(Liberal use of quotes for the many shades those words take.)
The dolphin extinction thread reminded me of a thread on the same topic on the libertarian-leaning Slashdot. In it, one commenter bluntly asserted that it is morally indefensible to act to preserve employment at the expense of species:
Whether seriously meant or not (and it feels it is to me), I have some conflicting reactions to such a statement. On one hand, I see what the writer is getting at, and I can sympathize. On the other hand, it’s something quite easy to say when it’s not YOUR job on the line, not YOUR family who’s starving. Yet in the great environmental debate, we make those judgments all the time - people have decided that it IS worth putting some lumberjacks out of work to save the spotted owl, for example.
Is it wrong of us to do so? Where should we draw the line in caring for our own vs. caring for biodiversity?
I don’t think either point of view is “evil”. IMHO, the conflicts we have in modern society between economic development and environmental protection stem not from “evil” attitudes but from naive views of economics.
We’re used to considering natural resources to be essentially “free” for our taking or our dumping. We pay very little attention as a general rule to the value of the various services our environment provides for us, or the long-term costs of damaging it. If we were more knowledgeable about how we interact with our environment, instead of just thinking “This is a thing for me to use” or “This is a place for me to dump stuff” (or alternatively “This is a natural environment so I must not touch it”), I think we’d find the inevitable trade-offs between protection and development somewhat easier to manage.
I think that it’s in the general best interest of humans as a whole to preserve the environment. No species exists in a vaccum-- each has its specialized niche in the food chain. Too many disruptions in that chain could have disastrous consequences.
We long ago decided, as a society, that the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” We use imminent domain to put a highway through a family farm (or, in some cases, supplant them for a commercial interest.) We ban imports of certain items like ivory, fur, or narcotics which are made/harvested by people who may have no other means of support. And sometimes, we forbid commercial interraction with other nations because we disagree with their politics.
Concern for the environment involves more than protecting an endangered species.
In the long run, overfishing & clear-cutting only provide temporary jobs. And mining practices often leave permanent scars on the land & poisonous pollution–long after the miners are laid off.
If environmental degradation proceeds to the point that civilization collapses, then there won’t
be any jobs for anyone at all (and people like Jared Diamond have put forth such scenarios).
So you sacrifice a few jobs now to save a bunch of jobs later. Who today mourns the passing
of careers in buffalo slaughtering from 130 years ago?
Yes, too much environmental degradation will destroy the planet and kill all humans and ruin life for everything, so any movement to protect the environment is inherently moral and anyone who opposes it is evil and or stupid. :rolleyes: Whatever.
It’s ridiculous to frame the debate in this way. Most debates about environmental laws do not involve such catastrophic terms. It’s not as if we are faced, on the one hand, with a choice that will save the earth, and on the other with a choice that will lead us towards annihilation of every species on the planet. Most environmental debates involve either different ways to approach managing natural resources, the methods of protecting the earth, or the exact level of that protection.
Take, for instance, the debate about roadless areas in national forests. Advocates for banning road building in national forests talked about the need to preserve biodiversity, the expense of road building, the desire to have “untouched” wilderness left. The opponents of such a ban talked about how biodiversity would not really be affected, the need for access to the land, and how logging can help forests. This debate was not about morality, but about what science said and about how you weigh competing interests.
Most environmental debates come down to this. It’s not the apocalyptic scenarios that Lissa and John DiFool mention.
Overfishing, perhaps. But clear cutting does not permanently remove trees from an area. Unless action is taken to prevent it, clear cuts will regrow trees naturally. And most logging companies replant their land, even when they clear cut.
While it can be abused, clear cutting is a valuable tool in forest management.
I said nothing about an apocalypse. I said “disastrous consequences” and I think it’s quite a reasonable statement. Take insects, for example. If we eradicate some species, we’d have a shit-load of problems when it came to crop pollination, and the birds which feed on those insects would also go extinct.
Sure, I suppose we could figure out a way to survive if the only creatures on earth were domesticated pets and cattle, but it’s not a pleasant scenario. No-- before you jump on me, I’m not saying every animal will go extinct if we don’t change our wicked ways, but we do lose some important links in the food chain when a species is over-exploited or their enviornment is damaged.
In my area, wolves and bears were eradicated eons ago. As a result, the deer population has flourished. Every year, farmer suffer economic damage from crop loss and people are injured or even killed by striking them in their automobiles. Hell, there’s a small herd here in town, which grazes next to the KFC. Hunters do their part, but they can’t fully replace “nature’s balance.” No one wants wolves around because they’re afraid of them, so we’ve wiped them out, but we have to deal with the consequences increased numbers of the prey animals (including other species than deer.)
I get a bit narked when a major road building project is held up because someone has discovered a colony of rare newts.
OTOH seriously damaging the environment is not a good long term idea.
It amuses me how the Russians have blasted Shell on the Sakhalin II oil project, because of some whales - as if they care a hoot about the whales (for all Russia cares the Japanese can eat them).
