
predators, 228, 244–45, 250, 255, genotype similarities, 262, 276–77
294 geologic forecasting, 103–4, 106,
food self-sufficiency, 236–37 116–17
forests/forest management geologic nuclear disposal. See nuclear
ancient tree protection, 143–44, 146, waste disposal
148 geologic restoration. See restoration
anti-desertification plans, 185–86 ecology
Buddhist values, 193 global warming, 217–18, 290
burning as farming technique, 72, 73, developing countries’ responsibilities,
74, 77–78, 203 39, 216
304 Index

global warming (continued ) greenhouse gas emissions

individual responsibility, 32, 39, 42 automobile-related, 39, 211, 214, 217
nuclear and hydro energy avoidance, decaying vegetation, 170, 174
102, 108, 113, 118, 166, 173–74 factory emissions, 211, 216–17,
See also climate change 220–23
GMOs (genetically modified organisms). fossil fuel usage, 174
See genetically modified crops/ individual responsibility/carbon foot-
foods prints, 32, 39, 42, 220, 221
God international reduction goals, 218,
Allah, and nature gifts, 123, 127, 133, 220, 290
134, 280–81 nuclear and hydro power non-
creator/creation, 21, 22, 26–27, 93, emission, 102, 108, 113, 118, 166,
145, 146, 149, 150, 154–56, 199, 173–74
200, 209, 292–93 See also climate change; global
interpreting God’s will, 152 warming; pollution
vengeance/judgment (see redemption green revolution (agriculture), 238–39
theology) groundwater reserves and use, 86–87,
Golden Rule, 5 98, 126
‘goodwill’ notions, 15 guns and hunting, 242, 244, 251, 252,
gorges. See dams 253
See also hunting
government assistance. See subsidies
government contract corruption. See
corruption and bribery, municipal habitat preservation. See forests/forest
management; hunting; rainforest
services
preservation
government instability and transitions,
Hart, John, 91–92
85, 87, 90, 93, 97
headscarf laws, 126–27
government regulations
heart transplants, 261, 262
Chinese controls, 191, 192, 193–94
See also xenotransplants
enforcement failure scenarios, 84–87,
Heilongjiang, China, 183–84
90, 216, 220
herbicides, 55, 59, 227, 228, 232
taxes and responsibilities, 32–34 herding/grazing, and desertification,
Grand Coulee Dam, 167, 172 181–82, 184, 185, 186, 187,
grasses, diversity, 197, 199–200, 203 188–90
grasslands hermeneutics, 152–53
Chinese desertification commentary, hexachlorobenzene (HCB), 50
187–94 hierarchies, 16–18, 151, 277, 292
Chinese desertification scenario, high-level radioactive waste. See radio-
181–87 active materials
ecosystem restoration commentary, Hinduism, 22, 93, 112, 262, 266, 267,
204–9 280
ecosystem restoration scenario, ‘‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological
196–204 Crisis’’ (essay), 151, 158
grazing of animals. See herding/grazing, Hobbes, Thomas, 37
and desertification Hoover Dam, 167, 172
green buildings, 221 housing costs, 135
Index 305

