Not my best work, but I am satisfied with the grade.
I got a B overall for the class. The paper: 86.
Prof's comments on the paper:
"Michael, interesting discussion, I enjoyed reading it. The paper could be improved by working on your argument more. While the paper flows well and is generally well written, it's not entirely clear what you want to argue through this paper. You need to make your thesis more explicit and argue for it more firmly, and return to it in your conclusion. Your conclusion, which I mentioned in a note, takes the reader by surprise, it doesn't seem like the whole paper was leading up that point. The conclusion seems to be that it is difficult to come to rational conclusions through philosophy because it is theoretical. However, if I retrace your paper and try to tease out an argument through the introduction, it seems to be that philosophy is well suited to come to rational conclusions about environmental issues. So there seems to be some tension in the intro and conclusion."
The important thing is that I am through with the Philosophy requirement for my degree.
On to something more enjoyable, like math.
When addressing environmental issues, there are the obvious issues of economic, social, and even political benefits. One fails to look at the philosophical benefits which can answer the deep seeded question that is on everyone’s mind: why should we care?
Philosophy is not limited to thinkers like Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Aristotle but it can be expanded to include observers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carol and even musician Ronnie Van Zandt. Observing an environmental issue from a philosophical perspective can give an individual a unique point of view about how to best tackle a problem and eventually come to a rational solution that makes the world a better place.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was penned in 1962 as a cautionary tale about the use of DDT and its effects on the environment. Carson described a possible future where an “evil spell had settled on the community” (Carson, 526) and “(everywhere) was a shadow of death” (Carson, 527) highlighted the negative aspects of using pesticides and their potential effects on the environment. What was the rationale for Carson’s reasoning that birds and bees should be protected from the effects of pesticides containing the toxin DDT? In Chapter 2 of Joseph R. DesJardins’s book Environmental Ethics, he discusses the support of protection of the environment through a unique source: The Bible.
Genesis tells the story of creation that God created the Earth in seven days. On the sixth day, God “let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind” (Genesis 1:24). It was during the sixth day that God “created man in his own image in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). After a week of creating the earth, water, the sky, plants, animals, and humans, God rested on the seventh day and looked back at what He created and determined that it was good. Since what God had created was good, then that means that nature must be inherently good, and if one was to honor God then it is necessary to protect His creation.
It was long believed that humans were meant to dominate nature as noted in history and in stories such as Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible which highlighted the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The townspeople in Salem, Massachusetts in the story falsely accused a group of young women for dancing and chanting in the forest. The citizens of the town believed that being out in nature and not the safety of the town is what led to the corruption of their youth. This accusation and irrational fear of nature led to rampant scapegoating as people were accused of witchcraft without any real basis of proof. It was safe being in the city, not out in the weirdness and strangeness that was nature.
However, there was a shift in thinking about the purpose of nature. That shift in thinking can be traced to the writings of Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. In Dickens writing, he highlights the corruption that is taking place in the cities. Some of the glaring examples are in stories such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. In Oliver Twist, Dickens tells the story about the exploitation of impoverished London youth through child labor and the only means for survival is to turn to a life of crime. This treatment of the youth is exhibited where Oliver requests the leader of the workhouse, Mr. Bumble, for more gruel by simply saying: “Please, sir, I want some more.” (Dickens) This leads the managers of the workhouse to label young Oliver as a trouble maker. The young boy and his fellow workers wanted was a little more food, while the managers nightly feasted on a large meal. The only place where Oliver Twist finds relief from this harsh lifestyle is in the end when Oliver is rescued by his real family and they live their life away from the city in the country. Ebenezer Scrooge displays his contempt for the common man before his revelation in A Christmas Carol when asked by a charitable organization that “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.” (Dickens, 21). Since the debtors prisons and workhouses are crowded which would result in an inconsiderate result of where “many would rather die” (Dickens, x), Scrooge responds that “(if) they would rather die, (the poor) had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Dickens, 24) followed by his catchphrase of “Bah! Humbug!” During his revelation with the Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge is shown that he was the happiest when he was courting a young woman who had a country home away from the city. The change in his heart happened when he moved into London and opened his accounting practice with his partner Jacob Marley. This led to the beginning of the reexamination of the purpose of nature; after all, Dickens proved that in the cities you had rampant poverty, pollution, overcrowding, and disdain towards the common person.
