1NC
Ocean exploration and development are and have always been human-centered
anthropocentric quests for information and resources.
Ramirex-Llorda et al, 11
(Eva, “Man and the Last Great Wilderness: Human Impact on the Deep Sea,”
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022588)
By the end of the 20th Century, the deep sea was recognised as the largest environment on Earth containing numerous subhabitats, with unique abiotic and biological characteristics and supporting a particularly high biodiversity [24]. However, the
deep sea has remained rather remote from public consciousness and the first exploitations and anthropogenic activities did not
have any major social impact. The deep sea was (and still is) perceived as a service provider at two levels: (1)
it served as a convenient site for disposal of waste, especially where land options were not politically
and “ethically” attractive and (2) it was seen as a source of potential mineral and biological wealth
over which there was no national jurisdiction. In the last decades, decreases in the amount of landbased and coastal resources combined with rapid technological development has driven increased
interest in the exploration and exploitation of deep-sea goods and services, to advance at a faster
pace than the acquisition of scientific knowledge of the ecosystems [25]–[27]. Evidence of this is
found, for example, in the boom and bust cycle of many deep-sea fisheries in the 1970s–1980s [e.g.
28], [29], the disposal of sewage waste in deep water in the 1980s [30] and the dumping of chemical
wastes and munitions [25]. Furthermore, human activities on land have promulgated a third and perhaps more dangerous
level of impact: increasing atmospheric CO2 emissions that have resulted in climate change [31] – including the warming of the
ocean, stratification and the generation and expansion of hypoxia – and ocean acidification [32]. A study by Halpern et al. [33]
indicates that no area in the ocean is completely unaffected by anthropogenic impact and that most areas (41%) are affected by
multiple drivers. Their model shows that coastal ecosystems receive the greatest cumulative impact, while polar regions and
deep waters seem to be the least impacted [33]. Previous studies have reviewed different aspects of anthropogenic impact in
the deep sea [25], [29], [34], [35], but to date little information is available on the direct and long-term effects of human
activities in bathyal and abyssal ecosystems. The deep-water ecosystem is poorly understood in comparison
with shallow-water and land areas, making environmental management in deep waters difficult.
Deep-water ecosystem-based management and governance urgently need extensive new data and
sound interpretation of available data at the regional and global scale as well as studies directly
assessing impact on the faunal communities [27].
Anthropocentrism leads to a genocide of the biosphere with mass die-offs and
eventually extinction of all life – this o/weighs their impacts which are based solely on
human extinction.
David Watson, 97, the author of “How Deep Is Deep Ecology?” and “Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a
Future Social Ecology”, Endangered Species Issue 288, March 1997, “Empire of Extinction”,
http://newint.org/features/1997/03/05/empire/, GH
For me these two smugglers exemplify a narrow self-interest driving both individuals and international institutions toward the abyss. But they
were the only ones intercepted, not the 50, perhaps even 100 who got away. In
a world where humans are the measure of all
things and sole repository of value, every unique manifestation of life becomes merchandise and rare
butterflies have little chance of living out their own evolutionary destiny. Sadly, such macrocosmic insults as dam
construction, logging, the use of biocides, and urban sprawl dwarf the collector as a threat to butterflies and their habitat. And as a single
moth goes, so may a flower, and other members of a small and complex community of life utterly
indivisible, and invisible to us. Those moths and butterflies that do eventually succumb will join an
accelerating dance macabre of extinction brought about by our clever species during the last few centuries,
especially the last few decades. Some victims are already gone: the Great Auk, Passenger Pigeon, Woodland Bison, Eskimo Curlew,
Dodo (and with it a plant dependent for its germination on the passage of its seed through the Dodo’s digestive tract). Others are sliding
irrevocably toward the chute: rhinoceros, elephant, tiger, piping plover and countless other creatures vanishing before we even
know of them. Like the Auk, so utterly extinguished by the mid-1800s that some thought it apocryphal, these creatures will one day
be considered as fabulous as we today consider the unicorn. It will matter little to our grandchildren whether they once
lived or were mere inventions. It’s easy to find scientists and lay people who consider this sense of loss mere
sentimentality unworthy of our status as ‘the lords and possessors of nature’, to repeat Descartes’ unhappy
phrase. After all, extinction is natural and inevitable; they are quick to remind us. Trying to save species
that have lost in the competition between the ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ is to turn back an inexorable clock. There is
little room for such beautiful losers in the ongoing march of progress. Extinction may be natural. But
today countless species are more like the victims of Latin American death-squad regimes, being made
actively to ‘disappear’. Rising human population is widely considered an underlying cause of the
contemporary die-off along the bulldozer’s blade and chainsaw’s teeth. Ecological collapse is typically represented by
a landless peasant slashing the forest with his machete, or a tribal woman carrying a bundle of sticks on
her head and a hungry child on her back. To be sure, the ascending J-curve of rising human numbers, accompanying the
vertiginous obliteration of countless other species, leaves a stunning impression. Yet sheer numbers do not totally explain the
current mass-extinction spasm. We need to look beyond the numbers, at social structures, at an energy- and commodity-intensive
development model and the social and historical causes of extreme poverty. While they comprise only 25 per cent of the
world’s population, industrial nations account for 75 per cent of energy use and consume 85 per cent of
forest products. US per-capita energy consumption is 250 times greater than in many poor countries. Obviously daily life in the North
contributes far more to ecological destruction than population growth in the South. On a global scale, according to one US official, the impact
of the world’s poorest people is ‘probably more akin to picking up branches and twigs after commercial chainsaws have done their work’.
There is a wide divergence of opinion about planetary carrying-capacity and the human numbers that
can adequately be supported (though there are copious signs that our ability to feed ourselves is declining due to abuse and overexploitation of our food sources). But even if some believe we can provide a decent life for twice the number of
people now living, no thoughtful person could possibly doubt the disastrous effect such numbers will
inevitably have on other species. How many people the earth can support is the wrong question. We also need to think
about what kind of life we want: crowded into an urbanopolis with a landscape entirely marshaled to
meet our ever-expanding needs; or in community with other species in a green world at least something
like the one in which we evolved. The latter is the kind of planet that will make it possible for all species
to flourish, along with essential wilderness and diverse land and ocean habitats. That will be the best world for us
too, but it will necessitate fewer of us. There is a ‘nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw’ idea that human depredation and
consequent mass extinction are entirely natural. According to this view even Palaeolithic humans, being an
intrinsically murderous lot, carried out their share of mass extinctions: for example, supposedly wiping out many large
mammals in North America. Yet there is little hard evidence, and much reason to doubt – except in obvious cases of
extinction on islands, like that of the flightless Moa of Aotearoa/New Zealand – that mass extinctions were caused by
prehistoric foragers and hunters. Farley Mowat, in his book Sea of Slaughter, gives us a dizzying description of the carnage
perpetrated on the animals of the North American eastern seaboard by explorers and entrepreneurs. He points out that the Great Auk
co-existed with human hunters for millennia. But it succumbed in a couple of hundred years to the
mechanized, market-driven empire that was only a quaint precursor to our own. We can remain agnostic about
whether or not our distant ancestors foolishly fouled their nest. It is pretty much irrelevant to the reality we face now: an immensely brutal and
thoroughly anthropocentric civilization ravaging the earth, ostensibly in our interest. The scale and scope of such devastation is unprecedented
in the history of our species. This
civilization’s arrogance is evident in our scientific tradition’s urge to expand
what Francis Bacon called ‘the empire of man’. But it goes back even further. The Judaeo-Christian biblical edict
granted us ‘dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’ Now many animals mentioned in the
Bible are going the way of the Dodo – Jonah’s whale, the Persian Wild Ass on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the Nubian Ibex, the Arabian
Oryx which Isaiah tells us was trapped in nets. Human
dominion has done these creatures little good; most have
fallen forever into our nets. The image of a human imperium oppressing the rest of nature is no mere
metaphor. It conforms to an actual pattern of imperial conquest, plunder, eventual exhaustion and
collapse. Our century has given a privileged layer of humanity an industrially organized life more opulent, more wasteful yet also more
frenetic, alienated and depressed than that of any ancient hierarch. We’ve transformed the earth into a giant mine and
waste pit, its forests and meadow lands into enormous feed lots for billions of stock animals, its waters
into cesspools devoid of life, its skies into orbiting junkyards of contaminated rocket debris. The world’s
tallest mountains are littered with expedition trash. Ships at sea do not go a single day without seeing
plastic garbage. Giant nets 30 miles long drag the oceans killing millions of sea creatures, including birds
and mammals. These are simply ‘by-products’ to be tossed overboard. The whole planet has become a
war zone generating a bio-crisis not just for individual species, but for entire webs of life. Human beings
are now altering the basic physiology of the planet. Industrial smog can be found everywhere over the
oceans, and weather patterns are so distorted that climatologists now discuss ‘climate death.’ Industrial
contamination is pervasive, even in the fat cells of Antarctic penguins. The rain is not only acid but toxic. Whether
industrialism warms or cools the atmosphere, its unprecedented chemical experiment threatens to
reconfigure life in ways barely imaginable, but undoubtedly for the worse. All empires turn out to be
relatively short-lived enterprises that finally betray their own subjects. Despite its enormous cost to the
rest of life, modern civilization has engendered a mode of existence that fails to provide even the barest
essentials for a fifth of humanity or to satisfy the fundamental psychic needs of the rest. Strangely, our
very anthropocentrism may be our own undoing.
