Endings

Now that my Philosophy and the Environment course is over, it may be time to shut this blog down. Few people visited here regularly, and even fewer are likely to do so from now on. That's the reason I didn't post on the Bali conference, which in any case was probably more too little, too late to save the planet -- or, at least, to save human civilization. There will of course be a huge upside to the coming catastrophe. Certainly pigs and bees will be better off once we're gone. Worst-case scenario: a few bands of savages will survive in the ruins, to start the whole mess over again. Best-case scenario: Gerda kisses the reindeer.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

What do I think?

I've been asked where I stand on the issue(s) of animal rights and environmental ethics. Those interested can consult my essay "Animal Rights and Human Needs", Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 249-264 -- or can request a pdf version by e-mailing me at amt [at] uvic.ca .

Final exam

The final exam in Philosophy and the Environment is scheduled for Monday, December 17 at 9 a.m. in the university Gymnasium. The exam is worth 40% of the course grade. Students will have to answer, without notes, any two of the following three questions:

(1) Is animal liberation, whether in its utilitarian or rights form, compatible with an ethical concern for ecological wholes (such as species or ecosystems)?

(2) Is a feminist perspective required for an adequate environmental ethic?

(3) Is capitalism ecologically sustainable?

In each case the topic is to be discussed with reference to some of the arguments covered in the course; you are to support your position with cogent reasons, and consider, and reply to, one or more significant objections to your position.

William Morris

William Morris (1834-1896) was a poet, novelist, designer, and a founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, to which the Maltwood Gallery at the University of Victoria has a historical tie. In his later years Morris became a committed political activist. Although influenced by Karl Marx, whose daughter Eleanor was a colleague of his in the Socialist League, Morris's unique vision of a post-industrial future reflected his concern for preserving a flourishing natural environment. He articulated his view of the intimate connections among art, work, and nature in essays and lectures, and in his utopian novel, News from Nowhere.

Eat your words

A friend pointed me to this website where you can have fun improving your vocabulary and feed the hungry at the same time.

Intelligence quotient

In my opinion Intelligence is the best series on television. It's a complex, gripping, and ongoing story with multiple plot lines and believable characters of varying shades of grey -- and it's set in Vancouver. The last two episodes of the season will air back-to-back on Monday, December 10 beginning at 8 p.m. It's like the electric car: people who know about it love it, but higher powers may be trying to kill it. Spread the word.

Chimps outperform university students

Given their superior memory skills, I wonder whether chimpanzees would do better at recalling the details of the land ethic. And anyone familiar with John Locke's theory of personal identity must wonder whether this means that individual chimpanzees actually exist over time more consistently than humans do.

Philosophy for kids

The multi-talented Tiffany Poirier, who not so long ago was a philosophy student at the University of Victoria, has a piece in The Tyee on the benefits of teaching philosophy to children. Her book, Q Is for Question: A Philosophy ABC, is due out in 2008.

You bet your life!

What's the worst that could happen?

Burj Dubai

This monster is already taller than the CN Tower and it's still growing. With the planet reeling from human excess, the rich are competing to put the peak into Peak Oil. When the crash comes, they may be piqued.

Australia votes for change

The government of John Howard, a close ally of U.S. president Bush, has been swept from office in the Australian general election. The new prime minister will be Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, who has pledged to sign the Kyoto Treaty and withdraw Australian combat troops from Iraq.

Meanwhile, at a Commonwealth summit in Uganda, Canada has blocked a call for binding targets for greenhouse-gas emissions by developed nations. Canada objected to the fact that other nations, particularly India, would have been exempt.

Sick

They're just animals.

Japan plans whale massacre

A Japanese whaling fleet plans to kill a thousand whales, including 50 humpbacks, in the South Pacific. Japan kills whales under the pretence of conducting scientific research. Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand says the Japanese should stay home.

1844

Victoria, in the seventh year of her reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, turned 25 – on May 24, of course.

At his home in Kent, Charles Darwin was writing a draft essay on his theory of evolution by natural selection, which he had not yet revealed to anyone.

Across the ocean, Abraham Lincoln, a successful lawyer with a young family, who had been born on the same day in 1809 as Darwin, bought a house in Springfield, Illinois.

To the east, on the other side of the Great Lakes, a promising young lawyer, John A. Macdonald, was elected to represent the town of Kingston in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada.

In the Red River Settlement, near modern-day Winnipeg, Louis Riel was born.

In Prussia, near Leipzig, Friedrich Nietzsche was born.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, published Rambles in Germany and Italy, a two-volume work of travel writing.