human-centric systems. See anthropo- India, 39, 52, 280

centric (classical) ethics; anthropo- Indians. See India; Native Americans
centric perspectives indigenous groups
human dignity, 25 Chinese religion, 191
human rights issues, 80 ecojustice focus, 157
language, 291 environmentalism and kinship, 22,
liberation theology, 61–62, 107, 119, 192–93, 279–80
156–57 Malagasy culture, 70–74, 77–78,
water access, 124, 130, 131–32, 78–79
134–35 Native American community values,
See also ecojustice 30–31, 35, 42–44
humans as actors Peruvian Indian agricultural tech-
climate change cause, 217–18 niques, 53–54, 56, 64–65
desertification cause/ponderings, See also tribal cultures
183–85, 188–89, 189–90 individualism
ecosystem members, 22, 237, 244, as anthropocentrism, 9–10, 16,
254–57, 276, 294 36–37
hunger and malnutrition and autonomy, 36–39
agriculture monoculture, 236 vs. community values, scenario
Chinese history, 182, 184, 185, commentaries, 38–39, 40–44,
187–88 177–78, 220
as larger risk than pesticide use, 54, vs. community values, scenario illus-
58–59, 60–61, 62 tration, 30–36
Indonesia
as risk weighed with deforestation,
agricultural trade issues, 237–38
95, 97, 99
history and facts, 90, 92–93, 96, 139
hunting, 250–51
island diversity, 90–91, 96
animal respect, 243–44, 249–50, 252,
land usage commentary, 91–99
267, 279
land usage scenario, 83–91
habitat preservation, 244, 246–47,
industrial chemicals, 50
254
industrialization, 23, 90, 187–88, 190
scenario commentary, 250–57
infant and child mortality, 94, 97, 131
scenario illustration, 232–50
infectious diseases, water-borne, 84,
Hurricane Floyd, 1999, 273 94–95, 126
Hurricane Katrina, 2005, 148, 157 infrastructure development
hybrid seeds and crops, 229, 238–39 privatization and, 131, 132, 139–40
hydropower transit, combating climate change,
green aspects, 165, 166, 170, 173–74 211–17
scenario commentary, 172–79 water systems aging/updates, 135–36,
scenario discussion, 163–72 137, 163, 167, 168, 172
U.S. history, 172–73 inherent worth theories, 10–12, 25–26,
91–92, 95–96, 99
illegal development, 84–85, 85–87, 88, instrumental value theories, 5, 25–26,
89, 90 91–92, 95–96, 99
immigration issues, 77 integral pest/plague management
immunosuppression and effects, scenario commentary, 64–66
260–61, 262, 268, 270 scenario discussion, 53–54, 55–56
306 Index

International Finance Corporation, 52 justice, 19, 111, 119, 133–34, 148,

international relations 219–20
Chinese insularity, 191 See also ecojustice
environmental treaties, 49–50, 52,
59–61, 62, 64, 218, 220, 290 Kant, Immanuel, 6, 7, 10, 16
free-trade policy, 132–33, 235–36 Kantianism, 6–7, 8, 10
nation-state system, 39, 80 practical limitations, 19
intrinsic worth. See inherent worth See also virtue ethics
theories karma, 112, 119, 268
kidney transplants, 259–60, 263
investment, improvement projects,
See also xenotransplants
211–12, 216
Koran, 123, 127, 133–34, 280–81
Iraq, 129, 130
Kyoto Protocol, 218, 220
irrigation
dams and, 166, 167, 171, 173, 176 lakes, 85, 130
personal/family water use, 124, Lancang River, 182
128–29, 130 ‘‘The Land Ethic’’ (Leopold essay),
sewer water recycling, 49 13–14, 40, 41–42
Islam language
Chinese Muslim experiences, 184, classroom challenges, case studies,
187 291–95
reproductive technologies, 281 hierarchies, anthropocentric, 277
stewardship, 22, 23, 93, 94, 133, 150, semantics, 205, 209
209, 280–81 Latin America
Turkey, 123, 126–27 liberation theology, 156
water views, 123, 127, 130, 133–34 non-governmental organizations, 191
xenotransplants, 262, 280–81 pesticides and pollutants commentary,
The Island of Dr. Moreau (Wells), 263 59–66
Isleta Pueblo v. City of Albuquerque pesticides and pollutants scenario,
(2006), 192 49–59
Israel, 134 water sanitation/privatization, 122,
132–33
leakage, water, 137
Jainism, 262
Lebanon, 130
Jakarta, Indonesia flooding, 83–84
legal aspects, natural resources
See also Indonesia
environmental protection cases, 144,
Java, 90–91, 95, 96, 97, 98
154, 192, 198, 201, 203
See also Indonesia
privatization and contracts, 123, 125,
Jefferson, Thomas, 37 127, 130, 133, 138–40
Jesus Christ, 7, 152, 155 Leopold, Aldo, 8, 13–14, 19, 40, 41–42,
Jordan, 130 199, 204, 209, 286
Judaism, 144–45 liberation theology, 61–62, 107, 119,
pork, and xenotransplants, 262, 281 147–48, 156–57
scripture, 152 life-centered ethics. See ecocentrism
stewardship, 22, 23, 150–51, 209, lifestyle choices/changes, environmental
281 responsibility, 31–32, 178, 217,
judgment. See redemption theology 221, 288, 289
Index 307