Pragmatic self-interest alone should teach us that we must change
before nature exacts inevitable revenge. And nothing can be done, North or South, without social strategies that create institutions to provide
practical alternatives and thus opportunities for people to change.
The alternative is to reject the aff in favor of a “trans” ethic that recognizes humans
and non-humans are interconnected and entirely dependent on one another. Only by
submersing ourselves in the nonhuman world can we overcome the anthropocentric
divide that threatens the entire globe. Oceans are a unique opportunity to
interrogate our human entanglement with the rest of the natural world.
Alaimo, 11
(Stacy, “New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible,” NORA- Nordic Journal of
Feminist and Gender Research 19.4, 2011, arc)
Like Karen Barad, I would argue that material feminisms and other new¶ materialisms should embrace a post-humanist ethics by “taking
account of the¶ entangled materializations of which we are a part” (Barad 2007: 384). In Bodily¶ Natures: Science, Environment, and the
Material Self, I argue that the literature, film,¶ photography, and activist web sites of the environmental justice and environmental¶ health
movements manifest epistemologies that emerge from the material¶ interconnections between the human body and the environment. By
emphasizing¶ the movement across bodies, trans-corporeality reveals the interchanges and¶
interconnections between various bodily natures. But by underscoring that “trans”¶ indicates
movement across different sites, trans-corporeality also opens up a mobile¶ “space” that
acknowledges the often unpredictable and unwanted actions of human¶ bodies, non-human
creatures, ecological systems, chemical agents, and other actors.¶ Acknowledging that material
agency necessitates more capacious epistemologies¶ allows us to forge ethical and political positions
that can contend with numerous late¶ twentieth/early twenty-first century realities in which
“human” and “environment”¶ can no longer be considered separate. Trans-corporeality, as a
theoretical site, is¶ where feminist theory, environmental theories, and science studies intertwine.¶
Furthermore, the movement across human corporeality and non-human nature¶ necessitates rich, complex modes of analysis that travel
through the entangled¶ territories of material and discursive, natural and cultural, biological and textual. As¶ the material self cannot be
disentangled from networks that are simultaneously¶ economic, political, cultural, scientific, and substantial, what was once the ostensibly¶
bounded human subject finds herself in a swirling landscape of uncertainty where¶ practices and actions that were once not considered in
ethical or political terms¶ suddenly become the very stuff of the crises at hand. Activists, as well as everyday¶ practitioners of
environmental health, environmental justice, and climate change¶ movements, work to reveal and reshape the flows
of material agencies across regions,¶ environments, animal bodies, and human bodies—even as global
capitalism and the¶ medical-industrial complex reassert a more convenient ideology of solidly bounded,¶ individual consumers
and benign, contained, products. At the conclusion of Bodily¶ Natures I call for an ethics “that is not circumscribed
by the human but is instead accountable to a material world that is never merely an external place
but always the¶ very substance of our selves and others” (Alaimo 2010: 158). Although transcorporeality begins as an anthropocentric moment, it unravels the¶ Human as such, by tracing the
material interchanges between each human body and¶ the substances, flows, and forces that are
ultimately global in nature. The current¶ crisis in ocean ecologies calls us to examine human
entanglements with the far reaches¶ of pelagic and benthic zones—the very limits of transcorporeality. It is difficult—¶ scientifically and imaginatively—to trace how terrestrial human bodies
are¶ accountable to and interconnected with as yet unknown creatures at the bottom of¶ the sea;
moreover, even the Western conception of the ocean as “alien”, or as so vast¶ as to be utterly
impervious to human harm, encourages a happy ignorance about the¶ state of the seas. Nonetheless,
the ocean creatures themselves embody something akin¶ to the ontologies that new materialisms
and post-humanisms advocate. Take, for¶ example, the jelly-fish, which seems barely to exist as a
creature, not only because it is¶ a body without organs but because it is nearly indistinguishable from
its watery¶ world. Seemingly flimsy and fragile, these gelatinous creatures are nonetheless¶ thriving,
provoking fear of a clear planet in which jellies over-populate the degraded¶ oceans, causing harm to
fisheries, mining operations, ships, and desalination plants. ¶ More generally, the nekton (swimming organisms) in the oceans
may be considered¶ “ecosystem engineers”, because, as they transport themselves, they “take a portion of¶ their original
environment with them”, and thus they “actively support the chemical¶ and biological processes on which they depend”
(Breitburg et al. 2010: 194). Thinking¶ with marine life fosters complex mappings of agencies and
interactions in which—for¶ humans as well as for pelagic and benthic creatures—there is, ultimately,
no firm¶ divide between mind and matter, organism and environment, self and world.¶ Thinking with
sea creatures may also provoke surprising affinities, from Elizabeth Brown Blackwell’s feminist musings on the
¶
parenting duties of male sea-horses¶ (Brown Blackwell 1875: 74) to Eva Hayward’s recent exploration of what her own¶ “being
transsexual knows about being starfish” (Hayward 2008: 82). Submersing ourselves, descending rather than
transcending, is essential lest our tendencies toward Human exceptionalism prevent us from
recognizing that, like our hermaphroditic, aquatic evolutionary ancestor, we dwell within and as part
of a dynamic, intra-active, emergent, material world that demands new forms of ethical though and
practice. I would like to invite feminists, queer theorists, new materialists, and post-humanists to follow the submersible.
Links
Oceans
The AFF centers their focus on what they believe to be the “ethical good” when it
comes to oceanic modification, however this attitude prioritizes the commercially
viable over the ecologically resilient.
Schrader, 12
Astrid Schrader, (Sarah Lawrence College, Astrid works at the intersections of Science and Technology
Studies (STS), Human-Animal Studies and Feminist and Poststructuralist Theories.), “The Time of Slime:
Anthropocentrism¶ in Harmful Algal Research”, March 1, 2012, Environmental Philosophy. Spring2012,
Vol. 9 Issue 1, p71-93. 23p., July 16, 14, TL
The very possibility of asking to whom the ecological transformations¶ of our oceans matters is effaced when the means of comparison
between¶ past and future states of the ocean are presupposed. When
complexity is¶ fetishized as un-interrogated "ethical
good," it becomes impossible to ask¶ who or what constitutes that "we" that prefers big fish and pretty
corals.¶ Or formulated the other way around, such a view takes for granted that¶ what "we" prefer
coincides with what is commercially valuable. In this¶ case,' "our" current human economic time
provides both the means of¶ comparison between present and past and the future telos of all natural¶
movements. In other words, through a collapse of production and¶ reproduction, it appears as if "time
[itself] 'accomplished' or brought¶ about things in the course of evolurion" (Fabian 1983, 15), as if "the¶ means of
production [were] already produced" (Helmreich 2007, 294).¶ Given these assumptions, an assessment of harmfulness in
algae blooms¶ in terms of loss of productive biocapital seems to follow naturally:¶ through the "cultural"
modifications of marine microorganisms'¶ "natural" reproduction, life (as capital) seems to move
"backwards,"¶ losing its economic value as ecosystems become simplified.
Generic but Good
The affirmative’s silence on the issues of nonhuman animals is an independent link- it
illustrates their assumptions of the superiority of humans and creates this view as
standard and correct. Their privileging of human experience natural environment to a
mere physical space that can exploited.
Bell and Russell, 2000 (Anne and Constance, “Beyond Human, beyond Words: Anthropocentrism,
Critical Pedagogy, and the Poststructuralist Turn,” Canadian Journal of Education 25.3, p.191-192)
For this reason, the various movements against oppression need to be aware of and supportive of each other. In critical pedagogy,
however, the exploration of questions of race, gender, class, and sexuality has proceeded so far with little
acknowledgement of the systemic links between human oppressions and the domination of nature. The
more-than-human world and human relationships to it have been ignored, as if the suffering and exploitation of
other beings and the global ecological crisis were somehow irrelevant. Despite the call for attention to voices historically absent from
traditional canons and narratives (Sadovriik, 1995, p. 316), nonhuman
beings are shrouded in silence. This silence
characterizes even the work of writers who call for a rethinking of all culturally positioned essentialisms.