In Paris, a radical young journalist named Karl Marx was writing what became known as his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. “The sun is the object of the plant – ”, he wrote, “an indispensable object to it, confirming its life – just as the plant is an object for the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun’s objective essential power.”

J. M. W. Turner’s paintings were filled with the sun’s light. His 1844 work Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway celebrates the fusion of technology and nature, and the headlong rush into the future.

Doomsday vault

In what should only be a science-fiction scenario but unfortunately isn't, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, backed by the Norwegian government and the Gates Foundation, has constructed a "doomsday vault" on an island in the Svalbard archipelago, not far from the North Pole. The vault will be used to store frozen seeds from about 1.5 million types of crops, in case of natural and/or human-made disasters, including climate change, that may threaten the world's food resources. Where will you get your food on Doomsday?

What's the poop?

For decades debate has raged (or stewed) over what kind of sewage treatment the Victoria area needs. On the one side are those, including Mr. Floatie and the Georgia Strait Alliance, who say Victoria is an environmental delinquent and that it is disgraceful that the capital district continues to pump its raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On the other side are the sceptics, including former local M.P. and federal Minister of the Environment David Anderson, who believe that building treatment plants could be a massive waste of money. For example, the association Responsible Sewage Treatment Victoria argues that "the most appropriate and responsible sewage treatment method for Victoria is the existing natural treatment system (NTS) with improved source controls and infrastructure upgrading." A letter with 92 signatures, published in the Times-Colonist on November 1, included the following:

The evidence indicates that the worst problem with the existing liquid waste disposal system is the continued failure to address storm drain overflows. Last January, for example, heavy rains resulted in raw unscreened sewage being discharged from storm drain outfalls along the coastline over 40 times.

The Ministry of Environment has mandated sewage treatment, at an estimated cost of $1.1 billion dollars. Yet the currently recommended plan submitted to the Minister would not fix the storm drain problem. Nor would it enhance the already exemplary source control program (which stops many toxic chemicals from ever going down the drain). The proposed treatment expenditure is huge: $1.1 billion is equivalent to $500-700 per year, per average household, in the core area for the next 50 years. The cost is similar to the annual cost per Victoria household of the entire City of Victoria Police Department.

Evidence-based policy requires evidence. Open government requires that citizens be informed. With these requirements in mind, we assert that the Ministry of Environment has a duty to commission and publish an independent, objective, cost-benefit study of the proposed land-based treatment option.

Accept no substitutes

Technological optimists like Julian Simon and Jan Narveson have argued that there are no real shortages of natural resources, since recycling, more efficient use, and the substitution of new materials and energy sources for old ones will provide us with the services we desire. James Howard Kunstler isn't buying that line. As a result, he foresees society undergoing radical changes in the coming decades.

Project Tiger

The National Tiger Conservation Authority, former Project Tiger, reports a serious decline in India's tiger population. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has responded by approving the creation of a "tiger protection force".

The majority of tigers that disappear in India - and other countries - are killed either by poachers supplying body parts to the lucrative traditional Chinese medicine market or by farmers and villagers who have to compete with the tigers for the same habitat.

The report also recommended speeding up the relocation of villages from within tiger reserves, filling empty park ranger posts and laying out "eco-tourism" guidelines to benefit local populations.

More profitable stupidity

Who would've thunk it? Indonesia is one of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases, thanks to the deliberate destruction of its peatlands in order to produce palm oil. Big Western companies are up to their necks in the business, of course, and we're all implicated.

1917 + 90

It's ninety years since the Russian Revolution, an event that shook the world.

What goes around

...comes around. Canada enthusiastically exports asbestos, the deadly, cancer-causing insulating material, to "developing" nations. There's nothing like a good profit to override moral scruples. But Thetford Mines, the Quebec town at the centre of the asbestos-mining industry, is severely contaminated and its residents must choose between their their livelihoods and their lives. Labour unions, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the World Health Organization are calling for a ban on the production and export of asbestos.

Pirates for justice

Vigilante justice on the high seas: The New Yorker has a long article on the fight by Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to save whales and other creatures of the world's oceans, by any means necessary.

“Monkey-wrench a bulldozer and they will call you a vandal. Spike a tree and they will call you a terrorist. Liberate a coyote from a trap and they will call you a thief. Yet if a human destroys the wonders of creation, the beauty of the natural world, then anthropocentric society calls such people loggers, miners, developers, engineers, and businessmen.”
~ Paul Watson

The right to silence

Public spaces are increasingly being degraded by unwanted noise, including people chattering loudly on cellphones. Some vigilantes are striking back.

