Ethics means several different things, including (1) systems of value in the customs and practices of human beings; (2) those aspects that constitute moral behaviour; and (3) the philosophical study of moral principles. But the fundamental ethical question (as posed by Socrates), and therefore the best starting-point, is: how should one best live, or what should one best do? At least three points follow. One is that questions of value - whose study is called axiology - are integral to ethics; ethics concern the realisation of values, both in the sense of 'realising what they are' and of 'making them real'. Another point is that questions of right and wrong behaviour - morality - while very important, are only a subset of ethics as a whole. And insofar as the emphasis is upon behaviour, private morality is less important than public; indeed, much of ethics concerns constraints on the activities of individuals for the common good of the community(s). Finally, ethics also overlaps with questions of knowledge, such as how we know what has value and what is good behaviour, the study of which is called epistemology.
It is also worth noting that ethics is not, and cannot be, an exact science (assuming anything is). As Hargrove puts it, "a tight, rationally ordered set of rules that can automatically be applied with great precision" is not an option, as distinct from a set of more or less related general rules-of-thumb. In order to understand them, people "will have to study the application of these generalizations to specific situations, as if they are learning to apply rules, but in fact they will be internalizing these rules or generalizations and in this way learning to see the world aright from the standpoint of environmental ethics".4
Analytically speaking, there are three broad traditions of ethics. (They are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive, so this is a fairly rough-and-ready guide.) Virtue ethics is taken to start with Aristotle, and is concerned with developing the four ancient virtues - temperance, justice, courage, and (practical) wisdom. (The later Christian virtues are faith, hope and charity.) A person who succeeds in doing so will realise and promote eudaimonia (usually translated as 'happiness', but better as 'well-being'). This emphasis on character is not as individualistic as it sounds, since for Aristotle and his Greek and Roman successors, humanity is integrally a social and political animal. Such an approach has recently been re-discovered, after being largely eclipsed in modern philosophy by two others, both with their origins in the late eighteenth century, as follows.
Deontological ethics is concerned with not inculcating virtue but developing guides for behaviour: in short, duties. Its major figure is Immanuel Kant, whose two main ethical rules were to act in such a way that you would want everyone else to do the same (the "categorical imperative"), and to treat everyone as an end in him- or herself, never merely as a means (the "practical imperative"). These injunctions were meant to be universal, to be followed regardless of the consequences. The implication of the first is that good intentions are everything; from the second follows the idea of universal individual human rights, which some philosophers, such as Tom Regan, have extended to animals, and others to all living things, including (say) trees. One problem here is that both rules and rights can conflict with each other.
Consequentialist ethics (sometimes also known as teleological ethics) is the third tradition. It holds, in contrast, that what really matters are the effects of actions, regardless of their motivations. The dominant form is utilitarianism, founded by Jeremy Bentham and further developed by John Stuart Mill, according to which the highest good is the greatest happiness - in terms of absence of unnecessary suffering - of the greatest number of people. In theory, this is something that it should be possible to calculate. This idea has also been influentially extended to animals by Peter Singer, following on from Bentham's assertion that "The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?" This point is well-taken, but a problem with the way it is often developed by utilitarians is that such calculation involves assigning relative values that are often highly subjective, if not actually arbitrary.
These three positions overlap. For example, maximising the "good of the greatest number" could be taken as a universal rule; motives for actions (especially insofar as they influence the choice of means) very often have a significant effect on outcomes; and the successful realisation of rules for realising the good requires, and results in, a kind of virtue. In fact, all these considerations - motivations for actions as well as their effects, rules for behaviour but also their inculcation as virtue - are important. But note something crucial for our purpose here: all three are concerned almost exclusively with human beings and their interrelationships: "àenvironmentally at least, all established ethics are inadequate".5
Another way of categorising ethics is more socio-historical. In this view, virtually all ethics began, and for much the greater part of human history have persisted, as religious codes. There is wide variation, of course, but ethics are derived either from local spirits (animism), various deities (polytheism), the nature of sacred reality itself (Buddhist nontheism), or most influentially God himself together with His prophets (Judaic, Christian and Islamic theism). The foundational text for the last kind is in Genesis 1:28: "àand God said unto them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'" This dominion thesis has two versions: a despotic one, in which humanity can do anything it likes with and to the natural world (including animals), and a benevolent one usually known as stewardship, according to which humanity can use the natural world but with due regard for the fact that God created it (albeit for us), and regard for the needs of future generations.
With the modern world, however - beginning (for most intents and purposes) in the seventeenth century - secular ethics became increasingly important. This includes the latter two positions described above. Very broadly speaking indeed, humanism replaced God with man (and only very recently woman), and replaced divine revelation with human reason. (Note, however, that the monist logic - only one legitimate source, with only one legitimate set of interpreters - remains untouched.) Increasingly, reason itself has become replaced by even narrower scientific reason, which now incarnates ever more powerfully as technology. The original Renaissance philosophy about the importance of human initiative within divine and natural limits has thus mutated into an arrogant techno-humanism which recognises none.6 Adherents, sometimes called cornucopians, believe that there is no serious problem which does not have a scientific/technological solution, and no end to human progress and growth, especially economic: hence, economism. So for them, it is literally a case of business as usual, only more so.