Like other educators influenced by poststructuralism, we agree that there is a need to scrutinize the language we use,
the meanings we deploy, and the epistemological frameworks of past eras (Luke & Luke, 1995, p. 378). To treat
social categories as stable and unchanging is to reproduce the prevailing relations of power (Britzman et al.,
1991, p. 89). What would it mean, then, for critical pedagogy to extend this investigation and critique to include taken-for-granted
understandings of “human,” “animal,” and “nature”? This question is difficult to raise precisely because these understandings are taken for
granted. The
anthropocentric bias in critical pedagogy man interests itself in silence and in the asides of
texts. Since it is not a topic of discussion, it can be difficult to situate a critique of it. Following feminist analyses, we find that
examples of anthropocentrism, like examples of gender symbolization, occur “in those places where
speakers reveal the assumptions they think they do not need to defend, beliefs they expect to share
with their audiences” (Harding, 1986, p. 112). Take, for example, Freire’s (1990) statements about the differences between “Man” and
animals. To set up his discussion of praxis and the importance of “naming” the world, he outlines what he
assumes to be shared, commonsensical beliefs about humans and other animals. He defines the
boundaries of human membership according to a sharp, hierarchical dichotomy that establishes human
superiority. Humans alone, he reminds us, are aware and self-conscious beings who can act to fulfill the objectives they set for themselves.
Humans alone are able to infuse the world with their creative presence, to overcome situations that limit them, and thus to demonstrate
a “decisive attitude towards the world” (p. 90). Freire (1990, pp. 87—91) represents other animals in terms of
their lack of such traits. They are doomed to passively accept the given, their lives “totally determined”
because their decisions belong not to themselves but to their species. Thus whereas humans inhabit a “world” which
they create and transform and from which they can separate themselves, for animals there is only habitat, a mere physical
space to which they are “organically bound.” To accept Freire’s assumptions is to believe that humans are animals only in a
nominal sense. We are different not in degree but in kind, and though we might recognize that other animals have distinct qualities, we as
humans are somehow more unique. We have the edge over other creatures because we are able to rise above monotonous, speciesdetermined biological existence. Change in the service of human freedom is seen to be our primary agenda. Humans
are thus cast as
active agents whose very essence is to transform the world — as if somehow acceptance, appreciation,
wonder, and reverence were beyond the pale. This discursive frame of reference is characteristic of critical pedagogy The
human/animal opposition upon which it rests is taken for granted, its cultural and historical specificity
not acknowledged. And therein lies the problem. Like other social constructions, this one derives its
persuasiveness from its “seeming facticity and from the deep investments individuals and communities
have in setting themselves off from others” (Britzman et al., 1991, p. 91). This becomes the normal way of
seeing the world, and like other discourses of normalcy it limits possibilities of taking up and confronting
inequities (see Britzman, 1995). The primacy of the human enterprise is simply not questioned. Precisely how an
anthropocentric pedagogy might exacerbate the environmental crisis has not received much consideration in the literature of critical pedagogy,
especially in North America. Although there may be passing reference to planetary destruction, there is seldom mention of the relationship
between education and the domination of nature, let alone any sustained exploration of the links between the domination of nature and other
social injustices. Concerns
about the nonhuman are relegated to environmental education. And since
environmental education, in turn, remains peripheral to the core curriculum (A. Gough, 1997; Russell, Bell, &
Fawcett, 2000), anthropocentrism passes unchallenged.’
Exploration/Tech
The desire to use technology to explore the ocean is rooted in dichotomous thinking
that has positioned men above women and humans above the non-human world.
Alaimo, 11
(Stacy, “New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible,” NORA- Nordic Journal of
Feminist and Gender Research 19.4, 2011, arc)
The question of how we should relate to that which we cannot control is still¶ up for grabs, and as
this question has become displaced, along with the wilderness, into the ocean deeps and the depths
of space, so feminists must¶ follow. (Bryld & Lykke 1999: 225)¶ The early twenty-first century has
ushered in a new era of deep-sea exploration,¶ marine science, industrial fishing, mining, drilling, and,
consequently, ecological¶ devastation. Feminists, environmentalists and new materialists of all sorts
must¶ follow these ventures in order to witness not only the dazzling newly discovered¶ creatures of
the abyssal zone1but also the outdated yet obdurate narratives projected¶ into the depths. Robert D.
Ballard, former Director of the Center for Marine¶ Exploration at Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (Massachusetts, USA),¶ concludes his personal history of ocean exploration with a section
entitled “Leaving the Body Behind”, describing the drawbacks of human-occupied diving machines¶ and
submersibles. Tethers, he writes, “remain a problem: They snap, they tangle, they restrict” (Ballard 2000: 310). Ballard
muses that robotics and telecommunications¶ technologies will allow us to...¶ cut the ultimate
tether—the one that binds our questioning intellect to¶ vulnerable human flesh. Through telepresence, a
¶
¶
mind detaches itself from the¶ body’s restrictions and enters the abyss with ease ... As Jacques Cousteau used¶ to say, the ideal
means of deep-sea transport would allow us to move “like an¶ angel.” Our minds can now go it alone, leaving the body behind.
What could be¶ more angelic than that? (Ballard 2000: 311)¶ A material feminist critique would point out the
gender dichotomies lurking in¶ Ballard’s mind/body dualism and examine how the wish to be free of
the vulnerable¶ (mother’s) body betrays an epistemology that distances and supposedly protects
the¶ masculine, transcendent knower from the realities, complications, and risks of the¶ material
world. The fantasy of masculinist knowledge, of control over the depths of¶ the ocean, relies upon
the projection of corporeality onto the womb-like submersibles¶ with their umbilical-cord tethers.
Conversely, the more advanced robotics and¶ telecommunications technologies are cast as pure
intellect, a masculine melding of¶ mind and machine that weirdly erases the eyes and hands—not to
mention the hearts,¶ lungs, and other bodily organs—that these technologies will still require. (A
feminist¶ cyborg submersible—a heretical mix of body, mind, technology, and prosthesis—is¶ unimaginable within Ballard’s
conceptual universe.) This small but symptomatic¶ example suggests why the reconceptualization of materiality remains crucial
for¶ feminist theory, since female bodies continue to be cast as the dumb matter that male¶ intellect seeks to escape. Moreover,
the intersecting categories of race and class have¶ also been constituted by their pernicious associations with brute matter.¶
Ballard’s desire to sever himself from the very world he would seek to know also¶ suggests why new
materialist theories should not divide human corporeality from a¶ wider material world, but should
instead submerse the human within the material¶ flows, exchanges, and interactions of substances,
habitats, places, and environments.¶ As new materialisms proliferate, some bear an uncanny
resemblance to (old)¶ Humanisms, in that they ignore the lively, agential, vast, material world, and
the¶ multitude of other-than-human creatures who inhabit it. Some of the essays within Diana Cole and Samantha
Frost’s fascinating collection, New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, for example, focus on the materiality of human life-worlds,
ignoring non-human animals and ecosystems. Meanwhile, Cary Wolfe’s momentous and provocative book What is Posthumanism? pays scant
attention to gender theory, feminist corporeal theory, or feminist science studies, even though all three are relevant to the questions he poses.
There is certainly not enough space here to detail the intersections, alliances, and productive interrelations between new materialisms,
feminisms, post-humanisms, and science studies, but I would like to propose that materialisms transgress the outline of the human and
consider the forces, substances, agencies, and lively beings that populate the world.
Post-humanist new materialisms, I
contend, are poised to topple the assumptions that confine ethical and political considerations to the
domain of the Human, while feminist theories, of many sorts, offer decades of scholarly contestations
of the very ethics, epistemologies, and ontologies that have underwritten Human exceptionalism.
Offshore Wind
Wind turbines have come to be symbolic of humanities ability to dominate nature.
Their claims of harmony with the environment mask the true nature of wind energy.
Richard Hirsh and Benjamin Sovacool in 2013, Professor Hirsh performs research on the
deregulation and restructuring of the American electric utility system at Virginia Tech. Dr. Benjamin K.
Sovacool is Director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at AU-Herning , “Wind Turbines and
Invisible Technology”, pg. 713-714,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.library.umkc.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v054/54.4.hirsh.pdf,
Muse, GH
Like other technologies, wind turbines have great symbolic value, which make the devices both attractive and repulsive to
various stakeholders. Often, policymakers do not consider the significance of these symbolic meanings, largely because few people express
them cogently. On the one hand, wind
turbines have become popular symbols of progress, modernity, and
environmental consciousness; they serve as backdrops to advertise merits of environmentally preferable
hybrid vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, and even beauty products. (Aveda claims to be the first beauty company manufacturing with
100% certified wind power.”) Political candidates frequently brandish campaign advertisements with images of
wind turbines, presumably hoping to enhance their claims as forward-looking environmental stewards.’
Companies that seek to reduce traditional en-ergy consumption, meet corporate and customers’ sustainability goats, and enhance
their images also turn to wind turbines occasionally, as Wal-Mart has done by installing small turbines near
some stores3’ Vail Resorts, the owner of several ski and mountain areas in the western United States, like wise boosted the company’s
environmental credentials by publicizing, in 2006, its commitment to purchase wind-power credits to offset all of its energy us. For similar
reasons, cereal manufacturers, fossil-fuel firms, banks, and other companies have employed iconic images of wind turbines. In 2013, the U.S.
Postal Service commemorated Earth Day with its wind-turbine cancellation mark (figs. 1—2). On the other hand, huge wind
turbines
have gained a different symbolic meaning to many people, as the devices intrude on what had been a
relatively unspoiled and natural environment. The turbines—especially the hundreds of machines that populated
California’s Altamont Pass in the 1980s—represent an industrialization of the hills that some rural residents want
contained in cities. After all, urbanites have a history of adopting un usual and alien forms of
architecture.4° Despite initial opposition, for example, Parisians took pride in the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of
modernity and technological prowess.4’ Skyscrapers in major cities also connote progress, economic
activity, and stylish novelty. In 2000, a British company built the Ferris wheel—styled London Eye, which reaches a height of 135
meters and is described, by its owner, as “an iconic landmark and a symbol of modern Britain.” These alien objects may fit into the
culture and lifestyle of city goers. But according to many people, they do not belong in the pristine rural landscape. Using a similar
logic, residents of the isolated Scottish Isle of Lewis opposed the introduction of as many as 181 turbines that would have reached 140 meters
in the sky. Proud of the isle’s 8,000-year-old history of habitation based on agriculture and animal husbandry, opponents objected to the
weakening of the cultural roots and conservative lifestyles that people have established there, despite the abundant wind resources that make
the turbines’ location so opportunistic. If completed, the project could have supplied about 7 percent of Scotland’s electricity needs.
Drastic impacts of offshore wind turbines mean the only nonanthopocentric approach
is to not build them.
Lilley, 10
(Jonathon Charles, NAVIGATING A SEA OF VALUES: UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD THE
OCEAN AND OCEAN ENERGY RESOURCES, doctoral dissertation at the University of Delaware for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Studies)
It is possible that even though offshore wind power is more environmentally friendly that oil drilling,
it is not seen as environmentally friendly enough. Despite offshore wind having a much lower
environmental impact, it will still have an impact, particularly with regards to individual animals;
some birds will hit the turbines, some fish will be displaced, and some marine mammals will likely be
affected by underwater noise and vibrations. Perhaps these potential impacts or simply a fear of the
unknown (as offshore wind has yet to reach the Americas) are enough to push those with a
nonanthropocentric attitude away from supporting offshore wind development. The data from this
survey appear to support this suggestion – that offshore wind power is seen by many as a threat to the
environment. The high percentage of respondents that chose environmental impacts as the primary
reason they oppose offshore wind development, coupled with the fact that certain environmental views
(e.g., the belief that people take the ocean for granted, concern about over-development) reduce
support for offshore wind, reveal that people are still unsure about its environmental impact.
Offshore wind is implemented for the benefit of humans while ignoring the harm to
birds- mortality, migration disruption, and habitat destruction
Brian Snyder and Mark J. Kaiser in 2008, Snyder is a research associate at the Center for Energy
Studies Mark J. Kaiser is a professor and director of the Research & Development Division at the Center
for Energy Studies, “Ecological and economic cost-benefit analysis of offshore wind energy”, Renewable
Energy, September 18 2008, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148108004217,
GH
One of the primary concerns surrounding wind farms is the risk that they will cause excessive avian mortality through collisions.
The birds most at risk of collision will be seabirds, and in some cases migrating passerines. While bird mortality increases due to the risk of colliding with offshore
turbines, the rate of mortality is relatively low, from 0.01 to 23 mortalities per turbine per year (these data are from both on and offshore wind farms; [34]). On a
per MW basis, fatalities range from 0.95 to 11.67 deaths per year [35]. Altamont
pass in California became notorious for its bird
mortality. While the annual collision rate per turbine was low (0.02–0.15 collisions per year), mortality was still
sizable due to the fact that 7000 turbines were involved and many of the birds killed were golden eagles, a charismatic species [34].
These data suggest that the fatality rate may be highly dependent on site specific factors. The estimates above were generally taken from studies in which mortality
was measured by counting dead birds found near turbines and, in some cases, correcting for birds removed by scavengers. In the offshore environment counting
carcasses is likely to be very difficult due to the fact that many carcasses will not be found [36]. At Nysted, a thermal imaging system was placed on one of the
turbines and could monitor 30% of the swept area for bird collisions. Using these data, it was predicted that approximately 0.02% of birds would collide with
turbines.
Wind farms can also pose barriers to birds. Birds often seem to avoid flying through wind farms;
birds that avoid a wind farm must expend a significant amount of
energy flying around it, especially since offshore wind farms can be quite large (tens of square miles). This could
be of particular importance if a wind farm is located in between rookeries and feeding grounds [34]. Finally,
wind farms can remove essential habitat from seabirds. Many seabirds have restricted areas in which
they can successfully feed and in many cases these areas are shallow sand banks appropriate for wind
farm development. If birds avoid wind farms, then even though the footprint of a wind turbine foundation is very small, very large
areas of habitat may be inaccessible to birds. This seems to have occurred among diving birds at the Horns Rev wind park and long-tailed
this likely decreases their mortality [37]. However,
ducks at Nysted wind park. Similar patterns are seen for terns and auks at Horns Rev, although the trends are not significant [38].
Offshore wind hurts marine mammals- sound of operation and construction interferes
with echolocation
Brian Snyder and Mark J. Kaiser in 2008, Snyder is a research associate at the Center for Energy
Studies Mark J. Kaiser is a professor and director of the Research & Development Division at the Center
for Energy Studies, “Ecological and economic cost-benefit analysis of offshore wind energy”, Renewable
Energy, September 18 2008, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148108004217,
GH
Many cetaceans use echolocation to find food and many more communicate via acoustic signals. As a
result many cetaceans, particularly porpoises, have very sensitive hearing which can be damaged by the loud noises
associated with wind farms, particularly the sounds of pile driving. At the site of construction, the sound
pressure level of pile driving a monopole for a 1.5 MW turbine is 228 dB [39]. Four-hundred meters away from pile driving
the sound pressure level is 189 dB. This would cause hearing loss in seals. Hearing loss for porpoises would likely
extend 1.8 km away from the source. Pile driving would be audible to porpoises and seals for at least 80
km and might cause behavioral responses up to 20 km away [39]. This sound pressure level is similar to, but slightly less intense
than that used in naval sonar which has been implicated in the mass stranding of beaked whales [39]. During wind farm operation the noise
from the turbines may be detectable for porpoises and seals up to about 1 km from the source [39]. At the
Nysted Wind farm the population of harbor and grey seals was monitored before, during and after construction. Wind farm operation did not seem to significantly
impact seal abundance, however, piling
driving operations that occurred at one foundation site (Nysted uses gravity foundations)
did decrease the number of seals observed at a nearby breeding site. Also, while the total annual population remained
stable, after construction fewer harbor seals were present on nearby land sites in June (the breeding season) but more were present in July and August. This could
suggest that
fewer seals are using the area around the wind farm for breeding which could have an
important effect on the viability of the population. Harbor porpoises were shown to occur less frequently in the area around a wind
farm during construction at both Nysted [40] and Horns Rev [38]. Presumably this is primarily due to animals fleeing the noise. At Horns Rev, the porpoises seemed
to return following the construction period, however, even two
were in baseline [38].
.
years later porpoises at Nysted are less numerous then they
Warming
Warming is a result of anthropocentric environmental behaviors - aff can’t solve.
Wood, 11
(David, “Toxicity and Transcendence,” Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 16.4, p.36, arc)
It would be another kind of myopia to suppose that this thought is new! Ancient peoples, farmers,
poets, even philosophers have long bowed down to the Sun. Nonetheless, this cosmic dependency is a
fragile insight, one that easily and understandably evaporates in our bustling quotidian lives.
However, it can easily be reanimated, and become available to us again. What it points to is a more farreaching displacement of our sense of being ‘‘at the center,’’ or what that means metaphysically. In
recent decades a dramatic shift has already occurred, something that could not perhaps have been anticipated.
Human beings have always dreamed of better worlds, of the city on the hill, of some sort of redemption from the wheel of
poverty and despair. With some exceptions, however, carrying on in an unreconstructed way was always the fallback position.