One issue is simply that there always needs to be more jobs. There is no particular need for the human population to grow (unless we are colonizing further planets), so cutting back to a static number is probably, long term, the best thing we can do to preserve the Earth.
Beyond that, there’s a difference between firing someone to save an animal, and setting up protocols to make sure that we don’t wreck what we have access to while still keeping everyone employed. I don’t see the latter happening though until such a time as modern countries ban the import of products made by sub-American standards.
A friend of mine used to work as a sort of ‘agent’ in the Far East. Basically the company he worked for acted as an intermediary between US buyers and Asian producers.
One time a major US store pulled an order for carpets made in India, because they got wind that some parts of the process were done by child labour.
My friend got on to the buyer and threatened him with a deluge of publicity, by pulling that order a large Indian village (town) would have absolutely no work.
It was too late to find another order - ethics would have flushed them down the toilet.
Fortunately the US buyer relented, and a highly satisfactory compromise was reached, the kids did work, but they also had schooling - which they would never have had if unemployed.
It is difficult applying Western ethics - sometimes the most beneficial thing looks evil at first sight.
Incidentally my friend went right out on a limb, his company would have fired him if they had known what he was doing, but since he pulled it off - he got away with it.
And yet both sides do it. Look at Reagan, casting logging in old-growth forests as an “American Jobs!” issue. He was pretty successful at framing the debate into “Should we put honest, hardworking American millworkers out of work? They have tiny, blue-eyed children!”
Never mind that the old-growth logs were desired by the Japanese, and shipped unmilled to Japan, where they employed JAPANESE millworkers.
We are repeatedly told that jobs are sacred and critical, as if a logger couldn’t ever learn to do anything else. Like they’d just die.
The same people who say that (conservative upper management) have no qualms about laying me off for a fraction of a percent change in an already-bloated profit margin, because I “can always get another job”.
Statistically, it’s true – I CAN get another job. And the old-growth forest will grow back, too – but it will take hundreds of years to grow back.
So while it’s dishonest to frame every debate apocalyptically, both sides do it, and frankly, the environmentalist side does so with more reason, I’d say.
Sailboat, as someone who grew up in an area directly affected by the environmentalists vs. loggers debate, I disagree that environmentalists have more “reason” on their side. The slowdown of logging on public land during the 1990’s certainly affected many rural areas, some devastatingly so. The contention that environmental restrictions would put people out of work was 100% accurate. Whether this job loss was justified by the environmental protection achieve is a good debate to have (and my contention is that it is certainly not worth it), but those saying no jobs were lost because of this are wrong.
"Is it “evil” somehow to value “jobs” over “the environment”? "
Yes. This is the definition of selfishness, puttin one’s own interests ahead of the group’s.
Of the seven deadly sins, this fits three or four.
That’s a ridiculous statement. Unless you have given up your job to minister to the poor for no pay, then you have no standing to make this judgment. Everyone could be doing more to help makind, so I guess everyone is going to hell, huh?
Furthermore, the entire free market system is based on serving one’s own self-interest. As Adam Smith pointed out, the baker is not trying to be altruistic when he bakes a loaf of bread for sale, but he is serving his fellow man at the same time. People serve others in our economy because it is in their self-interest. According to your definition, we are all guilty of selfishness and are evil.
To go on analyzing your inane statement, in many of these environmental causes there is a lot of room for debate about whether the remedies being proposed are all that useful. To give any sort of validity to your statement you assume that the environmental rules and regulations being proposed will actually help the environment. Furthermore, you assume that the rules and regulations proposed are the only way to help the environment. Those two assumptions are not always accurate.
Quite true. OTOH, such apocalyptic scenarios (e.g., anthropogenic climate change, runaway desertification, loss of biodiversity on a global scale) are not to be ruled out as possibilities, and any “jobs vs. environment” debate to which they may be relevant can and should be debated in very different terms.
And the above holds true even if we value the natural ecosystem only as a thing we humans need to thrive, and reject the idea that it has any value as an end-in-itself. But that’s a whole other debate.
The major points have been covered already I think - that it is important to strike a balance between preserving the environment and economic growth.
The Slashdot writer has presented the debate in a fairly simplified and naive format. I suspect they believe that “loss of jobs” means a bunch of fat-cat executives at oil companies don’t get a new Lexus this year or something. In reality, economic collapse can be just as devestating as an environemental collapse. In fact, economic collapse is often precipitated by an environmental disaster.
So IOW, it’s not “evil” to value jobs over the environment. It’s just short-sighted to not consider that economic health (IOW “jobs”) are, in fact, tied to the health of the environment.
Do you use electricity?
Do you use a form of transportation other than walking or biking or other human-powered vehicle?
Do you eat food that was grown on a farm?
Do you live in a building containing wood components?
Do you use paper products of any kind?
Simply existing on this planet forces you to interact with the environment. Every day billions of little decisions are made whether to put your individuals interests first or the interests of the environment.