We considered, in two preceding blog entries, how conservative Christianity has defined the nonhuman world as creation and therefore as something expendable by humans. Other religious traditions consider the Earth to be nature, from which humans evolved and of which humans are a part, just like every other species. Some of these religions are polytheistic, such as Buddhism and paganism, while others are more akin to spiritual philosophies, such as Taoism. There is even a little of this viewpoint in the Bible. The 104th psalm describes a world of creatures, of which humans are depicted as merely one component. Although these religions have not led their adherents on a deliberate conquest of the Earth, the homelands of these religions have suffered their share of environmental problems. The natives of North and South America experienced collapsed civilizations just like the Europeans.
The person most responsible for the emergence of environmental ethics based upon ecology was Aldo Leopold. As mentioned previously, Leopold made a pragmatic argument for the preservation of biodiversity. But he also promoted what he called the “land ethic,” and championed what he called “thinking like a mountain.” Humans, rather than rulers or even stewards, would be merely “plain member and citizen” of the world of species. Right and wrong were defined as those actions that contributed to or detracted from the health of nature. His essays in A Sand County Almanac remain a classic, even though they do not develop a complete ethical system. More recently, writer Wendell Berry has called for an ecological humility as the proper ethical system for humans. Biologist Wes Jackson promoted a very pragmatic view of the stewardship of natural resources, particularly soil, in New Roots for Agriculture and by founding The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Like Leopold, Jackson then went beyond pragmatism and calls for humans to recognize their membership in the world of interacting species.
Attention is now being given to evolution, as well as ecology, as a foundation for environmental ethics. Humans are one of several million species and, like the rest of them, evolved by natural selection; humans therefore have no rights not possessed by the other species. Some thinkers have gone so far as to develop a viewpoint known as Deep Ecology, in which the human species has become a disease upon the Earth, and needs to be brought into control.
Most environmentalists seek peaceful and orderly solutions to environmental problems—for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. A few organizations, however, use violent tactics to gain attention, even though they have little hope of actually counteracting the economic forces behind environmental destruction. These tactics usually take the form of arson on resorts that are closed for the season. Although no one has yet died from what conservatives call “environmental terrorism,” Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, said that these organizations were the greatest threat of domestic terrorism in the United States. He said this even though Oklahoma was the site of the largest act of domestic terrorism that has ever occurred in the United States—the Oklahoma City bombing, which had nothing to do with environmentalism. Conservatives conveniently ignore acts of violence carried out by extremists on the political right (again, without deaths) against government agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, whose charge is to protect natural areas.
The approach that considers the ecological world to be nature, rather than creation, is largely—but not entirely—separate from Christian theology. You can derive environmental stewardship from Christianity, but it is not easy. Christian environmentalists such as Cal DeWitt, Fred Van Dyke, Joe Sheldon, Dick Wright, Tony Campolo, and Jeff Greenburg are trying very hard to do so. But the great mass of evangelical Christianity is solidly centered on materialism, on getting whatever we can from the Earth before Armageddon destroys it all anyway. I wish my Christian environmentalist friends all the luck in the world, but I do not foresee any hope for the ecosystem services, upon which millions of the world’s poorest people depend, coming from Christianity.
This essay is based on the entry “Environmental ethics” in my forthcoming Encyclopedia of Biodiversity.
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