Ethical issues ignored in sustainability education, research
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Just about everyone agrees that sustainability – cutting energy use, reducing carbon emissions and, in general, keeping the Earth green – is a good thing. But why do we think that? Do we support sustainability for the right reasons?
These are among the questions that Michigan State University’s Michael Nelson addresses in a paper published this month in the journal Bioscience titled “Sustainability: Virtuous or Vulgar?”
Specifically, Nelson and co-author John Vucetich of Michigan Technological University argue that the issue of ethics is a vital component in the teaching and research of sustainability, but one that is sorely lacking.
“This debate,” they write, “has almost entirely neglected a fundamental dimension of sustainability – the ethical dimension. Lack of attention to the ethical dimension of sustainability is stifling progress toward sustainability.”
Or, as Nelson puts it: “If we don’t know where we’re going, we won’t know when we get there.”
Nelson said that from the educational perspective, it’s important that all aspects of sustainability are covered.
“Everything we do sends messages to our students,” he said. “We see our students as people who will go out and do important things in this world. It’s important how we nurture that.”
The ultimate question, the authors say, is this: “Do we care about ecosystem health because ecosystems are intrinsically valuable, or do we care about ecosystem health because it serves human interests?”
While a question such as this is difficult to answer, Nelson said that “we are unlikely to achieve sustainability without knowing what it means.”
In their paper, Nelson and Vucetich consider the most widely appreciated definitions of sustainability, which indicate at least roughly that sustainability is “meeting human needs in a socially just manner without depriving ecosystems of their health.”
While the definition seems quite specific, it could mean anything from “exploit as much as desired without infringing on the future ability to exploit as much as desired” to “exploit as little as necessary to maintain a meaningful life.”
“From a single definition rises two wildly disparate views of a sustainable world,” said Vucetich. “Handling these disparate views is the inescapable ethical crisis of sustainability.”
“The crisis results from not knowing what we mean by value-laden terms like ‘ecosystem health’ and ‘human needs,’” Nelson said. “In other words, is ecosystem health defined by its ability to meet human needs only, or does ecosystem health define the limits of human need?”
Nelson is an associate professor with appointments in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and the departments of Fisheries and Wildlife and Philosophy. Vucetich is an assistant professor in MTU’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science.
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Sustainability seems to be the 21st century form of Western Colonialism. You have the high minded academy telling the “savages” of our day what is appropriate. If these ideas are not heeded, then there needs to be intervention, but before they do that, some local natives will be brought on board to teach the other locals in the ways of sustainability. However, the goal is the same as 200 years ago, get control of the local resources so that the indigenous people don’t mismanage them. For some reason this form of colonialism is good because their is a nobler reasoning behind it…preserving a definition-less “intrinsic value”.
P.J. O’Rourke (probably borrowing from somewhere else) pinned it when he said that the problem is that many people don’t pose environmental questions as cost/benefit tradeoffs, but instead view it as sin versus virtue. No amount of sin is acceptable, of course, at any price. This makes them all hypocrites, except for the Unibomber.
I love this paper, esp the quote on page 4 – “The value of equating “goodness” with “sustainability”. This is the situation, we have countless people who simply want to be good, who have turned into useful idiots. The hate evil capitalists, yet it is evil capitalists who are controlling them because of their wish to be “good”. Young people are especially prone to this mind control because most of them were raised by their parents to be “good”. So when the evil green capitalists come along with the new paradigm that sustainability = goodness, they fall right for it. And certainly there is some truth to the wish to be sustainable, it makes complete sense that that is what we should be shooting for, but only if it is “true”. What a mind job they have done, they have convinced people whom just a few years ago were against constructing a shopping mall on a reclaimed junk property, that they should destroy and desecrate their beautiful mountain ridges, just for a few megawatts of electricity. It is utterly amazing what has happened in just a few short years.
One of the reasons this has happened so easily is because so many lost faith in the Conservative movement after the war in Iraq. They believe that was so wrong, that anyone coming from a different direction has to be right. And then I read on the blogs that the warmers and greens and loosing traction, I don’t think so, they are only getting started.
I remember when our educational system was not supposed to teach values. Wait, it’s traditional values we can’t teach. New Age values we can teach.
Sustainability is Malthusianism dressed up in moral and scientific jargon. It assumes that modes of future production in economics are fixed and do not change overtime so we are constantly running out of “natural resources” or “good soil” so therefore a control grid must be imposed by the State make sure “resources” are only used by approval of the State. It is the essence of tyranny.
The reality is that only thing that isn’t sustainable is the concept of “Sustainability” because it is a natural law that human societies change and improve their mode of work.