light rail systems. See mass transit medical and technology development
planning curing vs. caring, 270–71
literacy issues new ethical scenarios, 3, 204–5,
Indonesian rates, 95 263–64, 274, 281
pesticide usage/dangers, 53, 54, 61 organ transplants/xenografts,
litigation and confrontation, 33, 39–40 262–68, 269–70, 271–72, 275
grasslands mining scenario, 198, 201, risk assessment and precautionary
203 principle, 274
Indonesia forests scenario, 87 medical experimentation (animal
See also legal aspects, natural subjects), 9, 275
resources Mekong River, 182
local economies, 31 Merchant, Carolyn, 292
Locke, John, 37 mercury
logging fish levels, 169–70
Indonesian development, 87, 90, 93 spills, 52, 66n1
industry changes and improvements, metaphors, 208–9
95–96, 97–98 Mexico
outlawing, deforestation prevention, climate change planning commentary,
185–86, 188 217–23
See also deforestation climate change planning scenario,
Los Angeles, California, 137 211–17
Luther, Martin, 152–53 DDT production and usage, 52, 61
oil production and use, 218–19
Madagascar, 68, 77 water sources, 137
ecosystem/culture preservation Middle East, water resources, 123, 129,
commentary, 77–81 130, 133–34
ecosystem/culture preservation migration. See immigration issues; relo-
scenario, 68–77 cation of peoples
mad cow disease, 273, 282n1 military risk assessment, 278
malaria Mill, John Stuart, 5
flood and disease, 84, 94 minimalism in moral reasoning, 38–40,
pesticides prevention and resistance, 41
51, 52, 55, 58, 60 mining
malnutrition. See hunger and grassland ecosystems restoration
malnutrition commentary, 204–9
marshes and wetlands grassland ecosystems restoration
damming effects, 167, 170–71, 177, scenario, 196–204
178 pollution and accidents, 22, 52, 66n1,
endangerment, 246, 254 135, 201
protection example and pragmatism, South American oil, 192–93
19–20 MIP (Manejo Integrado de Plagas). See
reclamation history, China, 183–84 integral pest/plague management
mass transit planning misanthropy, 15
commentary, 218, 219, 221–23 miscarriage, 58, 62, 66n1
scenario, 212, 213–17 monism, 20
maternal mortality rates, 94, 96, 97 monoculture in agriculture, 236, 238
308 Index

monopolies and privatization, 122, 125, natural pest management, 53–54,

130, 138, 139–40 55–56, 64–66, 228
Montreal Protocol, 1987, 290 natural resource privatization, 130
moral minimalism, 38–40, 41 See also privatization, utility services
moral pluralism, 19–20 natural selection, 16, 208, 245, 255
moral standing/worth nature
animals as humans, 43 Buddhist and Taoist beliefs, 193
humans, 25, 91, 94 definitions, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209,
nonhuman debate, religious perspec- 293–94
tives, 26–27, 93–94 divine in, 21, 22, 26–27, 145, 147,
nonhuman denials, 4–7, 249, 254–55 149
nonhuman extensions, biocentrism, vs. domesticated animals, 276, 277
11–12, 91–92 feminization, 18
nonhuman extensions, deontology instrumental value, 26
and utilitarianism, 9–11 vs. science, 292–93
nonhuman extensions, ecocentrism, violence of, 148, 249, 250
12–13, 15 negotiated, monitored, retrievable
moral theories storage (nuclear waste), 110–11,
Aristotlean, 11–12 118–19
Kantianism, 6–7, 8, 10 nepotism, 125, 139, 222
utilitarianism, 4–6, 9 See also corruption and bribery,
mosquito-borne illness. See malaria municipal services
Muslims. See Islam Nestlé, 132
myths and stories, 35, 43 neurological damages, toxins, 57, 66n1
Nevada. See Yucca Mountain nuclear
Nash, James, 24, 91, 92 waste disposal
nationally owned companies, and new ethical scenarios. See technology,
pollution, 211, 216–17, 220–21 and new ethical scenarios
National Rifle Association, 251 New Orleans, Louisiana, 148, 157
national sovereignty, 39, 50, 75–76, 80 NIMBY attitudes, 109, 114, 115
nation-state system, 39, 80 nirvana, 94, 280
Native Americans nonfood crops, 236, 238
agricultural techniques, great plains, nongovernmental organizations,
202–3 Chinese intolerance, 191–92
agricultural techniques, Peru, 53–54, noninterference, 253
56, 64–66 Norton, Bryan, 19, 254
animals valuing and use, 35, 42–43, Novartis, 231, 232
149, 267, 279–80 nuclear accidents, 113
community values and environmen- Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), 101,
talism, 30–31, 35, 42–44 113
environmental court cases, 192 nuclear power history, 112–13
Oregon, relocation scenario/U.S. nuclear waste disposal
history, 167–68, 171, 173, 175 physical characteristics, 104, 114
natural disasters, 148, 157 retrievable storage, 110–11, 118–19
natural law theory, 7, 80 site integrity, 103–4, 116–17
Index 309

