Today’s Topics

•The Land Ethic

•Deep vs. Shallow Ecology

•Eco-Feminism

•Gaia Hypothesis

The Land Ethic: Conservationists

• David Henry Thoreau• John Muir (Sierra Club)

• Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold is the intellectual successor to Muir.

• Other important nature writers: Wallace Stegner, Rachel Carson, Barbara McClintock

The Land Ethic and the Moral Community

• Ethics and society are coextensive. Moral duties and moral consideration stop at the edge of the community.

• The Land Ethic “simply enlarges the boundary of the community to includes soils, water, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”

The Land Ethic

• 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.

• Aldo Leopold

Social Health and the Moral Community

• You can judge the health and quality of a community by seeing how it treats its most vulnerable members—children, the elderly and the sick. Proverb

• If we extend the moral community as the land ethic requires, who are the most vulnerable members?

Homo Economicus and Homo Ecologicus

• 3 Ways of life: Consumption, Conservation, Preservation

• Consumption—Use resources as you see fit

• Conservation—Wise use, shepherd resources, enlightened anthropocentrism

• Preservation—Preserve wilderness for its own sake

Homo Economicus and Homo Ecologus

• Why economic analysis isn’t enough.• See. P. 143• Living in a complex environment is a relational

activity.• The good of any member of the system depends

on the good and the well being of other members of the system.

• Law of unintended consequences: The Borneo cat drop.

Deep Ecology

• Grows out of the tradition of Idealism– Idealism (Rationalism) and Realism

(Empiricism)

• Holistic and anti-reductionistic

• Focus on networks, communities and processes

• Rejects the dominant, scientific worldview

Dominant worldview focuses on individuals and parts —reductionism works, the whole is just the sum of its parts Deep ecology focuses on connected networks—the whole cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts

Idealism, Knowledge and Mysticism

• Scientific understanding is necessarily incomplete

• There is something more to reality, to the whole of existence, than science and logic can show us

• Metaphors of connection, dependence, mutual support, feedback and interdependent loops

Three Deep Ecological Theses

• Everything is connected to everything (and human changes to natural systems are usually detrimental)

• Nature is more complex than we can ever think or understand

• Nature knows best

Deep vs. Shallow Ecology

• SE: Reduce pollution and resource depletion to improve the health and affluence of people in developed countries (RWPs)

• DE: Preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community (independent of narrowly human values or desires) because the members of that community have equal rights to live, blossom and flourish

• Shallow Ecology• Diversity is a natural

resource for humans• Diversity is good for

humans• Pollution is bad if it

threatens economic progress

• Humans will not accept a decrease standards of living

• Deep Ecology• Diversity has intrinsic

value• Diversity is good in

and of itself• Decreasing pollution

takes priority over economic progress

• Humans should accept a decrease in standards of living

• Nature is cruel and necessarily so

• Dominance over nature

• Resources are ample or infinite

• Consumerism and competitive consumption

• Nation States

• Humans are cruel and not necessarily so

• Harmony with the natural world

• Resources are limited

• Recognizing how much is enough

• Bioregions

Principles of deep ecology dominate much

environmentalism

Eco-Feminism

• The oppression of women and the oppression of nature are two sides of one coin

• The logic of domination governs both forms of oppression

The elements of the logic of domination

• Two groups are distinguished on the basis of some property

• A value hierarchy is attributed to the property

• The subordination of one group by the other is justified by the fact that the oppressed group lacks the valued property

The logic of domination explains:

• The subordination of women

• The subordination of nature

• In fact, the western intellectual tradition identifies nature with the feminine and systematically devalues it

Western Value Hierarchy

• Superior• Mental• Mind• Reason• Thought• Planning

• Inferior• Physical• Body (Matter)• Emotion• Brute Force• Instinct

The Feminine and the Value Dichotomy

• The Western tradition identifies the feminine with the body.

• The value of a woman was long associated with her physical attributes more than her mental attributes.

• Age is far less a hindrance to men being attractive than to women being attractive.

• Child-bearing as the key to a woman’s value.

Varieties of Feminism

• Equality feminism (traditional view)

• Radical Separatist (lesbian) feminism

• Difference feminism

Difference Feminism

• Carol Gilligan and women’s moral knowledge

• Sandra Harding and women’s ways of knowing

Difference feminism tries to escape all dualistic thinking

• Don’t replace one evil dualism (the traditional world view) with another (women are closer to nature)

• Recognize that there are different values and that difference does not imply a hierarchy

• Merge different ways of knowing

Eco-feminism and deep ecology share:

• Contextualism

• Pluralism

• Inclusiveness

• Holism

Environmentalists MUST be concerned about women’s issues AND vice versa since the two phenomena are sides of one coin

The Gaia Hypothesis

• We have discovered a living being bigger, more ancient, and more complex than anything from our wildest dreams.

• That being, called Gaia, is the Earth.• James Lovelock , Sydney Epton, Lynn

Margulis, James Kirchener

Gaia and Mother Earth

• Take seriously the view that the earth is the mother of all living things.

• The physical conditions on earth that allow for life as we know it are unique in the solar system.

• The evolutionary history of the planet suggests a system that regulates the conditions that allow life.

Threats to Gaia

• Continued life requires maintaining the balance of the system.

• Human actions present a real threat to the system that makes life possible.– Atmospheric change– Climate change– Water cycle change

• SO, human actions must be regulated for the good of life.

Problems with The Gaia Hypothesis

• There are several different hypotheses all of which could be called the Gaia Hypothesis

• Testing Hypotheses• Criteria of Testability--falsification• Criteria of Usefulness—predictive and

explanatory force and Ockham’s razor

Gaia Hypotheses

• Two weak theses:

• Influential Gaia—temperature and atmospheric composition are actively regulated by the sum of life on the planet

• Coevolutionary Gaia—Biotic and abiotic environments mutually interact.

Gaia Hypotheses• Three strong theses

• Homeostatic Gaia—The interaction between biota and the abiotic environment is stabilizing. Negative feedback loops.

• Teleological Gaia—The homeostatic atmosphere has a purpose or design.

• Optimising Gaia—Biota manipulate the abiotic environment for their own good.