Human beings will revolt from technology suppression when it results in declining conditions of life that must result from using inferior mode of production simple because they are deemed by the State as as the only acceptable.
The reality is that the theory is of sustainability is an anti-science prison for the mind because it denies the fact that the “Ultimate Resource” in human economy is human creative reason which is essentially free energy for the negentrophic system that is the defining characteristic of human economy.
The issue goes the philosophy of Aristotle’s dead universe of fixed things because God had created everything that could be created already was created and therefore anything that human did to change the already perfect world was evil so therefore if a slave wanted to be free than that was evil because it violated the “natural order” of “Royals”, “Nobles,” “Commoners”, and “Slaves.”
On other hand, real science reveals that this is a universe of becoming and of evolution not of fixed perfect circular orbits.
The powers of human cognition are a higher order of change the drives and bends the biosphere to isn’t faster order of relative time just as biosphere uses and changes the abiotic for it’s evolution.
Since we know that cognition is the highest form of evolution in the universe we know the sustainability is essentially “Biological” geocentrism is trying to subject a higher power process of evolution to a lower orders and it will work no better than trying to say a polygon is a circle or pounding a square peg into a circular hole.
Sustainability by itself is inadequate. It must be robust sustainability.
“Sustainability”…buzz talk for NEW WAVE RELIGION..
See also, George Orwell, “NewSpeak”.
‘… as Nelson puts it: “If we don’t know where we’re going, we won’t know when we get there.”’
That statement is partially correct. If we don’t know where we are going, that is because we got lost, don’t know where we are and how far we deviated from the best way to get there. To have gotten lost means that we have no sense of where or when we started, whether we are moving into the right direction and how far along the way we got.
If we are lost, it is quite possible that with every step we take we are moving farther away from the intended destination.
The last part of Michael Nelson’s statement should therefore be: “…, we will not only lack the knowledge of when we will get there, we don’t even know whether we will ever make it there.”
Thanks for posting the article. Good questions to ponder.
While the definition seems quite specific, it could mean anything from “exploit as much as desired without infringing on the future ability to exploit as much as desired” to “exploit as little as necessary to maintain a meaningful life.”
I’ve read a few articles recently where the author talks about our hunter-gatherer ways, about changing the meaning of standard of living to inclcude things such as leisure time (no jobs) and time to walk in the woods… I’ve also read that it would take over 5 earths to provide the resources for every human on earth to live like we do.
My guess is that developed countries are going to have their standards of living reduced significantly over this century until all nations have a similar standard of living (contraction and convergence?).
Other options are leaving things as are or population reductions.
“Sustainability”, especially when coming from the realms of academia, is a code word for hitching the cart of socialism to the horse of the environmental movement. It’s a strategy for advancing a progressive agenda under the guise of helping the environment. It’s the same strategy recently employed when such efforts fell under the label of “social justice”. What reasonable person could object to advancing “social justice”?? Similarly, what sort of person would ever object to helping build a “sustainable” future?? These people are genius when it comes to naming thier efforts to hide the true nature.
The National Association of Scholars has written numerous articles on “sustainability” within academia. Might be worth checking out:
http://www.nas.org
I think the approach of this professor is excellent and much needed. Many issues of environmentalism, and even environmental engineering, are beset by deep-seated philosophical confusion. Our notions of nature, safety and risk, clean and polluted, and conservation are just a few of them. This post addresses one rather amusing instance of this:
http://iamyouasheisme.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/that-natural-feeling/
Ken Smith: July 6, 2010 at 5:09 am
I was a little surprised to find that about half of them indicated that they did not want the cave to be explored. They wrote things like “leave it the way God made it” or “respect the magnificence of this wonderful natural formation and leave the rest of it alone.”
Completely disregarding the fact that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to view the part of the cave that they *did* see unless it had been explored. I’d trust a spelunker to leave a cave as he found it sooner than I’d trust one of those visitors to walk ten feet to a trash can to toss a gum wrapper rather than dropping it in place.
The word ‘sustainability’ hides a multitude of sins, it is a modern word but the aims behind it are well used and well worn. The freedom to act and think and do as you please is anathama to some people, control and order and direction from a governing elite in order to create an obedient mass looking to a central point of authority for their behaviour patterns. Who decides what is sustainable and what isnt? What are the dangers of allowing a certain group of people to dictate to others what is acceptable behaviour and what is anti social behaviour?
The idea that the masses must subject themselves to a guiding will is a key element of faith with leftist/marxist/socialist/green/cult religious groups, they always try to build an authoritarian structure where the individual will is submerged beneath the will of the masses as led of course by a small group of ‘leaders’, a leader class that dictates and guides the masses using certain key ‘enabling’ narratives.