Yucca Mountain commentary, elimination proposal commentary,

112–19 59–66
Yucca Mountain consideration elimination proposal scenario, 49–59
scenario, 101–12 fishing industry effects, 56, 62
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, 114 See also pesticides; POPs Elimination
NWPA. See Nuclear Waste Policy Act of Treaty
1982 personal responsibility. See carbon foot-
prints; lifestyle choices/changes,
oak trees. See ancient trees environmental responsibility
ocean warming, 218 Peru
oil companies and producers native peoples agricultural techniques,
scenario commentary, 218, 220–21 53–54, 56, 64–66
scenario illustrations, 211, 213, 216 organic pollutants elimination
See also mining commentary, 59, 61, 62–63
Omaha parcel organic pollutants elimination
restoration, commentary, 204–9 scenario, 49–50, 51–59
restoration, scenario, 196–204 pesticides
one-child policy, China, 193–94 bans, history, 50–51, 52, 55, 59–60
option for the poor, 61–62, 156–57 costs issues, 51–52, 55, 60–61, 62,
organic farming and food, 229, 230, 64, 66
232, 235 fishing industry effects, 56, 62
organic toxins. See persistent organic genetically modified foods and, 227,
pollutants (POPs); POPs Elimi- 228
nation Treaty natural alternatives, 53–54, 55–56,
organisms 64–66, 228
ecosystems compared, 14 persistent organic pollutants
nature of, 11–12 commentary, 59–66
organ transplants persistent organic pollutants scenario,
animal-to-human (see 49–59
xenotransplants) physical damages from, 53, 57, 58,
cloned organs, 264, 265–66 62, 66n1
human-to-human, 259, 260–61, 262, production, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56–57
263, 264, 269–70, 271 See also POPs Elimination Treaty
overgrazing. See herding/grazing, and pest management. See integral pest/
desertification plague management; pesticides;
overpopulation. See population issues traditional agricultural/pest
ozone layer protection, 290 management practices
pharmaceutical companies, 63, 268
pain pig farming/production, 272–74, 275,
ethics, 5, 9, 10 276
hunted animals, 243–44, 252, 253 See also xenotransplants
Parks, Rosa, 157 piracy, botanical, 63, 192–93
Passmore, John, 8, 26 plants (living organisms)
patriarchy, 17–18, 153 bio- and ecocentrism considerations,
persistent organic pollutants (POPs) 11–12, 13
dirty dozen, 50, 51, 54, 55, 59, 66 piracy, 63, 192–93
310 Index

plants (living organisms) (continued ) Mexican urban growth, 216, 217

water rights, 133 water resources, 128
See also biodiversity protection; Posewitz, Jim, 243
endangerment and extinction, poultry farming/production, 237–38,
species 246
pleasure, 5, 10, 27 pragmatism in environmental ethics,
hunting, 248, 252 19–20, 205, 254
pluralism, moral, 19–20 prairies. See grasslands
polar ice melts, 218 prayer, 21, 134, 144
pollution precautionary principle, 63, 64,
air, 39, 211, 214, 216, 218–19, 189–90, 274
220–21, 290 animal production and organ use,
anthropocentrism ethics, 8 273, 278–79
China, 39, 187–88 chemical safety/bans, discussion,
controls, scenario examples, 214, 50–51, 58
216–17 genetically modified foods, 232, 234
fossil fuel combustion, 174 preservationism, 205–7, 208
hydroelectricity/dams and, 166, 170, See also restoration ecology
173–74, 178 price-fixing, 122, 125, 130, 132, 138,
mining causes, 22, 52, 66n1, 135, 201 139–40
social justice issues, 6, 18 primal instincts
treaties to combat, 49, 50, 59, 218, and hunting, 248, 255–56
220 language considerations, 277, 294
water, history and cases, 128, 135, privatization, utility services
192 business practices, 123, 125, 127,
water scenarios, and cleanup, 123–24, 129, 130, 131–32, 133, 138
126, 134 energy, 129, 139
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), 50 natural water sources, 130
poor nations. See developing nations reasons against, 131–36
POPs Elimination Treaty reasons for, 131, 135–36
contents, 50–51, 51–52, 59 water, commentary, 129–40
scenario commentary, 59–66 water, scenario, 122–27
scenario illustration, 49–59 projections, population, 217
population issues, 237 Protestantism, 151, 152–53, 155, 293
animal populations and hunting, See also Christianity
244–46, 252, 255 prudence, 38, 177, 219, 223
Chinese state policy, 193–94 public health
education and management, 76, 79, organic pollutants policy
96 commentary, 59–66
immigration causes, 77 organic pollutants policy scenario,
indigenous religions, 22 49–59
Indonesia commentary, 94, 95, risk assessment, 234, 278
96–97, 99 public utilities. See electricity; sewer
Indonesia scenario, 88, 90–91 systems; water sanitation and
industrialization cause, 23, 75 access
Madagascar, 75, 76, 77, 79 Pueblo Indians, 192
Index 311

