Moral Ecology

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 105

Moral Ecology

Progress, progress, progress. So many things are justified in the name of progress. All too often we hail the forward motion of progress because it improves our lives somehow. Things are easier, services are less expensive, anything we want is at our fingertips any time we want.

But I would contend that such progress comes at a rather steep price that we tend to ignore. Besides the environmental consequences what about our moral responsibility?  

Beyond simple eco-friendly living, are we actually morally responsible for making environmentally friendly choices. If you want to know the answer to this questions then listen to this episode on Moral Ecology. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick bringing you E105 which is called Moral Ecology.

In this episode this episode there are several things I want to discuss: 

-Examples from my own life of how I have seen the results of progress, both good and bad. 

-Progress is really a net gain, meaning there is always a price

-A few examples of the results of our progress

-How we are morally responsible for the results of our progress

-And finally leave you with a good take away. 

When I was a kid growing up the Tennessee and Georgia, my grandparents had a large farm outside of Rising Fawn Georgia. Interestingly enough this community was named after the daughter of a Cherokee chieftain, and her name was Rising Fawn. But I also had a lot of family in neighboring Trenton, Georgia. This town is filled with Civil War history and I remember visiting many battlefields and museums as a kid. Oddly enough Trenton, Georgia is named after Trenton, New Jersey. Some of my fondest memories as a kid was roaming the streets of Rising Fawn and Trenton. Everything was within walking distance an easy bike ride. 

The community was quite small, everyone new everyone else and is was a perfectly safe place to be roaming free.  I always remember every year at Christmas time my cousin and I wound go out into the forest to gather mistletoe. We wound place small amounts in sandwich bags and would get permission from a local store owner to set up a table on the sidewalk. We sold our mistletoe for 5 cents. By the end of the day we may have made $5, which was a considerable haul for two 10 years old in the early 1970s. 

One of my other favorite memories was all the Mom and Pop shops. These were just local small business owners that would sell hardware, groceries, and other goods. We would often take our mistletoe money and load up on candy and bubblegum. Our biggest challenge was keeping it all hidden from our mothers. 

In my adult years, even after moving to Colorado, I would visit this area several times a year to see family. It was sad to see the changes that were being made. More and more people were moving in, new subdivisions were being built, much larger businesses, retailers, and supermarket chains moved in and the long established Mom and Pop shops were closing down. 

But I have also seen the same thing happen in Colorado. When I first purchased my cabin property in 1996, there was very little development in the area and the highway going to my mountain community was a narrow, winding challenge of a road especially in the winter time. 

There was a small supermarket in a near-by community which had most of what you needed. Despite this, once a month I would drive into Denver and go to a local warehouse  market and purchase basic necessities in bulk.  

One of my best memories about the early years of having the cabin was the distinct lack of people in the area. I would often drive 10 to 15 miles on the highway or county road without encountering another vehicle. 

But much like Rising Fawn and Trenton, progress slowly but surely took over. The narrow two lane highway is now two lanes in both directions. There are several new shopping centers, numerous restaurants, and other businesses, and Starbucks of course. I now go to the local supermarket at 6 in the morning just to avoid the crowds. 

And of course to make room for all of this progress, land was cleared, electrical grids were put in, and numerous new houses were built. And as I have shared in previous episodes, my favorite groove of old growth trees, most of which were over 300 years old, was cut down in order to put in a driveway for someones home. 

All in the name of progress.

Now I do not want to give you the impression that I am opposed to progress.  Obviously all the new development in the area has lots of benefits even for me. I don’t think anyone is truly against progress. The very word “progress” indicates or at least insinuates improvement and that typically means that some value is gained. 

But I think that we all too often forget that the value gained is a net gain. What that means is that although we gain something it also comes at a price. And if we are not willing to pay that price, we will likely forfeit the gains that we have made. This is exactly how I look at things in my own life. I consider a goal I want to make or something I want to accomplish. Then I ask myself “What is that going to cost me ?” If I am willing to pay the price then I go for it. If not, I forget about it. 

A perfect example of this is when I started back to school. I knew when I started back to school that my goal was to eventually get into veterinary school. I also realized that it was not only going to cost me a considerable amount of money but a considerable amount of time, a complete change in my lifestyle, I was going to have to sell my house and move to a different city. Another example is when I started my dive training with the goal of becoming an instructor. Again, time, money, travel, a whole lot of hard work, and a 2 day exam process. In both of these cases I was willing to pay the price so I went on to accomplish both of these things. 

In our present day, we are without question in the midst of unprecedented progress. Due to the ever accelerating expansion of technology, our knowledge and power over the environment is expanding. This is because with knowledge comes power. We now have access to hundreds of years of knowledge in a matter of seconds. While this may seem as if it’s totally benign, what the average person fails to realize is that the burden of our moral responsibility also grows exponentially along with the expansion of science and technology. Due to our own cleverness, we have now put in peril the very thing we depend on for our survival.  

Someone said to me once that the only thing worse than going in the wrong direction is going in the wrong direction enthusiastically. 

C.S. Lewis, a British writer who first gained recognition for his children’s series the Chronicles of Narnia, once said, “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road, in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

Now I have stated before that I am not a very politically oriented person but every now and then making some sort of political statement makes for a good example. In the United States we love to tout ourselves as being one of the most progressive countries in the world. In fact, we love playing global policeman. President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1905 stated in a message to Congress concerning the Monroe Doctrine, that “Chronic wrong doing …..may in America, as elsewhere ultimately require the intervention by some civilized nations.” I suppose this justifies the US government running around policing the planet. But, what if we are the ones that are wrong? What then?