Henry David Thoreau published Walden which described his experiences on Walden Pond. Thoreau was heavily influenced by the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, specifically his essay Nature that he published in 1836. Emerson stated that nature was a paradise not to be ruled by a superior being; in this case, humans. An argument can be made that God is a superior being; however in DesJardins’s argument about stewardship “(destruction), desecration, or waste of resources is an affront to the generosity and beneficence of God” (DesJardins, 39) and “(dominion) is not domination.” (DesJardins, 39) Thoreau took Emerson’s writings one step further by purchasing property owned by Emerson, and living on Walden Pond for two years beginning in 1845.
This paradise described by Emerson and later reaffirmed by Thoreau is mentioned in Chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis about the fabled Garden of Eden that God bestowed on Adam and, later Eve to care for as long as they obeyed one rule: “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). Emerson’s essay and God’s bestowing on Adam and Eve to care for this paradise supports DesJardins’s claim of stewardship. Carson describes in great lengths about the destruction such as “feeding stations in the backyard being deserted” (Carson, 527) due to the lack of “the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices” (Carson, 527); describing the inability of farm animals to reproduce viable offspring and farmers unable to produce crops due to “no bees (droning) among the blossoms” (Carson, 527); and “(the) roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire.” (Carson, 527) Carson concludes that it was not the result of some supernatural force or the result of a military attack from an aggressive nation that caused this apocalyptic vision of the future but the work of people themselves. Carson’s vision of this possible future is supported by DesJardins’s claim that our purpose on this planet through the Creation Story as described in his section about stewardship supports that claim that it is humans’ purpose “to nurture and protect God’s creation and not to destroy it.” (DesJardins, 39)
The idea of stewardship, as DesJardins puts it, “would be sympathetic to conservation of natural resources and sustainable economic growth (DesJardins, 39).” That idea of stewardship has not been entirely embraced by multinational companies such as British Petroleum (BP). On 20 April 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and subsequently sunk in the Gulf of Mexico 40 miles southeast from the coast of Louisiana, resulting in the deaths of eleven workers and what is being classified as the largest environmental disaster in United States history. In Chapter 6 of DesJardins’s book, he discusses the inherent value of life.
These two issues that DesJardins discusses are connected to each other. In order to have sustainable development there has to be consideration that the development has on the impact of all things living in the area of development. An example of that impact is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that has been taking place for the last four months. There are three major industries that are benefited by the resources in the states along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico: the energy industry, the commercial fishing industry, and the tourism industry. All three utilize a resource for their industry: the Gulf of Mexico. Each of these industries views the Gulf as an instrumental value which DesJardins defines as “a function of usefulness” (DesJardins, 129). The Gulf of Mexico “possesses that value because it can be used to attain something else of value” (DesJardins, 129), which for these specific industries would be money. An oil executive for BP at his headquarters values the Gulf of Mexico because of what is underneath the ocean floor: a large pool of oil. A commercial fisherman values the Gulf because every season he, like his father and grandfather and many previous generations, have utilized the Gulf’s natural resource of shrimp, fish, and oysters for their source of yearly income. The tourism industry values the Gulf because they are able to capitalize on a group of people that value the Gulf of Mexico differently than they do.
