WC Archive

Aaaargh! Opening such a fascinating topic as this on what are some of my pet obsessions (philosophy/anthropology student as I am)just as I go to India for 3 weeks! I will just have to hope the discussion still continues when I return. But it looks like you are on the right track - the most important being the focus on the earth as a whole system and other aspects being reinforcing subsystems. Deciding what constitutes the health of the main system is the hardest part. Good Luck. See you in a few weeks (unless I can find an internet cafe in Delhi!)

Aaaargh! Opening such a fascinating topic as this on what are some of my pet obsessions (philosophy/anthropology student as I am)just as I go to India for 3 weeks! I will just have to hope the discussion still continues when I return. But it looks like you are on the right track - the most important being the focus on the earth as a whole system and other aspects being reinforcing subsystems. Deciding what constitutes the health of the main system is the hardest part. Good Luck. See you in a few weeks (unless I can find an internet cafe in Delhi!)

I have a question and an observation. Question: What is the difference, if any, between geoethics and environmental ethics? Observation: Geoethics seems to have an inherent complication not present in biomedical ethics. Isn't biomedical ethics simpler in the fact that it mostly or exclusively involves balancing the rights of individual humans or groups of humans?
This idea of geoethics suggests to me the possibility of non-human entities being considered to have rights. Here's an example: Let's assume a person decides the "geoethical" thing to do is to cut greenhouse gas emissions to prevent climatic change. Whose rights would that decision be intended to protect? The rights of the planet, or the rights of the *people* who would suffer or die because of higher temperatures and sea levels, etc? Could geoethics, depending on how it is defined, lead to an opinion that the planet needs to be protected for its own sake, for reasons beyond the benefit of mere humans? It seems to me that any "geoethicist" would need to decide which entities have rights, or alternatively, whose rights really matter. (I don't have any immediate answer.)

Just trying to clarify here- seems we are addressing geoethics as a specialization of environmental ethics, applying it to efforts to address human intervention in the geo-climatic system.

Jamais, if this is accurate, perhaps you could change "human behaviors that can affect larger planetary geophysical systems" to "human behaviors seeking to affect larger planetary geophysical systems."

To me, the "Precautionary principle" is a reflection of our deep ignorance- there are so many interconnections that we can not know them all, so we must be careful intervening. The first principle of medicine should be "Do no harm." It's the first thing I think of when looking at any complex system- the less is done, the better I think we are.

"Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food" seems like an exhortation to practice prevention. Creating algae blooms to sequester CO2 while ignoring the nurturing of corporations focused on restorative business models is backwards. I also wonder if our interventions can be made self-correcting. I'll take the example of artificial reefs to sequester CO2- could we build them so that if CO2 concentrations keep rising they keep growing faster, but if the opposite happens they slow down? Adding a self-checking feedback loop to an already complex system seems like a safe bet, and the medicine (intervention to heal the system) becomes food (part of the normal climate cycle).

Hmm... the more global warming, the more incentive to build artifical reefs. Seems to me like that's elegant- maybe we should be talking about geo-aesthetics? :)

I understand environmental ethics to be concerned primarily with ecosystems and biology. If that's the case, I consider geoethics to be a superset of environmental ethics, not a specialization.

To address a couple of points: assigning rights to non-humans is by not inherently a problem to me; but determining how those rights are assigned is, as you suggest, a challenge; the precautionary principle can be useful here, but it depends on how it's defined (there are versions that fit, and versions that end up translating into across-the-board inaction.

I *really* like the idea of adding self-correction.

Jonathan Pfeiffer raises a really interesting point. Once you start looking at ethics on a global level, ecosystems become more important than any one organism. The health of the planet over 10 millenia is of primary importance.

How is this reconciled with humanist ethics, when there are collisions with geo-ethics?

"How is this reconciled with humanist ethics, when there are collisions with geo-ethics?"

I think they're reconciled by realizing you can't have one without the other.

I would agree with many comments here.