Politically speaking, modern secular ethics divides largely into the individual rights of liberal democracy (note the affinity with deontology) and the collective rights of social/socialist democracy (note the affinity with utilitarianism). In both cases, the guarantor of rights is the state, with which individuals and/or groups supposedly have a contract: they cede the state its power in return for its protection of them and their rights. (The dominant philosopher of this statism is Hobbes.) Despite the control that democracy is supposed to exert, however, the state itself is increasingly run by - and its ethics determined by - the power of capital and its principal representatives, transnational companies, together with the science and technology with which both states and capital are ever increasingly entangled. Here a distinction between genuine science and scientism - essentially, science as cult - must be made. The latter, in its contempt for local and traditional knowledge, is plainly anti-democratic (as well as anti-ecological), but even respecting the former there is a strong case for greater democratic accountability.7
The best name for this entire process is modernism - not as a school of artistic, architectural or other such thought, but as the ideology that drives the project of modernity.8
Anthropocentrism - human-centredness - is sometimes taken to mean that all value and/or ethics should or even must have human beings as its principal or even sole focus. This is an egregious error. In the first place, human beings are certainly not the only locii of value, need and agency; it takes a particular arrogance and dogmatism to deny that to other animals, at the very least. Secondly, even if it were true that values and/or ethics are generated only by human beings, ie. are anthropogenic, it does not follow that humans must be the main repository or central concern of value. (Of course, that could be argued on other grounds.) Analogously, recognition of the intrinsic value of the natural world - an important theme in ecological ethics - may require a human valuer; but that does not mean it has no such value.
Alternatively, anthropocentrism is frequently used to criticise an unjustified privileging of human beings at the expense of other life-forms, analogous to such prejudices as racism or sexism. The problem with this usage is that there is nothing wrong with a concern for human beings as such, nor is it necessarily inconsistent with a concern for non-human nature.9 And the same is true of humanism as such, which is sometimes used in the same way (eg. by Ehrenfeld). For this reason, a better term for what is commonly meant by anthropocentrism would be human chauvinism.10 (Other alternatives that have been suggested are speciesism - a clumsy neologism - and human racism - too narrow an analogy.11) So "anthropocentrism" can still be used to describe a situation where human interests are central, but "human chauvinism" is more appropriate where this is meant critically.12
Ecocentrism is at least equally a contentious and delicate matter. It should simply mean an approach (in this case, to ethics) which foregrounds the natural world; and as such, is fundamental to an ecological ethic.13 But the crucial question is, does, or should, that include human beings? Critics of ecocentrism have charged it with a simple inversion of human chauvinism which is not only misanthropic (and strategically counterproductive) but preserves the radical split between the human and natural worlds that we inherited from Judaeo-Christianity: a split which ecologists in general see as an integral part of the problem. And this accusation is not always without justification, where some populist deep ecologists are concerned. But ecocentrism does not necessarily exclude humanity, and there are powerful reasons - strategic as well as ethical - why it should not. Warwick Fox is right that "being opposed to human-centredness is logically distinct from being opposed to humans per se."14 And misanthropy is as unjustifiable as it is unattractive. As Robin Eckersley writes, respecting the Earth's bounty, "The principle of common entitlement makes it clear that humans are not expected to subvert their own basic needs in order to enable other life-forms to flourish".15
However, humanity poses a conundrum in this respect, being plainly partof the natural world and at the same time, distinctive from other animals in the extent to which individual reflective consciousness, and its socialisation as culture, affects to a relatively unique extent how otherwise 'purely' natural factors play themselves out. Note that this uniqueness does not entail any superiority or special privileges! But it does mean that ethically, as Jones puts it, "Humankind does have a unique responsibility for the wellbeing of other creatures and the whole ecosystem, yet is at the same time a dependent and integral part of that system."16 So neither exclusive anthropocentrism nor exclusive ecocentrism is a defensible option.
