Fragile environments: moral and ethical responsibility

Besides the problem of definition of East and West, the meaning of “moral obligation” is problematical. It leads me to emphasise the difference in meaning between morals and ethics, and argue that ethical obligation rather than moral obligation should be our priority.

I posit that moralities are overarching absolute externalities, and include such systems as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, and I agree with Bertrand Russell (in A History of Western Philosophy) that marxism is a system of belief, and thus a morality. I would go even further, however, and include the belief in capitalism as similarly a moral code.

The problem with all of these different moralities is that their absolute nature gives a possible raison d’etre for war, in that two or more opposing moral codes leave no room for discussion and disagreement is final and absolute. Ethics, on the other hand, I see as a continuous social construction that allows ethical decisions to be made not in any absolute terms of belief but rather by the use of critical thinking.

I particularly argue for ethical responsibility rather than moral responsibility because of the relationship between moral certitude and war. It has been argued that war is a catalyst of progress and a basis of human evolution, but from an environmental perspective, in the long run, war is stupid.

If we consider the environmental history of China, we see that humanity has waged what Mark Elvin (in The Retreat of the Elephants: and Environmental History of China) calls “The Three Thousand Year War” on the Chinese environment through continuous competition with and negation of the “wild”.

It is not well known but elephants roamed northern China only 3,000 years ago, and elephants have completely disappeared from China today because of humanity’s short-term struggle for power and profit through what Elvin calls “war and the logic of short-term advantage” - the advantage of human being over human being with the environment as the collateral victim. This war reached its crescendo in China in the late imperial period with the wild and the environmental “sink” so decimated that famine became rife.

We read descriptions of people resorting to eating the bark from trees and the buttocks of dead bodies. It is only with modern scientific means that China can now feed itself without such catastrophes although even now there is some discussion of an imminent environmental crisis in China.

Nevertheless, if one considers the development of thought centred on dili (the principles of the earth) and fengshui (wind and water) in traditional Chinese culture, an environmental awareness is apparent, but as Elvin points out, perceptions or beliefs that were characteristically Chinese had comparatively minimal effect on interaction between humanity and the environment in relation to the short-term struggle for power and profit.

The destruction of the environment in China is an indication of what can happen to humanity when war and short-term advantage hold sway.

Australia has a very specific environment and ecology. It is basically a desert that does not look like a desert. In fact, Cook was so fooled by first appearances that he perceived the Wollongong escarpment to be like a gentleman’s parkland. The settlers on the First Fleet soon found differently when all the plants that they had brought with them and planted in a comparatively fertile place, the present day Sydney Botanical Gardens, died in the first year through poverty of soil and lack of water.

By northern standards, such conditions should make Australia a desert but its geology has had a profound effect on life here. The Australian continental plate is inordinately thick and this thickness has allowed comparatively little renewal of the land through volcanic and plutonic action over millions of years. This stability has enabled the life force to create species that thrive in this harsh environment.

Australia has an environment unlike the power centres of the world - Eurasia and North America. Europe has what Tim Flannery calls a “weed” ecology, stemming from the comparative fertility following to the geologically recent Ice Ages.