With global warming and the dramatic and accelerating destruction of biodiversity, it is becoming
increasingly plausible that the status quo ante is disappearing as any kind of option. There is a shift
from thinking about the amelioration of the human condition towards sustainable survival. And the
reason for this is that we are clearer than ever about our ontological condition, even as the collective
consequences of our practices belie these conditions. Human dependency – the dependency of the
human on the nonhuman – has typically been. refused and/or misrecognized. Metaphysically, we might
think of dualism as a refuge from the uncertainties of that dependency. And it is difficult not to think ‘‘misrecognition’’ when
Wittgenstein writes ‘‘Man is a dependent being. That on which we depend, we may call God’’ (73). There is perhaps a double
misrecognition here – both in the characterization of the other partner in the relation and in the nature of that dependency.
The two errors are brought together in the atavistic thought that we can effectively deal with the limits of our own control by
ritual propitiation of the gods. Individually and collectively we are indeed dependent on background
conditions that we cannot wholly control. We are vulnerable to storms, flooding, disease, crop failure,
extreme temperatures, etc. But alongside and often superseding religious responses to this condition we have
developed technologies of empowerment and security which, even as they often achieve greater local control
(protection from the ele-ments, greater terrestrial mobility), have far- reaching consequences that we cannot
control (climate change), and which threaten much greater destruction. They threaten destruction
because they impact precisely the ecological systems on which we depend (and which cannot be propitiated by
ritual sacrifice!) but are only addressed by a global transformation of our practices. Our dependency is very real and
for most of the history of humanity we have been locally vulnerable. What is new is that local
vulnerability is morphing into something of global proportion. The question is: can we respond adequately to this
(new) grasp of our dependency on background conditions (and relational interdependency with other beings)? What is at stake in this
question is, strangely, more than our survival. One peculiar way of putting it would be that what is at stake is our right to
survive.
Development
“Sustainable development" is an anthropocentric attempt to evade natural limits on
growth — this contributes to a global ecological meltdown
Irvine 2001, member of Me Campaign for Political Ecology, MI [September 5, "Sustainable
Development — The Last Refuge of Humanism RC)
The realities of life on a finite planet suggest that the programme of sustainable development is indeed
the last refuge of humanism since it represents the final attempt to evade the limits to growth. But it is
doomed to be dashed on the roots of ecological decline. The only way to avoid terrible consequences
ecological meltdown - a goal in the interests of all species. humans and non-humans – is to start putting Earth first .
Protection of the Earth’s life support systems, the conserver agenda, must become the overriding and all-pervading priority. Without such a
paradigm shift, the most worthy social goals such as justice, tolerance and quality of life, goals to which humanism has made a real contribution
(as have mom theistic traditions). can never be realised on a durable basis.
The idea of sustainable" exploitation of resources is simply a smokescreen to justify
ecological destruction
The Campaign for Political Ecology September 2001 ["Sustainable development'',
http://eco.gn.apc.org/SustainDev/index.html] RC
There are many well intentioned sustainable development
initiatives in which people involved believe they are matting a real
contribution to sustainability. Equally, a large number of organizations are using it as a marketing tool, which is not altogether unreasonable if
they are making a real effort in the direction of real sustainability. Unfortunately, the term
is all too frequently hijacked and
erected as a smokescreen behind which to carry on business as usual is the form of unsustainable
growth. Even amongst the genuinely well-intentioned, disappointingly few seem to have grasped the
true implications of sustainability. There is a widespread misconception that a few add-on pollution
controls plus a small increase in efficiency are all that is necessary to safeguard the future.
Development by definition is Anthropocentric
Hansen 2008 (Mogens Busch, Associate professor, Roskilde University, Global Governance for
Sustainable Development, eadi-online.org, RC)
The article aims to interlink the basic elements of natural resource endowment, their utilisation and transformation in production and
consumption, the waste generation and its shorter or longer term assimilation by nature. The waste may be transformed and appear as a new
natural resource or it may be accumulated as waste being an obstacle for new development. If this circular process can be repeated
indefinitely, the development is truly sustainable. However, sustainability involves many aspects, and most importantly the aims of
development. That includes the meaning of value and hereby the moral/ethical framework for development. Development studies show us
how differently the circular process has been evolving through history around the globe. Development
is by definition building
on anthropocentric values, i.e. the society is manipulating ‘nature’ for maximum utility. Natural
resources - or natural capital - are through the process being transformed into man- made capital. That is
physical structures in locations and infrastructure with its knowledge based institutional networks. This sets the frame for utilisation
and transformation of natural resources, assimilation of waste and the use of ‘nature’ for creating human welfare. Whether
this process is sustainable in the short term or in the long term depends on the quality of human made capital, whether it makes up for the
depletion of natural resources that will allow contemporary communities around the globe as well as future generations to fulfil their needs.
The articles tries to illustrate how space, as the combination of natural resources, environments and man-made capital, is the basic and most
important dimension of sustainability.
Development at its heart is anthropocentric
Hansen 2008 (Mogens Busch, Associate professor, Roskilde University, Global Governance for
Sustainable Development, eadi-online.org, RC)
Value is basically an economic concept as a measurement of utility for the individual and the human society. However, it may be claimed that
certain tree species are more valuable in avoiding soil erosion and maintaining a watershed and as such can be attached an economic value as
an environmental service for providing water downstream. A special issue of the Journal of Ecological Economics (Vol. 41, June 2002) was
devoted to a discussion of the integration of economic and ecological perspectives of values in relation to ecosystem services. Here it is also
stated that ‘value’ is a term that most ecologists and other natural scientists would prefer not to use at all (Constanza and Faber 2002). They
see ecosystems in their own right and humans, in their view, being part of nature on equal footing with
other species, do not have the right to threaten other species by defining anthropocentric values. Paul R.
Ehrlich in a recent article in Environment and Development Economics makes a powerful argument for the demonstrable failure of
conventional economics to focus its attention on what will be the central issues of the twenty-first century and hence the need for ecological
economics to become the central sub-discipline of economics. In doing so, the aim of this article is to contribute to what Paul Ehrlich sees as
important for ecological economists - keeping the ‘big picture’ in view. (Ehrlich, 2008). The
whole idea of development (and the
academic discipline of development studies) is deeply embedded in an anthropocentric perception of value that may
now, however, emerge as its own contradiction. With the development of production capacities and subsequent waste generation as the world
has experienced during the so-called development epoch, the depletion of natural resources and deposits of waste in soil, water and air, is
potentially becoming an obstacle to further development and more seriously potentially threatens the life supporting ecosystems4. This forces
the human society to seriously consider sustainability. The
meaning of value that I shall pursue in this article, therefore,
is the anthropocentric, instrumental use value supporting economic, social and political development for present and future
generations. If pursuing development for the present generations results in the risks that future generations
cannot pursue development, then it should accordingly not be deemed a value. This call for an understanding
of sustainable development and the role development studies could play in elaborating on this concept for the benefit of human development
within sustainable ecosystems.
Currently, Sustainable development is completely anthropocentric and a new way is
needed to evaluate the environment
Robinson 03 (John, Sustainable Development Research Initiative, Squaring the circle? Some thoughts
on the idea of sustainable development,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800904000175, RC)
From the point of view of biophysical concern, the key problem is that the sustainable development
position is ultimately a purely anthropocentric one. As noted earlier, both the more radical and the more reformist
formulations of the sustainable development position exist on the pragmatic side of the debates in the environmental literature between those
arguing for fundamental value and behavioral change and those who focus on the development of technology and on institutional reform. In
the end, these underlying debates turn on a difference between a primarily utilitarian focus on human well-being and a more spirituallyoriented focus on our relation with the natural world. Like
the conservationist and efficiency-oriented strains in the
environmental literature, the rhetoric of sustainable development is about achieving sustainability for
human purposes and ultimately conveys faith in the ability of humans to solve environmental and
social problems through the application of reason. However, from the point of view of those adopting a non-anthropocentric
or biocentric position on the appropriate relationship between humanity and nature, this means that the sustainable development
argument simply misses the point. What is needed, this argument runs, is a new ethic; a new set of
values; and a new way of relating to the natural world. In the words of David Suzuki, because we are so dependent on
natural systems, “we must learn to regard the planet as sacred” (Suzuki and McConnell, 1997). On the social side, similar concerns exist. The
concern here is that sustainable development is seen as innately reformist, mostly avoiding questions of power, exploitation, even
redistribution. The
need for more fundamental social and political change is simply ignored. Instead, critics
argue, proponents of sustainable development offer an incrementalist agenda that does not challenge
any existing entrenched powers or privileges. In this sense the mantra of sustainable development
distracts us from the real social and political changes that are required to improve human well-being,
especially of the poor, in any significant way. This argument finds current expression in the anti-globalization movement
around the world (Klein, 2000) which in turn is related to a larger critique of the political and economic characteristics of modern Western
culture (Margalit and Buruma, 2002).
