Moral Responsibility towards Environment
“Sooner or later, we will have to recognize that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” -Evo Morales
Abstract: In view of the above quote, I sought the evaluate the attitude of human beings towards the environment. First, what is meant by environmental ethics and why do we need eco-philosophy to understand this concept is discussed. By why do we need to have a moral responsibility towards the environment in the first place? This is outlined along with who are the creatures that we need to accord this moral status to. Then a very basic view of what steps are needed to realize our responsibility towards the environment and undo some of the damage that we, as humans, have done to the environment is presented.
Keywords: Environmental Ethics, Ecosophy, Anthropocentrism, Speciesism, Sentience
INTRODUCTION
For centuries, human beings have been exploiting the resources provided by the Earth for their selfish gains with complete disregard for any other living beings present in the environment. It was long after when they realized that humans do not have a monopoly over the Earth’s resources and if these resources are not used judiciously, it would reap destructive consequences.
The question here arises, do these resources belong to humans and humans alone? Or do humans share these resources with other members of the biosphere, living or non-living? Here comes in the concept of Environmental Ethics which concerns with the ethical and moral relationship of human beings with the natural environment and its non-human contents. It suggests that humans are simply one part of the ecological ecosystem which comprises of many other living creatures and it is the responsibility of every human being to respect and honor the moral status of all of these creatures.
However, as straightforward as these principles might seem at first, they are fairly abstract and most people end up ignoring these principles in their lives mainly because there are several nuances to these ideas that they fail to objectively understand. This paved the way for an idea called as Ecosophy or Eco-philosophy which is a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. According to Arne Næss, “it contains both norms, rules, postulates, value priority announcements and hypotheses concerning the state of affairs in our universe.” (Drengson, & Inoue, 1995, p. 8)
Now, we do we need to look at the concepts of environmental ethics and ecosphy to understand our moral responsibility towards the environment? This is because the aim is to address the following two fundamental questions: what duties do humans have with respect to the environment, and why? We need to evaluate the answers to these questions on their merit and in the most scientific way possible, then only would we be able to actually appreciate the nuances related to the environment and our ethical responsibilities to it.
WHY DO WE HAVE A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS THE ENVIRONMENT?
The most basic answer to this question is that we have a moral responsibility towards the environment simply because we share the Earth with many other environmental creatures and so, they also have certain rights and some share in those resources. Now the question arises, who do we have these obligations to? Do we have environmental obligations for the sake of human beings living in the world today, for humans living in the future, or for the sake of entities within the environment itself, irrespective of any human benefits? (Cochrane, n.d.)
To answer these questions, we need to evaluate the moral status of different living creatures in our environment. There are several philosophical views in this respect. One view that has been very prominent in the past was the view of Anthropocentrism which literally means “human-centeredness”. We know, only human beings can reason about and reflect upon ethical matters, thus giving this debate a definite human-centeredness. But what is it that makes humans so special that we must give moral status only to them. Rene Descartes answered this question by saying that we have rationality, or language, or self-awareness and so on and this is what gives us moral status. This view implied that many human beings such as infants and severely disabled people would not have a moral standing in the environment. In actuality, the only property that is central to only human beings is membership in the species Homo sapiens. Rest all human characters are shared by some creature or the other. So, by differentiating creatures on the basis of their species (Speciesism) is no different than racism or sexism because we are discriminating others solely on the basis of belonging to a particular biological category. Many philosophers later argued that the idea of moral status must be expanded to the concept of sentience that is the capacity to have conscious experiences like pleasure and pain. A classic example given by Peter Singer is that of kicking a rock versus kicking a mouse. He says that a rock is not sentient, so we have no moral obligation at all to not kick the rock. On the other hand, the mouse is sentient and it will suffer from our kick. So, we do have a moral obligation to not kicking the mouse. Still, there are other philosophers that think that we should expand the idea by saying that life itself gives us moral status. This would imply that all living organisms including human beings, non-human animals, plants, trees, bacteria, mosquitoes and so on have a moral status and we have a moral obligation towards all of them. Which of these theories of moral status we accept is going to have profound implications on how we live our lives. It must be clear by now that we need to rethink on our basic concepts of morality and moral obligations and this is where ecosophy comes in. (Sebo, 2014).
HIERARCHY OF MORAL STATUS
Let us consider that all living creatures have an equal moral status in the environment This would mean that a person’s want to have a pretty garden is non-basic, and a weed’s interest in survival is basic, and the person would have a moral obligation to protect the weed (Cochrane, n.d.). This seems rather odd. Therefore, many philosophers came up with a hierarchical framework vis-à-vis we may accord a moral standing to plants, but they will have a much lower moral significance than humans. But how much lower? This again calls for some ecosophy. Now, since we have established that all living creatures do have a moral standing in the environment, we need to think about them whenever we make any conscious decision. Thus, the framework of Utilitarianism must include these creatures as well.
Side-note to Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Let us understand this using and example. In the TV series, Game of Thrones, there is a character called Jamie Lannister who is mocked by many people as ‘Kingslayer’ and ‘Oathbreaker’ because he was a ‘Kingsguard’ to King Aerys II Targaryen and ended up standing his King in the back because the king was going to burn the entire city that would lead to the death of a million people. But, if we look at it objectively, what he did was the only Utilitarian choice because breaking his oath and killing one person would bring good to millions of people, animals and plants.
WHAT ARE/OUGHT TO BE OUR ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS?
As has been already mentioned, human beings have been misusing nature’s resources for centuries. Mahatma Gandhi rightly said, “The Earth provides enough for every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.” We need to make judicious use of Earth’s resources and keep in mind that we have a moral obligation to share these resources with all other non-human living creatures on the planet.
All these living creatures have certain basic right and value in the environment, irrespective of its worth for human purposes. Humans have no right to interfere in the realization of these values except to satisfy vital needs. A policy change is required in this regard that would affect the basic economic, technological and ideological structures of our world today. More than a policy change, a change of attitude, behavior and ideology. We need to engrain this idea of a sustainable and inclusive development.
A complete reform in the Environmental education all the way from the primary level is needed. The problem with the present system is that we get our environmental education by mugging up and reproducing it in exams. If we actually need students to learn and understand the importance of this area, we need to integrate this idea in their day to day lives.
CONCLUSION
The issue of environment is of paramount importance today more than ever before. The quality of environment is deteriorating and with it, the quality of life especially in a country like India whose 8 cities are among the top 10 most polluted cities in the world.
We need to understand our moral responsibility towards the environment, towards plants, trees and forests, towards animals and towards other human beings. A change in attitude and behavior is the first and foremost step towards achieving this, what appears to be a far-fetched, goal and we need to start right from the primary level.
References
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