Qinghai Province religious sources/adages as guidelines,

desertification scenario commentary, 7, 23, 112, 144–46, 150, 152–53,
187–94 193, 286
desertification scenario illustration, stewardship, 23–24, 93, 133, 144–46,
181–87 147–49, 150–58, 209, 280–81
Qu’ran, 123, 127, 133–34, 280–81 valuing creation, 26–27, 149, 156,
157, 279–80
radicalized ecocentrism. See deep valuing humans, 23–24, 25, 93–94,
ecology 133, 147, 148–49, 151, 155–56,
radical relationality, 16 254–55, 277, 292
radioactive materials water ownership issues, 123, 127,
storage futures scenario, 101–12 130, 133–34
storage realities/commentary, 113–18, See also scripture
118–19 religion and medicine
rainforest preservation human organ transplants, 262, 270
Madagascar commentary, 77–78, 79, reproductive technologies, 281
80–81 stem cell research and cloning,
Madagascar scenario, 71–72, 73, 264–65, 266, 268, 281
xenotransplants, 262, 269, 279–81
74–75, 75–76
religious missions, 92
rationality
relocation of peoples
gender stereotypes, 18
Indonesia, 90, 96–97
Kantian philosophy, 7, 9, 16
Madagascar commentary, 78–79,
rats
80–81
desertification cause, 181–82, 186,
Madagascar scenario, 70, 71–77
190
Native Americans, Oregon dams
disease carriers, 84, 95
commentary, 173, 175–77
recessions, effects, 93, 96–97, 211, 215,
Native Americans, Oregon dams
216–17 scenario, 167–68
reciprocity, 35, 43 relocation of property
reclamation of land, China, 183–84, polluting factories, 220
185, 187 scenario commentary, 154
recycling programs, 32, 194 scenario examples, 143–44, 149–50
redemption theology, 147, 148–49, renewable energy, 165, 166, 171,
155–56, 157, 281 173–74
Regan, Tom, 8, 10–11, 15 reparations, 110
regency. See stewardship notions replanting, trees/forests, 87, 97–98, 186,
reincarnation, 112, 119, 268, 280 190, 194, 212–13
relationism, 16, 41 reproductive technologies, 281
religion and ecology/environmentalism, research. See data and research
21–24, 192 reservations, Native American, 168,
China, 191, 193 175, 192
dietary rules/customs, 262, 280, 281 resistance to pesticides, 52, 58, 60, 64
environmental activism, 146, 149–50, resource depletion
151–52 consumerism effects, 41
liberation theology, 61–62, 119, efficiency and justice, 219
147–48 See also conservation
312 Index