What, in that case, is there to choose between them? Simply this: ecocentrism (which from now on I shall assume is inclusive of humans) includes more, and does so more effectively, than extending through limited add-ons an anthropocentrism that has already held sway for millennia, and in our unprecedented circumstances is now in drastic need of radical change. The important thing now is to "set anthropocentric concerns within ecocentric concerns." And this cannot be done if it is based entirely on self-interest, ie. chauvinistic reasons - although paradoxically, "if humans do learn to care about what happens to other species and ecosystems - that is, to treat nature as if it mattered - then the repercussions [of environmental destruction] to humans will be lessened".17
There is an important political and strategic dimension to this issue, because there is a dangerously naïve version of ecocentric inclusiveness which is actually quite common. It consists of maintaining that the "liberation" of nature (a highly patronising idea, by the way) not only can and must proceed together with that of other oppressed classes, such as women and the poor, but that it necessarily does. Obscuring in this way the real conflicts and hard choices that do sometimes occur between what are at least perceived as humans' and nature's interests only makes it harder to evaluate and act on them. (One example, as I write: the question of banning DDT on environmental grounds, jeopardizing the eradication of malaria in the Third World.) This is true even within the broad movement to protect the non-human world: clashes between proponents of animal liberation/ rights (about individual animals) and ecologists/environmentalists (about species and/or ecosystems) are all too common.18 Alliances between different progressive and emancipatory movements do not come ready-made; the hard work of forging them is unavoidable. And it should be added that in some, perhaps many situations, an appeal to anthropocentric self-interest may be an unavoidable part of the argument for an ecocentric outcome.
This raises the question, is a new ethic required? The answer depends on what is meant by "new". Something entirely new is simply not a possibility, either conceptually or practically. Passmore is correct that "A new ethic will arise out of existing attitudes, or not at all".19 But it does not follow (as he goes on to maintain) that a new ethic - new in effect, even though constructed, like all such things, out of older materials, and out of some designed for other purposes - is impossible. And since the current unsustainable and indefensible making over of the world - not ultimately, but well before then - is driven by ideologies (chief among them that of global consumer capitalism) that embody an ethic according to which this simply does not matter, a new ecological ethic is not only possible but urgently needed.
Shallow ethics has its roots in the dominion/stewardship thesis mentioned earlier, now secularised. Nature has only instrumental value (or use value), as a resource to be exploited for human ends. It is the dominant approach in governmental departments and companies (which is to say, it is dominant overall), represented by resource management and conservation, human welfare ecology, and much environmentalism. It doesn't preclude precautionary arguments, but their concern is still human wellbeing, based on what Sylvan and Bennett call the Sole Value Assumption (SVA). This human chauvinism has recently found new and more sophisticated expression among techno-optimists,22 who use the ever-increasing impact of humans on global ecosystems to advocate more of the same, in the form of "managing" the ecosphere more "efficiently" - or what amounts to a more scientific plundering of resources and further evasion of natural limits on human ends. Pearce's project to put a price on everything23 is part of the same programme in which, while there is a provision for abuse of nature as well as use, there is none for non-use. All this finds its reductio ad absurdum in the idea that having done such a good job with itself and the world to date, the duty of humanity is now to take charge of all evolution and (through genetic engineering) direct it: a kind of "intelligent species' burden", as Fox aptly puts it.24
It is necessary to repeat that in some (even many) situations, a connection to human interests may be all that there is for ecologists to fall back on. As a defence, however, shallow ecological ethics is inherently inadequate; as Evernden among others has pointed out, with "resourcism" the terms of the debate are already loaded in favour of human interests - almost always construed in narrow and relatively immediate economic terms - and the outcome thus predetermined.25 Ecologically speaking, "enlightened self-interest" is ultimately an oxymoron; in practice, it can take us so far, but not not far enough. (Deep ecologists have a particular understanding of "self", however, to which I shall return.)
There is a paradox here. Ecologists - by which I mean those who are not only acutely aware of the ecosystemic natural world but who value its integrity - argue that human beings can and should choose not to exploit our species dominance by expanding in every way possible. This assumes that we are significantly different from all other animals, who are presumably incapable of practising quasi-voluntary restraint. Human chauvinists, on the other hand, frequently argue that (in the words of one defender of animal experiments), "All animals put their own survival first, and we should do the same".26 This assumes a human nature that is ethically identical with that of other animals; the only difference lies in the contingent success of our evolutionary position. The question then becomes, how can one argue for ecocentrism without thereby encouraging human exceptionalism? The answer is, you can't, and that is all right - as long as our participation in and dependence upon nature (as discussed earlier) is given its due weight.
One version of intermediate ethics is the social ecology developed by Murray Bookchin,27 which holds (unconvincingly) that human-nature relations depend completely upon human-human relations, so that improving the former depends on resolving the latter. Bookchin also holds to a mystical/teleological view in which nature is somehow "completed" in and by human evolution - as if the natural world needed us more than we need it! Social ecologists do valuable political and social service, both theoretical and practical, in the form of municipal and community development; but these, while valuable in themselves, do not go to the heart of the ecological crisis.