We$t coa$t for $ale

"If this goes ahead what quality of life are we going to have? Forty-five kilometers of urban sprawl from Sooke to Port Renfrew?" That was Vicki Husband yesterday, responding to a plan by Western Forest Products to sell ocean-front land to developers. B.C.'s minister of forests says the sale of 28,000 hectares of temperate rain forest is a done deal. Environmentalists are organizing to fight the plan anyway.

Biodiversity BC

Biodiversity BC is a partnership of government and non-government organizations that aims to conserve biodiversity in British Columbia through developing and implementing a Biodiversity Action Plan.

Carbon tax

Carole Taylor, B.C.'s Minister of Finance, says the provincial government is considering introducing a carbon tax to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. This follows a letter last month from professors at B.C.s four universities calling for such a tax.

State of the planet

The UN has released its 2007 Global Environment Outlook report. The BBC has graphics and a link to the full report.

Oil madness

It's mud, sweat, and tears in Fort McMurray, and the environment be damned.

Maude Barlow in Victoria

Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians will be speaking this evening at the Da Vinci Hall Centre, 195 Bay Street, at 6:30 p.m. She is on a tour promoting her book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. The Tyee has an interview with her here.

Bad for your health

Meat, alcohol, and obesity contribute significantly to the risk of getting cancer.

And Gap Kids may endanger the health of Indian children.

Death by biofuel

The Guardian notes that 25 primate species are about to disappear. Habitat destruction is a major factor, according to a recent study.

The report follows assessments in 2000, 2002 and 2004. "Overall the problems are increasing," said Eckhard Heymann at the German Primate Centre in Goettingen, one of the report's authors. Common problems are habitat loss due to logging for timber or oil and mineral extraction, plus bushmeat hunting. The two issues are related because roads cut through tropical forests for logging trucks help give hunters easier routes to wildlife. "Every additional access to remove areas increases the access to hunters," Dr Heymann added.

Another problem is habitat destruction to make space for biofuel plantations such as oil palm. Developed economies such as the US and Europe are pledging to use more sustainable energy sources to combat climate change, but this is having a knock-on effect on tropical wildlife. "It is creating a huge market and now in several countries politicians are thinking of converting tropical forest areas to palm plantations," he said.

This particularly affects orang-utan populations. Although they still number in the low thousands, they are disappearing as a faster rate than any other primate species.

One organization trying to stop us killing off our relatives is the Jane Goodall Institute.

Malthus

Darwin's reading of An Essay on the Principle of Population, by Thomas Malthus, played a key role in his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Malthus's model of exponential growth applied to human society has always been controversial. Albert Bartlett explains the implications of exponential growth using the arithmetic of the "rule of 70".

More drought

Australia is running out of water.

Cowichan River threatened by warming

Climate change is already affecting one of Vancouver Island's principal salmon rivers.

Awake and Dreaming

Kit Pearson reads from Awake and Dreaming in front of the angel in Ross Bay Cemetery.

When smart people say stupid things

James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, has put his foot in his mouth and landed himself in hot water.

Drought

The U.S. Southwest is running out of water.

The U.S. Southeast is running out of water.

Meanwhile, oil hit a record price of $88 U.S. a barrel today. But don't complain -- in years to come, that will seem very cheap.

Update, Oct. 18: Oil hit $90 U.S. a barrel today. $88 a barrel? Those were the good old days.

Nobel Peace Prize

This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to Al Gore and to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They have been honoured for their roles in raising awareness of climate change, which the Nobel committee in Norway views as an important security issue facing humankind. Canadian Inuit Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a prominent activist and spokesperson on behalf of aboriginal people confronting Arctic warming, had been another leading nominee for the prize.

Bjorn Lomborg is not impressed with Gore's win.

Sceptical about Bjorn

Bjorn Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist, has published a new book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming. In it, he argues that there are more immediate concerns that we should focus our attention on: malaria, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, drinking water, and so on. In The Globe and Mail (Sept. 29), Alanna Mitchell ripped into Lomborg with a review titled "The Pollyanna of Global Warming", calling his book "deeply dissatisfying, ignorant and shallow".

In high-school biology class, we used to do an experiment with fruit flies. You put flies and food in a jar, screw the top on tight and wait to see what happens as the flies reproduce like mad. The goal is to see at what point the limits of the jar - air, food, space - begin to affect the ability of the fruit flies to exist. At some point, the jar becomes inhospitable and the flies die en masse. If Bjorn Lomborg ... were to write up that high-school experiment, he would focus on the point just before the flies began to hit the limits. He would wax on about how the population of flies had never been stronger, trot out statistics to show how astoundingly well the population had reproduced over time, and gush boyishly about the excellent living conditions in the jar. ... Given those facts, examined at that specific point in the arc of the experiment, he would have drawn the correct conclusions. But he would have missed the facts that the food supply was getting low, that the air was becoming fouled and that fruit-fly catastrophe loomed. In other words, he would be correct on carefully selected points of fact, but fatally incorrect about the larger picture, or the meaning of the information he was looking at.

