Detailed Course Notes on Environmental Issues for students of the Edexcel syllabus – Course notes and revision materials for students of A Level Religious Studies/Philosophy.

From the syllabus for Religion and Ethics (Paper 2):

1.1 Environmental issues

a) Concepts of stewardship and conservation from the point of view of at least one religion and at least one secular ethical perspective; animal welfare and protection, sustainability, waste management and climate change.

b) Strengths and weaknesses of significant areas of disagreement and debate, assessment of relevant examples, legal changes and social attitudes, appropriateness and value of employing religious perspectives in these debates.

With reference to the ideas of J Lovelock and A Næss.

DEFINITIONS

Stewardship – a steward is someone who looks after something for someone else e.g. a cloakroom attendant. Christians believe that they have been put in charge of the natural world by God. But as God created the world, everything in it actually belongs to him. We are only looking after it for him. Someone who looks after something else for God is called a steward. According to the Christian teaching of stewardship, human beings have a responsibility to look after the world carefully and not ruin the environment. This is similar to the way in which all of us might take very good care of anything valuable that we borrowed off someone else.

Conservation – this is the prevention of the wasteful use of a resource, in this instance, the natural world. In environmental ethics, the debate about conservation tends to focus around whether the natural world has its own intrinsic value, as suggested by by supporters of Deep Ecology, This contrasts with the anthropocentric view of what is known as ‘shallow ecology’, according to which the environment (or elements of it) should be conserved because human beings benefit from this.

Animal Welfare and Protection – this is self-explanatory. For more on this issue, see below.

Sustainability – most broadly, this is to with maintaining the ability of the earth to sustain life. For example, if climate change goes unchecked, in the future many animal species may become extinct and the survival of humanity itself may be severely impacted. More specifically, it concerns preserving natural resources e.g. sufficient stocks of edible fish species that may have been reduced through over-fishing.

Waste-Management – Waste management (or waste disposal) includes the activities and actions required to manage waste from its creation to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process. Waste can be solid, liquid, or gas and each type has different methods of disposal and management. Waste management deals with all types of waste, including industrial, biological and household. In some cases, waste can pose a threat to human health. For example, in investigative journalist Roberto Saviano’s book Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia (which has been made into an acclaimed movie and television series), the activities of the Camorra (an organised crime syndicate based in Napoli) are catalogued. These include the illegal dumping of hazardous toxic waste into the surrounding Neopolitan countryside, which has resulted in a dramatic upsurge in local cancer cases. For more on this, see here.

Gomorrah - Italy's Other Mafia by Roberto Saviano | London Evening Standard

A particular concern in recent times has been the elimination of non-degradable plastic packaging and the dumping of it in the world’s oceans. Legislation is usually advocated as one method of controlling this. However, the philosopher Roger Scruton favours an approach based on what he calls ‘oikophilia’. For more on this, see below.

Climate change – this has already been looked at here.