There have been important efforts to move intermediate ethics in a more ecological direction, by arguing that what has been thought of as a solely human value is also true of non-humans: hence what is sometimes called moral extensionism. One such pioneer was Aldo Leopold, whose land ethic famously asserted that "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".28 In arguing that humanity must take its place as "plain member and citizen" of that greater community - although "peculiar member" might be more apt - Leopold took a major step in extending ethical consideration to its other members.29 Contrary to some human chauvinists (eg. Passmore), qualification for such membership does not depend on being a moral agent - unless, as Midgley has pointed out, one is willing to exclude from ethical consideration children, the senile, the temporarily and the permanently insane, defectives, embryos (human and otherwise), sentient animals, non-sentient animals, plants, artefacts, including art, inanimate objects, groups of all kinds, ecosystems, landscapes and places, countries, the biosphere and oneself - in other words, the majority of beings with whom we have to deal!30 But extensionism remains human-centred, retaining the assumption that humans come with "rights" which can in certain rare cases can be extended to honourary humans, but which otherwise trump all other considerations, even when the rights that are defensible as needs have blatantly transmogrified into straightforward wants - usually with the help of an economic system whose enormous resources are dedicated to creating and then exploiting just that process. And another potential problem with this particular form is that as a result of its holism, individual interests could be unduly overridden in the interest of (someone's particular version of) the whole; this has invited the somewhat overheated charge of "environmental fascism" from another moral extensionist, the defender of (individual) animal rights, Tom Regan.31
Another even more influential extensionist is Peter Singer, the pioneer, in its modern form, of animal liberation.32 From the starting point provided by Bentham's famous question quoted above, and developing his associated utlitarianism, Singer has bravely tackled the horrendous suffering - and sheer scale of suffering (in the USA alone annually, 70 million animals are used in experiments and 5 billion live and die in factory farms) - for which, especially when combined with the global decimation of wildlife, "holocaust" is not too strong a word. His arguments have had a significant (if still far too small) effect on animal welfare, and effectively establish the ethical point that the literally vital interests of nonhuman beings should not be violated for relatively trivial human reasons. However, as Sylvan and Bennett point out, Singer has traded human chauvinism for sentient chauvinism.33 That is, only sentient beings are worthy of ethical consideration; living but nonsentient ones - let alone ecosystems - are not. Another serious problem is irreducible individualism, which has the same drawback. For its remedy, we need to turn to the next kind of ecological ethic.
Ecofeminism is difficult to characterise, as it includes some major disagreements, or at least different emphases (which is not necessarily a weakness). They share a perception of the fundamental - if not, I think, necessarily always dominant - role of patriarchy in the exploitation of both women and nature; but positing an essential or necessary connection between the latter two (as is held by some ecofeminists, on either mystical or biological grounds) is problematic, for two reasons. First, that is the very argument long used by male chauvinists to justify dominating women; and second, by merely inverting the dominant values attached to male/female essentialism, it preserves the same destructive logic, when the point is to subvert it. The trick is to maintain that women are closer to nature - and therefore best-placed to lead its "liberation" - without subscribing to an essentialist determinism which would, for example, deny men the ability to change their ways or share in such a process. Analogous to human beings as a whole in relation to nature, women's experience and insights are best understood as special or even unique without being therefore superior. That experience/insight includes reasserting, against modernist abstract universalism, the profound value of life as embodied, situated and engaged, local and particular; and, against a hypertrophic rationalism, the value of intuition and what cannot be calculated, economically or otherwise.38
Probably the best-known kind of deep ecological ethics, however, is Deep Ecology (DE). Its principal architects are Arne Naess together with Devall and Sessions in North America, where its popularity is greatest.39 To oversimplify, but hopefully not caricature, DE affirms the intrinsic (non-instrumental) value of human and non-human life, whose flourishing forms humans have no right to reduce except to satisfy vital needs; it argues that present human interference with the non-human world is excessive and worsening, and therefore policies must be changed; and that this will come about mainly through changes in attitude (appreciating quality of life more than standard of living).40
So far, perhaps - except for the last point, which is naïve - so good. The genuine ecocentrism here is undeniable, and important. The problems that remain, however, are quite severe. (1) The DE version of intrinsic value - known as biospheric egalitarianism - holds that all beings have equal intrinsic value. This is intellectually and metaphysically implausible (why should value in nature be distributed equally?) and hopelessly impractical as a guide to action (besides advising us to treat, say, a lethal virus as having equal value to anything else, it allows no way to resolve conflicts). (2) Another problem - which is a major part of the Deep Ecological programme, particularly in America - is its emphasis on Self-realisation as our "real work" and also the goal of other beings (with which we shouldn't interfere). This results in another kind of chauvinism in favour of beings evidently capable of Self-realisation (ie. higher life-forms); it also opens the door wide to "an enlargement and extension of egoism",41 New Age versions of which have proven so amenable to symbiosis with market and corporate capitalism. Not surprisingly, with such an emphasis on states of consciousness/being, actual ("consequentialist") effects are down-played. (3) In particular, DE is critical of ("deontological") approaches in which ethical rules are central. Instead, it argues that people will naturally "do the right thing(s)" when their apprehension of the natural world is correct - a process that supposedly comes about through ever-wider identification of oneself with that world and its fellow inhabitants (hence, Self-realisation).
