The New Moral Code
Environmentalism in the 21st Century
by David O'Toole
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“It used to be thought that environmental protection
was against the interest of the poor. What the poor needed –
in the third world and Britain was economic and employment growth,
and these could only be retarded by excessive concern for animals,
trees, water quality and so on. We now know however that exactly
the reverse is the case. The poorest people almost always live
in the poorest environments. In the rural areas of the developing
world they have been forced onto marginal ands by the process
of enclosure, leading to deforestation, soil erosion, agricultural
failure and increasing poverty. In urban areas they die from the
diseases of water pollution and insanitary waste disposal, and
from pollution emitted by unregulated factories. Global warming
will affect the world's poor - those least able to
protect themselves against crop failures and rising sea levels
- far more severely than the more affluent.”
The above is taken from The Real World Coalition's Politics
of the Real World, which bills itself as a major statement of
public concern from over 30 of the UK's leading voluntary
and campaigning organisations. Although the above was written
seven years ago it could easily have been written yesterday; it
is typical of green, environmentalist and sustainability thinking
today. As with much of the discussion around sustainability, it
puts forward little or no justification of its stance. The authors
seem to assume that no proof or statistic need be put forward
and that the reader is already onside.
In some ways no proof, argument or evidence is needed. Although
robbed of its mass support in the political arena, itself a symptom
of a retreat from political activism in general, the need for
an environmentalist approach is taken as read. Environmentalism
has genuinely entered the mainstream; politicians of all political
persuasions describe themselves as environmentalists, businesses
and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), especially those concerned
with development, adhere to principles of sustainability, and
educational establishments teach environmentalism as an integral
part of science subjects. Environmentalism is no longer simply
a set of ideas, or a critique of the pattern of development so
far - it is the moral code of the beginning of the twenty first
century.
This worries me. Every idea should be open to continual question
and debate and it seems that that all discussion is now at an
end. What is equally worrying is the intrusive nature of the new
moralism. No aspect of daily life is free from it; I am told that
I should recycle and if I don't I am subject to criticism
from many quarters including my wife and children; I am told that
I should drive my car only if it is absolutely necessary. Gone
are the days when the aspiration for freedom of movement was seen
as healthy, rather it would be seen today as selfish and beyond
the pale; I am told that I should not eat certain foods, buy certain
brands or do a myriad of other things that are seen as ‘unfriendly’
to the environment or ‘unsustainable.’
Whatever happened to the idea of progress and a better future?
I still believe in both. The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future
(1987), defines sustainable development as “development
which meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
Implicit in this definition is the idea that the old pattern of
development could not be sustained. Is this true? Development
in the past was driven by growth and innovation. It led to new
technologies and huge improvements in living standards. To assume
that we know what the circumstances or needs of future generations
will be is mistaken and inevitably leads to the debilitating sense
that we are living on borrowed time.
Only if we assume that society will remain static can we understand
the needs of the future. The way we live today could not have
been predicted twenty years ago. The sustainability paradigm fails
to recognise this. It is a static view and thus places limits
on human ingenuity. Similarly a whole host of false assumptions
dominate environmental thought; the scale of problems is exaggerated,
the amount of resources is underestimated and spurious links are
made between areas such as green policies and profit, poverty
and environmental degradation. Those of us who want a better future
need to question these assumptions.
One example of the way that the scale of problems is consistently
overestimated is landfill. The United States, as the epitome of
the throwaway society, produces the most waste per head of any
country, yet the area required to cater for the waste produced
by it during the entire twenty first century has been calculated
as less than 18 square miles. This is less than 0.009 per cent
of the area of the country (Lomborg, 2002)
It has been argued in the past that we cannot continue our growth
due to dwindling resources. It is interesting that, even where
it has been recognised that resources such as oil have are more
plentiful than was thought in the past, the idea of limits still
dominates the discussion. In 1972 The Club of Rome produced its
seminal report Limits to Growth, probably the most influential
work of the environmental movement, which made claims about oil
reserves. However, by the time its follow-up, Factor Four, was written
in 1997 we knew of 5 times the stores of oil untapped than had
been thought to be left in the 1970s. The authors of Factor Four
readily admit this, yet still take the limits premise as read.
The misleading connections made between environmentalism and
increased profitability can be seen in the following example.
Here is a quote from an agency promoting new business start-ups.
“Businesses taking up best practice on environmental
issues can expect to see an increase in profits, according to
the Business Environmental Training Initiative. It predicts bottom-line
increases of between 1% and 4% for businesses implementing green
polices. Click
here to find out more.”
How does concern for the environment translate into extra profits?
Is it that, in a climate in which environmental concern is central,
companies must adhere to the new ethics to attract custom? Or
are there other gains to be made? Following the link reveals that
the main increase in revenue came from avoiding punitive legislation.
“However, significant numbers of respondents believed
there was a link between good practice and increased sales, reduced
operating costs, improved relationships with customers and workforce
motivation, although avoiding prosecution was viewed as the main
benefit of introducing a successful environmental policy.”
Thus the environmental policy does not contribute to the profitability
in any real sense at all. In practice it is companies that are
well organised and efficient, or that are already comfortably
profitable, that have time to establish and police environmental
policies. However, if profitable companies are the ones most likely
to establish “environmental best practice” this is
confusing cause with effect. It is not that environmental best
practice causes profitability, but that being profitable allows
for concern for the environment.
It is seen as axiomatic by many that the wealth gained during
the twentieth century has been at the expense of our overall quality
of life. In other words we may be richer because we have more
material goods but we are all poorer because we live in a poorer
environment. But the UN wrote in 1997:
"Few people realize the great advances already made.
In the past 50 years poverty has fallen more than in the previous
500. And it has been reduced in some respects in all countries"
and the World Bank wrote in 1998:
"there has been a reduction in poverty during
the last few years throughout most of southern Asia and parts
of the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America."
In an attempt to determine if this growth is at the expense of
the environment it is possible to plot figures for economic development
and pollution for all countries where these figures are known.
These figures indicate that as countries develop from extreme
poverty to medium income they pollute more and more but after
this pollution levels fall – to the level they had before
they started developing.
As I write the following are facts: more than half of sub-Saharan
Africa's 600 million people live on less than US$1 a day, more
than 28 million Africans are living with HIV/AIDS and forty per
cent of children in Africa do not go to school.
Clearly we face huge problems which, morally, we must overcome.
If environmental thought is to be put forward as a solution to
the problems of society, or if it is the code to which we must
adhere whilst overcoming these problems, then we must be sure that it
holds water.
I do not believe that it is morally conscionable that having
attained standard of living that we enjoy in the West that we
deny that level of development to others. I believe that what
the world needs, and needs urgently, is real development. I also
believe that targets for development should aim to match he standards
of the West. I also believe that almost no-one is arguing for
this.
David O'Toole, August 2003
References
Our
Common Future, [1987], report of the
World Commission on Environment and Development
Politics of the Real World, [1996], The Real World Coalition
Limits to Growth, [1972], Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers,
Bill Behrens
Factor
Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use, [1997], Ernst
Von Weizsacker, Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins
The
Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the
World, [2002], Bjorn Lomborg.
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