Environmental Ethics Position Paper

Environmental Ethos CHANGING OUR DEFINITION OF ETHICS

Sienna Scheid MAY 2014

Quintessential to every philosophy is an underlying current of the spirit of culture. Greeks believed that culture and society were the product of a collective mindset, one with “character” and “disposition.” They coined this idea of dominant communal assumption and spirit ethos. Through time the idea was stretched and fitted into our common understanding of ethics. Our ethics do happen to reflect a collective mindset, although we aim to categorize and structure our morals and values. And now that we have entered an age of struggling to define our exact moral principles, we must adopt a more ethos oriented mind frame to tackle the ethical hurdles we encounter. Environmental ethics is an ethos. Currently, our general attitude – our collective character – towards the environment is one of disinterest verging on disdain. The goals of environmental ethics stem from altruism and heartfelt concern, as well as personal preservation. But they also fountain from reason and logical arguments, and many philosophers have come to the conclusion that it makes sense to protect animals, land, and humans. The idea is to convince society that our ethos is incomplete without environmental ethics. Food, Inc. is a sound argument for doing just that. The documentary explores the vast implications of the U.S.’s eating habits. Even more importantly, it reveals the ethical crossroads of the massive system. The sheer scale of the elaborate and backwards way food is made available to us is enough to leave anyone impressed. More likely than not, it will make you a little disgusted, affronted, and rebellious. I feel like I’ve been the sucker of a big joke, but even stronger is my contempt for the overall injustice of the system. The appalling treatment of animals, people, land, and – as it comes down to it – myself is perhaps the most important take-away from the documentary.

Environmental Ethics Overview Peter Singer, a provocative and influential animal rights activist, said, “when we think of humans as no more than a small sub-group of all the beings that inhabit our planet that we may realize that in elevating our own species we are at the same time lowering the relative status of all other species.” Extension of ethics to animals is a major piece of the modern environmental ethics movement. The argument for their inclusion in our “moral circle” often stems from the recognition that you don’t need to possess any ability to reason to

deserve moral treatment. This case is often made by comparing the relatively low cognitive functionality of infants and persons with mental disabilities to highly intelligent animals. The argument being: “should persons of extremely low mental capacity deserve more rights than animals of surpassing mental capacity?” Philosophers have come to the conclusion that two conditions should be sufficient enough to earn a being the right to be treated ethically. These conditions are a) the ability to suffer (sentience), and b) the ability to value one’s life. This understanding often requires that mammals and many other species be granted at least some ethical consideration based on their obvious ability to fulfill both conditions. Oddly enough, ethical philosopher Aldo Leopold also considered ancient Greece when contemplating his ethical identity. He comes to the conclusion that “during the three thousand years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have been extended to many fields of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages in those judged by expediency only.” Leopold was one of the first to extend the “fields of conduct” to include the land. He introduced a holistic management style and forever changed how land is regarded. He argued that because each member of community is highly interdependent on the overall health and integrity of the system, it makes little sense to regard each component individually. An ecosystem often functions like a large organism. Thus, if sentient beings depend on the land, why should land itself not earn its own spot in the moral circle? Justice is the final yet integral component of environmental ethics. Perhaps it is counterintuitive that injustice can be perpetrated using the environment as a medium, yet it happens daily. The means of environmental injustice are far and wide, but follow a common story. This story often begins with a minority or underprivileged group being subjected to some toxic imposition – like waste treatment plants, formaldehyde factories, etc. - against their will. This imposition is usually inadvertent, or at least not intentional. Professor Robert Bullard coined this behavior “institutional racism;” racism pervasive through a system yet without any individual or group directly at blame. It is difficult to approach this type of injustice because the legal system often requires an “intent” to allow for any successful prosecution.