This approach has been especially developed by Warwick Fox under the term transpersonal ecology.42 It also has a strong affinity with Rodman's "ecological sensibility".43 Fox presents it as a way of bypassing the ("axiological") issue of value-in-nature. And it is true that positing intrinsic value as either objectively present (like Rolston) or only subjectively present (like Callicott) is highly problematic.44 But these, fortunately, are not the only two alternatives.45 Furthermore, axiology, although not enough in itself to accomplish anything, is essential; we might say (adapting Kant) that ethics without value is blind, while value without ethics is lame. It is also easy to see why deep/transpersonal ecologists are suspicious of rules and duties; but they in turn are vulnerable to Gandhi's remark (perhaps apocryphal, but pointed nonetheless) about trying to devise "a system so perfect that no-one will have to be good." It could be asked, will a sufficient number of people, to a sufficient extent, really partake of this process of enlightenment? Because consequences, unlike intentions, motives or states of Being, are literally what matter.46 Finally, deep/transpersonal ecologists confuse morality with moralism, and fail to see that deep ecological rules can succeed to the extent that, like any other successful kind, they become an integral part of the political, social and cultural processes of active - and in this case, green - citizenship.47
Stan Rowe's recent reformulation of the "Deep Ecology platform", which avoids many of these drawbacks, is probably as good as it gets:
The last points have specific and important economic implications, such as replacing profit maximisation with profit satisization (ie. sufficiency) and "free" markets with fair markets. Sylvan and Bennett provide considerable detail (for which there is no space here) about the political, cultural and educational ways in which DGT could - and to become influential, must - be realised, as part of encouraging the ethical virtue of green citizenship. They also point out that as I have already implied, there are circumstances in which arguments of a shallow and intermediate type may well be appropriate to invoke; deep green ethics are not meant to cancel these out or replace them, but to reach the places they cannot. The same applies to individual and rights-based approaches. Conversely, however, the absence of deep green ethics makes the current vogue for largely cosmetic measures like "environmental modernisation" - what Rudolph Bahro aptly called "cleaning the teeth of the dragon" - all too easy.
A post-religious spirituality (which the Dalai Lama and Vaclav Havel have advocated) that was ecocentric and inclusive - ie. which recognised intrinsic value in the nature humans and non-humans share - would be a great asset in the fight against the modern megamachine, whose militant secularism is no coincidence: disenchanting the world is one of the prerequisites to exploiting it.51 Or as Bateson succinctly put it, if you see the world as simply yours to exploit "and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell".52 It is true that the ancient world included some ecological devastation (despite being hampered by the lack of modern technology), and the same is true of indigenous tribes in recent times. Nonetheless, indigenous peoples have managed, on balance, to coexist sustainably with the natural world considerably better than have moderns; and a key to their relative success has been an Earth-oriented spirituality with practico-ethical implications which at least restrain unduly destructive practices.53 (It must be added, however, that another reason for their success was simply much lower numbers; see the section on population, below.)
I am not suggesting that contemporary versions of that sensibility are The Answer, but I think they are an important part of one; and there is no reason to think that they would necessarily prove reactionary. Ecofeminism in particular has a vital contribution to make here to a pluralist, materialist and locally-engaged ecological spirituality, as opposed to the universalist and disembodied off-planet religiosity with which we are all too familiar - or any "green" equivalent.54 At the same time, such a spirituality, in order to be effective, must be collective and social, not the privatised kind of the New Age consumer.
This modus operandi is closely related to the ecological crisis, insofar as it is what makes the disenchantment of the world, followed by its desecration, possible. It is also virtually impossible to subscribe to a monist universalism without rejecting limits (since the latter by definition is without any) - another key element of anti-ecological modernity. Yet ecological fundamentalism would merely replace the one true and universal God with Nature - leaving the logic untouched, and thereby becoming the enemy, and of the worst, because most disingenuous, kind. (It matters not whether the Nature here is mystical or scientific.) It follows that the only way to resist and ultimately replace this inherently anti-ecological logic is through a pluralism of the kind I have already mentioned: in this context, a moral as well as epistemological pluralism.56 This is vitally important. The important point is to recognise not only that different considerations can apply in different cases, but that each case can properly be viewed in different ways.57 Connections must then be made, and decisions taken, on grounds to be argued and established contingently in each case - which is to say, politically - and for which responsibility cannot be shirked in the name of supposed transcendental abstract truth.58
However frustrating this may be for ecocentric ethicists - "Everything - human rights, health, the lot - depends on ecosystems! No ecology, no nothing!" - it at least helps relieve them of three burdens they are better off without: (1) a tendency to self-righteousness which is self-defeating in its effect on others whom they are trying to influence; (2) a tendency to despair when they fail to do so; and (3) any involvement in a green version of the dominant mainstream programme, namely "intellectual/political totalitarianism (the effort to identify the presumptively universally compelling Truth and Way and to compel it universally)..."60 True, it also leaves them a great deal of hard work to do; but that was there anyway, and illusions of transcendental guarantees or so-called objective truths only make it even harder.