Biodiversity
Preservation of biodiversity only sustains human economic growth – your motive will
be conflated production and growth
Aton 97, (Donald K. Aton, Anton Director of Policy and International Law University of Melbourn,
Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 1997.)
In order to appreciate the need for new international law to provide greater protection to marine biological diversity beyond the continental
shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), it is necessary to appreciate the value of such diversity, why we care about conserving it, and why
threats to it arc a matter of concern. From
some ethical points of view all forms of life, and the habitats that
support them, can be considered as intrinsically valuable to their own sake. - Under this premise, it
follows that protection and preservation ought to follow as a matter of course. However, excepting
certain philosophical, religious or cultural [*347] systems, the value of biological diversity’
overwhelmingly has been viewed from the narrow position of economic worth to humans . Of course,
this presents problems for the protection of biological diversity, because it has recognized value that
cannot be calculated in dollar terms. Further, under current accounting systems. the cost of losing biodiversity is ordinarily shifted
to society rather than internalized by private actors responsible for the loss. The problem is even more acute in the case of
marine biodiversity found beyond national jurisdiction because of its commons nature. Consequently,
systems for valuing biodiversity need to use monetary valuation as one tool among many. The debates
surrounding the C.B.D. have suffered from this myopic economic view of the value of biodiversity. Instead of focusing on the wide spread
protection and conservation of ecosystems. scies, and genetic variability, the debates have primarily involved access to biological diversify and
rights to profits generated through the exploitflon of genejc material.
Preservation Link
The preservation of marine natural resources is purely for use by future humans and
assumes humans should reign over nature
Warwick Fox in 1990, Australian philosopher and ethicist, “Toward a Transpersonal Ecology:
Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism”, pg. 10, Google Books, GH
When attention is finally turned to the exploitation by humans of the nonhuman world, our arguments for the conservation and
preservation of the nonhuman world continue to betray anthropocentric assumptions. We argue that
the nonhuman world should be conserved or preserved because of its use value to humans (e.g., its scientific,
recreational, or aesthetic value) rather than for its own sake or for its use value to nonhuman beings. It cannot be emphasized
enough that the vast majority of environ mental discussion—whether in the context of public meetings, newspapers,
popular magazines, reports by international conservation organizations, reports by government instrumentalities, or even reports by
environmental groups—is
couched within these anthropocentric terms of reference. Thus, even many of those
who deal most directly with environmental issues continue to perpetuate, however unwittingly, the
arrogant assumption that we humans are central to the cosmic drama; that, essentially, the ‘World is
made for us. John Seed, a prominent nonanthropocentric ecological activist, sums up the situation quite simply when he writes, “The idea
that humans are the crown of creation, the source of all value, the measure of all things, is deeply embedded in our culture and consciousness.”
Environment
Eco-crisis framing implicitly installs humans as the stewards of the earth and
forecloses attunement to the wonders of nonhuman life and processes
Mueller ‘9
[Michael, an environmental philosopher and science education profes- sor at the University of Georgia,
“Educational Reflections on the ‘‘Ecological Crisis’’: EcoJustice, Environmentalism, and Sustainability”,
Sci & Educ (2009) 18:1031–1056]
Noddings’ point calls into question the anthropocentrism deeply embedded in phrases such as
‘‘ecological crisis’’ and ‘‘environmental racism’’—the latter not wrestled with here. Although these phrases have previously served environmental
scholars, they do not promote the careful study of the environmental sciences. Are the trees, hawks and soil really in ‘‘crisis’’? If not
carefully considered, the crisis supposition could be interpreted to mean that humanity’s conservation choices
are shared with the birds, insects, microorganisms and the soil—all complex components of the Earth’s many ecosystems. As
noted by Harvard biologist Wilson (2006), humans may not wish to save all life forms. For example, Wilson notes malaria-infested
mosquitoes and invasive fire ants, and yet there are other pesky critters such as the protozoan Plasmodium falciparum, that causes malaria; and hookworms, and
liver flukes, and organisms that cause river blindness, dengue fever, yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, leprosy, and tuberculosis. The criticisms above also could be
applied to my use of the term ‘‘ecojustice.’’ What is considered justice is mostly human construed and positioned. For example, social justice focuses on how people
are advantaged or disadvantaged and attempts to eliminate disparities that occur someplace(s) (i.e., in-relation-to-other-places) (Thayer-Bacon 2000, 2003, 2008).
Emerging research (de Melo-Martin and Intemann 2007) further supports that deciding which disparities to eliminate involves ethical, political and social
evaluations (Chalmers 1976/1982/1999; Longino 1990; Thayer-Bacon 2003). Thus, ecological justice considers how Earth’s ecosystems are advantaged or
disadvantaged and attempts to eliminate disparities that occur someplace(s). Because rejecting unjust conceptualizations is warranted, the case can be made that
eliminating species or habitats in someplace(s) is justified. Ecojustice is human preconceived when it comes to renewing and revitalizing the commons; it runs the
risk of privileging what is considered good for humans rather than for the overarching ecosystems. Because there are obvious and not so obvious margins of error
between human sustainability and species conservation, I will uphold the tradition of using ecojustice to convey the constructed and positioned meanings of social
and ecological justice for both humans and the Earth’s other species. For the sake of argument, let’s
assume that environmental advocates
do consider every species on Earth in decisions to renew and revitalize the many diverse ecosystems.
Would the other-than-human-species really have a ‘‘voice’’ in how these decisions are approached? For
example, if eliminating a species someplace(s) means more outdoor experiences and reduces
consumerism would it be appropriate to do so? Turn that idea upside down and we come back to Wilson (2006), who speculates on
what might happen if there were no more humans for other species to contend with: ecological bliss!
Likewise, evolutionary ecologists point out that conserving all components of the ecological world is not responsible
stewardship from the other-than-human-vantage-point (Pennisi 2007). Studies in evolutionary ecology suggest that wildlife
biologists and conservationists will need to be very careful about revitalizing ecosystems with particular species that have been extirpated for extensive periods of
time. Moreover, ‘‘conservation policies need to consider how species might differ genetically across space, and how the coevolutionary paths they travel might
vary’’ (p. 687). The
implicit danger of crisis thinking is that it carries the false assumption that educators and
their students can save every species and habitat. This point is evidenced by the fact that the idealized assumption of the deepening
ecological crisis does not depend on any particular place(s) in Bowers (1993, 2001, 2006) works, because if it were, the ecological crisis would be compromised by
nonhumans. Clearly, the nonhuman species cannot talk to tell us what is on their minds. However, the Earth’s natural history provides some clues. There are billions
of years of significant geologic events in the exposed strata of rock formations around the world, showing fossilized evidence of previous global warming and
cooling trends, rising and falling coastlines, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and meteorites that have been classified as natural phenomena. For
example, Earth’s climate changes have been effected by the changing shape of the ellipse of the Earth around the Sun, the tilt of the Earth that varies between
22and 24 (dynamic seasonal changes), and the Earth’s slow spin axis ‘‘wobble,’’ which alters the timing of seasons. These natural changes intensify the unfamiliar
terrain of more incipient changes occurring in the last several centuries (Pollack 2003/2005, p. 52). Moreover, the natural history of climate change is influenced by
plate tectonics (albeit, at the speed of fingernail growth), including the uplifting of mountains and constantly eroding topography of the planet. These natural
processes both warm and cool the Earth, sometimes abruptly in the past, which led to movements in ancient civilizations (Diamond 2005). The assumption of
ecological crisis may not be the best way to think about the Earth’s natural processes and events. Life
has survived, and will almost surely continue to survive, no matter how insensitive humans are to the
Earth. One of the best examples can be found in the world’s undersea ‘‘basements,’’ where occur the highest mountains, the deepest valleys and the
hydrothermal vents, which paradoxically are both volcanic producers of toxic effluent and chemical islands of life (Van Dover et al. 2002). Other highly resilient
ecosystems include the geothermal pools of Wyoming and Montana, rocks of the Mojave Desert, and icepacks of Antarctica and Greenland. On the Earth there are
literally billions of organisms which do not rely on humans’ needs for their survival. Interesting examples of resilient ecosystems also can be found by looking to
Earth’s paleoecological records for evidence of earlier life forms—fossil pollens, seeds, animal remains and charcoal. Analyzing paleoecological studies or
‘‘hindcasting’’ helps today’s researchers think about the complexity of Earth’s changes and the impacts of humans (Willis and Birks 2006). What is thought to be
natural and native is seldom transparent. For example, Willis and Birks explain that ‘‘although it is not unreasonable to assume that an increase in aridity would
result in more [forest] fires, several studies indicate otherwise. In the Alaska boreal forest, fires occurred more frequently under wetter climatic conditions’’ (p.
