Bioethics and the Crisis of Global Ecology

1. Bioethics and the Crisis of Global Ecology Steven H. MilesSusan Craddock was a collaborator.

2. "Anthropocene Epoch” 2000 Paul Crutzen • Greek based neologism: anthropos [human] + kainos [recent] • Global warming, depleted freshwater, species extinction and migration, ocean acidification, and environmental pollution are rapidly changing the biome to which humans belong and on which they depend. Isaac Cordal. Politicians Debating Global Warming Johannesburg 2014

3. Industrial age ~1800 Civilization ~ 10,000 years old. Holocene Epoch (11,700 years since last ice age). Terra: 4.6 Billion Years The holocene is the “.” at the end of a two kilometer long sentence about earth history.

4. Anthropocene Ethics • Issues about the effects of humans on the biosphere. • Reasoning to ground moral choices.

5. When did Anthropocene Ethics Begin? New Words? New Movements? 1st Earth Day 1970 Ecology Movement 1950s? Industrial Age 1800s Human Civilization (urbanization, burning, population growth) • “Anthropocene” • (Crutzen, 2000) • “Global Warming” • (Broeker, 1975) • “Climate Change” • (Plass, 1956) Anthropocene began before it was named. Naming recognizes that a conversation is underway.

6. God Eco-Apocalypses. Atra Hasis-Babylon. Gods punish noisy, sinful cities with famine, plague and then promise to “never again to harm the people of the land.” The earth was corrupt in God’s sight. God: “I am going to put an end to all people. ... “neither shall there anymore be a flood to destroy the earth.” Genesis 8:22 1800 BCE 1000 BCE 1700 --------------- 1100 2012 “Genesis 8:22 …‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” Inhofe: Chair Senate Enviro Comm.

7. Greece and Rome: The shift to natural disasters ~700 to 500 BCE Greece Local catastrophes caused by gods. • An earthquake in Delos where none had been ere that. Thucydides. Herodotus • Storm destroys Athenian fleet. Ashes were already falling, … a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. … You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore. • Pliny—Pompeii, Eruption of Vesuvius

8. Anthropocene Science • Global (not local) in time and location. • Scientific • Capacity to measure adverse human effects on large biosphere. • Capacity to project those effects over time. • Moral • Capacity to envision how to modify effects. Only possible in Enlightenment, Industrial age. Boyles’ gas machine.

9. Malthusianism: First Anthropocene Projection • Population grows exponentially. • Food grow arithmetically • Policy check to Decrease fertility • Or, natural check by starvation. Malthus did not graph but, if he did…. 1798

10. Extinction-George Cuvier 1795 Thomas Jefferson: “Such is the economy of nature that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct.” 1781 Cuvier • Create the new idea that created species could become extinct. • Rejected evolution. • Posited periodic catastrophes. Megatherium (sloth)

11. Mass Extinctions Glaciation ? Warming from methane bacteria in oceans, acidification of ocean

12. Marsh: Prudentialism • Effect of canals, agriculture, dams and deforestation on land, rivers, seas and aquifers. “human activities . . . act in ways ascribed to them, though our limited faculties are at present, perhaps forever, incapable of weighing their immediate, still more their ultimate, consequences. our inability to assign definite values to these causes of the disturbance of natural arrangements is not a reason for ignoring the existence of such causes in any general view of the relations between man and nature and we are never justified in assuming a force to be insignificant because its measure is unknown.”  

13. By 1900: Anthropocene Debate was Underway Theorists Scientists Discovered Relationships between industrialism and the environment including acidification of rain and ground water. Extinction Marsh: proposed principle of ‘Prudentialism’ when risks are high and evidence is suggestive but incomplete. • Malthusians • Deeply tied to racial and class biases • Counter Malthusians • Faith in progress • Lack of empiric foundation • Ungrounded extrapolations

14. The Anthropocene Triple Helix Conservationism Environmentalism 1880s 1970 1940s Apocalyptacism

15. Conservationism 1870s Urban Parks 1892 Muir: Sierra Club 1916 US Nat Park Serv “How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preserva-tion of moral and intellectual health! The discipline of the schools or of business can never impart such serenity to the mind.” • Thoreau, Journal, May 6, 1851 Twin Cities Mississippi River Gorge

16. Conservationism • Posited a morally necessary relationship between humans and the natural world. • Saw that development was displacing or destroying natural environments. • Concluded that public policies should protect and preserve those natural spaces and the species native to them. • However, saw natural spaces and corresponding threats as geographically or biologically as local and discrete rather than taking a global view.

17. Environmentalism 1940s DDTRachel Carson 1948 Air Water Pollution Control Acts 1951 Nature Conservancy DDT

18. Environmentalism • 1972 Environmentalism first applied to ecology issues. • 1973, Naess. • Deep ecology: Holistic reverence for all life. • Shallow ecology: Prioritizing ecological conservation according to anthropocentric priorities. • Environmentalism and Conservationism fused. • Even when addressing global issues (e.g., ozone hole or endangered species), did not necessarily envision catastrophic collapse of the global environment. Naess, for example, was an optimist who believed that catastrophe can be delayed or avoided with drastic public policies. Anthropocene explicitly signifies belief in an impending apocalypse.

