Opinion Editorial | |
"Ecosystem Health" Common GroundH. Sterling BurnettH. Sterling Burnett is an environmental policy analyst with the National Center for Policy Analysis, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education institute. |
I'm still hoping, perhaps foolishly, that traditional environmentalists
(by that I mean the typical Audubon or Sierra Club member) will find common
ground with the classical liberals who call themselves free market environmentalists.
As a student of philosophy, I see areas where the two groups ought to be
close together. Whether this linkage will ever materialize, I don't know.
But here's the argument. For years, traditional environmentalists have recognized the ineffectiveness
of many government policies. More recently, they have admitted a role for
property rights and markets by such things as undertaking "debt for
nature" swaps, bidding for timber contracts, and arguing for an end
to subsidized resource use. In actions at least, there is some common ground
with free market environmentalists. It seems to me that both camps can agree that the government has a duty
to prevent environmental changes that violate basic individual rights. For
example, when people's actions, such as polluting a river, cause wrongful
harms to downstream users, the law should intervene. Traditional environmentalists
see this as fair, and classical liberals see this as protecting rights. Beyond protection of rights lie morally right actions. Environmentalists
consider actions toward the environment as either morally right or wrong
because they either protect or harm the health of ecosystems. Arguably,
environmentalists have a role to play in informing individuals of morally
right actions. Okay, say the classical liberals. But since such actions go above and
beyond simple respect for individual rights, they must involve the exercise
of moral judgment and choice. Surely actions performed or prevented at gunpoint
or under threat of criminal sanction do not involve moral choice. Many environmentalists propose coercive pressure or restraint because
they fear that if we rely solely on moral persuasion or positive incentives
to protect the environment, some people will continue to purposefully destroy
it. But at this point we enter the realm of individual preferences and personal
values. Environmentalists value ecosystems in minimally humanaltered conditions.
But I would argue that their preferences are on the same footing as other
preferences-say, the preference that the city of Cleveland continue to support
a football team. Certainly, governments should give such preferences no
special weight. The government should remain neutral between differing conceptions
of the good when their pursuit does not involve wrongful rights violations. This principle is especially important since there are key unanswered
questions about the very nature of the good-ecosystemic health-to be protected.
Even if one can objectively determine what constitutes an ecosystem (and
many biologists will grant that this is exceedingly difficult), doing so
does not help to define what makes an ecosystem healthy. Ecosystemic health,
like "health" per se, is a normative concept; it is necessarily
defined in relation to a goal or desired endstate. The continuance of ecosystemic
health does not exist as an objective goal of nature. Indeed, the health of our planet is always defined in relation to human
values, and humans have played a large role in the internal functioning
of many ecosystems. If ecosystems are to be maintained or restored, it will
be because humans choose to promote particular sets of environmental conditions
and humans will have a continuing role in attaining and/or maintaining those
conditions. It seems to me that classical liberals and traditional environmentalists
can agree that a minimal level of ecosystemic functioning is necessary for
human survival. For example, if science determines that human actions are,
in fact, changing the global climate in catastrophic ways (e.g., if rising
temperatures from human energy use cause a sea-level rise of three feet,
wiping out entire island nations), then government restrictions on certain
activities might be justified. Protecting some minimal level of ecosystemic
functioning is within the legitimate purview of government. But environmentalists also value ecosystems for their own sake, independently
of their role in human survival. In their view, if ecosystems are to change
they should only do so along paths created by their internal functioning.
At this level, the desires and preferences of persons concerned with the
preservation of ecosystems for their own sake must compete on an equal footing
with the desires and preferences of others, rather than be promoted by coercive
government action. Fortunately, the protection of ecosystems goods under such conditions
is not as difficult as it may seem. The large operating budgets of environmental
organizations indicate that ecosystems can compete well for people's affections
and dollars in a free society. So, there are areas of common ground between traditional environmentalists
and classical liberals. They can agree on protecting rights and on protecting
ecosystems to the extent that ecosystems are essential to human survival.
Beyond that, they should agree that the marketplace of values and ideas
is the proper forum for decisions about additional environmental protection.
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