The vehicle of ‘sustainability’ has got little to do with actual sustainability however that term has actual meaning, the term is simply an ‘authority enabler’ a tool to place limits on an individuals behaviour rather like handcuffs in fact, these limits must be ‘self imposed’ by means of moral blackmail and appeals to an individuals guilt and fear and sense of social conscience. In other words the chains of limitation can only be applied with popular support enabled by the masses themselves, those who choose not to have pressure applied by turning the masses against those ‘anti social elements’ using a planned attack and smear campaign.
When the authoritarian groups wish to take over a group of free individuals they never use frontal force, they use well tried methods of enslaving a population by stealth. Its obvious at this moment in our history that there is a concerted effort to create a central authoritarian state, it is being created by stealth using the supposed destruction of the earth as a cover and vehicle. This would be authoritarian state is using well tried and tested and very predictable methods, trying to invite populations to place the chains of slavery on themselves and many are on the verge of doing just that, invited by to do so by falsehoods and silky lies and misrepresentation.
As old as civilisation, the art of stripping a free people of that freedom by stealth and yet again we see it happening and yet again many still fall for the oh so obvious fraud, it makes you wonder if we will ever learn the simple reality of humanity, wherever free people live in freedom there will always be a minority planning to steal that freedom, from the streets of Babylon to the streets of Rome to the streets of Washington, the people change but the methods do not.
Remember this, your freedom once given away is always a great struggle to regain and the regaining of that freedom exacts the greatest cost, giving away your freedom is easy, getting it back again is a different matter altogether.
Sustainable Development is Agenda 21 until you understand that it is not about the environment but a cover for totalitarian control of people you miss the whole point.
No I am not a “conspiracy theorists” I am one very frighten individual because I have been following the progress of this disease for over ten years. I actually started out as a member of Greenpeace and WWF.
The idea of conserving the environment and “sustainablity’ is just a cover story. It is just like CAGW, a hoax used to blind the masses as they are bound up in regulations and fleeced of their wealth and freedom. I am very much afraid we are at the brink of the next Dark Ages if we as a people do not wake up and figure out the lies we are being spoon fed especially those fed to our children. http://www.newswithviews.com/Shaw/michael17.htm
“You Americans are so gullible! We don’t have to invade you! We will destroy you from within without firing a shot! We will bury you by the billions! We spoon feed you socialism until your Communists and don’t even know it! We assist your elected leaders in giving you small doses of Socialism until you suddenly awake to find you have Communism. the day will come when your grandchildren will live under communism!” – Nikita Khrushchev
Sustainable Development is part of the diet we are being giving in small doses by our elected leaders. This site has put together a lot of the information gathered from official sources. Please, please at least skim through it. I have a lot of references to this subject but this article pulls most of them together. Green Global Dictatorship: Regional Governance, UN Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, and the Wildlands Project by Dr. Eric T. Karlstrom, Professor of Geography
(Ignore the religious quotes at the beginning, the research is still good and has a lot of references.)
…”Specifically, Nelson and co-author John Vucetich of Michigan Technological University argue that the issue of ethics is a vital component in the teaching and research of sustainability, but one that is sorely lacking.”… (per above news release)
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Several good observations, here’s another:
Humans have always and consistantly used the “ethical” delemia argument when the issue of change was being called for and/or when changes being implemented began to be questioned. It was, is, and will always be, used in human arguments. The authors in this case are begging the question now for their own agenda. To say that it has not been adequately applied in the past is untrue; what happened happened. To claim that it is not being appropriately applied now is likewise untrue; what’s happening is happening. To say that it might not be applied in future is a joke, for what will be will be.
PS: People tend to split into two groups about any issue; those who are for it, and those who are against it. The ‘ethical’ appeal can and, usually, is used by both sides to further their argument and convince the undecided.
Good someone from academia is addressing this ethical dimension of climate science.
As several different people have pointed out, the underlying conflict about climate science is the conflict between “naturalists” and “humanists”. The former believe that nature and its ecosystems, unchanged by humanity, are inherently good and valuable, while the latter consider the maintenance of natural ecosystems valuable only to the extent that this insures the quality of human life. It is a philosophical difference which is not going to disappear. It seems to me that most climate scientists, at least those who are publicly outspoken, are “naturalists” rather than “humanists”, and assign a high priority to protecting natural ecosystems from change/disruption by human activity, while most skeptics are “humanists” who assign higher priority to improving the lives of humans, especially the poorest.
