{"id":982,"date":"2009-09-03T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T08:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=982"},"modified":"2009-09-03T08:03:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T08:03:00","slug":"why-bother-saving-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=982","title":{"rendered":"Why bother saving the planet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been pondering that conversation<\/a> that I linked to a while back. I just want to throw out a line of thought and see what people make of it.<\/p>\n

If we accept that Peak Oil and the related limits to growth are real, then our present industrial system is unsustainable – ergo<\/span> [as the Architect<\/a> says] it WILL come to an end. I expect that to be quite soon, certainly in my hoped\/expected lifetime (I’ve just turned 39).<\/p>\n

There’s not a lot that we can do to stop that happening. The processes and mechanisms involved are vast, beyond (probably) everyone’s comprehension, and tie in just about every aspect of our existence.<\/p>\n

In response to this predicament we might:
– become a survivalist, with the mentality that “I” (or: my family, tribe, nation) will SURVIVE!!!!! I’m sure you’re all familiar with that approach;
– adopt a devil-may-care, laissez-faire, apres-moi-la-deluge form of not caring about it (or ignoring it, which is the same thing) – again, I’m sure people are familiar with forms of that;
– adopt a ‘we must save the planet’ approach and do all that we can to alleviate and minimise the inevitable human suffering.<\/p>\n

What I’m exploring is a distinction _within_ the third of these options – although it might look more like the second from some points of view.<\/p>\n

Let me bring in some philosophy to take this a bit further, the distinction in ethics between ‘consequentialism’, ‘deontological ethics’ and ‘virtue ethics’.<\/p>\n

A consequentialist understanding of ethics says that an action is right or wrong according to what the consequence of the action is. The worth of adopting a low-carbon lifestyle is that it will minimise the problems of climate change.<\/p>\n

In contrast to this, the deontological approach says that there is something inherent in the act itself which constitutes its character as good or bad: the worth of adopting a low-carbon lifestyle is something intrinsic to itself.<\/p>\n

The virtue ethics approach says that an action is right or wrong according to how it will affect the character of the person making the choice: the worth of adopting a low-carbon lifestyle is assessed by what sort of person you become when you choose that lifestyle.<\/p>\n

What I’m getting at is that arguments that take the form ‘we must do X because it will (help to) save the planet’ leave me cold – in part because I don’t like consequentialism as an ethical theory (I’m much more of a virtue ethicist myself, basically an Aristotelean as mediated by Alasdair MacIntyre).<\/p>\n

There are various practical reasons why it leaves me cold. I’m very much of the view that we have to be honest about where we stand – that, to a very great extent it is too late to preserve a very great deal of our culture and habits. I also suspect that, even if per impossibile<\/i> we succeeded(!) in saving the planet, we’d end up realising that we had missed some rather important things; that is, I’m not inspired to make the world safe for modern industrialism! (I should say, I tend to the view that our environmental problems are ultimately symptoms of a more fundamental social justice problem – and that it is the latter that we most need to address).<\/p>\n

What motivates me are arguments that say ‘we must do X because it is the right thing to do’ (the deontological approach) or, even better, ‘we must do X (or even a contagiously enthusiastic “Let’s do X!!”) because it allows us to be the people that God has created us to be’. In other words, the inner logic of choosing, eg, a low-carbon lifestyle is completely different in the one case than the other. Wittgenstein once used the comparison of two puppets – one being handled by string from above, one being directly manipulated by a hand inside – the actions might look the same but the forces involved are completely different.<\/p>\n

There is a spiritual path through our present predicament which involves, I would say, a trust in a greater providence – the counterpart to abandoning our own pride – and walking in the Way of Life. We can never know all the eventual consequences of our actions; we can’t know – I would say – whether it is possible to ‘save the planet’ or not. Yet we can know that choosing a simpler life, more strongly rooted in our particular local contexts and ecologies, more concerned to nurture social justice, more connected to all that makes for meaningful human relationships and vocations – all these things are the right things to do and help us to become the right sort of people. I think we can let God look after the consequences, for what does he require of us, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before him? <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been pondering that conversation that I linked to a while back. I just want to throw out a line of thought and see what people make of it. If we accept that Peak Oil and the related limits to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crisis","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-fQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}