March 3, 2001

Environmentalism for humans
by Will Wilkinson

Polled citizens often cite "the environment" as among the issues that most merit political attention. This is not surprising. The environment is where we live, and we care about where we live. But interest in the environment is not always so straightforward and free of ideological freight. The environmental movement has been very successful in moving their issues, framed in their terms, into the educational system and into public debate. They have been so successful that concern for the environment is often identified with a rather troublesome political program. Worse, the conversation about the environment often shows the participants, environmentalist or not, with neither a sound notion of the human place in nature nor a clear understanding of the very idea of an environment. We are unlikely to make environmental progress if our thoughts are confused. Rather, we are likely to become victimized by ideology and to do ourselves and our environment harm.

Humanity & Nature

It is crucial to grasp that human beings and our products are continuous with the rest of nature. There are two main ways of missing this point. First, one can see humans as special or select in some way -- as having been set apart from the rest of nature by God's favor, for instance. Second, one can see humans, like Agent Smith in The Matrix, as something like a virus, an alien parasite undermining the integrity of its host. The similarities between these positions are more essential than the differences. In both cases, humans are on the outside of Earth's natural order looking in. Whether the position outside is overlord or interloper, exalted or insidious, is inessential.

Both stances are fallacious, and for the same reason: humans are fully natural beings that emerged naturally from a natural process. Just like fish and fig trees, we are a product of evolution by natural selection -- our remarkable minds too. The spark of the divine exists only as a self-flattering invention. We and our handiwork are fully a part of nature in every respect. We are neither above nature nor in conflict with it. We are simply an embedded part of it. From the perspective of nature, we are no more special than the flying squirrel and no more alien than the echidna. From the perspective of nature, there is little to distinguish Manhattan from the Amazon; both occurred, neither occurrence occult or contrary to nature's laws.

Of course, from a human perspective our products have a very special status. They exist to serve human purposes, which sets them apart in our minds, because we are human. Manhattan, unlike the Amazon, is in many ways eminently hospitable to humans, because humans made it that way.

My drill exists to serve my drilling needs, while rocks and twigs just exist. So my drill seems to me to be quite apart from the order of rocks and twigs. It near enough emanates an aura of purposiveness; it is there specifically to serve, while rocks and twigs are just there. But this felt difference derives from our role in consciously constructing artifacts to meet our ends and our ongoing intentions and attitudes toward them, not from any intrinsic attribute of artifacts that sets them apart from other things. There is in nature a great egalitarianism among objects. Only purposive minds discriminate.

However, these purposive minds and the abilities that allow us to create artifacts, and to pass along our knowledge to our fellows, are as natural as a frog's ability to catch flies with it's tongue. And our creations -- drills, the towers of Manhattan -- are simply recombinations of natural materials, not different in kind from the beaver's dam or the bowery bird's bower. We should not let our special human attitudes toward our own human creations confuse us into believing that our creations are not a fully integral part of the natural order.

In The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, biologist Richard Dawkins argues that the spider's web is as much an external reflection of the spider's genes as its eight legs. Unlike the spider and its web, we aren't genetically pre-programmed to specifically build Pentiums, Nokias and Volkwagons. But we are pre-programmed with the disposition to modify our environments to better suit our needs, and our big brains are built to store and pass along effective methods of modification that build on those that came before. Though we have to learn how to make Pentiums, Nokias and Volkswagons, this talent for learning is our most distinctive adaptation. When we put this adaptation to use, we are, like the spinning spider, doing what comes naturally. And what comes of it, whether webs or WAP-enabled phones, are equally a part of nature.

The Very Idea of an Environment

Environments aren't just places. Environments are places where something lives. And living things all have specific needs that must be met, but which the environment may or may not happily meet. Different living things have different needs. Whether a place is a good environment depends on what the living thing's needs are and whether the environment meets them. 'Environment' itself is an essentially relational concept. Without reference to some organism or other for whom a place is an environment, a place is just a place. A good environment is never good, period, but is good for some organism or other.

A place with many deer and wolves is likely to be a good environment for wolves and a bad environment for deer. Is it a good environment, period? That's a bad question; it's unanswerable. You must ask either the deer or the wolves and both will give true but conflicting answers. A place made by humans into a good environment for humans may turn out to be a bad environment for wolves. There simply is no absolute "best environment". The interests of species are often in conflict. The thought that there is some delicate harmonious state in which each strand in the web of nature is held taut in perfect shimmering balance is a fantasy.

