No Regrets Journal Essay Humanity, Nature, Ecology and Morality

No Regrets Journal Essay

Humanity, Nature, Ecology and Morality

Clayton Medeiros February 2020 

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Humanity, Nature, Ecology and Morality Climate change is not about politics. Climate change is about ethics and morality. We are creatures of the earth and the cosmos. We are deeply, inherently connected with nature and all of its flora and fauna. We are biologically tethered to the earth. We are engaged with the earth. The earth is engaged with us.

The biosphere is the atmosphere, waters and lands that support and include life in an ecologically diverse world. We are completely dependent on the well being of the biosphere and the nature and environment it supports.

Climate change is an issue above political differences. It is about the need to understand the implications of our behavior for the environment and the biosphere that have allowed the creation of generations of human beings and provided us with shelter and sustenance.

Ecology is the interaction of life with the environment. We are integrated dynamic systems interacting with other integrated dynamic systems including plants and animals, the earth itself, the solar system, the galaxy and the universe. Our consciousness is self reflexive and self interpreting, but we can also imagine and think about each of the dynamic systems that share creation with us. We can reach out with our intelligence to explain the history of the earth, the solar system, galaxies and the cosmos. We can imagine world’s that are inhabited by other life forms on the earth or on other planets.

We are the language animal. The complexity of our language distinguishes us from the rest of the natural world. Our organization of families, societies, the building of cities and nations takes place in the context of language and communication. Language can be constitutive and powerful. It establishes reasons, values and shared meanings for individuals and the community of which they are a part. Our relationships to family, friends, lovers, co-workers, fellow citizens and strangers are linked to what we know together, what we share with one another, read, see and listen to.

Speech has agency and consequences. Racist speech and hate speech are statements that demean fellow human beings and state an intention to diminish another person’s freedom to be and act in a shared community. Language also speaks to the ethics and morality of the speaker.

Ethics is the study of morality. We have an ethical and moral responsibility to ourselves and to the environment and its inhabitants. The environment and the natural world are moral sources that require our consideration and involvement.

Rachel Carson in “Silent Spring” and other writings spoke to these issues. Her insights and recommendations are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published in 1962. “Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.”

She saw us as having a “grave and sobering responsibility (which) is also a shining opportunity”; to “go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature, but of itself.”

There is a moral principle that one should not treat another person as a means to an end. Each person’s agency, ability to act, should be respected. Treating them solely as a means takes away any sense of the intrinsic value of their being, their humanity. They become an object. Just as it is not ethical to treat another person as an object, as a means to an end, it is equally unethical to not respect the earth, the environment and the world of being that we share.

Ethical and moral sources from religious and philosophical beliefs can be harnessed with political will to take action that will preserve the environment and its occupants in to the future. Ecological approaches provide the opportunity to reconnect with the earth and the biosphere and establish a balance that will benefit us and our surroundings.

Science presents us with a description of what is happening to the environment and identifies clear opportunities to modify the current projections around the impact of carbon pollution. There can be an integration of science and the search for meaning in our lives. A meaning that includes environmental considerations, moral considerations and political action.

The short sightedness of humanity and the endless exploitation of nature have reached a level of harm that is causing a catastrophic collapse of species, decimating the health of our lands, oceans, aquifers, forests and the ability of the earth to sustain life that includes human beings. Natural law and the findings of science clearly point to the need to respect the natural world, the biosphere and the earth itself.

Religion, a matter of faith, also has an impact on environmental concerns. In some traditional Christian interpretations of the bible, the natural world is fallen and humanity fallen along with it having been cast out of the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Genesis, the fall, the exile from Eden were often interpreted to mean that the newly inhabited natural world was not sacred. It could be freely exploited. Some evangelical sects look forward to environmental collapse as hopeful because the end of days will come sooner.

There are also Christian and other religious groups that have established interpretations that integrate divinity into all of creation and support the need for ecological balance.

Many ecotheological Christians make the case that the destruction of the environment is an affront to God who created the cosmos and the earth. We should be stewarding and protecting God’s creation. For some Christians, God is separate from the creation. For other Christians, God is present in the creation and the creation is sacred. God loves the creation and humanity.

Transcendentalists and pantheists believe we have deep spiritual connections to the natural world and the universe. The cosmos itself is divine. The creation itself offers a source for faith and morality.

I accept religious faiths that remain open to and respect other religions and beliefs as also having value. There is no exclusive pathway to the sacred or to the establishment of an ecologically and morally sound society.

My own beliefs are tied to my being present in and interrelated with the wonder that is the creation and the cosmos with all of its complexity. My values take the form of mind and consciousness in a search for understanding, meaning, love, empathy and openness to the world that surrounds us.

I would suggest that our fall, rather than being the traditional biblical disobedience, has been a failure to respect the laws of nature, the interconnection of all things, the ecological balance required for humanity to continue to flourish in its codependence with the earth and the biosphere . The natural world has intrinsic value as an end itself. The earth and the universe are coherent in their own terms. Many religions contain the idea of a cosmic intelligence or consciousness.

In the seventeenth century, RenĂŠ Descartes replaced judaeo christian fallen nature with mechanistic nature, a position adopted by much of western science.

Only human beings were conscious, could reason and had souls. Since animals did not have souls and could not reason we were allowed to treat them as machines or robots and be unconcerned about their well being. They had neither emotions nor a sense of pain. They and the natural world were seen only in instrumental terms as means to an end.

