Shifting Paradigms: From Technocrat to Planetary Person

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Drengson, Alan
Revised paper, which was first published in Environmental Ethics 3 (1980) 221-240. It was revised and reprinted in The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology (1995), edited by Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue. North Atlantic Press, Berkeley California, pages 74-100.

In this essay I examine the interconnections between two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. I will discuss how we are moving from the technocratic paradigms to the emerging ecological paradigms of the planetary person. The dominant technocratic philosophy which now guides policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled fully for human ends and it threatens to drastically alter the integrity of the planet’s ecosystems. In contrast, the organic, planetary person paradigm conceptualizes intrinsic value in all beings. Deep ecology movement principles give priority to community and ecosystem integrity and help to guide the design and applications of technology according to principles which follow from ecological understanding. I will describe this shift in paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions.

DrengsonShiftingParadigms.pdf

For a Grounded Conception of Wilderness and More Wilderness on the Ground

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Cafaro, Philip
Talk given at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Berkeley, CA. March, 1999

Recently a number of influential academic environmentalists have spoken out against wilderness, most prominently William Cronon and Baird Callicott. This is odd, given that these writers seem to support two cornerstone positions of environmentalism as it has developed over the past twenty years. First, the view articulated within environmental ethics that wild, nonhuman nature, or at least some parts of it, has intrinsic or inherent value. Second, the understanding developed within conservation biology that we have entered a period of massive anthropogenic biodiversity loss and that landscape-level habitat preservation is essential for combating this. I argue here that Cronon and Callicott are wrong. In fact, an ethics of respect for nonhuman nature and an informed, scientific understanding of what is necessary to preserve it do strongly support increased wilderness preservation.

CafaroWilderness.pdf

Thoreau’s Virtue Ethics in Walden

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Cafaro, Philip
The Concord Saunterer (Journal of the Thoreau Society) 8 (2000), pages 23-47

I believe the time has come to appreciate Thoreau as an ethical philosopher. Two recent changes within academic philosophy should pave the way for such an appreciation. First, the rise of environmental ethics; second, the recent rise of virtue ethics as an alternative or supplement to mainstream Kantianism and utilitarianism. Today, the ethical issues Thoreau’s writings address have finally been recognized as real philosophical issues. Because he wrestled with fundamental problems and linked particular ethical judgments to a plausible general framework, philosophers can recognize Thoreau as one of their own. Because he lived his ethical truths and demanded that we live ours, professional philosophers and general readers are equally challenged by his words.

CafaroThoreausVirtueEthics.pdf

The Transformation from a Land Based to a Fossil Fuel Based Energy System. The Case of Austria 1800-2000.

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Krausmann, Fridolin
Presentation at the Gordon Research Conference on Industrial Ecology. 01-06 August 2004, Oxford, UK.

This contribution provides a socio-ecological and empirically founded perspective on the period of industrialization, focussing on the biophysical characteristics of this process. The paper explores the physical limits of growth under the conditions of the agrarian socio-ecological regime where the availability of energy was based on biomass and land, and explores the mechanisms and strategies which allowed overcoming these limits during two centuries of industrialization. In this perspective, industrialization appears as a process of a stepwise decoupling of energy provision from the use of land and labour, based on a gradual shift towards the exploitation of natural stocks rather than tapping renewable energy flows. Austria, one of the European late comers, serves as empirical case study for an analysis of changes in the socio-economic use of energy, materials and land since the early 19th century. This analysis provides insights into the characteristics of the transformation of the agrarian socio-ecological regime and the fundamental changes in social metabolism and human interference with natural systems triggered by this process.

KrausmannTransformationLandToFossil.pdf

Environmental Virtue Ethics: Half the Truth but Dangerous as a Whole

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Rolston, Holmes III
Cafaro, P., Sandler, R. (eds.) (2004): Environmental Virtue Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pages 61-78

Rolston warns against casting environmental virtue in too fundamental a role in environmental ethics. Although environmental virtue is an intrinsically good state, valuable to its possessor, and enables attunement to “the flow of nature,” we must not identify human virtue or excellence as the source of natural value. Natural entities do not derive their value from their relationship to human virtue und flourishing; nature and natural entities have value in themselves. Indeed, environmental virtue is only intelligibly as a responsiveness to the independent value of nature. After all, it is hard to gain much excellence of character from appreciating an otherwise worthless thing. The author finds environmental virtue ethics dangerous to the extent that its focus on human flourishing distracts us from the intrinsic value of natural entities that makes environmental virtue possible. Our deeper ethical achievement needs to focus on values as intrinsic achievement in wild nature. These virtues within us need to attend to values without us.

RolstonEnvironmentalVirtueEthics.pdf