Since the year 1600 nearly 90% of the virgin forest that once covered the United States has now been destroyed. Presently, only 50% of Australia’s forest and bushland remains intact. In Europe 50% of the natural forests are gone.  If we do not stop our present rate of deforestation, our planet will be devoid of trees in another 300 years. 

Humanity is now responsible for the 6th mass extinction event. The species extinction rate is now at least 100 times greater than the normal back ground extinction rate. 

So called “forever chemicals”, which is a class of highly persistent chemicals with over 4,700 compounds,  now pollute almost everything on Earth

Plastic micro particles can now be found in even the most remote regions on Earth from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest parts of the oceans.

Now I could go on with numerous other examples but I think you can sort of get the point here.  

Besides the fact that we are literally cutting off our own life support system, what about our moral responsibility for all of this. Now I must admit that my philosophical knowledge goes little beyond a freshman philosophy class but I think it is worth considering for a moment whether we actually do bear some moral responsibility and if so, what is it exactly that makes us responsible. 

Now to quote some simple principles from my freshman philosophy class, in order to say the we are “responsible” for any act that we commit is say that we satisfy four criteria:

-We have knowledge of the consequences of the act we are about to commit. 

-We have the ability to commit that act.

-We have the choice not to commit that act and to simply choose another course of action

-The act we are about to commit has some value significance attached to it, meaning it affects the rights and welfare of others. 

For example, let’s say you have a kid in the neighborhood that has been bullying the other kids for years. You happen to drive by right about the time this kid does something that is very mean, unfair, and is purposely making the other kids cry. But, this is only the hundredth time you have seen or heard of this happening. 

But today, your boss, who is a particularly harsh and unfair bully, came down on you really hard. But he is big and intimidating and if you retorted you would likely be fired. But, compared to the neighborhood bully, you happen to be twice his size. Your blood pressure goes through the roof and you really want to step out of your vehicle and pound his face into the dirt because that is exactly what he deserves. 

You have a moral dilemma. You could pound his face into the dirt but there would be consequences for you and him. You are twice his size so you certainly have the ability to do this. But you also have a choice to do something else. You could solve this verbally with him as well as his parents or guardians. And if you do pound his face into the dirt, you certainly would affect his rights and welfare.  All this being said, if you do pound his face into the dirt, you would be morally responsible for your behavior.  

While this is a good example of our potential moral responsibility with people, what about the environment? Are we not morally responsible for all the things we are doing that destroys our planet? After all we are certainly well on our way to not only destroying ourselves but we now have the power to take all of nature down with us. 

I think the challenge with this is that for centuries it was beyond our comprehension that humanity could have a negative impact on the oceans, the atmosphere, and the global ecosystem because we viewed it as being a vast and limitless resource. It truly has only been in the last 40 to 50 years that we have realized that nature is truly vulnerable to our clever ingenuity and technological greatness. We are now starting to realize that we cannot solve all of our problems with science and technology. 

As a result of this realization, terms such as global warming, climate change, carbon emissions, ozone depletion, carbon footprint, forever chemicals, and micro-plastics are now a common part of our vocabulary. We now realize that due to our sheer numbers we are having a negative impact on the planet. But, as I said this is  relatively new knowledge. But along with the growing body of knowledge of the consequences of our actions, what naturally follows is moral responsibility. This is to say that we now satisfy the four criteria for being morally responsible for our environment:

-We have knowledge of the consequences of our actions 

-We obviously have the ability to commit those acts.

-We have the choice not to treat the planet the way we do and can choose another course of action

-Our actions have some value significance attached to it because it affects the rights and welfare of others.

The true irony of this situation is that this enormous moral responsibility that now falls on us is the result of advances in science, technology, and engineering that was solely geared toward results oriented solutions to problems faced by our modern society. If that is difficult to grasp then think of it in this fashion. While the science and technology that lead to the invention of the atomic bomb certainly was an amazing achievement and that science has lead to many other benefits to humanity. But consider the implications of that science on every single person on this planet. While this was not likely considered at the time, it is hardly possible to factor in “plausible deniability.”

Up until fairly recently, moral ethics have been applied to the welfare of solely one species on the planet and that is humanity. Many scholars are now proposing that there are many other entities that demand our moral attention. It is becoming quite obvious that we not only have duties to other people but also to higher animals, trees, various other species, and ecosystems simply because they exist in their own right. 

For centuries now we have been propelling ourselves forward, congratulating ourselves as we repeated stand on the shoulders of one success after another. The sky is blue, all is sunshine and roses, and the planet is limitless. All the while we never realized until recently that we would have to eventually deal face-to-face with the implications of our own successes. Our own technological cleverness is going to result in our own demise. 

I think we all know that without some sort of moral compass our society and culture would be no less than total chaos. I hope that this episode has given you something to think about in that perhaps we actually have a moral responsibility to take better care of our planet which in the end means we should be living more sustainably. After all, our planet holds a lot of life over which we have the ultimate power. 

I want to wrap up this episode by quoting a well known Biblical text, “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

This is your host Patrick signing off until next week. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.  

Patrick

Patrick