Environmental ethics
An imaginary conversation between Rachel Carson and Robert L. Fielding
Taken from www.rlfielding.com
Rachel Carson’s most famous book, ‘Silent Spring’ helped to bring environmental ethics to the awareness of the general public. She is best remembered for her work on the poisoning of the environment by pesticides and other chemicals. She died in 1964.
RLF: Could you define environmental ethics?
RC: Yes. Environmental ethics concerns itself with the answers to questions such as the following. Should we continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption, should we continue to make gasoline powered vehicles, depleting fossil fuel resources while the technology exists to create zero-emission vehicles, what environmental obligations do we need to keep for future generations, and finally whether it is right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the (perceived or real) convenience of humanity.
I believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
Environmental ethics is that part of environmental philosophy which considers the ethical relationship
between man and the natural environment. It is influenced by a large range of disciplines: law, sociology,
theology, economics, ecology and geography; there are so many ethical choices and decisions that we make
concerning our environment.
RLF: Really? How can theology, for example, have any connection whatsoever to issues related to the environment? Surely those are scientific issues rather than moral ones, aren’t they?
RC: On the face of it, yes, but if you consider the Earth, the whole of our environment, and that includes the envelope of gases and vapour that we are used to calling our atmosphere, if you consider it as something of which we are a part, then why should not theological points of view be discussed in the same breath as scientific ones. Are not the physical sciences something that connects us with our environment – we cannot survive without oxygen and water, which are but chemical substances – an element and a compound, to be exact. Do not the sciences of medicine, the science of biology, anatomy and physiology concur on this?
RLF: That is true, they do. But how is philosophy with its roots in the forest of ethics come to be so connected? Surely philosophy is the study of man’s more cerebral dimensions than simply his physical ones, is it not?
RC: So many would have us believe, at the cost to both branches of thought, and to our own cost. Is treating man and the world in which he exists and survives as if it were two totally distinct and different entities helping us to make the right decisions to ensure the survival of both, rather than of the former at the expense of the latter?
Are not both the Earth and we who live on its surface intertwined in ways that make us bound to consider the one when making decisions that affect both? And, I must include all who live on its surface in any equation I would formulate where we and our planet home are concerned.
RLF: But it has been that way for so long, has it not? The physical sciences have traditionally been considered remote from the humanities – from philosophy, religion, sociology, economics, and even more distant from the arts – visual and otherwise, have they not?
RC: They have, and that, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a growing number of people, is at the root of all our problems today as we seem to near the apocalypse, the one of our own making.
If you think of the equations and assumptions of that most man-made, most synthetic of all philosophies – economics, land and labour are added as ingredients more or less with as much impartiality as plant and machinery. To our cost, we are still thinking of flesh and blood in those terms, even as we ourselves are nothing more nor less than flesh and blood.
RLF: And you draw from such treatment of man and land that neither is taken in to any more account than stone, than steel and water?
RC: No more than anything that appears one the one side of an equation, even forgetting, in the logic of its values that inorganic and organic stem from below our feet.
RLF: It is as if we must go back to a sort of initial position in which everything comes from below our feet, as you put it, that what is called man-made – synthetic is ultimately natural in its origins.
RC: And it is that going back to an initial position, that we see that it is right there where our faults are initiated, that nothing is synthetic – that everything comes from Earth – everything, and that includes us, all of us, as I have said.
We must not forget our first laws – that we can n either create matter, nor destroy it. What was here a millennia ago is still here – in a greatly altered form, no doubt, but nevertheless still here. The great oaks that saw Shakespeare write his first play, and were cut down before he penned his final triumph are still here, in the humus of our soil, feeding and replenishing all that grows and is harvested to feed us.
You have a famous song that follows similar lines, do you not? ‘On Ilkley Moor baht ‘at’, is it not called?
RLF: Why yes. I see what you mean.
RC: How does that last line go again, after the friend has suffered from his going without a hat on that moor, been eaten by worms, who were then eaten by ducks to feed us at our tables?
RLF: ‘Then we shall all have eaten thee!’
RC: Tell me that is not so.
RLF: Well, a lot of processes have to pass before it can be really said to have happened, but yes, it is so.
RC: Now tell me that some vestige of our dead friend does not inhabit us in some molecular scale?
RLF: That is probably also true. But how can it be helped? And how are we affected by it?
RC: Who can say? Science has a long way to go, has it not before it can say with any certainty that body and soul are as distinct as night and day.