1263). They note similar conditions in the paleoecological record of wildland fires in the Northern Great Plains grasslands of North America and the tropical dry
forests of the southern Ratanakiri Province in northeastern Cambodia. Essentially, modern conservation logic may be ‘‘clearly at odds with evidence from the
paleoecological record’’ (Willis and Birks 2006, p. 1263). The paleoecological evidence signifies that ‘‘low-intensity forest fires caused by humans may, in fact,
conserve forest cover’’ (p. 1263). Willis and Birks propose that the paleoecological record be used to provide insights to guide wildlife conservation (which aligns
with Pennisi (2007) above). Moreover,
the thinking that accompanies the cultural myth of ecological crisis may not
allow for ecological surprises! Christensen et al. (2006) explain that ecological surprises (i.e., ecological discoveries) are expected
where ‘‘a high degree of uncertainty exists in predicting the cumulative impacts of anthropogenic
stressors on an ecosystem because stress-induced species tolerances result in antagonistic responses’’ (p. 2317). ¶ Mueller 2/2¶ In other
words, ecologists and other environmental scientists are less likely to predict longer-term cumulative
impacts of human-caused stressors on ecosystems because of the opposition and resilience of
ecosystems to these stressors. Christensen et al. point out several scientific studies that also show organisms and microorganisms can be
surprisingly resilient and tolerant of Earth’s changes and human activities. They note a significant lack of scientific investigations available to help understand the
effects of multiple anthropogenic stressors on Earth’s diverse ecosystems. Future ecological studies will help scientists make better use of the currently unreliable
‘‘forecasts of the cumulative impacts of global change on biodiversity and related ecosystem processes’’ (Christensen et al. 2006, p. 2321). Christensen et al. also
note that there will be many more unexpected ecological surprises in the years to come: some will be beneficial and others adverse, but all will depend on the
particular contexts in which ecosystems are situated. Not surprisingly, abrupt
changes are now thought to have caused at least
five previous mass extinctions and the emergence of many new life forms. Without this reoccurring evolutionary process,
the dinosaurs may not have met their demise 65 million years ago, which subsequently allowed new species to survive and reproduce. The emergence
and movements of species deserves philosophical consideration (e.g., what is beautiful, good, just,
right…). Can the case be made that human beings are invasive species, for example? By today’s science standards,
an invasive species is identified as a non-indigenous species that expands beyond its native home range, which may be introduced by humans (i.e., humans may not
be considered part of the local ecosystems) or by the variability of Earth’s changes (Willis and Birks 2006). With Earth’s climate changes and variations, we cannot
know for certain which species will shift borders and, hereafter, every species could potentially be considered invasive if it moves in response to Earth’s
temperature changes. A
double standard for humans that assumes that we all have unlimited access to Earth’s
vast topography has been privileged in response to Earth’s previous climate changes. Ironically, the
cultural myth of ecological crisis may disguise humans from being positioned as ‘‘invasive.’’ If there is an
explanation for why humans are favored for survival and reproduction, Bowers (2001, 2006) does not offer it.
Humans only conserve the environment for their own survival
Katz and Oechsli, 2003, (Eric Katz, currently Vice President of the International Society for
Environmental Ethics, author of “Organism, Community, and the ‘Substitution Problem’, and Lauren
Oechsli, an undergraduate biology major at Columbia University, New York, 2003, “Moving beyond
Anthropocentrism: Environmental Ethics, Development, and the Amazon”, AD)
Diverse species populations thus contribute to stable ecosystems, which have positive impacts on human life. Finally, this
argument is broadened into a general concern for ecological function. The preservation of the natural environment
insures a biosphere that supports human civilization. Degradation of the natural environment threatens
human survival. Nevertheless, knowledge of ecological processes can help humans avoid damage to
essential biological and physical links in the natural world. As Norton indicates, the loss of species and ecosystems is a sign that
these natural connections are being “cut,” lost, or damaged. The mere preservation of the natural environment halts this
process of degradation. Nature thus has to be preserved because it has a value for human beings and human
society: it insures the physical basis of human life. In sum, these preservationist arguments based on “human
interests” move from a narrow concern for the specific direct use of a natural entity or species, to the indirect importance of
species as stabilizers of ecosystems, and finally to a general concern for the maintenance of ecosystems as the basis of human
existence. These anthropocentric instrumental arguments for environmental preservation are easily transferred to issues of
environmental policy. Recent concern about the destruction of the ozone layer and the increased probability
of the “greenhouse effect” reflect the fear that current environmental and economic policies are
damaging the environment and threatening human life. Indeed, it is a mark of the success of the environmental
movement that the public is now aware of the connections between environmental health and human survival. A clear
example of the connection between instrumental human interest arguments and concern for the
preservation of an ecosystem is the current awareness of the plight of the Amazon rain forests.
Although continued development of the forests and the conversion of rain forests to farmland and
pasture contribute to a rapid loss of species, the major problem is a threat to the overall ecosystems of
the rain forests themselves. Deforestation has a significant impact on climate because of the increase of atmospheric
carbon. The recent increase in atmospheric carbon is a primary cause of the “greenhouse effect,” which
leads to global warming. Thus, the preservation of the rain forests is an important element in the
maintenance of a biosphere habitable for humanity. This line of reasoning has been a clear argument and powerful
motivation for environmental policies designed to preserve the Amazon rain forests. Environmentalists and ordinary citizens
alike now seek a halt to the destruction of the Amazon; they now recognize that the welfare of all human life depends
on the maintenance of this unique ecological region
Natural Resources
Exploitation of natural resources is anthropocentric in all instances
Shrivastava 1995 (Paul is the Distinguished Professor and Director of David O'Brien Centre for
Sustainable Enterprise at Concordia University, Ecocentric Management for a Risk Society , The Academy
of Management Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 118-137, RC)
Anthropocentrism. Another fundamental limitation of the traditional management paradigm is anthropocentrism, an ideology that asserts the
separateness, uniqueness, primacy, and superiority of the human spe- cies. This concept legitimizes human welfare as the central purpose of
nature is reviewed as an expendable resource for furthering the interests of
humans. Humans, thus, have a right to exploit nature without any real concern for maintaining its integrity. Preservation of nature is meaningful only as a condition of human self-interest. Therefore, nature may be
societal institutions. Accordingly,
protected and conserved so that humans may use it to the "max," both at the present time and in the future. According to anthropocentric
assumptions, human beings have no moral obligation to minimize their impact on nature (Devall & Sessions, 1985; Nash, 1989).
Anthropocentrism is part of the traditional management paradigm at a very deep level. It is part of the basic assumptions borrowed from neoclassical economics, which is in itself anthropocentric. Thus, ideas such as "property rights" over natural resources, "free market" exchange with
linked ecological externalities, "economic rationality" in organizational decision making, denaturalized theories of the firm, and insatiable consumption needs of homo economicus are taken for granted in organiza- tional studies (Daly & Cobb, 1989). Under
anthropocentric
assumptions, organizational exploitation of natural resources is legitimate, even desirable. Concerns
about natural resource extinction rarely surface as strategic organizational issues. When they do, they
are prompted not by a preservationist sentiment, but rather by fears of price inflation and future
shortages. This anthropocen- tric attitude has fostered the unchecked exploitation of resources by organizations (Pauchant & Fortier, 1990)
The idea that nature is simply a resource to be preserved for future human
consumption is anthropocentric-it’s the same mindset that justifies ecological
destruction
Orton, 03 (David, Deep Ecologist and Philosopher, Key Deep Ecology Ideas,
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Key_Deep_Ecology_Ideas.html, RC)
Non Human-centeredness. Humans do not have a privileged position. For me this is the central contribution of DE.
As a species, we are
just one member of a community of all beings. There is no belief in a hierarchy of organisms, with humans on top. Nature
is not a “resource” for human use . We should share the planet on a basis of equality with all other life forms. We should have a
humility attitude, “live and let live.” We have to adjust to the natural world, not the natural world to us. Our
language is human-centered: trees, fish, etc. are “resources.” For industrial forestry, insects are “pests,”
trees are described as “decadent” and “overmature” when they are considered past their prime from a
human-use perspective. For wildlife here in Nova Scotia, we have a booklet called “Hunting & Furharvesting Regulations.” Morality
just concerns “humans” in a human-centered universe, so it is not considered immoral by most to
destroy wildlife through industrial forestry. For example, there isn't even a thought given to clearcutting in May and June when
ground and tree birds are nesting.
