Cover image Immortal Hulk by Bung Carol
My readings this week brought me to some confusion about what morality we are trying to construct in the ever-growing environmental awareness. The search for a sustainable energy source is a good thing, but the approach towards it leaves a lot to explain. From the urge to transition to questioning whether or not having children in this era of global warming is moral with regards to keeping the Earth sustainable, I am questioning whether or not these so-called environmental ethicists are just green activists rallying under the guise of philosophy. This concern leads me to scratch a rough reflection about how environmental ethics is supposed to be done.
I will therefore propose that ecology is only moral when human lives are prioritised, and this anthropomorphic idea is as moral as it could ever be.
Muddying The Ecological Concept
Conceptualisation of human-environment relation in ecology gained its popularity whan C. S. Holling presented his paper in 1973, Resilience and Stability of Ecological System. In that seminal paper, Holling proposes the idea of resilience as “a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables” (Holling, 1973). Much later, in 1997, he contextualised the idea of environmental resilience with engineering infrastructures for development, emphasising the necessity of developing urban infrastructure for human resilience without compromising with environmental resilience (Holling, 1996).
Without denying the importance of environmental resilience and the goodness of the increasing human role in exploiting our natural resources responsibly, ecology in our contemporary world often gets overshadowed by environmental activism. Here we meet climate activists who proudly and loudly boast big ideas to save the planet through stopping all fossil fuels, getting rid of meat consumption, transitioning to renewables right away, and so on.
Some of this angry mentality also finds its expressions towards symbolic anarchism such as vandalising priceless art objects in the museum (Gayle, 2022), completely pouring out dairy milk in the supermarket (World, 2022), and even vandalising some London landmarks with orange spray paints as a form of protest against oil (Climate Activists Spray-Paint London Buildings Orange, 2022).
Mildly speaking, this extreme climate activism is predicated towards a faint understanding on how complex ecology and its derivation, environmentalism, really is. The reflection on how the environment should be treated is not as simple as saving the planet via getting rid of fossil fuels or animal products. Even until now discourses are still taking place in the subject of formulating the relation between human beings and their environment. The problem is that these climate warriors with their pretentious higher morals are further blurring the genuine efforts of certainly some honest thinkers and policy makers in how we could better guard the Earth’s life sustaining capacity while prospering as a species.
Some environmental activism simply exacerbates the situation.
Anti-Human Ecology
An even more extreme version of contemporary ecology is the anti-human ecology. Briefly put, this ecology comes in two steps. First, it centres the values for the planet with the assumption all accept the intuition of the planet being everything we could name on Earth safe human beings. Second, it throws a complete disdain against human beings, often labelling them as the planet’s parasite.
These two positions are made clear with the growth of environmental activism. The most immoral idea so far comes from two articles, one from 2017 titled Science proves kids are bad for earth. Morality suggests we stop having them on NBC News (Opinion | Kids Are Bad for Earth. To Save It, We Must Stop Having Them, 2017), and another one from 2018 titled Would you give up having children to save the planet? Meet the couples who have on The Guardian (Fleming, 2018). Both articles present the underlying value of having children nowadays as a form of immorality.
This is simply nauseating.
In the academic community, this premise is toned down and framed differently into a question of where the carbon footprint responsibility of the children must be attached to. One example of this article comes from Felix Pinkert and Martin Sticker titled Procreation, Footprint and Responsibility for Climate Change. In this article, Pinkert and Sticker both talk about the implausibility of dividing the carbon footprints between parents and children, and suggest to put the carbon footprint from having children to their parents’ carbon impact. Carbon impact from the parents means counting the overall impact on climate change based on their overall choices of action. By the end of this article, both Pinkert and Sticker agree that the morality of procreation would depend on the carbon impact that their parents are making in their overall choices of action. More extensive research is also required to see if greater carbon impact from parents directly implies immorality of procreation (Pinkert & Sticker, 2021).
The problem with the rather toned-down approach is the relativisation of procreation via carbon impact. While going softer than the two previous evil articles, the similar premise still applies. While the web articles clearly condemn procreation, the academic one relativises it. Even if the overall carbon impact of parents is just bad for the planet, and their family size somehow plays the biggest role in it, by no means it vilifies their decision to have children. How do you put a threshold on the permissible carbon impact, and based on that, the moral permissibility of having children? And what of poorer families which are statistically larger in quantities who cannot afford much luxurious choices in life so that having only one child would spike up their carbon impact?
There is no moral justification for a permissible family size carbon impact-wise, and pursuing this idea clearly creates injustices to an even larger group of the poor. Trying to tone down anti-procreation positions by relativising it on the basis of overall carbon impact is just a form of lesser evil, but evil nonetheless.
This anti-human ecology is simply appalling.
Pro-Life
Combatting anti-human stance as previously explained does not signify throwing away environmental concerns altogether. Extreme environmentalists may indeed vilify anthropocentrism in the way we regard ourselves in the world, but they are wrong. Prioritising human lives, i.e. our lives, does not necessarily amount to the destruction of the planet, whatever that means. Instead, it is only by prioritising our lives that the bigger and more ethical picture of environmentalism can be made clear.
First, focusing on ourselves is simply a rational and natural attitude one can imagine in his or her connectedness with Earth as his or her milieu. Anthropocentrism which the eco fascists deeply despise is a self-preservation attitude in its basis. Just like any other species on Earth, human beings want to preserve themselves both as individuals or in a collective manner. The difference thereon lies in human beings’ higher capacity to ponder upon and articulate their own existence between them and to themselves through more complex communications, technology, and interpersonal relations. Nothing is evil about anthropocentrism. If anything, it is a perfectly natural mode of existence.
Second, it is from anthropocentric reflection that we could better reflect on lives other than our own. Deeper understanding on our lives necessarily opens up a larger horizon on where we live and with whom we share the Earth as the milieu of life. Concretely speaking, it is from the incessant wonder of our living existence that we are enabled to ponder on how we exist and with whom. Anthropocentric view in its developed level is therefore not a greedy, parasitic, and destructive mode of existence that the eco fascists would like us to believe. It is actually thanks to anthropocentrism that we can start to think about our role as the guardian of the environment and the lives within.
Third, it is through serious attention and respect towards human lives that we are able to respect other lives at all. It is true that we consume and exploit, but different from other animals and plants, our exploitation and consumption are tailored in such a way that we can do that responsibly. Once responsibility is considered in our horizon of action, anthropocentrism becomes an ethical view towards lives in the world starting from our own. True environmental responsibility does not manifest aimlessly in just anything non-human, but in lives other than ours.
Without a clear respect for lives, environmentalism is but an evil idea purely directed as an opposition against human lives. In its final point, there is only self-destruction and merciless sacrifice on others for the sake of a vague pro-planet delusion.
True ecology must not be based on the love of the river, but the lives afforded by it; not on rocks or land, but the lives dependent on it; not on sea, but on the richness of life benefitting from it. True ecology has to be pro-life. Pro-human lives is the first step in that direction.
Environmental ethics is a pro-life ethics.