restoration ecology scripture

degraded ecosystems commentary, Judeo-Christian, dominating envi-
204–9 ronment, 151, 155–56
degraded ecosystems scenario, Judeo-Christian, environmental
196–204 protection, 23, 144–45, 146, 147,
restoration definition and history, 148, 149, 154–55, 156–58, 209,
202, 204–5 281
retrievable storage, nuclear waste, Judeo-Christian, interpreting, 152–54
110–11, 118–19 Qu’ran, water/nature gifts, 123, 127,
rich nations. See developed nations 133–34, 280–81
risk assessment, 116–17, 269, 274–75, seawater incursion, 86, 98, 170–71, 218
277–79 secular nations, 123
ritual, religious, 21 seeds. See genetically modified crops/
rivers foods
Chinese, and desertification, 182, 188 self-criticism, in study, 288
vs. hydropower, commentary, 172–79 self-governance, 37
vs. hydropower, scenario, 163–72 self-sufficiency, food, 236–37
pollution, 128 semantics, 205, 209
water privatization issues, 129–30, ‘semihumans,’ 263
135, 137 sentience
Robb, Carol, 23 cloning and, 265–66
role playing, 289, 291 ethics and animal rights, 9–10, 11, 12,
Rolston, Holmes, III, 3, 4, 26, 92, 256 15, 92, 252
sewer systems
Romans, book of, 149
privatization, 122, 123–24, 131, 132
Ruether, Rosemary, 23
sanitation issues, 86, 98, 124–25,
126, 128, 131
sacrifice, as duty, 35, 42, 279 shade trees, 212–13
safety principles. See precautionary shallow ecology, 15
principle See also deep ecology
Saint Francis of Assisi, 158 Shi’a Muslims, 134
salmon populations, 164, 167, 169, Silent Spring (Carson), 286
170, 173, 176, 178 Singer, Peter, 8, 9–10, 15, 92, 252
A Sand County Almanac (Leopold), site integrity, 103–4, 116–17
13–14, 40, 41–42, 199 slavery
sandstorms, 182 moral justification, 109, 110
Sanjiangyuan area, China in scripture, 153
desertification scenario commentary, United States history, 142, 144, 157
187–94 social capital, 44
desertification scenario illustration, social contract, 37
181–87 social ecology, 16–17, 207
school study of cases. See case study social engagement and activities, 34, 40
method social hierarchies, 16–18
science fiction, 263 social justice. See ecofeminism;
science vs. nature, 292–93 ecojustice; liberation theology;
scientific method, 117 social ecology
Index 313

social roles, 18 suffering

South Africa, 52 ethical issues, 9, 10
South America. See Latin America hunted animals, 243–44, 252, 253,
sovereignty 254
Adam and Eve, 292 Suharto regime (Indonesia), 85, 93, 139
national, 39, 50, 75–76, 80 Sunni Muslims, 134
self, 37 Supolitik Iletisim Agi (Waterpolitics
Spain, 138 Network), 122, 129
species cataloging, 63 sustainability
species egalitarianism. See deep ecology agricultural production and trade,
species endangerment. See endan- 236–38
germent and extinction, species Chinese desertification scenario, 183,
spiritual perspectives. See religion and 184
ecology/environmentalism; religion ecojustice role, 19, 219
and medicine Mexico transit scenario, 216–17, 221
sport hunting. See hunting overpopulation challenge, 237
sports utility vehicles, 75, 213 symbolism in religion, 24–25
state capture, 139 Syria, 129, 130
state-owned companies, and pollution,
211, 216–17, 220–21 taboos, 69, 74, 270, 280
stem cell research, 264–65, 266, 267 Taoism, 193
stewardship notions, 22–24, 93, 133, taxes
209, 269 auto efficiency and testing, 213, 214,
Islam, 22, 23, 93, 94, 133, 150, 209, 216, 219
280–81 bottled water exports, 132–33
Judeo-Christian, 23–24, 93, 133, gasoline prices, 33, 212, 216
144–46, 147–49, 150–52, 153–58, nuclear futures funds, 109–10
209, 281 Taylor, Paul, 8, 11–12, 15, 252–53
protection commentaries, 150–52, technology, and new ethical scenarios
153–58, 208–9 genetic modification, 233, 239, 269
protection scenarios, 142–50 medical, 3, 204–5, 280, 281
Stockholm Convention on Persistent organ transplants/xenografts,
Organic Pollutants, 49, 50, 54 262–68, 269–70, 271–72, 275
See also POPs Elimination Treaty risk assessment and precautionary
storms, 148, 157, 273 principle, 274
storytelling, 35, 43 telos, 11–12, 19, 20, 154–55
subjects-of-a-life (Regan), 10–11, 15 Tennessee Valley Project, 172
subsidies terrorism risks, 111
agricultural, 235–36, 237 Thames river, 128
environmental improvement incen- theology. See hermeneutics; liberation
tives, 39 theology; redemption theology;
food and housing, 135 religion and ecology/environmen-
mass transit systems, 221 talism; scripture
pesticides transitions, 51–52, 54, 66 Thornton, Joe, 64
water, 128, 130, 135–36 Tigris river, 129
Suez (company), 125, 132, 138 totems, 267
314 Index

