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Hue and cry: the differing shades of ecological ethics

Patrick Curry
Wednesday June 7, 2006
The Guardian



In the ongoing crisis of rampant climate change, habitat loss and species decimation, it is not surprising that ecological ethics is rising up personal and national agendas. Ethics is fundamentally concerned with the question of how best to live and act, but in the past 2,000 years or so, it has been overwhelmingly concerned with how to treat either other human beings or God. Neither religious nor secular ethics has bothered with non-human nature. This, for increasingly obvious reasons, is no longer sustainable.
Three broad categories of ecological ethics can now be discerned. The commonest one, dominating governments, corporations and businesses, laboratories and university departments, is light-green, or shallow ethics. Here, nature only has value in so far as it is necessary or useful to humans. In keeping with anthropocentric "resourcism", nature is to be managed for our good - and, in practice, only for a limited set of humans. Consequently, any natural kinds of beings that are useful can be "improved" to increase their productivity, and any who are not can be eliminated without qualms.
The resulting measures were aptly described by the green philosopher Rudolf Bahro as "cleaning the teeth of the dragon". Shallow green ethics is shared by advocates of environmental auditing and dream "techno-fixes", such as a hydrogen economy. This is also the ethics of the environment secretary, David Miliband, the Tory leader, David Cameron, and the editor of the Ecologist, Zac Goldsmith - and even, in so far as its concern is still chiefly human welfare, the Green party.
Mid-green or intermediate ethics is more extensive. It proceeds by extending the charmed circle of moral considerability from humans to at least some other animals - a significant improvement. Partly inspired by the work of philosophers Peter Singer on animal liberation and Tom Regan on animal rights, movements such as Animal Aid, Compassion in World Farming and Peta lead from the front in contesting the suffering of farmed animals; while, among others, conservationist Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd, and the Environmental Investigation Agency, work against the mass slaughter of wild animals. Their success so far is limited but real. But mid-green ethics has two weaknesses: its concern is limited to sentient beings - ones who can suffer - and it is confined to individuals. It offers no way to value and protect non-sentient life or collectivities.
For that we need to turn to dark-green or deep ethics, which is fully "ecocentric". Here, all life - including the non-organic - is recognised as the source of value and is worthy not only of respect but reverence. It includes entities such as species, ecosystems and places, and allows for the possibility that the interests of humans are not necessarily always paramount.
This is where groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace really belong, although they clearly falter. More consistent examples include James Lovelock's Gaia theory - not itself an ethical theory but one with ethical implications; the Deep Ecology movement founded by Arne Naess; and recent offshoots like Left Biocentrism (which tries to integrate ecocentrism with social justice) and the Earth Manifesto. A closely related strand is ecofeminism, which combines ecological concerns with those of gender in an ethic of care for the human and non-human world alike.
Movements based on these ecocentric ethics share a number of characteristics. They recognise that rational self-interest is too narrow and corruptible to protect nature and that success will be impossible without sufficient people valuing nature for its own sake. But they also recognise that agreements to perceive and act on green issues must be forged through the hard work of education and negotiation, and reject the right and ability of any single discourse - science, religion, or a particular politics - to monopolise the discussion.
To have real effects - wide, deep and soon enough to actually make a difference - ecocentric ethics will require active political leadership. However unlikely that seems at present, it is something we can at least imagine, hope for and work toward. · Patrick Curry's Ecological Ethics: An Introduction is published by Polity Press at £14.99. To order a copy for £13.99 with free UK p&p call 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop