Rolston, CNV, Chapter 7: The Home Planet

• SECTION V. MANAGING THE PLANET?
• The case that management is necessary (desirable? possible?)
• Necessary? We have so affected the earth, that not to manage is itself a management decision
• Desirable? Wouldn't it be good to be free of the "tyranny of physical nature that has plagued man from the beginning"?
• Possible? Is managing nature way beyond what we are capable of doing? Ever?
• Rolston's replies
• Rolston strongly opposes using "planetary managers" as our paradigm of the human relation with the earth
• Rejects that our only relationship to nature is one of engineering it for the better
• Need to see ourselves as residents in a community, as moral overseers who try to optimize cultural and natural values
• Human management of earth is no more appropriate than people managing other people: it's a purely an instrumental relation
• What we need to do is not manage nature, but manage human uses of the environment so it can manage itself
• Earthen nature has managed itself fine for billions of years, and has provided a marvelously comfortable home for humans (and other life)
  • Considerable genius there
  • Earth made the would be managers, after all
• "Hands are for managing, but they also are for holding in loving care"
• Two different types of reasons not to manage entire planet
• One: Skepticism toward the human ability to manage (skepticism toward science, technology, and industry) and trust in nature as provider, given its historical track record
• Two: We shouldn't manage even if we could
  • The poverty of humans being in total control
• Rolston's list on p. 226-227: the kind of total control of nature that humans have no business doing, even if we could
• Should we leave these decisions to planetary managers or even to democracy?
• Great value in being part of a world not of our own making
• But would our ability to control spoil this value even if we refrained from exercising it?
• Earth Ethics
• Cherish earth is deepest value and duty to love it is deepest obligation
  • Not a reductio of env. concern for snails and whales, now dirt
• But the most serious moral commitment
• Religious language: "On earth we live move and have our being: If there is a holy ground, this earth is it."
• Earth (the earthen life processes, the creative life processes of earth of most value)
• E.g., Forests are characteristic expressions of earth's generative forces
• Earth is a fertile planet; earth as a womb from which we have come
• This is the truth in "mother earth" language
• Earth not finally property, but home
• Earth's richness belongs to no one as belongs to all
• Earth more important than people
• Earth First!?
• "If conserving earth is more important than having more people, then why isn't earth more important than needs/welfare of existing people"
• Conflating right to life of already existing people with right to propagate?
• Sacrifice human rights to earth
• To protect its health (note: doesn't say integrity)
• Which would you choose, earth w/o people or people without earth?
• Does the latter even make sense?
• Transcending Nationalism:
• Global nature of our duties
• Helping Brazilians preserve rainforest not foreign aide, but saving the home planet
• Humans as earthlings
• We are earth citizens first, citizens of countries/nations second
• Owe earth system far more than owe obedience to civic laws