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
Robert L. Fielding
An imaginary conversation between Rachel Carson and Robert L. Fielding
Taken from www.rlfielding.com
Rachel Carson’s most famous book, ‘Silent Spring’ helped to bring environmental ethics to the awareness of the general public. She is best remembered for her work on the poisoning of the environment by pesticides and other chemicals. She died in 1964.
RLF: Could you define environmental ethics?
RC: Yes. Environmental ethics concerns itself with the answers to questions such as the following. Should we continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption, should we continue to make gasoline powered vehicles, depleting fossil fuel resources while the technology exists to create zero-emission vehicles, what environmental obligations do we need to keep for future generations, and finally whether it is right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the (perceived or real) convenience of humanity.
I believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
Environmental ethics is that part of environmental philosophy which considers the ethical relationship
between man and the natural environment. It is influenced by a large range of disciplines: law, sociology,
theology, economics, ecology and geography; there are so many ethical choices and decisions that we make
concerning our environment.
RLF: Really? How can theology, for example, have any connection whatsoever to issues related to the environment? Surely those are scientific issues rather than moral ones, aren’t they?
RC: On the face of it, yes, but if you consider the Earth, the whole of our environment, and that includes the envelope of gases and vapour that we are used to calling our atmosphere, if you consider it as something of which we are a part, then why should not theological points of view be discussed in the same breath as scientific ones. Are not the physical sciences something that connects us with our environment – we cannot survive without oxygen and water, which are but chemical substances – an element and a compound, to be exact. Do not the sciences of medicine, the science of biology, anatomy and physiology concur on this?
RLF: That is true, they do. But how is philosophy with its roots in the forest of ethics come to be so connected? Surely philosophy is the study of man’s more cerebral dimensions than simply his physical ones, is it not?
RC: So many would have us believe, at the cost to both branches of thought, and to our own cost. Is treating man and the world in which he exists and survives as if it were two totally distinct and different entities helping us to make the right decisions to ensure the survival of both, rather than of the former at the expense of the latter?
Are not both the Earth and we who live on its surface intertwined in ways that make us bound to consider the one when making decisions that affect both? And, I must include all who live on its surface in any equation I would formulate where we and our planet home are concerned.
RLF: But it has been that way for so long, has it not? The physical sciences have traditionally been considered remote from the humanities – from philosophy, religion, sociology, economics, and even more distant from the arts – visual and otherwise, have they not?
RC: They have, and that, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a growing number of people, is at the root of all our problems today as we seem to near the apocalypse, the one of our own making.
If you think of the equations and assumptions of that most man-made, most synthetic of all philosophies – economics, land and labour are added as ingredients more or less with as much impartiality as plant and machinery. To our cost, we are still thinking of flesh and blood in those terms, even as we ourselves are nothing more nor less than flesh and blood.
RLF: And you draw from such treatment of man and land that neither is taken in to any more account than stone, than steel and water?
RC: No more than anything that appears one the one side of an equation, even forgetting, in the logic of its values that inorganic and organic stem from below our feet.
RLF: It is as if we must go back to a sort of initial position in which everything comes from below our feet, as you put it, that what is called man-made – synthetic is ultimately natural in its origins.
RC: And it is that going back to an initial position, that we see that it is right there where our faults are initiated, that nothing is synthetic – that everything comes from Earth – everything, and that includes us, all of us, as I have said.
We must not forget our first laws – that we can n either create matter, nor destroy it. What was here a millennia ago is still here – in a greatly altered form, no doubt, but nevertheless still here. The great oaks that saw Shakespeare write his first play, and were cut down before he penned his final triumph are still here, in the humus of our soil, feeding and replenishing all that grows and is harvested to feed us.
You have a famous song that follows similar lines, do you not? ‘On Ilkley Moor baht ‘at’, is it not called?
RLF: Why yes. I see what you mean.
RC: How does that last line go again, after the friend has suffered from his going without a hat on that moor, been eaten by worms, who were then eaten by ducks to feed us at our tables?
RLF: ‘Then we shall all have eaten thee!’
RC: Tell me that is not so.
RLF: Well, a lot of processes have to pass before it can be really said to have happened, but yes, it is so.
RC: Now tell me that some vestige of our dead friend does not inhabit us in some molecular scale?
RLF: That is probably also true. But how can it be helped? And how are we affected by it?
RC: Who can say? Science has a long way to go, has it not before it can say with any certainty that body and soul are as distinct as night and day.
The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe around us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
Robert L. Fielding
Posted 5th February in: plug out,