Biologists sometimes say that to a first approximation, all species are extinct. Which is to say that Earth throughout history has been a very bad environment for all but a tiny fraction of species. Without a single person or power plant, Earth's ecosystem has managed to extinguish almost every species that it has ever produced. Whatever balance exists is a constantly shifting, dynamic thing. Change is the rule. And some of these changes produce fatal environments for some species and happy environments for others. From the perspective nature, states of the ecosystem are neither better nor worse than others; they are merely different.

However, if you are certain kind of thing with particular requirements for survival, changes can be better or worse for you, and not just different. And it is obvious that we humans do radically alter the environments in which we find ourselves. We build split-level ranches, fairgrounds, and so forth. So, we change things. But do we make things better for ourselves or worse?

Unlike other organisms, we can actually ask this question. Because of our remarkable minds, we can take stock of what we have done, judge it and either ratify or alter our present course. The looming question now is: what standard will we use in making out judgment? The point to keep in mind in is that we humans, qua human, are judging the quality of the human environment.

Some radical environmentalists put forth a standard of minimal human impact: the less conspicuous humans and their products, the better the environment. Indeed, the environment would be better off if we just disappeared. But it is hard to see how this is an intelligible standard of environmental value for the humans. It is perhaps superficially appealing, if one is in the grip of an idealized picture of a spiritualized, pristine nature untouched by the spoiling touch of humankind.

However, this standard of evaluation is flawed, because it is abstracted and absolute, neglecting the essential relativity of environments and environmental value. And it is chauvinistically misanthropic, arbitrarily neglecting the ecological reality of human existence and needs. If human flourishing requires a great deal of environmental reorganization, then a decent human environment is one heavily reorganized to suit human needs.

Of course, it is hard not to be just a little misanthropic. There is a lot to dislike about other people. It is especially easy to dislike oneself and then to generalize the sentiment. Perhaps you like other, non-human, animals better. Well, one is free to act as an advocate for other species. One may even prefer their company. (Many a country tune attests to the virtues of a good dog.) But one should not be shocked or appalled to find a general human preference for the human.

While very few of us prefer a return to the Paleolithic, many of us do have vaguely "green" aesthetic and recreational preferences. We prefer rolling prairies to sprawling shopping malls and virgin emerald forests over another mammoth Disney pseudo-reality. But these are preferences for wealthy, lucky people, to be developed and indulged only after more primary needs are met. As a matter of immutable fact, we care about ourselves first. Sure, we care about other species and their environments too, but secondarily. We integrate their well being into our sense of our own. And that's is great. Animatronic pandas just won't do. But one cannot justifiably demand that we sacrifice the quality of our environment and the quality of our lives for the sake of the environments of other beings. It is one thing to argue that what at first seems a sacrifice will be eventually compensated for by overlooked benefits. It is another thing altogether -- an unjust thing -- to make compulsory sacrifices whose benefits are illusory or uncertain. "Earth First!" is not a humane slogan.

We are accustomed to thinking environmentally. When one makes an important personal decision, one must bear in mind the effects it will have on one's family and friends, for these are the people one lives among -- these are one's immediate social environment. A decision having adverse effects upon one's children, for instance, may forever despoil one's psychological backyard. Similarly, decisions about how to live physically must take into account the effect on the air and land, the plants and animals. Decisions take place against a background where consequences ramify. Of course, the background, by definition, is not generally foremost in attention. But we must always strive to remember what sustains us, what conditions makes our lives possible and desirable. We can and should think about our social and psychological environment in term of needs of the self, and we can and should think of our physical environment in terms of needs of the human.

It may be uniquely human to care about nature for its own sake, but it certainly isn't definitively human. Some of us care very much, some not at all. It varies. And environmental concern is only one legitimate concern among innumerable others. We must give each of these concerns their due, and our differences should be worked out peacefully, through persuasion and voluntary exchange, not force and seizure. We must remember that human society is a central part of the natural human environment -- human society is where we live.

But we must also remember that many humans stand to other humans as predator to prey, as parasite to host. We are own worst natural enemy. Because we need to care about the environment, because we need to sustain a livable human habitat, we need to recognize the threat we pose to ourselves. Yes, that means that we must ensure that we don't spoil the air that we breathe or the water that we drink. But it also means that we must pay attention to conditions even closer to home and ensure that we don't allow some humans to prey upon others by using the institutionalized tools of predation to move by force and take by fiat.

Caring about the world we live in is what it means to be a genuine environmentalist. We'll suffer more than irony if we allow the degradation of our environment in the name of the environment. --30--

Will Wilkinson is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Maryland and a Program Director at the Institute for Humane Studies.