Spiked

Spiked is a free-market, pro-technology website that has little use for the green movement. Oddly, some of its members migrated to their present views from the (apparently) radical left.

How bad is it?

Some scientists are so worried about climate change that they are proposing massive geo-engineering projects as possible solutions.

Meanwhile, we humans continue to kill off our last remaining close relatives. Perhaps this isn't surprising, given that we may have been responsible for exterminating our Neanderthal kin 30,000 years ago.

Is the sun causing global warming?

Evidence of warming on Mars and other bodies in the solar system has led to the claim that it is the sun, rather than human activity, that is driving global warming on Earth. The alternative, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson suggests, is to believe that "Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle."

But scientists say that solar radiation output has actually been declining in recent years, and attribute warming on Mars to other factors.

Which animals feel pain?

In humans, nocioceptors -- neurons specialized for sensing noxious stimuli -- are connected to a central nervous system, and the resulting signals are processed in the brain. ...the human nocioceptive system also includes endogenous opiods, or endorphins, which provide the brain with its natural "pain-killing" ability. ... If we want to know whether it is reasonable to believe that a particular kind of animal is capable of feeling pain, we may ask: Are there nocioceptors present? Are they connected to a central nervous system? What happens in that nervous system to the signals from the nocioceptors? And are there endogenous opiods? In our present state of understanding, this sort of information, together with the obvious behavioral signs of distress, is the best evidence we can have that an animal is capable of feeling pain.

-- James Rachels, "Drawing Lines", in Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum (eds.), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

Cell phone warning

The Green Party is calling upon the federal government to warn Canadians of the potential danger posed by radiation from cell phones and wireless networks. (The global village may be hazardous to your health.)

Sputnik

Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first artificial satellite. The event was a propaganda victory for the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and marked the start of the so-called "space race". But Sputnik also paved the way for communications satellites, which have helped to spin the increasingly interconnected, participatory web of human interaction that Marshall McLuhan called "the global village".

Rats!

One dam thing leads to another.

Carl Cohen and marginal cases

Anyone who wishes to include all human beings within the moral community while excluding all non-humans is faced with a problem. Whatever standard one chooses as the criterion for admission to the moral community -- rationality, moral agency, autonomy, ability to communicate, emotion, the ability to feel pain -- many humans score no higher, and some score lower, than some animals. Because of this overlap, it appears that to be logically consistent one must either exclude some humans from the moral community or else admit some non-humans. This is called the argument from marginal cases.

One response to the argument from marginal cases is what has been called the argument from species normality. This has been advanced by Tibor Machan, who says that a broken chair may not be good for sitting on, but it is still a chair and not a monkey or a palm tree. In other words, humans who are deficient in some key respect are nevertheless members of the human species and ought to be treated the same way as other members of their species. Perhaps the best-known defender of this position is Carl Cohen, in his article "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research" and in his slugfest with Tom Regan in The Animal Rights Debate. Cohen says that while moral agency is key to membership in the moral community, this standard is not a test to be administered on an individual basis, but applies to all who are of the same kind. Humans are the kind of beings who have moral agency.

Nathan Nobis argues that Cohen's position has absurd and contradictory implications. David Graham takes issue with Tibor Machan.

Dihydrogen monoxide warning

China is running out of water.

Hard to swallow?

Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma has engendered much buzz and admiration. Pollan inquires into the origins of the food that Americans consume and suggests that a switch to a more ethical regime is in order. Now in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, B. R. Myers argues that for gourmets (gourmands?) like Pollan, the pleasures of the palate trump any serious moral concern for the treatment of animals.

Everything is connected

In August the military dictatorship of Burma imposed steep price increases for fuel. Students protested. Then this month thousands of Buddhist monks took to the streets, calling for democracy, and sparking mass demonstrations. Now the military, which is supported by China and Russia (oil and gas, anyone?) and has brutally suppressed opposition in the past, may crack down again. Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and leader of Burma's democracy movement, has been under house arrest for many years. In Norway a small group of exiles operates the Democratic Voice of Burma website.

Klein versus Gore

Naomi Klein will be speaking at the Alix Goolden Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 6. She's on tour, promoting her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Tickets, if any are left, are only $10 each from Bolen Books, and will get you $5 off the cover price of the book. That's a much better deal than $200+ per seat for Al Gore at the Conference Centre this Saturday -- even if that does include tea at the Empress.