19. Apocalyptacism • The belief that we are entering a disruptive end time. • Typically arises in a marginal religious sects. • Promulgated by charismatic leaders (limiting intrusion of contradictory voices) • Who claim esoteric knowledge that can only be interpreted by those who believe in the apocalypse. • Secular apocalypses: Nuclear Winter, Y2K, Survivalists. • To say Anthropocene is apocalyptic says nothing about the validity of the claim. • It points out that it posits an end time. • It facilitates comparison with other apocalyptic movements. Waterworld

20. Apocalyptacism Multi-factorial Club of Rome 1972 Resources Pop Food Pollution • Racial/ socio-economic bias: • (As was Malthus) • Decry population growth or inefficient burning in developing countries. • Discount high per-capita pollution of developed countries. Pop Food Binary Malthusian

21. So far, the Apocalyptics have been off. • Borlaug’s Green Revolution • Discovery of vastly more fuels and minerals. • Radical slowing of population growth rates.

22. Hardin 1968: The Tragedy of the Commons. Social Reception of Anthropocene Apocalyptic Warnings • Fundamental social/political/change is needed but society has faith in technological fixes. • Politics rejects anecdotes as unconvincing and large studies as esoteric. • Policies that restrict personal choices are seen as elitist and unnecessary infringements on personal liberties. • Pursuit of minor technical fixes delays fundamental reform as matters worsened.

23. The Anthropocene Helix Conservationism Esthetic valuing of a necessary relationship of humans with the natural world. Environmentalism Scientific understanding of causal interactions by which humans harm the natural world. 1880s… Apocalyptacism Claims for legitimacy from a scientific elite with their dire predictions and prescriptions. 1940s… 1960s…

24. The Rise and Fall of Bioethics for the Anthropocene

25. “Bioethics:” Humanistic knowledge to forge a science for sustainable medical and environmental survival. – Van Rensselaer Potter. 1970 79 Jonas Potter: • A biochemist, recoined “bioethics” grounding it on Leopold’s environmentalism. 72 Limits to Growth 70 Earth Day 69 Enviro Impact Statements 68 Tragedy of Commons 62 Silent Spring 1949 Aldo Leopold

26. Bioethics and the Biosphere 1970-1980 • Hans Jonas: (Philosopher, ethicist) • 1979 The Imperative of Responsibility. Public policy must look to the future and be shaped to reflect “solidarity with the organic world” and “the permanence of genuine human life.” • Theologians: (e.g., H. Richard Niebuhr, James Gustafson, Paul Ramsey) bioethics has two foundations: • Social solidarity (Justice, community, respect, etc.) • Human responsibility for the natural world. • By 1980, “Bioethics” was appropriated by and given a radical make-over by the Hastings and Kennedy Institutes and academic health centers.

27. Bioethics Erases its Anthropocene Root • Potter: [The Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Hastings Institute] narrowed “bioethics” to • “the ethics of how far to exercise the medical options that are technically possible, such as organ transplants, the use of artificial organs…. These issues in general have short term, immediately visible consequences and all have to do with the maintenance and prolongation of individual lives.” • Englehardt [introducing Potter’s Global Bioethics: Building on the Leopold Legacy (1988)]: • Bioethics “developed its own history with little regard to Potter’s original intentions. It is like a child who left home, renouncing the disciplines of its father.”

28. Bioethics unsuitable for Anthropocene Ethics. • Individualism is not sufficient to balance consumption preferences with the ecolological concerns. • Its sense of justice and community engagement largely keeps it from forays out of academic health centers into the global community. • Its short-range focus is temporally parochial to undergird long range structural reforms.

29. bi·ome /bīˌōm/ noun A naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat. Global Biome Ethics

30. Restoration Ethics • Restoring damaged ecosystems to the ‘original’ • What does ‘original’ mean? Preindustrial times? Medieval? • How useful is it if it does not address practices degrading the environment? Facade Hong Kong skyline for tourist photos

31. Connectivity--Simon Dalby • Connections between personal and environmental are invisible. • Exhortations to reduce consumption have little impact because they rely on a sense of responsibility. • People must see how personal choices affect the earth and each other. • This will lead to wantingto reduce consumption.

32. Human - Non Human Continuum Gibson-Graham, Roelvink • Life forms are interdependent. • Open human sensibilities to encompass all life forms in connectivity and co-existence. • De-center humans by moving away discounting non-human life. • An ethic of negotiated interdependence and long term survival.

33. Human - Non Human Continuum Gibson-Graham, Roelvink

34. Shared Suffering-Haraway • Shifts from learning a connection among life-forms to an empathic feelingof the shared suffering among interconnected life forms. • Such empathic ecology will lead us to mitigate the suffering of life forms by revising production, use and consumption. Mel Chin: Revival Field. These plants are chosen for their ability to take up and retain (chelate) toxic metals from the soil of an industrial site. When they die, they are harvested and the metals are taken for proper disposal.

35. Terra is not a thing It is not a spaceship that we ride in and rationally tweak for comfort. It is not an environment (room) wrapped around us where we set the temperature and maintain the air filters.

36. Human life is not in an environment. It is one with the present Terra. Pollution:  temp. Water O2 CO2 Sugar Protein Bacteria A pentillion Mitochondria (1000 per human cell), create energy using sugar, protein, oxygen from plants. Pollution:  plants, usable water More bacteria in your body than body cells. They metabolize vitamins, protect from disease etc. Antibiotics, herbicides, pesticides (pollination, alter body flora.) Deforestation

37. Steven Miles miles001@umn.edu(slides available)