CHRISTIAN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Genesis promotes the idea that the earth was created for humans (who are the only creatures with souls having been made in God’s image – imago dei). Genesis 1:28 ‘let them have dominion…..’.
In Genesis 9v2 humans are instructed by God to instil ‘fear’ and ‘dread’ into all living creatures. So the idea seems to be that ‘dominion’ involves exploitation: animals and the natural world are just there to be used.
This resonates with the philosophy of Aristotle and the Greeks. ‘She has made all animals for the sake of man’. Aristotle thought of nature as a hierarchy in which those with less reasoning power exist for the sake of those with more.
Aquinas (who was heavily influenced by Aristotle) also believed this but believed the hierarchy was created by God as described in Genesis. In his classification of sins, Aquinas has room only for sins against God, ourselves and our neighbours. There is no possibility of sinning against non-human animals or against the natural world (unless human beings are harmed in this process).
Dominion has also influenced ‘end time theology’, beliefs about the end of the world maintained by some evangelical Christians in the USA. According to this brand of theology, concern for the earth is irrelevant because the earth will be destroyed at the end of time and God will make a new earth in its place. The Rapture is a time when God takes from the earth the faithful people, leaving the rest behind for a time to be tested. The quicker we use up the world’s resources, the quicker the Rapture can come!
Even Jesus in the New Testament is hardly eco-friendly: he curses a fig tree and performs an exorcism which involves sending a group of demons into a herd of pigs that then throw themselves off a cliff.
The Genesis story also says ‘be fruitful and multiply’. In an already overpopulated world which puts a strain on natural resources, this may not now be a good idea.
However, ‘dominion’ can also be interpreted in terms of responsible stewardship – everything in creation belongs to God. He is the true owner of the earth. Therefore being put in charge of creation means looking after it responsibly and wisely.
Dominion idea may allow, in Genetic Engineering, some plant and animal manipulation as part of the human greater good – helping poor African farmers, alleviating hunger.
God might also be perceived as having permitted human beings the use of technology to harness and use the planet’s resources.
Genesis 2 (remember this is a separate account which names the first humans and has God much closer to Adam and Eve, walking in the garden with them) suggests the idea of stewardship more. Adam and Eve are caretakers of the Garden of Eden.
There is also, for some Christians, a belief in Creation Spirituality. This is the idea that God can be found in all of creation. There are parallels with the Gaia hypothesis (see below). St Francis of Assisi also thought that animals had souls and encouraged a reverence for nature.
The teaching of Original Sin may also have environmental implications. The story of the Fall may account for why humans do not respect the planet and why the planet is not always kind to humans.
The Golden Rule is the ethical principle of treating other people as you would prefer to be treated yourself. One of Jesus’s most famous and impactful teachings, it can be found cited at Matthew 7:12 (“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets”) and Luke 6:31 (“Do to others as you would have them do to you” ). Note that this is not an original teaching of Jesus. He is quoting Leviticus 19v18 (‘You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.’) and Jesus refers to it as the second great commandment. He does this because it was common to ask popular spiritual teachers which of the 613 commandments in the Torah is the most important. In response to this question when it is posed in Mark’s gospel (see Mark 12:28-34), Jesus quotes Leviticus alongside another commandment (“Thou shalt love thy Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”) found at Deuteronomy 6:4-5.
The idea of the Golden Rule dates at least to the early Confucian times (551–479 BCE), according to Rushworth KIdder, who states that this concept appears prominently in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and “the rest of the world’s major religions”. 143 leaders of the world’s major faiths endorsed the Golden Rule as part of the 1993 “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic”. According to Greg M. Epstein, it is “a concept that essentially no religion misses entirely”, but belief in God is not necessary to endorse it. The philosopher Simon Blackburn also states that the Golden Rule can be “found in some form in almost every ethical tradition”.
Given the fact that this teaching seems to be so universal, extending it to all creation might be helpful and also useful when trying to find common ground as far as inter-faith response to environmental issues is concerned.

ISLAMIC ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Like Christians, Muslims believe that – according to the Qur’an – humans have been appointed as stewards over the earth and its environment. A steward is called a khalifah in Islam.

For both Christians and Muslims, the beauty of the world can inspire a sense of awe (respect for God’s power to create) and wonder (marvelling at the complexity of the universe).

Muslims see the earth as being like a vast place of worship. Damaging it is therefore a serious sin that would be comparable to vandalising a mosque. So it is clear that humans have a duty to look after the earth for God. Muslims may also therefore encourage people to reduce waste, recycle and re-use materials. Both the Qur’an and the hadith contain teachings about living sustainably (e.g. only using and consuming what you need). Water conservation is particularly important in a desert environment and Muhammad encouraged this too e.g. by safeguarding wells. Even in times of war, Muhammad commanded that the natural environment should not be destroyed e.g. by poisoning enemy water supplies, crops, and even beehives.

The use and abuse of animals

Muhammad also called for kindness to animals, even to the extent of protecting bird’s nests with eggs in them. He criticized those who abused their animals, including animals used for farming, warfare and travel. He warned that anyone who wrongfully killed even a sparrow would have to account to Allah for what they did. However, he was not a vegetarian, and unlike in Christianity where all foods were ‘declared clean’ by Jesus, there are dietary laws in Islam about what it is permitted (halal) and forbidden (haram) to eat e.g. pork should not be consumed.

With respect to killing animals for food, Muhammad prescribed rules to make the process as quick and painless as possible. There are hadith specifying that animals are not to be killed in front of other animals and that sharp knives should be used, but they should not be sharpened in front of the animals.

