Can Environmentalists Keep Two Ideas in Mind and Still Function

Abstract

A New Yorker cartoon depicts a pair of Puritans in stiff collars, doublets, cloaks leaning over the rail of the Arbella as it made landfall in the New World. One says, My immediate goal is to worship celebrate His Creation, but long-term, I plan to get into real estate. cartoon presents two visions of the natural world. On the one hand, we may regard nature as sacred, as having a value in itself, a history, autonomy, diversity that commands our appreciation respect. On the other hand, we can regard the natural world as a storehouse of economically fungible resources to be developed for human benefit. With these two visions of nature come two conceptions of salvation. first is personal; if one learns to commune with Nature to study its meanings messages, one may become more secure decent in one's soul. second is collective. If humanity uses natural resources wisely over the long term, it can maximize wealth well-being. With the advance of science technology, humanity may escape from scarcity, where there is no want (as the philosopher David Hume argued) there is no injustice. An efficient economy can bring Heaven to earth. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, still retain the ability to function. I argue in this essay that an intelligent society can hold these two opposed ideas of nature or salvation in mind, balancing them as well as it may, without trying to make them commensurable or reducing or collapsing either into the other. Environmental Goals: Ethical or Economic? New Yorker cartoon points to an opposition or inconsistency between two ways of regarding nature--one as a source of religious inspiration, the other as an object of economic exploitation. For more than a century, environmentalism has lived within this contradiction. Historians often set the preservationist tradition of John Muir, who compared forests to cathedrals, against the Progressive tradition of Gifford Pinchot, who saw forests as sources of wood water needed by the economy over the long run. Muir often called on biblical images. God began the reservation system in Eden, he wrote, and this first reserve included only one tree. Yet even so moderate a reserve was attacked. For Pinchot, in contrast, The first great fact about conservation is that it stands for development. He added, Conservation demands the welfare of this generation first, afterward the welfare of the generations to follow. Environmentalists generally regard intrinsic properties of nature as sources of reverence obligation. Society has a duty to preserve the wonders of nature for what they are in themselves, that is, for the properties through which they appeal to moral intuitions aesthetic judgments. Biodiversity--the variety of living things--provides the standard illustration of the glories of nature that move us to feelings of curiosity respect. As the philosopher Ronald Dworkin points out, many of us believe that we have an obligation to protect species that goes beyond our own well-being; we think we should admire protect them because they are important in themselves, not just if or because we or others want or enjoy them. Economist Amartya Sen has written, Our living standards are largely--or completely--unaffected by the presence or absence of spotted owls, but I strongly believe that we should not let them become extinct, for reasons that have nothing much to do with human living standards. People tend to express their affection for nature in religious terms. In a survey, Americans by large majorities agreed with the statement Because created the natural world, it is wrong to abuse it. Many of the respondents who answered this way said that they did not profess a religious faith. anthropologists who ran this survey found that divine creation is the closest concept American culture provides to express the sacredness of nature. …