Lily's Reflections on Environmental Catastrophe

Reflections on Moral Responsibility for the Destruction of the Environment
(Lily)

It's official: the Arctic ice cap is melting at a rate of 8% per decade. At that rate, there will be no ice at all during the summer of 2060 -- well within the expected lifetime of many OR readers. A cursory survey of other recent environmental statistics reveals additional frightening numbers: In 2004, America's beaches alone experienced nearly 20,000 pollution-related closings and advisories. In the past 50 years, 90% of the oceans' largest fish -- such as sharks, swordfish, tuna, marlin -- have disappeared. And although the underlying causal elements are unclear, no one can doubt that Atlantic hurricanes are increasing in number and ferocity. This list could go on.

When human-induced tragedies occur, whether the ultimate harm is borne by other humans or by the environment, moral responsibility can be hard to assign. And the repercussions of assigning it can resonate for generations -- as, for example, certain elements of modern day German and Japanese culture still struggle to incorporate into their national consciousness the role that their countries -- and their citizens -- played in World War II. America, especially the South (where Andrew, Mike and I call home) is, to this day, still reeling from the legacy of legalized slavery that officially ended almost 150 years ago. The problem of where to place the blame for massive tragedy of any scale is compelling; even more compelling, to me, is the question of who can prevent that type of tragedy before it ever happens, and how.

The need is for a shift from a vague sense of collective societal responsibility for disaster, to a sense of individual responsibility: we need -- I need! -- to make a more direct connection between (for example) the decision about how to get to work in the morning and the issue of whether, 55 years from now, there will be ice in the Arctic. I know there's a lot that's been written about the economics of this, the problem of waste and depleting collective resources, and would be delighted if someone more educated than I am in these matters would chime in on that stuff. What I wanted to mention was more from a philosophical standpoint: the concept of role responsibility.

This is a concept that I first read about in Dr. David H. Jones's book called Moral Responsibility for the Holocaust (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). To quote Dr. Jones, "The main idea contained in the concept of role responsibility is that a person assumes certain duties by virtue of occupying a social role or position, whether or not the duties are formally defined." (p. 27) For example, a ship captain, by virtue of his position, bears the role responsibility of ensuring the safety of those aboard his ship. Studies done of individuals who helped people escape certain death in Germany during the years of the Holocaust describe a similar phenomenon to the ship captain's sense of duty: those rescuers saw it as their duty -- by virtue of their position -- to save refugees from the hunters of the Third Reich. Thus their courageous protest against mass tragedy was the assumption of individual responsibility.

Importantly for the present discussion, Dr. Jones notes that while "most concepts of moral and legal responsibility . . . involve retroactive responsibility for a past act or omission," the concept of role responsibility "involves prospective responsibility for future acts and omissions." (p. 26) Right now, we are poised to prevent future bad acts and omissions that would destroy our last wild places. So, my challenge is this: somehow we must find a way to envision ourselves as bearing the responsibility to not only live lightly upon the earth but also to take active steps -- as individuals -- to save the earth. Only if we feel personally the weight of this great duty, and feel that something about our position as citizens in the most affluent and powerful country in a world whose human population size has exploded, requires us to act -- only then will we really be motivated to do something about that polar ice cap, and the disappearance of all those big fish. Is the best way to do this through governmental regulation? In part, but we have got to -- I have got to -- take individual responsibility too.