On oil & the environment
Our ethical stance towards the natural world
In response to the recent oil spill Andrew Sullivan writes that it’s time to reconsider the “morality of oil” He argues that even if the “cost benefit analysis of offshore drilling make sense” there are deeper ethical concerns to consider:
I’m not talking here about the logic once one has conceded the modern world’s attempt to master the earth as a resource so as to create the fantastic wealth and technology and health many human beings now have access to. I’m talking about a humbler view toward the moral and ethical cost of such an achievement. In the words of T.S. Eliot,
“A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God . . . . It would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which God allows us to live on this planet.”
I don’t mean to unfairly single out Sullivan, because his views are certainly far more nuanced than I make it seem here, but there is a danger in drawing too sharp a contrast between how we evaluate our economic needs and how we evaluate our attitude towards nature. There is often a temptation to see economic concerns and human needs in terms of a mathematical “cost benefit analysis” while our obligation towards the environment becomes a much more intangible exercise best summed up by a T.S. Elliot quote.
Of course, there is no such clear distinction. The needs of humans and what makes “economic sense” are heavily dependent on “moral and ethical” questions. Similarly, when we discuss how to treat the natural world we have to do the same sort of “cost benefit analysis” that drives the economic models Sullivan refers to.
Sullivan is certainly right that “ghastly slick spread over the Gulf” should make us question the role of oil in our lives. But, if change is going to occur its important that we do not fall into the trap of simply speaking of environmental issues in abstract terms and instead start making tough decisions about what exactly our responsibilities are, and how to balance human interests against those of the planet’s other inhabitants.
-Luke
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