Rights and Environmental Ethics: An Aside
by Tom Regan
From The Case for Animal Rights, University of California Press,
1985.
The difficulties and implications of developing a rights-based
environmental ethic, alluded to in an earlier context, should be
abundantly clear by now and deserve brief comment before moving on. The
difficulties include reconciling the individualistic nature of
moral rights with the more holistic view of nature emphasized by
many of the leading environmental thinkers. Aldo Leopold is illustrative
of this latter tendency. "A thing is right," he states, "when it tends to
preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It
is wrong when it tends otherwise. The implications of this view include
the clear prospect that the individual may be sacrificed for the greater
biotic good, in the name of "the integrity, stability, and beauty of the
biotic community." It is difficult to see how the notion of the rights of
the individual could find a home within a view that, emotive connotations
to one side, might be fairly dubbed "environmental fascism." To use
Leopold's telling phrase, man is "only a member of the biotic
team," and as such has the same moral standing as any other "member" of
"the team." If, to take an extreme, fanciful but, it is hoped, not unfair
example, the situation we faced was either to kill a rare wildflower or a
(plentiful) human being, and if the wildflower, as a "team member," would
contribute more to "the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic
community" than the human, then presumably we would not be doing wrong if
we killed the human and saved the wildflower. The rights view cannot abide
this position, not because the rights view categorically denies that
inanimate objects can have rights (more on this momentarily) but because
it denies the propriety of deciding what should be done to individuals who
have rights by appeal to aggregative considerations, including, therefore,
computations about what will or will not maximally "contribute to the
integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community." Individual
rights are not to be outweighed by such considerations (which is not to
say that they are never to be outweighed). Environmental fascism and the
rights view are like oil and water: they don't mix.
The rights view does not deny the possibility that collections or
systems of natural objects might have inherent value--that is, might have
a kind of value that is not the same as, is not reducible to, and is
incommensurate with any one individual's pleasures,
preference-satisfactions, and the like, or with the sum of such goods for
any number of individuals. The beauty of an undisturbed, ecologically
balanced forest, for example, might be conceived to have value of this
kind. The point is certainly arguable. What is far from certain is how
moral rights could be meaningfully attributed to the
collection of
trees or the ecosystem. Since neither is an individual, it is unclear how
the notion of moral rights can be meaningfully applied. Perhaps this
difficulty can be surmounted. It is fair to say, however, that no one
writing in this important area of ethics has yet done so.
Because paradigmatic right-holders are individuals, and because the
dominant thrust of contemporary environmental efforts (e.g., wilderness
preservation) is to focus on the whole rather than on the part (i.e., the
individual), there is an understandable reluctance on the part of
environmentalists to "take rights seriously," or at least a reluctance to
take them as seriously as the rights view contends we should. But this may
be a case of environmentalists not seeing the forest for the trees--or,
more accurately, of not seeing the trees for the forest. The implications
of the successful development of a rights-based environmental ethic, one
that made the case that individual inanimate natural objects (e.g.,
this redwood) have inherent value and a basic moral right to
treatment respectful of that value, should be welcomed by
environmentalists. If individual trees have inherent value, they have a
kind of value that is not the same as, is not reducible to, and is
incommensurate with the intrinsic values of the pleasures,
preference-satisfactions, and the like, of others, and since the rights of
the individual never are to be overridden merely on the grounds of
aggregating such values for all those affected by the outcome,
rights-based environmental ethic would bar the door to those who would
uproot wilderness in the name of "human progress," whether this progress
be aggregated economic, educational, recreational, or other human
interests. On the rights view, assuming this could be successfully
extended to inanimate natural objects, our general policy regarding
wilderness would be precisely what the preservationists want--namely, let
it be! Before those who favor such preservation dismiss the rights view in
favor of the holistic view more commonly voiced in environmental circles,
they might think twice about the implications of the two. There is the
danger that the baby will be thrown out with the bath water. A
rights-based environmental ethic remains a live option, one that, though
far from being established, merits continued exploration. It ought not to
be dismissed out of hand by environmentalists as being in principle
antagonistic to the goals for which they work. It isn't. Were we to show
proper respect for the rights of the individuals who make up the biotic
community, would not the community be preserved? And is not that
what the more holistic, systems-minded environmentalists want?
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