Environmentalism: Think like a Psychologist

When thinking about environmentalism and environmental ethics, I typically approach the subject from a Christian perspective. We should protect the environment not just for human health, natural capital, aesthetic beauty, sustainability, or the moral considerations of animals, but also because "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

This handy technique saves me an awful lot of time when arguing about ethics or morality in general. When someone asks why premarital sex is wrong, I can simply say, "Because God says so." and smugly retreat into the background. I don't have to back up the assertion with facts about disease or unwanted pregnancy or emotional dependency or divorcing a teleological act from its natural conclusion or larger sociological implications. That's putting the cart before the horse: sin causes Bad Effects, but Bad Effects don't offer complete insight into sin.

Instead, my main task in investigating ethics or morals is to use the principles set forth in Scripture. "Did God really say...?" This is easier done in some cases (premarital sex, homosexuality, Baal worship, lying, cheating) than in others (just wars, politics, economics).

I realize this isn't very convincing to people who do not accept the authority of Scripture. "Who cares what your God says? I don't think he's real!"

Getting people to act ethically when they don't accept the authority of Scripture is the point of this post, with a specific emphasis on environmental ethics. How do we do this? Is it even desirable?

I. Appeal to self-interest and self-preservation.

1. Point out dire direct effects of products/services.

Lead paint causes birth defects in children. Let's use less of it. Mercury is toxic and comes from coal. Let's burn less coal. PCB's and Naphthalene and Arsenic and Radon and VOC's and particulate matter all directly adversely affect human health, so they should be regulated.

I know this technique seems totally obvious, but it really wasn't popular until Silent Spring and the creation of the EPA.

2. Point out indirect environmental effects.

No one will be able to eat any fish at all if we overfish resources to extinction. CFC's aren't terrible by themselves, but they deplete stratospheric ozone levels and indirectly harm human health. Carbon Dioxide isn't particularly toxic, but causes global climate change, which will be a Very Bad Thing.

I would like to take a minute to talk about Global Climate Change and how it relates to human self-interest. When we talk about self-interest, it's natural for our first tendency to be to think about death or disasters. In the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow', global warming causes hurricanes and floods and ice storms that freeze airplanes that are flying through them and wolves to escape from zoos that eat people.

But I don't think that escaped wolves will be our biggest enemy. Instead, Climate Change will be. You won't be able to grow the same crops you did before. What was once a fertile area is now inhospitable, while a place that was desolate is now really nice- and really undeveloped. People will have to move and adapt. It will be very costly, and maybe the gain in new fertile areas will offset the loss of others. But with a huge chunk of the Earth's surface dominated by human development already, it will be hard to change.

Imagine you are playing Civilization IV. You place your cities, roads, and improvements based on the conditions you see. If those conditions change, if a grasslands turns into a hill, a hill into a mountain, a mountain into a desert, a desert into a flood plain, it will be little consolation that there is no net change in your resource distribution, all told. You will be pissed that you built all those windmills where you would have built a mine given a second chance, and that if you had placed London three squares to the right, it would be making more beakers.

3. Relate environmental issues to sustainability.

This week in discussion, a classmate said, "The term sustainability is so broad, that we decided that sustainability is what you get out of it." I disagree.

Sustainability is providing for current needs in a way that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This is related to human self-interest thusly: if we compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs, everybody dies in the future. We can use coal to make electricity if we want, but eventually, we will run out of coal, and then we will have nothing to make electricity.

I will try another analogy from a computer game because I am feeling Super Dorky today. In the game 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic', you play an enterprising young Jedi Knight who battles evil robots. To help you, you can use things called 'stimulants' that temporarily make you harder, better, faster, stronger. Now you can use those stimulants anytime you want, but you probably want to save them for later in the game when it gets harder. If at some point in the game you were using stimulants faster than you were finding them, many people would be critical of that strategy. They would say that if you kept employing the strategy, you would get to the end of the game and die. The needs of the future would not be able to be met.

II. Appeal to other ethical considerations.

Beyond self-preservation, there are other ethical considerations that a vast majority of people view as intuitively legitimate.

1. Environmental Equity

Because poor or disadvantaged people disproportionally live on marginal land, environmental problems that damage that land therefore disproportionally hurt those people. This argument is often advanced about global warming. Poor people living in the land right by the desert are hurt by droughts that they didn't even cause. No one wants toxic waste in their backyard, so disposal sites are located nearest the people with the weakest political power.

2. Aesthetic Considerations

Forests are pretty. So are tigers. Dolphins, especially! I normally am very disdainful of these arguments because they are so subjective and an appeal to emotion. However, those of us who are not evil robots will give some weight to emotions. Our emotions and our consciences are trying to tell us something. To go against conscience is neither right nor safe!

Questions for the Reader
Can anyone else think of any other reasons why other people might follow environmental ethics? Can you think of ways that I can articulate religious justification for environmental stewardship without coming across as a crazy man?

On to the earlier reason for this post

Initially, I wanted to talk about another thing that was said in the environmental discussion. We were talking about the future of sustainability, and what an environmentally sustainable world would look like. We mentioned advances in technology and social/political organization. They were very "Hope is the Future Change Our Children Can Believe In" kinds of ideas. Apparently, we need to vote for Barack Obama to Unite the Clans, and he will use his Leadership to make the world Sustainable.

Then another person talked about economics. He said that businesses would change, and that there would be less Corporations, and more local, smaller organizations. You see, these Corporations, they...they sit in their Corporation Buildings being all...uh...Corporation-y, see?

So does it follow that there will be less corporations? I don't think so. Are we going to seriously argue that everything needs to be local? A community needs to grow its own food to be sustainable? Its own steel, its own smelters, its own semiconductors, its own manufacturing? That would be silly. If Kansas can grow wheat for both places, why not have Pittsburgh trade them some steel for its wheat? So comparative advantage is good, as is trade. That doesn't necessarily guarantee that corporations have to exist or be huge, merely that efficiencies can be found on large scales.

What about industries that are capital-intensive? What about reducing barriers to entry into markets? What does adding sustainability into the mix add to the equation? I would argue, nothing. This is where psychology comes into the mix. I posit that this person thinks that there will be smaller corporations because Environmentalism is a Leftist issue, as is Hating Corporations. Sustainability to Environmentalism to Liberalism to anti-Corporatism.

Questions to the Reader
Am I correct in identifying this person's thinking? When are we guilty of doing this ourselves? What happens to corporations in the future?