tourism industry United States

ecotourism, 79 conservation hypocrisy, 75, 80–81,
Mexico scenario, 211, 212 218
water activities draw, 165, 173, 175 dams, history, 172–73
water usage, 122, 125, 133 energy sources, 174
toxicity testing, 58 environmental lifestyle changes, 221
toxic wastes, nuclear. See nuclear waste extinction of species, 97
disposal farming and subsidies, 235–36,
toxins, damage effects, 53, 57, 58, 62, 237–38
66n1 hunting, 250–51
traditional agricultural/pest infant and maternal mortality, 94
management practices, 53–54, Kyoto Protocol rejection, 218
55–56, 64–66, 228 Native Americans and values, 30–31,
transplants. See organ transplants; 35, 42–44, 175, 192
xenotransplants pesticides production/stance, 50, 52,
transportation modes. See automobile 58, 59
use; bicycle transportation; bus Southern history, 142
transportation water rates and usage, 135, 137
trees urban growth, 137, 216, 217
Biblical mentions, 148, 154–55, 156 U.S. Department of Energy, 114
Buddhism role, 193 utilitarianism, 8, 9, 175
city greening, 212 practical limitations, 19
See also ancient trees; forests/forest scenario illustrations, 175, 254
management and scientific reasoning, 117–18
tribal cultures utilities. See electric companies; elec-
Indonesia, 92–93, 96 tricity; sewer systems; water sani-
Malagasy, 69–70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, tation and access
78–79
Native American communities,
30–31, 35, 41, 43–44, 167–68, value/values, defining, 24–27
171, 175–77, 192 VanDeVeer, Donald, 9
tuberculosis, 94 vegetarianism, 221, 262, 277, 280
Turkey Vesey, Denmark, 157
politics and religion, 123, 126–27, violence in nature, 148, 249, 250
134 virtue ethics, 38, 177–78, 219, 223,
water facts, 125, 129–31 290–91
viruses, 92, 264
underground nuclear waste. See nuclear
waste disposal Wales, 137
unemployment concerns, 95, 97, 211, war and risk, 278
215, 216, 220 waste
United Kingdom animal consumption, 246, 250, 256
animal diseases, 273, 282n1 energy/oil, 218–19
water leakage, 137 immorality and injustice, 219
United Nations Conference on Envi- water conservation and, 124, 128–29,
ronment and Development, 218 135, 137, 221
Index 315

water absorption women’s issues

deforestation and development ecojustice and ecofeminism, 17–18,
complications, 84–87, 88–89, 183, 157
188 headscarf laws, 126–27
shade trees, 212–13 maternal and infant mortality, 94, 96,
water pollution, 128, 135 97
factory farms, 246, 273 scripture and oppression, 153
U.S. lawsuits, 192 water, 121, 124
water privatization word meanings
capitalism and business practices, case study language challenges,
123, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131–32, 291–95
133, 138 semantics, 205, 209
commentary, 129–40 World Bank, 52, 139, 236
scenario, 122–27 world religions, 22–23
water sanitation and access World Water Forum, 129
desertification, China, 182, 188 worth and value, 25–27
drinking water and flooding, 84 See also moral standing/worth
groundwater reserves and use, 86–87,
98, 126 xenotransplants
as human right, 124, 130, 131–32, eco-philosophies, approaches, 9,
134–35 10–11
and pesticides use, 53, 61 graft examples, 271–72
privatization commentary, 128–40 religious perspectives, 262, 266,
privatization scenario, 121–27 279–81
See also bottled water; dams; sewer
scenario commentary, 269–82
systems
scenario illustration, 259–69
weather changes, 183–84, 218
Wells, H. G., 263
Western philosophy Yangtze River, 182
anthropocentric ethics, 4–7, 36–37, Yellow River, 182
292 Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal,
case study method history, 285 114
West vs. East, environmental trends, discussion scenario, 101–12
22–23, 280 scenario commentary, 112–19
wetlands. See marshes and wetlands
White, Lynn, Jr., 151, 158 Zhaba Duojie, 185–86
Whitman, Walt, 251 zoonotic diseases, 255, 264, 273, 275,
wolves, 244–45, 294 278, 282n1