There is a corollary here. Paradoxical as it may be, the "intrinsic value" of nature is something that must be established. And to proceed as if it was already obvious (ie. to everyone who isn't a fool or knave)is not the most promising way to do so. On the contrary, its being valued is just what cannot be taken for granted. So influencing that outcome means, for example, involvement in and at least some influence on the institutions (eg. all the media, universities, etc.) that in turn tend to control how natural goods are perceived.61
What does that work consist of? It is to "create and maintain structures and procedures that give as much scope as possible to the laborious working out, individually and in concert, of courses of action that are the 'best' (all things considered...) for each, and each set, of us".62 Slightly less abstractly, there are educational, political, economic, social and cultural dimensions, all of which are important. And in all cases, deep ecological ethics must be brought to the attention of both the relevant authorities and the public - not always in the same way, of course. The former must be helped to reconceptualize their perceived political and economic remits in relation to the ecological dimension; the latter, to imagine plausible cultural and social life-narratives which include that dimension.
For many people and organisations directly involved with ecological ethics, the primary task is to get ecocentric ideas and values into the "collective mindstream" of the policy community - NGO's, think-tanks, quasi-academic institutes and the media - who tend to determine what are "issues" and how they are treated, and who are themselves trying to influence state/government policy regarding these issues. This can be more productive and important than lobbying the government (up one 'level') directly, although of course that too is often necessary. Doing so will often involve articulating and construing the concerns and fears of so-called ordinary people (down one 'level'), though again, not just doing that. In the words of a friend, "Getting an idea 'onto the table' is a prerequisite for getting it to influence action - whether action by the state or in some grass-roots way."
One of the problems here is that to the extent an ethic remains fundamentally conventional (anthropocentric) it will tend to be persuasive but effect little change; whereas to the extent it is radical (ecocentric) it will tend, for that very reason, to be easily marginalised.63 In a related point, an appeal purely to what seems like (ecocentric) altruism seems in general almost certainly bound to fail; yet an appeal to "enlightened" self-interest is highly vulnerable to people's selfishness, short sense of time-scale, and narrow interpretations of "self" (eg. myself and my family, now and maybe for the next few years) - all of which invites more over-development. For the great majority of people, it must be said, the survival of biodiversity, or even the human species as such, is so abstract as to be virtually meaningless. But this is just the sort of thing that requires cultural - artistic as much as intellectual or political - work enabling it to become real in our collective imagination.
So a compromise must, as usual, be sought, with reference to each different context and problem. And if an ecocentrically radical politics is sufficiently pragmatic, and an anthropocentrically reformist politics is sufficiently extensive, they meet, rendering the distinction irrelevant. It is also true that "we do not in all cases need to await agreement on principles (much less on social solutions in which they are applied) before particular problems can be recognised as such".64However, an ecocentric ethic as a regulative "horizon", an ideal which may never be reached but nonetheless indicates the right direction, is indispensable; otherwise, only degrees of co-option are left.65 And changing conditions can change receptivity to ideas quite quickly.
As Sylvan and Bennett (among others) have remarked, real change can come about in two basic ways - and there are serious problems with both. One is slowly, through reform. But "the overwhelming evidence is that not nearly enough will happen in time for anything but a grossly impoverished natural environment to emergeà. For much of the world's remaining wildernesses, for most of its remaining species, it is going to be all over in the next 20 years or so." Reform virtually never happens with that sort of speed, especially when the initial odds are so heavily against it. The alternative is revolution, at least in a few key states. But "were the styles of historic revolutions emulated, it would be a problematic and likely nasty medicine." Such a revolution - for which there is hardly much public support anyway - is very hard to achieve satisfactorily, and there is always the possibility that a state could "fall the wrong way, for instance to a totalitarian far right".66 Of course, public opinion and political conditions could change if something goes badly wrong. And as Herman Daly says, it may well take "a Great Ecological Spasm to convince people that something is wrong with an economic theory that denies the very possibility of an economy exceeding its optimal scale. But even in that unhappy event, it is still necessary to have an alternative vision ready to present when crisis conditions provide a receptive public".67
As things stand, would there be, ready and available, sufficiently well-thought-out and detailed ecocentric alternatives? Sylvan and Bennett wisely conclude that "Requisite organisation, well-thought-through directions, plans for action, and restructuring: such features are critical. Deep environmental groups should begin to prepare, carefully and thoroughly, for revolutionary action".68 But equally valuable is the attitude suggested by Jones (1993:190), to be a practical idealist: "one who is accepting of her fear (and there is plenty to be afraid of) without being possessed by it. Living beyond optimism and pessimism, she is a patient and clear-sighted possibilist."