There is ample proof that we are not alone in manifesting consciousness.

Animals share consciousness with us. They can recognize themselves in a mirror, they feel pain, they mourn their dead. Other natural communities including trees, fungi and bacteria have the ability to communicate with one another across great distances.

The downfall of homo sapiens has been its predatory nature which looks at the world with instrumental eyes that only have a short term perspective of immediate usefulness. We fail to see the threads that tie our well being to other species, forests, rivers and oceans. We are the ultimate predator with our ability to communicate, organize and plan as a group to accomplish our aims.

This ability and an anthropocentric view limits our approach to science and limits our approach to living in and understanding the complexity of the environment that surrounds us and interacts with us. We perceive the world and act as if it is available for our use without considering that the earth holds its own meaning and value with its own rules. We ignore its responses to our presence at our peril.

Homo sapiens dominance is no longer viable. The concept that we need to respect the rights of our fellow human beings is embedded in religious and philosophical traditions. This sensibility needs to be expanded to the world around us. We are one species in a web of many species that have been supported by the earth and biosphere.

Extremes in politics and extremes in religion eventually fail. Fascism and communism failed partly because their beliefs were not sustainable in the face of reality and in the face of alternative beliefs about how civilization should conduct itself. Exclusive fanatical religions are in a similar position and often involve the acquisition of political power. Right wing evangelical Christianity will always be limited in its influence because many of its believers do not recognize the nature of reality at a minimum in the conclusions of science about evolution and climate change. The same is true of ISSIS and other forms of extreme religious beliefs.

Ecological Status 
 Forests are rapidly disappearing particularly in the Amazon and Indonesia to establish ranches, plantations and farms. In these rain forest areas the fires do not just destroy the current forest. They also burn the underlying, centuries old peat swamps and soils that release additional carbon pollution that has been stored for centuries. The rain forest that is cleared to raise cattle in the Amazon or the boreal forest that is harvested for lumber and paper in Canada and Russia are focused on their instrumental value. The soils that remain after fires or clear cutting are limited and often must be soon abandoned as unproductive. The forest’s role in storing carbon that otherwise pollutes the atmosphere and raises temperatures and the role in providing a home for animal species, trees, insects, soil bacteria and fungi require a broader integrated approach to how we live on the land.

Extinctions and near extinctions grow with each passing day. Monarch butterflies will soon no longer exist in the United States. A recent German study showed that 78 percent of the insect population has disappeared. In each of these cases insecticides and biocides are the major cause accompanied by disappearing habitat. A United Nations study has concluded that three billion birds have disappeared since 1950. If DDT had not been banned, there would be no eagles in America today.

The biosphere, the atmosphere, oceans and soils communicate in response to climate change driven by carbon pollution with droughts, floods, increasingly powerful storms and forest fires. We have ignored the warning signs in favor of exploitation of the environment for short term goals and the maximization of profits. A longer term ecosystem approach is necessary to stabilize conditions.

This is not a political position. It is an ethical requirement.

Our instrumental exploitation of the biosphere is untenable. A wider, inclusive perspective is required if homo sapiens and the biosphere are to survive in anything like their current and historic form into the near and long term future.

The biosphere and humanity are interdependent. The rights and needs of other species, insects and bacteria, trees, oceans and fresh water sources must also be considered and acted on. We are fouling our own nest, the only home we are likely to know.

The biosphere will continue to evolve with or without humanity. The biosphere will do its Darwinian work. Current life forms will evolve to meet changing requirements and new life forms will be created as the pace of climate change increases and oceans rise beyond current expectations.

Conclusion We are part of nature. We have the opportunity to act beyond our current species limited subjectivity. We have the knowledge and skills to create an ecological ethic that integrates our needs with the needs of nature. We can create meaning in a shared effort to move from anthropocentric exploitation to an ecologically shared world.

The universe is not value neutral. Many of its values are inherent in our scientific findings. There are universal laws captured initially for physics by Isaac Newtown. Newton’s work was expanded by Einstein among others along with the complex world of quantum mechanics that introduced chaos theory and uncertainty in to the scientific mix. Darwin established the overall directions of evolution that continue to take place today in response to the dangers being created by carbon pollution and short sighted anthropocentric exploitation of the natural world.

If we enter in to a partnership with the natural world, we cannot prevent climate change. We can slow carbon pollution and limit what will otherwise become a full fledged disaster for humanity and the earth as we have known if for thousands of years. Ecological ethical approaches present the opportunity to have common purpose in creating the inherent balance to preserve the earth and our place in it.

This is not a political issue. It is an issue of ethics and morality. There are many simple as well as complex solutions that will limit the ultimate impact of climate change. Our current short sighted approaches lead to ecocide. The natural

world will continue to evolve as conditions change. It is already doing so as anaerobic bacteria establish themselves in parts of the oceans that no longer have enough oxygen to support other life forms.

We are biologically tethered to the earth. We need clean air to breath, we need clean water to drink, we need uncontaminated land to till. The current pairing of climate change and increased temperatures are not sustainable. The earth’s role in providing a home for humanity is being undermined by humanity.

The preservation of the earth is a moral imperative that cuts across religion, politics and philosophy. The science is clear. The measurements of the harm of our present approach and projections are clear. As many young people around the world are pointing out, we need a revolution that will protect the earth and their futures.

Clayton Medeiros