In The Grass Each of these issues – animal rights, land ethic, and environmental justice - are directly addressed in Food, Inc. A specifically potent chapter, In The Grass, is where I’ll focus most of my attention. This segment explores organic farming and environmental justice in the meat industry. The film reveals that the pervasive sentiment towards animals is a human-commodity relationship. Peter Singer summarizes it quite succinctly: “for the great majority of human beings, especially in urban, industrialized societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species is at meal times: we eat them.” To quote one farmer, “we’re not producing chickens, we’re producing food.” In fact, the phrases such as “growing chickens” and “mass production” have become common in agricultural talk. Agriculture is now regarded as a science. We’re no longer “raising” or “tending” livestock. This mentality leads to a breakdown in our relationship with other species. In fact, the discrepancy is so large that Singer developed a term for the perceived gap: speciesism - not unlike racism. Industrial farming indeed lacks ethics. For example, animals in feed lots stand ankle deep in their own manure every day. (Kenner, 2008) It’s difficult to ignore that something is fundamentally wrong here. Undoubtedly these animals lead unpleasant lives at best. Singer argues that “if a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration.” Fortunately, not all animals are being subjected to an obvious lack in ethical treatment. Joel Salatin, an organic farmer, provides a glimpse into a lifestyle in which livestock are treated as ethically as possible. His animals are given ample space, natural – often homegrown – feed, and allowed to mature as nature intended (sans growth hormones, etc.). He does this not because it is profitable, but because it is moral. Similarly, Salatin looks to treat his land with due respect. His idea: considering “the environmental costs, societal costs, health costs – the industrial food is not honest food.” He feels it is his responsibility to service humans, animals, and his land in a respectable manner. But there’s more to this idea. Salatin uses crop rotation, controls his cattle’s ranging to prevent overgrazing, and uses what has been provided naturally to maintain the health of the land. On the other hand, most often “the land ethic is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.” (Leopold, 1949) The modern system runs inside out. Corn, for

example, grown to feed cows is fertilized not by their manure, but by a potent mix of chemicals which is often over applied and runs off into major waterways, leading to massive algal blooms and extensive fish dieoff. The corn is processed into feed, trucked to the cattle lots and given to the animals. This process requires twice the land – a plot to grow corn and one to house the cows. The result is massive ecological disasters and corn doesn’t even interact well with the cow’s digestion. On the other hand, cows could be allowed to live on a plot of land along with their natural diet of grass and clover, fertilize their own food, and cut out millions of dollars and environmental problems along the way. The modern system does not agree with Aldo’s theory of a biotic pyramid – or a cyclical and holistic ecosystem. It also follows Gary Varner’s tragedy of the commons in that we use public reservoirs (the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere) to extract what we want and dump what we do not. Few benefit, yet we all pay the environmental price. Some people pay a higher environmental price than others. Smithfield Hog Processing Plant is the largest slaughterhouse in the world. It is located in an economically depressed region in North Carolina. The workers are poor whites, blacks, and Hispanics. One worker described Smithfield’s employee relations, saying, “They have the same mentality towards the workers as they do towards the hogs.” Eduardo Peña, a union organizer in the area, further augmented this claim, saying, “Smithfield has mastered picking a work force they can exploit.” In this we find a classic example of institutionalized racism. There was no one person or group that decided to exploit the poor and subject them to the industry and all its waste. It happened by design; the company is structured to discriminate. Robert Bullard explains this by saying, “The current system has institutionalized unequal enforcement of safety precautions; traded human health for profit; placed the burden of proof on the victims and not the polluting industry; … and failed to develop pollution prevention as the overarching strategy.” In considering Rawls’s philosophies, the case of environmental injustice becomes even more despicable. He believes that our privileges (or lack thereof) are due to birth thus complete luck. In other words, the people subjected to mistreatment by Smithfield and other organizations are being persecuted for no other reason than they were born a minority and/or impoverished.

Consulo There are seemingly insurmountable problems within the food production industry. But ignoring these issues will only serve to fuel them. In fact, turning a blind eye changes our relationship with animals, the land, and people – most often for the worse. I quite like the way Joel Salatin expressed the dangers of our mentality. He said that “a culture that just views a pig as a pile of protoplasmic intimate structure that can be manipulated by whatever creative clever design a human can foist on that critter will probably view individuals within its community and other cultures in the community of nations with the same type of disdain and disrespect and controlling type mentality.” If the risk of the disintegration of our ethos isn’t enough to spark a desire to change, I don’t know what is. For if we do not act, do not assume responsibility for our commons and the health and wellbeing of our neighbors, how can we function with cohesion and peace? Many great philosophers have been calling us to action. They have presented nearly irrefutable arguments towards regarding all living things with compassion and equality. We stand in a delicate balance of harmony and utter collapse. Now is the time to opt for a system of ethics which functions not unlike natural ecosystems – that is, with harmony, connectivity, and substantiality. Now is the time for an environmental ethos.

References Bullard, R. D. (2005). Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first Century. In R. D. Bullard, The Quest For Environmental Justice (pp. 19-34). Sierra Club Books. Kenner, R. (Director). (2008). Food, Inc. [Motion Picture]. Leopold, A. (1949). A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press, Inc. . Singer, P. (n.d.). All Animals Are Equal. In P. Singer, Animal Liberation (pp. 103-115). Varner, G. E. (1995). Can Animal Rights Activists Be Environmentalists. In D. M. Embree, Environmental Ethics and Environmental Activism (pp. 169-201). Rowman & Littlefield.