The tendency of outspoken climate scientists to paint a certain and frightening picture of future warming is in part motivated by their personal valuation of unchanged natural systems. For a “naturalist”, substantial changes in Earth’s climate are inherently ‘catastrophic’ and hugely ‘expensive’, regardless of the consequences of those changes to humanity; any significant risk of substantial change is unacceptable, so large public expenditure to reduce the chance of substantial environmental change is a moral imperative. It is interesting to note that outspoken climate scientists consider those who question the size and certainty of future warming and its consequences as either wholly ignorant of “the science” (and incapable of understanding it!) or simply immoral and evil. This analysis says much more about outspoken climate scientists themselves than it does about the technical competence and morals of skeptics.
This is not a new conflict, and not one which will be easily resolved. But it is at least constructive to examine the conflict for what it really is, rather than waste time arguing about technical issues (polar ice melt, projected temperatures, uncertainty ranges, etc.) that are poor surrogates for the fundamental disagreement. Continuing to frame the question of global warming in terms of “what the science says”, while ignoring underlying disagreements about personal values and priorities (AKA politics), will only do science a disservice and delay a political consensus.
Sustainability, if one thinks about it properly, references man and his ability to exploit resources available, while ensuring future generations have the same ability. The earth is fine and isn’t going anywhere.(At least anytime soon.) Anyone who thinks the present flora and fauna of this earth are to be some permanent fixture of nature sadly delude themselves. Yes, I know they are among us, they’re just wrong. Species adapt or become extinct and new ones arrive. This is true for both plants and animals.
““Do we care about ecosystem health because ecosystems are intrinsically valuable..?”
If there is no benefit to mankind, then how could it possibly be regarded as having value, intrinsic or otherwise? If it is a benefit to mankind, then it is because of mankind’s ability to exploit nature’s resources.
For these people it’s alway a zero sum game, they don’t ever seem to see a future that will be better as we learn and then develop new technologies. Allowing human creativity and ingenuity to make life better for all of us just doesn’t seem to be a possibility for the environmentalist, it’s all doom and gloom. Of course this very socialist outlook has been instilled from kindergarten on for the last 30 years, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.
Part of what worries me is with this outlook where do we look for innovators and real scientists who are interested in bettering human life rather keeping things sustainable.
My concern, as a deeply committed environmentalist, can best be illustrated by the majority of the comments in this thread. Since AGW is a scam and is identified as being an environmentalist movement, all environmental activism is likewise called into question. At one time I too bought into the whole global warming alarmism. A surprizing little time doing a dispassionate analysis convinced me this was a non-issue. That does not mean that there aren’t a host of other very legitimate environmental issues we can, and should, address. But now that nearly all “green” issues are becoming tainted with the AGW scam brush we run the risk of turning our backs on some very real problems. And environmentalists will have no one to blame but themselves. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” parable comes to mind.
‘Sustainability’ is perhaps the dirtiest word in the English language. Its advocates would have us give up on progress, on the growth of civilization, and the eventual journey of mankind to the rest of the Solar System and to the stars. It is anti-growth, anti-freedom, anti-prosperity, and anti-human; it is therefore profoundly unethical.
‘Sustainability’ is of course based on the myth that there are ‘limits to growth’ (sound familiar?). That myth and its promulgators must be roundly and decisively fought and defeated. We are in a war that will determine the future of humanity.
E. M. Smith has very aptly given the lie to the myth of ‘sustainability’: there is no shortage of ‘stuff’, and there never will be, unless we impose it upon ourselves:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
/Mr Lynn
I’m not terribly impressed by any of the comments.
Humankind is facing the question of how to handle it’s growing population and what version of a future Earth it wants to have. “Sustainability” is the question of how much of the recent state of the natural ecosystem can be maintained with a peaking population. It is not that the world has existed in a pristine, unchanging state, it is that the pace of change related to human intervention is increasing. This increasing pace drives the insecurity of “greenies”, and it does represent a real problem.
Morality is an appropriate paradigm to use in discussing “sustainability”, because it is a question of what we want as a future state of the Earth insofar as we can form that future state.
Gail Combs says:
July 6, 2010 at 6:52 am
Bang on. And I probably met you at a march or two… What a senseless waste of time! “I could have been a somebody! I could have been a contender. But i’m just a bum…with a one way ticket to palookaville….”
Is it ethical for someone else to decide if I live or die. Maybe if you live or die. The consideration moves to my dog or car. Artificial ethics take the form of taxes and social laws, they can reach deep determining if I drive my car or feed my dog or consider procreation. The alternative is the market solution.
I’m not particularly impressed with redefining morality to suit the latest left-wing agenda that comes down the pike, either.