While on the subject of the demos, however, let us also dispense with the absurd notions, which some greens have inherited from anarchism, that left to themselves, human beings will naturally "do the right thing"; or indeed that human life is possible without social and political structures. Nor can such structures ever be purely emancipatory: that about them which enables is also, in different ways and/or for different people, what unavoidably constrains. As Oldfield remarks, "The moral character which is appropriate for genuine citizenship does not generate itself; it has to be authoritatively inculcated".71 Certainly 'authoritative' should not be 'authoritarian', but liberal sensitivities nothwithstanding, it need not be; and to expect it to work without duties as well as rights, punishments as well as rewards, losers as well as winners is indefensibly naïve; these will inavoidably figure strongly in any green citizenship worth the name. (They do now, of course, in its absence; but for very different ends.) In some cases, they may well take the form, in Hardin's words, of "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of people affected"72 - although if so agreed, does it then remain "coercion"? (Again, it is absurd to pretend that we are presently not subjected to any coercion, whether directly or indirectly.) In any case, there is much to learn here from the tradition of civic republicanism73 - more than from its modern, somewhat ersatz cousin, communitarianism.74 (On liberal concerns about such a project, see the next section below.) It is also significant that virtue ethics is closely related to - and probably inseparable from - that tradition.75 And central to both is the concept, and value, that has been trampled underfoot in the modernist stampede for Progress: the common good. Only now, it must be an ecological common good, that of all the communities that make up the republic of life.76
I have no illusions about establishing a green utopia. As Callicott says, "An ethic is never realised on a collective social scale and only very rarely on an individual scaleà. An ethic constitutes, rather, an ideal of human behaviourà. [but] it nonetheless exerts a very real force on practice."77 A powerfully ecocentric version of such an ethic, where there is now effectively almost none, would be very heaven on Earth - which is where we most need it.
Now it is true that given the last point, no single one of the three offers a complete solution to ecological crisis. Nor are all ecological problems the result of overpopulation; in particular, if overdevelopment powered by global corporate capitalism continues unabated, its disastrous effects will need no help from other quarters. Nonetheless, one does not have to be a genius to work out that if population continues to grow at a sufficient rate for long enough, then no amount of technological tweaking (always assuming it is politically feasible) nor reduction of consumption (which we already know is not politically feasible) will suffice to bring about what we also know must be done for ecosystemic human well-being - and a fortiori the survival of most other species along with any remaining wilderness - which is to control and then reduce our environmental impact.In addition, overpopulation has the peculiarly vicious result that simply by force of numbers, the most natural human activities - ie., those most directly related to survival and the continuation of the species, such as finding fuel, growing food, procreation, excretion and so on - themselves become direct threats to personal survival, and that of the species.
This is the context in which world population has now reached six billion people, and is still rising fast. Despite much recent publicity about a trend "reversed", what has started to decline (and with no guarantees that it will continue) is the rate of increase; but population itself is still growing, and it is already far too high.79 Yet any attempt even to raise this as an issue to be aired, let alone tackled, is vociferously overruled by an unholy alliance of political left and right. For the right, when religious, to do so is an intolerable threat to dogma about the sanctity of individual human life, no matter in what conditions; when non-religious, the threat is to the secular cult of humanism, according to which if one human being is good (indeed, literally the only good), as many more as possible are simply that much better. For the left, which shares a great deal of ground with the last position, to raise the issue of over-population is itself irrefutable evidence of misanthropy, and in particular of racism. The latter suspicion seems in no way assuaged by geographical even-handedness. (Indeed, given that a child born in Britain, say, will put 30-40 times more strain on global resources than one born in Bangladesh, population control in the overdeveloped world is considerably more urgent.) Even NGO's - let alone elected leaders of governments - are too frightened to address this issue honestly; when they do so at all, it is by cautious indirection (eg. greater prosperity, women's control of reproductive health, improved education, access to health care, etc.) - not to say subterfuge, given that although these are vital concerns, research seems to show that they have no effect on fertility at best.80 Even the annual deaths in pregnancy and childbirth of 600,000 women - roughly the equivalent of four fully-loaded jumbo jets crashing every day, and overwhelmingly preventable81 - are apparently an untouchable issue: too close to the P-word.
In short, any programme aimed at population control as such - through widespread access to birth-control, removing government subsidies for children after the second, and perhaps recovering the social and ecological costs of such further children through taxation (see below) - seems out of the question. It is hard enough to raise even the obvious questions, such as: How many people do we arguably need, as opposed to how many can we squeeze onto the planet? (Cultural high-points in the past, such as the Renaissance, only involved a tiny percentage of our population.) What is the global population optimum, especially in relation to the planet's carrying capacity? Is collective human good really a quantitative, indeed additive, phenomenon, with the more people the better? And what about the places and species that are already the victims of mass-extinction as a direct result of human beings continually taking over and remaking new territory?82
I don't propose to discuss the above-mentioned right-wing concerns, the pathology of which I hope is already reasonably clear to most readers. Left/liberal discourse, however, is different. Its combination of apparent political common-sense and a direly inhibiting effect on the population (non-)debate requires some straight talking: namely that it is time to call time on individual human rights as the sole or fundamental (and I emphasise, sole) real value, trumping all others. Both its individualism and its restriction to humanity can be highly problematic in an ecocentric context, and so too is its common emphasis on "rights" divorced from responsibilities: both to other human beings (in terms of their quality of life) and to the natural world (in terms of its survival tout court). By all means, let us pursue individual human rights, including when they cohere with ecocentric concerns; but there will inevitably be cases where they clash, and DGT [deep green theory] states unequivocally that in some of such cases, the former should give way. Population is one such case.