One observation about the precautionary principle: it works best in situations where *not* acting has few or no negative results. In regards to climate change, I think the choice of no responsive action is itself an action with profound negative results.

I think that humanist values must absolutely be integrated into this sort of ethics, if only because to fail to address the profound human needs (or even perceived needs) around us is to fail, politically.

We need an ethical system which guides us not only to planetary health, but to a human standard of living which is much better for the vast majority of people than we have now.

Anything less, is, as I wrote in Winning the Great Wager, likely to lead to the failure of the whole project.

Perhaps some recognition of that needs to be explicitly woven into the statement of values?

This is where robust indicators could be very helpful. I'll stick my neck on the chopping block and propose the following:

For a given population of people, there is some basic level of material comforts and decencies below which no one should be forced to live - measured how? (Infant mortality, literacy, kCal/capita, protein/capita, - ?)

The total environmental footprint of this population must not exceed one planet Earth (leaving space colonization out of the discussion for now) - "Environmental Footprint" being an excellent indicator, developed by Bill Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, although there are of course others.

There is a functioning, healthy, planetary bio-geo-chemical system, unbelievably complex, with multiple feedback loops and surprising delays of information, stocks we can run down for a while, flows whose limits we need to live within. This can be thought of as "Natural Capital" and "Ecosystem Services". It's stupid to erode Natural Capital since that's what provides the Ecosystem Services. How to measure and monitor this is a whopping big discussion of its own.

We haven't begun to fathom the ways in which Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services can help us; we're just scratching the surface of cradle-to-cradle resource use, biomimicry, renewable energy fluxes, etc. (Is there an indicator for how well our political economy matches that of nature?)

We have no idea how "brittle" or "resilient" Natural Capital is; therefore, we have no idea how much pressure we can put upon it, or how much needs to be left as unaltered as possible for "insurance". (How are we doing with indicators of planetary "resilience?)

Technology is useful when aimed at decent living standards, reducing ecological footprint and preserving natural capital and ecosystem services; it's not useful when it runs counter to those goals. Increasing "benign" technology helps people live within limits at a higher standard - and in some cases, can help provide the security, education and services people need to begin planning their families and limiting the number of children they have. Technology can also fuel its own growth, but it can't in and of itself decide its goals. (What's an "indicator" for a level of technological skill applied to useful purposes?)

When natural capital is eroded enough to diminish ecosystem services, then living standards suffer, and human resources must be diverted to providing human substitutes for ecosystem services - assuming that's even possible. That's not progress. We face that now when confronting the very real prospect of "terraforming" Earth;

Gross injustice of living standards and conflict over resources divert resources to military power, police and surveillance, rules and codes, interventions in markets, short-term palliatives, etc. That's (usually) not progress.

For a given technological level, and a given amount of natural capital, population growth reduces available resources per capita. There is a maximum possible population on this planet. That, I think has to be one cornerstone of "geo-ethics".

If there aren't too many of us, consuming too much of the Earth's Natural Capital, then we free resources to increasing human welfare instead of trying to keep our current system patched together a little longer. When we aim technology toward living decently within physical limits, we're on the right track. When we restore Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services, our long-term welfare increases. When we have to divert scarce resources from human needs to prop up unstable natural and social systems, we're impoverished.

At this point in history, there's no longer a tradeoff between human and planetary health. To help one, we must see to the other. We are Nature.

Well, there's some skeet for everyone to shoot at.

Just for the record, "do no harm" is not part of the Hippocratic Oath. It's in "Epidemics", also by Hippocrates.
Arguments haved a lot more weight when quotes are accurate.

Chris, I suspect that lots of people think that "do no harm" is part of the Hippocratic Oath -- when I saw it referenced as such in one of the essays on bioethics linked to in the post, I had no reason to think otherwise.

I'll confirm and edit appropriately.

Confirmed and edited.

Thanks, Chris. I wasn't aware that was a misconception, and am always happy to learn something new.