The people that visit the Gulf for tourism purposes value it for its intrinsic value, which according to DesJardins, is defined as an object that “it has a good of its own and that what is good for it does not depend on outside factors” (DesJardins, 130). Tourists recognize that the Gulf of Mexico has value because it has different meanings to people through “moral, spiritual, aesthetic, or cultural importance” (DesJardins, 130). Throughout human culture there are many examples of items having value such as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, witnessing the Changing of the Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, or the Temple of Apollo on the Greek island of Rhodes. We value those items because of the significance and the awe that people receive when they witness those items. Nature exhibits those values, such as “a she-gator protect her young or a fish in a river swimming free, (or) the beauty of the hills of Carolina, (or) the sweetness of the grass in Tennessee” (Skynyrd). Ronnie Van Zandt, the lead vocalist of the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, expressed witnessing those values in nature in his song All I Can Do Is Write About It due to his passions were participating in activities out in nature and in order to share his passions with the people “all (he could) do (was) write (them) in a song” (Skynyrd). A supportive argument can be stated that even the commercial fishing industry recognizes that the seafood they harvest from the ocean has intrinsic value because people’s pallets prefer the taste of Gulf seafood over any other seafood.
It is obvious that BP did not have a high enough instrumental value in the Gulf of Mexico or even matched the combined level of instrumental value that the commercial fishing industry and the tourism has. BP’s plan for cleaning up the oil spill included saving walruses which are not native to the Gulf Coast. Not only did it involve a company based out of London with British Petroleum, but the company that built the oil rig, Transocean, is headquartered in the landlocked country of Switzerland. Originally the company was located in Delaware, but relocated to Zug, Switzerland in order to take advantage of that nation’s low tax rate. Then there is the company Halliburton which is actually headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Halliburton has been implicated in many publicized events. On 7 June 2007, a spill of hydraulic fracturing fluid resulting in a toxic gas cloud caused citizens to evacuate their homes in Farmington, New Mexico. Twelve soldiers serving in Iraq were killed through electrocution in the shower due to faulty wiring which was performed by one of Halliburton’s subsidiaries, KBR. The connection between the Deepwater Horizon event and Halliburton lies in another oil spill that took place in the Timor Sea off of the Northwest coast of Australia. Similar to Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton was involved with the cementing process of the Montara wellhead platform back in August 2009.
Included in the location of the companies that built and operated the Deepwater Horizon platform was the flag that the oil platform was flying. An oil platform is similar to a ship sailing on the high seas that it has to fly a flag in order to signify which country it belongs to. Since this oil platform was being used to drill for oil reasonably close to American shores and using American employees to operate the platform, it is expected that it flew the American flag. The flag Deepwater Horizon flew was that of the Marshall Islands, a tiny chain of islands near the equator closer to Japan than the contiguous United States. The Marshall Islands was chosen due to the non-existent regulatory policies concerning oil platforms. Because of the lack of inspectors and oversight, employees that worked on Deepwater Horizon were concerned about their personal safety on the job. One of the wives widowed due to the explosion said that her husband had a bad feeling about what was taking place and prepared to put his personal affairs in order should the worst case scenario should happen.
It is difficult for a company, or in this case several companies, to determine their impact of their actions when they are located in places where they are not doing the work. That seemed to be the case when soon-to-be former BP CEO Tony Hayward uttered the phrase during an interview: “I’d like my life back.” BP’s intrinsic value in the Gulf of Mexico was viewing the Gulf of Mexico as a source of income. BP placed all their intrinsic value in making money which is BP’s purpose in life: like any other corporation, it is to maximize profits by any means possible. Even if means flaunting safety regulations or drilling offshore where people fish for economic purposes or enjoy vacations along the coast. After all, BP’s 2009 total profits were $14 billion. Had either BP, Transocean, or Halliburton placed some value in the other industries in the Gulf of Mexico or valued protecting their employees operating the oil platform by investing some of their profits into finding ways to prevent this current worst case scenario before it took place, then Deepwater Horizon would have been the name of another platform operating in the Gulf of Mexico and not synonymous with an oil spill disaster.