Note that a Muslim living in the UK may therefore take steps to make sure that the food they are eating is halal e.g. they may check the list of ingredients on a tinned product to make sure that it does not contain pork or alcohol.

As far as animal experimentation and testing is concerned, Muslims believe that testing which is carried out for essential human needs (e.g. to test new medicines) is allowable, as long as the animals are treated with compassion.

DEEP ECOLOGY

This contrasts with shallow ecology – the anthropocentric view that the environment should be preserved because humans will benefit from doing so.
The term was first used by Arne Naess and is used to emphasise that we are part of nature and not separate from it. We are just one element in a larger biosphere.
This view also sees all life forms as having intrinsic value, even inanimate objects like mountains and non-sentient life like forests and plants.
Naess also encourages us to ‘think like a mountain’ (a phrase derived from another influential Deep Ecological work, Aldo Leopold’s The Sand County Almanac). Thinking like a mountain involves realizing that we are part of the biosphere, realizing our responsibility to other living things and thinking about the long term interests of the environment as a whole. Deep Ecologists are therefore united in holding that the environmental crisis is not a technical problem that can be ‘fixed’ by the application of appropriate technology. Nor do they believe its ultimate solution is to be found in political or economic reforms. What they believe is called for is a change in consciousness, a new way of seeing the natural world and our relation to it. This is not (or not only) a call for us to revise our intellectual understanding of what the world is; it is a call for us to change the way that we actually experience the world.
Deep Ecology is sometimes categorized as a ‘secular’ (non-religious) ethical approach to the Environment. However, as Deep Ecologists have taken inspiration from Buddhist and especially the Zen Buddhist conceptions of the natural world, as long as you point this out you can include Deep Ecology within the ‘religious’ category too. Specifically, Buddhism in its traditional Indian form places an emphasis on avoiding the killing of beings that are capable of drawing breath (prana). Zen Buddhism in its Japanese form seeks to cultivate a mystical sense of oneness or unity with the natural world e.g. through meditation and art forms like Haiku poetry.
The Deep Ecological perspective has been criticised by Singer.
For Singer, persons have the most moral status. To be a person you have to be able to reason in a simple manner and know that you have a future. Some animals (e.g. chimpanzees) show evidence of this. So those in the wild deserve protection. So too do those animal species with a nervous system as they can feel pleasure and pain. But stalactites, mountains and plant life cannot be thought of in this way. They lack personhood and a nervous system. So the Deep Ecology movement is wrong to claim that we must ‘think like a mountain’
A second, related criticism: why should value in nature be seen as something that is distributed equally or evenly? Naess’s view seems to assume this.
A further problem is that the kind of ecocentric view maintained by authors like Naess may be philosophically incoherent. This is because it is impossible for anyone to ‘think like a mountain’ i.e. to adopt a non-human view of nature. Surely, it is humans, and only humans, who can appreciate the claim that nature has intrinsic value, that it is valuable in itself. In which case, it is impossible to escape from an anthropocentric perspective.
On the other hand, there is evidence from social psychology experiments that our moral behaviour is very much shaped by our immediate environment. Examples are the famous studies carried out by Milgram and Zimbardo (see your course notes on Virtue Ethics for a fuller description). It might therefore be reasonable to assume that in a degraded future environment our moral behaviour will become far worse. This is an anthropocentric view to do with human morality but is does provide an incentive for us to value the environment in a manner suggested by Naess to avoid this outcome.

THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS

This is basically the idea (formulated by James Lovelock) that the earth itself is a massive, self-regulating, biological organism. This can be seen as both a spiritual/religious claim (think of the phrase ‘mother earth’ and how some people use it in a spiritual manner) and as a scientific one. With regard to the former perspective, in his book Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet, Roger Scruton comments that, ‘In its more mystical forms, the cult of Gaia comes close to recapturing the pagan view of the earth as a goddess, whose animating principles run through all of us’.
James Cameron’s movie Avatar and its sequel have helped to popularize this version of the hypothesis. In the first movie, Eywa, also known as the ‘All-Mother’ or ‘Great Mother’, is the biological sentient guiding force of life on the planet Pandora, one that acts to keep its ecosystem in equilibrium.
Lovelock himself, however, was keen to distance himself from way of understanding his theory. In one of his later works, The Revenge of Gaia, he cautions his readers to ‘not assume that I am thinking of the Earth as alive in a sentient way, or even alive like an animal or a bacterium’.
When it was first published, the Gaia hypothesis attracted criticism from supporters of Darwinism like Richard Dawkins. Their argument was that a self-regulating biosphere could never have evolved, as the organism was the basic unit of natural selection, not the biosphere.
For example, in his book The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins drew attention to the fact that there was no relevant Darwinian population in which biospheres compete. As he put it, ‘The Universe would have to be full of dead planets whose homeostatic regulation systems had failed, with, dotted around, a handful of successful, well-regulated planets, of which the Earth is one’. Even then, Dawkins notes, supporters of the Gaia hypothesis would need to offer an account of biospheric reproduction, ‘whereby successful planets spawned copies of their life forms on new planets’.
In response, Lovelock found himself agreeing with Dawkins that Darwinian evolution, as it was understood at the time, was incompatible with his hypothesis.
In 1981, it then occurred to him that, ‘Gaia was the whole system – organisms and material environment coupled together – and it was this huge Earth system that evolved self-regulation, not the biosphere alone’. Lovelock accordingly designed a computer simulation called ‘Daisyworld’, which attempted to demonstrate that the theory of evolution was not contrary to Gaia theory. When biologists and geologists attempted to falsify Lovelock’s modelling, none were successful.
And so gradually the Gaia hypothesis has gained scientific credibility. For example, at a meeting in Amsterdam in 2001, one at which four principal global-change organisations were represented, more than a thousand delegates signed a declaration which stated that ‘The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components’, though their communiqué stopped short of agreeing, with Lovelock, that the goal of the self-regulating earth was sustain habitability.
A further obstacle to fuller scientific acceptance of his hypothesis might be that, as Lovelock himself admits, ‘a full explanation would require an account of how self-regulation works. In some ways, this is not just difficult, it is impossible: emergent phenomena like life, consciousness and Gaia resist explanation in the traditional cause-and-effect sequential language of science’.
Moving on, according to either of these views (the scientific and quasi-mystical), humans are not treating Gaia (i.e. the Earth) with respect and, as Gaia is self-regulating, it/she may soon cause us to become extinct.
A strength of the Gaia Hypothesis might be that in thinking about the earth as a living organism, it makes our relationship to it a little more personal, and we may then be more inclined to think of it as something that needs protecting.
A further strength of the theory (though this only applies to the mystical version of it) is that, by making nature into a kind of deity, it encourages us to respect it.
However, in some ways, either version of the theory tends to portray human beings possibly too negatively, treating them as if they are some kind of disease on the face of the planet.
Deep Ecologists might also criticise Gaia theory because it is not a fully ecocentric theory. The idea seems to be that we should stop destabilizing Gaia simply because this might be dangerous for us to do so. We run the risk of Gaia taking ‘revenge’ by making adjustments that might result in us becoming extinct or there being fewer of us living in much more difficult circumstances. But this way of understanding the problem does not seem to include the suffering we are causing to other species and to the natural world by behaving as we are doing right now.
In The Revenge of Gaia, Lovelock suggests that because there is such an urgent need to cut fossil fuel emissions, we must turn to nuclear power as an alternative energy source. However, this idea has been criticised because if more nuclear power stations are built this may increase the risk of nuclear accidents or terrorist strikes. It would also mean that there might be less demand for and research carried out on truly safe, renewable technologies like wind, wave and solar power.
Peter Singer has also criticised the mystical interpretation of Gaia Theory, arguing that just because the earth seems to respond to events in ways that resemble a self-regulating system, this does not mean that the earth consciously desires to maintain itself.
Slavoj Zizek disagrees with Lovelock’s claim that nature is like a harmonious, organic, balanced, living organism which is then disturbed and derailed by exploitative human activity. Instead he argues that ‘nature is a series of unimaginable catastrophes’. Oil, which is partly made up of the remains of animal life and plant life, is an example of a resource that is only available because of ecological catastrophes brought about nature in the past. So the existence of oil shows us that ‘nature is crazy in itself’ and not at all harmonious. Zizek declares that ‘there is no nature’ in the sense of nature being some kind of wonderful phenomenon that has intrinsic value (and should even, perhaps, be worshipped). This idea can also be used to criticise supporters of Deep Ecology.
The notion that Gaia can somehow be harmed in some way by human activity is also questionable. It could be argued that from the earth’s point of view (assuming that it could have one), that humanity is just a temporary itch on something much bigger and longer lived than ourselves. In other words, nature doesn’t care what we do because it doesn’t have any thoughts or feelings, but it might not care even if it did.