Actually, the case is strongly arguable on anthropocentric grounds alone. As is well-known, two children per couple more or less amounts to current population replacement. Yet most governments in the developed world still subsidise further children. Norman Myers is worth quoting at some length:
Of course two children are every couple's right. It is their right too to have a third child without asking anybody's approval. But everybody else has a right to ask the couple to pay the additional costs entrained for everybody else by that third child. These are costs the child will impose upon everybody's environment and hence on everybody's economy. There are all manner of spillover costsàsuch as pollution, depletion of vital resources, road congestion, and so forth - that are charged to others than the parents, allowing the parents a free dip into everybody's wallet. Of mega-course that is not what the parents intend - they just don't think about it. But effectively and increasingly, that is what it amounts to.
These costs amount to at least £1000 per person per year of life. Directing them back to source through taxation (which discourages a third or more child but does not actually prohibit it) is perfectly possible - in principle. But as Myers remarks, "Perish the thought of somehow restricting parents' right to procreate as they please, even though they restrict everybody else's right to live as they please."83
This is a key (liberal) idea: the "right" to have children - any number (and now apparently at any age, with elaborate and expensive biotechnical assistance). And as I have noted, advocates of measures to control population - and I mean humane and sensible measures, not forced sterilisations or eugenics - are often accused of misanthropy, while those who make the charge thus implicitly lay claim to compassion (within a strictly human context) for themselves. But what if some restraint, self-denial and even deprivation now for some people means a better quality of life for more people in the not-so-distant future? And what if indulgence today means drastically greater hardship and suffering tomorrow? What if so-called "authoritarianism" results in more future liberty, whereas the actions (and non-action) of "liberals" now ends in greater repression? If, as Parsons points out, explosive population growth is itself a major threat to individual freedom, then population control is needed to preserve it: "Population planning is not an invasion of liberty but a safeguard of liberty".84
This argument - and that of Myers, since not all effects on the environment are costable economically - implicitly includes the profoundly important ecological dimension to this issue; but that must be made much more central. Particularly urgent is incorporating the concept of "ecological footprints" (and relatedly that of carrying capacity) into our thinking and planning.85 An ecological footprint is the amount of ecologically productive land (wherever it may be) that any nation uses - which immediately raises the question of fair shares, not only among human beings but with the rest of nature as well! And regarding that, it is already the case that global ecosystems are strained, some to breaking-point, and the current obliteration of irreplacable biodiversity crucially driven, by unsustainable human numbers. In fact, there are good reasons of all three types for a decent, but urgent, reduction as soon as possible86: shallow, because ecosystemic health is obviously in our own interest; intermediate, because of the death and suffering we are causing for other life-forms by taking over their habitats; and deep, because what is being lost has (literally) immeasurable value in itself, the destruction of which is not remotely justified by its transformation into more telephone directories, plywood shuttering, sales catalogues, carrier bags and road surfacing.
I have also suggested various ways of realising such a project. Underlying them all is the point that it faces many difficulties, which will require political as well as emotional intelligence. It also has many enemies, both in high and low places, and as Machiavelli pointed out, "The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous".87 It is also a fact of living in a pluralist world that values sometimes conflict, with no ideal resolution.88 Taking these points together, then, it follows that although it is both ethically and stragically important for ecocentric activists to accommodate as many different virtuous ideals as possible, it will not always be possible to accommodate them all, nor all their adherents.
There is no blueprint for how to act in this situation, no set of infallible rules or guidelines; but act we must. Yet although the kind and extent of our present crisis is unprecedented, such uncertainty is not, and negotiating it is inherent in being alive. Hence, Christ advised us to be not only harmless as doves, but wise as serpents.89 The Buddhist tradition emphasises the inseparability of compassion for suffering on the one hand and wisdom, or what is also called "skilful means", on the other. Aristotle stressed the value of phronesis, or practical (as distinct from theoretical) wisdom, and the still more ancient Greek term metis implies the same as Chinese zhi, namely wisdom as cunning.90
Another unlikely agreement may also be significant: both the Chinese Neo-Confucians and Montaigne, (roughly) their contemporary and perhaps the most influential European humanist, concurred that one cannot be fully human if one's concern is only for humans; in other words, without being humane.91 Be that as it may, without compassion - for fellow human beings, certainly, but for the rest of life no less - we would not care about the ecological holocaust, and there would be nothing more to discuss. But without intelligence, wisdom and sometimes even cunning, we shall not get very far in stopping it, nor in bringing about something better.
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