It is obvious that the United States needs energy. This nation is the largest consumer of energy in the world. In Chapter 4, DesJardins asks the questions what responsibilities do we owe future generations and if we do, then what are they specifically? With the result of the Deepwater Horizon spill, future generations will be impacted. The oil will eventually be clean up, but how long will the environmental damage affect the wetlands? What about the food supply of the pelicans that flew majestically along the Louisiana coastline? How much tourism dollars will be lost because people do not want to vacation in an oil spill zone? What about the clean-up workers? Will there be any negative biological effects from the exposure to the oil and the dispersants due to the lack of personal protective equipment that BP failed to provide those workers? What about the monetary claims for damages? It took twenty years for Exxon to pay damages due to the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that took place in Alaska back in 1989. Exxon was able to litigate their way and drag the case for a long period of time.
If there was any good to come out of the spill, it was that finally the United States would recognize that it was time to take on an aggressive approach to its energy policy. Many environmental issues played a role in government intervention. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring led to the government banning DDT in pesticides a decade after it was published. The infamous Cuyahoga River fire in 1969 and the high levels of toxicity in Lake Erie led to the establishment of the EPA and the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1970. Some prominent politicians, such as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota’s eighth congressional district and Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal demanded that the Obama administration does something. It should be noted that Bobby Jindal refused money from the stimulus bill that was passed in the early part of the Obama administration, and Congresswoman Bachmann made false claims about the Census and claimed that the health care bill that passed in March 2010 was a government takeover of the health care sector. When President Obama addressed the nation on 15 June 2010, many people felt like the speech came too late, but most importantly did not address the need to make plans for future generations with an aggressive energy policy to eventually weed our nation off of non-renewable energy sources such as coal and foreign oil.
Throughout history people have not taken future generations into considerations. The framers of the United States Constitution did not address the issue of slavery. They were completely unaware that two generations later citizens would rise up against the practice and eventually a Civil War would be fought over it. They were unaware that women’s roles would greatly expand in the twentieth century with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the invention of the birth control pill, and eventually Roe v. Wade (1973) which gave women complete control of their reproductive rights. They did not imagine that one day a man of color would one day reside in the White House that was once built by slaves or that women would be a serious contender for the office of Presidency. Because of that lack of foresight and the consideration for those that do not exists, as DesJardins explains in Chapter 4, that is why we cannot come up with a solution to produce an energy policy that results in a sustainable environment that is both beneficial to humans and nature.
It can be nearly impossible to come up with a rational solution to environmental issues through philosophy because philosophy is grounded uniquely in theory. Theory does not take one unique element into consideration: the human element.
Works Cited
Carson, Rachel. “Silent Spring.” Environmental Ethics: Readings In Theory and Application: Fifth Edition. Ed. Louis P. Pojman and Paul Pojam. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 2008. 526-33.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, Inc. 1984.
Dickens, Charles. “A Christmas Carol in Prose.” The Annotated Christmas Carol. Ed. Michael Patrick Hearn. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2004.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature, Addresses, and Lectures. Ed. Robert E. Spiller and Alfred R. Ferguson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1979.
The Holy Bible New International Version. Colorado Springs, CO. 1984. Print
DesJardins, Joseph R. Environmental Ethics: Fourth Edition. Boston, MA: Wadsworth. 2006.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: Text and Criticism. Ed. Gerald Weales. United States of America:
“Gulf oil spill’s economic impact will be long term.” McClatchy. 28 May 2010. <http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/28/94982/gulf-oil-spills-economic-impact.html>
“All I Can Do Is Write About It Lyrics- Lynyrd Skynyrd.” LyricsFreak. 12 August 2010. <http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/lynyrd+skynyrd/all+i+can+do+is+write+about+it_20086093.html>
“http://info.publicintelligence.net/BPGoMspillresponseplan.pdf.” 12 August 2010. <http://info.publicintelligence.net/BPGoMspillresponseplan.pdf>
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