ROGER SCRUTON

Scruton is one of the most recent contributors to the debate about appropriate environmental ethics.
He is unusual because politically Scruton is a right-wing thinker, whereas most of the philosophers who have written on this topic are usually left-wing. His book represents a complete theory of how to create and implement a practical environmental ethic that truly works.
A particular emphasis in Scruton’s book Green Philosophy is on the issue of motivation. For Scruton, the only meaningful environmental ethic has to be one that actually makes us actively want to behave in an environmentally conscious manner.
Scruton therefore recommends that we should become what he calls ‘oikophiles’, people who care about their local environment. He thinks that this is possible because most people tend to be like this anyway – their immediate home and local environment matters a lot to them. Rather in the manner in which we like our children to inherit our property, Scruton also thinks that that the sense of community one encounters at a local level can inspire people to ensure that the local environment can be preserved so that future generations can also appreciate it.
He further thinks that when the interests of people a conflict on an environmental issue, that it is easier to find solutions at this level.
He uses the term ‘homeostatic’ to describe local ecosystems. By this, he means that they can be kept in a state of self-correcting balance. For example, those who hunt and fish locally would tend to be sensitive to the wildlife population and fish stock levels, and would therefore hopefully cultivate self-imposed limits on their own activity.
He thinks that we can also inspire people to behave in an environmentally friendly manner at the national level, by tapping into our patriotic feelings e.g. perhaps by appreciating ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ through singing the hymn ‘Jerusalem’ (my example, not Scruton’s).
He also thinks that larger, wealthier democracies like the USA are best placed to undertake the kind of necessary research that will hopefully eventually result in cleaner energy.
Scruton is sceptical about the cultivation of a global environmental ethic through international agreements and treaties. For such treaties to work, again there has to be some kind of motivation for the countries to both sign up to and then keep such agreements but he does not think that this motivation exists where some countries are concerned.
BUT: perhaps appealing to our sentimental love of nature in the form of oikophilia is leaving too much to chance. Critics of Scruton might think that people need to be forced to change their habits about things like recycling and their personal carbon footprint.
This also applies to transnational corporations and countries like China that pollute (where two coal fired power plants are built every week, according to one estimate). That such huge and powerful ‘players’ in the field of environmental ethics can be brought in line through oikophilia seems unlikely.
Scruton’s notion of oikophilia might also be considered somewhat romantic and pastoral in character. For example, it might be difficult to convince the more intractable residents of some of the roughest, inner-city housing estates of its merits.
In the latest edition of his influential book Practical Ethics, Peter Singer asks, ‘Can we be sure that future generations will appreciate wilderness? Not really; perhaps they will be happier playing electronic games more sophisticated than any we can imagine. ‘ In other words, they may not wish to become oikophiles.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick — **In this novel, the author envisages a future in which the inhabitants of the earth immerse themselves in drug-induced virtual realities as a form of escape from an environmentally degraded real world.**

PETER SINGER ON ANIMAL WELFARE AND PROTECTION

First of all, it is worth reviewing Christian teaching about this. So go back to the section above on Christian Environmental Ethics and do so. Islamic teaching is also subsequently described, though the point of view of only one religion needs to be learned according to the syllabus.

Additionally, most Christian churches believe that animal experimentation is acceptable as long as there is a good reason for conducting the experiment and the animals are not put through unnecessary pain. Christians who see St Francis as a role model may possibly be opposed to all animal experimentation as he believed that animals have souls too, just like humans.

For a secular (non-religious) perspective, utilitarian philosophers have been highly influential, as the following passages reveal:

“The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity* of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum**, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?…the question is not, Can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?… The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes… ”

*villosity – the extent to which the skin is covered with hair ** os sacrum – the large, heavy bone at the base of the spine.

– Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer “immoral,” let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.“

John Stuart Mill “Whewell on Moral Philosophy”, in Collected Works, vol. X, pp. 185-187

Peter Singer is, himself, a utilitarian philosopher who stands in this tradition. He is especially famous for championing the cause of animal rights and the claim that we are speciesists in our treatment of animals. Speciesism, for Singer, happens when we allow the frequently trivial preferences of our own species to override the more weighty preferences of another species. For example, when shopping for food, most of us would prefer to buy cheap food that tastes good. But if that food is an animal product, in making our purchase we have not taken into account the preference an animal may have for not suffering when they are alive (as often happens as a result of intensive farming) and dying prematurely. For Bentham, as already noted, animals were of moral significance. He wrote that “The question is not, “Can they reason?” nor, “Can they talk?” but “Can they suffer?” Singer agrees with Bentham’s view and also introduces the notion of personhood into his version of preference utilitarianism. For Singer, a person is a being that can value its own existence and knows that it has a future. He argues that many animals are persons in this sense, and research into animal awareness suggests that he is right. For example, chimpanzees have been taught ASL (American Sign Language) and have exhibited linguistic skills that approximate to those of a human child of around two years of age.

Singer is controversial because he regards speciesism as being as immoral as racism. For example, in old American south, a white slave owner’s preference for profit and cheap labour were allowed to override the preference of black slaves to be free. For Singer, this example is morally equivalent to the example of the food shopper given above.

He further considers unborn foetuses and young babies to lack personhood, which makes abortion and even infanticide morally acceptable for him in some cases. He has even suggested that it may therefore be preferable to carry out medical experiments on orphaned human infants rather than animals because infants are less aware than many species of animals and do not acquire a sense of being a person until they are older.

Here is a brief extract from Singer himself which touches on the legal changes which have resulted from the influence of his own writing and the work of many others:

“In the early 1970s, to an extent barely credible today, scarcely anyone thought that the treatment of individual animals raised an ethical issue worth taking seriously. There were no animal rights or animal liberation organizations. Animal welfare was an issue for cat and dog lovers, best ignored by people with more important things to write about. Today the situation is very different. Issues about our treatment of animals are often in the news. Animal rights organizations are active in all the industrialized nations. A lively intellectual debate has sprung up. Nor is this debate simply a Western phenomenon – leading works on animals and ethics have been translated into many of the world’s major languages, including Japanese, Chinese and Korean. This change has also had practical consequences for hundreds of millions of animals. Across the entire European Union – 27 nations with a combined population of more than 450 million – some of the worst forms of factory farming have been banned. Now the same trend is evident in the United States, after the voters of California voted to allow all farm animals room to move around and stretch their limbs without touching the sides of their enclosure, or other animals. These are, obviously, very modest freedoms for animals, but compared to how animals are standardly kept today in many countries, they are significant improvements.

So there is reason for hope that things are improving. But all the progress for animals in Europe and North America is, tragically, being outweighed by the great increase in meat-eating that is happening in Asia, as people become more affluent and increase their meat consumption. That is bringing the worst forms of factory farming to Asia, and on a vast scale.“

The full article can be read here.

ANIMAL WELFARE AND PROTECTION – A COMMERCIAL SOLUTION?

A example of a business based solution to an environmental issue, albeit on a smaller scale, is that of black rhino hunts in South Africa. Since 2004, it has been legal to participate in a hunt for a fee of $150,000. The logic is that landowners have been provided with an incentive to raise rhinos on their ranches and protect them, thus increasing the supply. As a result, less are being poached and the black rhino population has actually increased.
However, whether it is right to kill endangered species or indeed any wildlife for sport is a highly controversial issue. It might be defensible on the grounds that a species like the black rhino might otherwise become extinct, so the practice can be seen as the lesser of two evils.
And the political philosopher Michael Sandel discusses this example and comments (in a manner suggestive of disapproval): ‘Whether to create a market in the hunting of endangered species depends not only on whether it increases their number but also on whether it expresses and promotes the right way of valuing them.’ What he is implying is that there needs to be a debate about whether capitalism and the free-market itself can form the basis for any kind of ethic. For more on this, see Sandel’s article here and this book:

From an accompanying online promotional blurb for the book:

Should we financially reward children for good marks? Is it ethical to pay people to donate organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons or selling citizenship?

In recent decades, market values have impinged on almost every aspect of life – medicine, education, government, law, even family life. We have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In What Money Can’t Buy Michael Sandel asks: Isn’t there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? And how do we protect the things that really matter?