Regan on respect and doing harm

Tom Regan's book The Case for Animal Rights is 400 pages of closely reasoned argument. A synopsis can be found in the article "The Case for Animal Rights" (see column at left). Regan argues that the criterion for having the right to be treated with respect is being the subject-of-a-life. What is that?

To be the subject-of-a-life, in the sense in which this expression will be used, involves more than merely being alive and more than merely being conscious. ...individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else's interests. (p. 243)

The right to be treated with respect implies the prima facie right not to be harmed by moral agents. But sometimes rights conflict and someone's right not to be harmed must be overridden. Apart from the obvious cases of acting in self-defence and punishing the guilty, Regan proposes two main principles for deciding cases of conflicting rights.

The miniride (minimize overriding) principle:

Special considerations aside, when we must choose between overriding the rights of many who are innocent or the rights of few who are innocent, and when each affected individual will be harmed in a prima facie comparable way, then we ought to choose to override the rights of the few in preference to overriding the rights of the many. (p. 305)

The worse-off principle:

Special considerations aside, when we must decide to override the rights of the many or the rights of the few who are innocent, and when the harm faced by the few would make them worse-off than any of the many would be if any other option were chosen, then we ought to override the rights of the many. (p. 308)

Go figure

Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight; someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It’s strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former. How removed from the screaming crowd around the dog pit is the laughing group around the summer steak barbecue?

So asked Gary Francione in a piece on Michael Vick that attracted some attention. People's attitudes toward animals are full of inconsistencies. But is it inconsistent for a vegetarian to support vivisection (experimentation that harms animals)? Not according to the author of "Confessions of a vegetarian vivisector".

The Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, argues that the end of cheap oil will soon force radical changes in our lives. The suburbs and the suburban way of life will be toast. Cities will of necessity become smaller, and will rely more on waterways and ports for the delivery of goods. The rail networks will have to be rebuilt and upgraded. Overall, however, life will become intensely local, and urban centres that do not have access to locally produced food will be in trouble. It’s madness, says Kunstler, to construct buildings more than seven stories high. With power outages likely to be fairly common, living on the 18th floor of a building will not be a good idea.

Kunstler rejects the idea that technological innovation will enable us to overcome the crisis with little disruption of our comfortable way of life. Technology ≠ Power, he says. A jumbo jet can’t be fuelled with software. (He says that the young millionaire nerds at Google headquarters to whom he talked just didn’t grasp this elementary fact.) He doesn’t believe that alternative energy sources like wind or solar power – or even nuclear power – can be adequate replacements for oil and gas. And he utterly rejects claims that the Alberta Tar Sands and its ilk can provide enough recoverable oil to significantly postpone the arrival of the Long Emergency. He says that people often ask him whether he can give them any hope, but he can’t do that. The only hope there can be is what comes from getting up off your rear end and doing something about the current state of affairs.

Here's Kunstler's acerbic commentary on Alan Greenspan and the Iraq War.

Battle at Kruger

Darwin speculated that the origin of the moral sense is to be found in feelings that humans share with other social animals, and that these feelings are naturally selected for by evolution. Creatures that sympathize with, and aid, others of their group have a better collective chance of surviving. Here's a remarkable video of buffalo coming to the aid of one of their youngsters attacked by lions.
Warning: violence and South African accents.

Meanwhile, there's a bumper potato harvest in Greenland.

Blood for oil

Alan Greenspan, recently retired chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, admits that (surprise, surprise) the Iraq War is largely about oil. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran seem headed for a showdown. What has all this got to do with the environment? Everything.

Suicide food

This is an example of "suicide food": a happy animal urging you to "kill me and eat me, please". As you can see from this site dedicated to suicide food, such images are quite common. I took the above photo several years ago here in Victoria, at the corner of Fort and Blanshard. The place used to be "The Cultured Cow", but is now a Starbucks (what else?). This photo (in black and white) has been used by Carol J. Adams in her book The Pornography of Meat. Adams is an ecofeminist who is interested in the way that women have culturally been linked with nature, and in particular with non-human animals. Her best known work is The Sexual Politics of Meat.

Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, has now published The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. A short promo film for the book can be viewed at Klein's website. And The Guardian is hosting a series of extracts and reviews.

In memoriam

It is unfortunate to have to begin with the news that Alex, the African Grey parrot and well-known friend of Dr. Irene Pepperberg, has died at the age of 31. No one familiar with Alex is likely to use the term "bird brain" in the usual derogatory way.