Economics and the environment: a case of ethical neglect

Abstract

The economic development path favoured by mainstream politicians and economists is one of `business (and consumption) as usual', albeit with increased efficiency in resource use and with regulation and market-based incentives to temper undesirable environmental effects. Such technocratic environmental intervention is an inadequate tool for achieving sustainability and fails to recognise that environmental problems are an ethical, as much as an institutional, issue. Their solution lies in changing personal moral values as much as in institutional action. The sustainable development debate focuses attention on the need for modern society to adopt a new metaphysical attitude to match ecological reality in its promotion of human progress. Cultural heritages may be a starting point for the task of cultivating an ethical obligation towards the natural environment. Different cultures embody alternatives to modernist ways of interacting with social and natural environments. If cultural heritages have a role in establishing an environmental ethic for today, it is necessary to examine whether particular cultural traditions are conducive to ecologically sensitive behaviour and to what extent there is congruity between traditional cultural prescriptions and actual current behaviour. To do this, the paper contrasts European and Chinese heritages. A persuasive thesis has been developed that modern environmentally destructive tendencies in science, economics and public policy have deep historical roots in Western religious and philosophical tradition, suggesting that recourse to traditional ethics in the West would do nothing to mitigate unsustainability. By contrast, there is much in traditional Chinese culture which suggests a relationship between people and nature resonant of contemporary environmental ideals. Yet, the link between cultural tradition and current economic behaviour is clearly not a robustly deterministic one, since destructive processes are now taking place against this cultural background despite its clear behavioural norms aimed at harmony and moral well-being rather than at more utilitarian goals. If the European cultural heritage is ecologically insensitive and others are not resilient to Eurocentric materialism, what are the economic implications? Most optimistically, there is a clear emergence of a Leopoldian `land ethic' in the West, which combats the current promotion of irresponsible technological civilisation inspired by an obsolete world view, sets up a moral challenge to the legitimacy of the currently dominant view of economic development, is changing public policy and popular culture and, in time, promises a new ecologically benign postmodernism in economic policy making.