Anthropocentrism is a gateway to massive resource consumption
Mchpherson, 09
( Guy Mchpehrson is a philosopher and writer of the human effects on ecology,Resources and
anthropocentrism, http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-10-12/resources-and-anthropocentrism ,
AW)
As I indicated in a previous post, the
word "resources" is anthropocentric because it implies materials are
placed on this planet for the use of humans. We see finite substances and the living planet as
materials to be exploited for our comfort. Examples of intense anthropocentrism are so numerous in the
English language it seems unfair to pick on this one word from among many. And, as with most other cases, we don’t even think about these
examples, much less question them (cf. sustainability, civilization, economic growth). My only justifications for singling out “resources” are the
preponderance with which the word appears in contemporary media, the
uncritical acceptance of resources as divine gifts
for Homo sapiens, and previous posts on a few of the other obvious examples. I’ll start with definitions, straight from the MerriamWebster Online Dictionary. Resource: 1 a: a source of supply or support : an available means —usually used in plural b: a natural source of
wealth or revenue —often used in plural :c: a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of human life d: computable wealth —
usually used in plural e: a source of information or expertise. All these definitions imply an anthropogenic basis for resources, and c is
particularly transparent on this point. Digging a little further, the etymology of “resource” brings us directly to lifelong bedfellows
anthropocentrism and Christianity. “Resource” is derived from the Old French “resourdre” (literally, to rise again), which has its roots in the
Latin “resurgere” (to rise from the dead; also see “resurrection”).
Technology
Technological solutions to environmental problems ultimately fail and lead to
environmental biocide. Attempting to combine a deep ecological approach with
technology is doomed to failure.
Berry, 96 (Thomas, was a Catholic priest of the Passionist order, cultural historian and ecotheologian.
PhD/Deep Ecologist advocate, Ethics and Ecology(Harvard Seminar),
http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:Sq4zZuakOa8J:scholar.google.com/+%22we+kn
ow+the+story+of+the+formation%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,26, RC)
We know the story of the formation of the modem world, the dominant intellectual framework and its beginnings in the 17th century with the
publication of Descartes' philosophy and then its development in the 18th century with Newtonian physics. This
mechanistic view of
the world encouraged the growth of technological invention and industrial plundering, culminating in
the 1880's when the electronic and chemical research centers were established, scientific technologies
were advanced, and the modem commercial corporations were formed. The objective was to make
human societies as independent as possible from the natural world and to make the natural world as
subservient as possible to human decisions. Nothing was to be left in its natural state. Only now can we appreciate the
consequences of this effort to achieve human well-being in a consumer society by subduing the spontaneities of the natural world to human
manipulation. We
begin to realize that the devastation taking place cannot be critiqued effectively from
within the traditional religions or humanist ethics. Nor can it be dealt with from within the
perspectives of the industrial society that brought it about.
We find ourselves ethically destitute just when, for the
first time, we are faced with ultimacy, the irreversible closing down of the earth's functioning in its major life systems. Our ethical traditions
know how to deal with suicide, homicide and even genocide, but these
traditions collapse entirely when confronted with
biocide, the killing of the life systems of the earth, and geocide, the devastation of the earth itself.
The idea of a technological “fix” is just error replication-problems humans face are
human caused, and with the greater the level of technology the greater hazards we
face, up to and including destruction of the biosphere
Scott 11 (Dane, is the Director of the Mansfield Ethics and Public Affairs Program at The
University of Montana and Associate Professor of Ethics in the College of Forestry and
Conservation. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University, an M.A. in
philosophical theology from the Graduate Theological Union and a B.S. in soil science from the
University of California Riverside. The Technological Fix Criticisms and the Agricultural
Biotechnology Debate, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics June 2011, Volume 24,
Issue 3, pp 207-226 , RC)
With this background in place, the next step is to turn to the philosophical criticisms. The sweeping philosophical criticisms of technological
fixes are expressed by the cultural historian, Leo Marx. He writes: To
dismiss the possibility of a scientific or
technological ‘‘fix’’ is a commonplace of contemporary intellectual discourse. But too often
the idea is treated as if it were a single, discrete, isolable, vulgar error—a tiny speck of bad
thinking easily removed from the public eye. Unfortunately, the dangerous idea of a technical
fix is embedded deeply in what was, and probably is, our culture’s dominant conception of
history. (Marx 1983) While Marx’s comments are over 25 years old they are still an accurate representation of the philosophical criticisms
of technological fixes. For Marx, technological
fixes are defective because they derive from uncritical
philosophical commitments to scientific and technological progress and an anthropocentric
conception of the human relationship to the rest of nature. Langdon Winner expresses this in terms of a
commitment to the idea of technological progress. He writes: ‘‘In the twentieth century it is usually taken for granted that the only reliable
sources for improving the human condition stem from new machines, techniques and chemicals. Even the recurring environmental and social
ills have rarely dented this faith’’ (Winner 2004). The philosophical criticisms aim to undermine this faith by exposing cracks in the intellectual
foundations of Western, technological culture. It is, of course, not possible to provide a comprehensive discussion of this highly contested area
of intellectual discourse. However, it is possible to draw a quick sketch of major landmarks that inform the philosophical criticisms of
technological fixes. One landmark that no doubt shaped the philosophical criticism is Lynn White’s, ‘‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological
Crisis.’’ White’s often cited essay appeared just as environmentalism was entering popular consciousness in the late 1960s (White 1967). His
thesis is that the origins of the twentieth century’s ecological crisis are found in Western Christianity’s anthropocentric conception of the
relationship of humans to nature and in the merging of science and technology. Stated differently, our
present environmental
troubles are the result of the enormous power created by the union of science and
technology along with a worldview that justifies the use of that power to dominate and
control nature.White speculates that the soil, if you will, for these developments was prepared by the transition from the scratch plows
to the heavy plow in northern Europe. The heavy plow, with its vertical knife blade, sliced deep into the rich soils of the region, opening up the
earth. The application of this agricultural technology, according to White, transformed how people understood their relationship to the natural
world. Prior
to the heavy plow, comments White, ‘‘man had been part of nature; now he was the
exploiter of nature’’ (Ibid.). Like numerous environmental critics of technological culture, White references Francis Bacon’s
seventeenth century utopian vision in The New Atlantis. The creed of Bacon’s utopia, and the culture it has come to represent, is ‘‘scientific
knowledge means technological power over nature’’ (Ibid.). White’s
critique aims to undermine the views that
technological power is essentially a benign and progressive force and the idea that we
humans have the right to dominate the earth to satisfy our needs. Another landmark is Leo Marx’s critique
of the history of Western technological culture, mentioned at the beginning of this section. Marx’s critique is similar to White’s; however, he
focuses on the seventeenth century Enlightenment’s philosophy of history. That philosophy asserted the inherent progressiveness of science
and technology. In this view, technological fixes are not an alternative means for solving problems; science and technology are the only way to
advance civilization. Marx writes, ‘‘The assumption is that the achievements of scientists and engineers translate more or less naturally and
predictably—in the ordinary course of events—into solutions of such grave problems’’ (Marx 1983). Marx calls this assumption a ‘‘logical abyss
in our thinking,’’ and responds to it by asserting that ‘‘few
arguments could be more useful today than one
aimed at persuading the world that science and technology, essential as they are, cannot save
us’’ (Ibid.). He elaborates by saying that, ‘‘The most urgent problems on the human agenda inhere in the
man-made, not the natural environment. They are political, not scientific, and thus scientific progress
cannot be the basis for their resolution’’ (Ibid.). For Marx, the philosophical criticisms of technological fixes point to the Enlightenment’s
discredited philosophy of history. In doing so he calls into question the unjustified habit of behaving as if this philosophy of history were true by
an undue focus on technological fixes. Science and technology do not necessarily lead to social progress. According to Marx, the
problems humanity now faces are not techno- logical; they are fundamentally social, political,
and moral. Closely related to White’s and Marx’s philosophical criticisms of technological fixes are the criticisms of philosopher Alan
Drengson. Drengson reiterates many of the above themes in his essay, ‘‘The Sacred and the Limits of the Technological Fix.’’ Drengson
defines a technological fix as, ‘‘the attempt to repair the harm of a technology by
modification’’ (Drengson 1984). Like White and Marx, Drengson’s critique seeks to expose weaknesses in the intellectual foundations of
Western technological culture. Drengson points out how the technological fixes create a pattern of
problem solving where the same approach that created a problem is used to find solutions,
when a completely different way of thinking about the problem is needed. Further, this pattern of
problem solving is underwritten, echoing White, by the belief that humans have ‘‘power as masters and controllers of nature’’ (Ibid.). Drengson
labels this way of ordering reality as the technocratic and instrumentalist view. He writes: ‘‘The technocratic and instrumentalist view values
science primarily as an activity which produces knowledge with predication power and capacity for control’’ (Ibid). For Drengson, The
threat of modern technologies is so great that they could destroy the biosphere, and yet these very
technologies, it is argued, are necessary for human security and happiness. Paradoxically the escalation of technological power has brought less
security. The
level of hazard tends to expand with the level of power. It is in such a context that the limits to the
‘‘technocratic and instrumentalist’’ worldview that is
driving the repeated application of ever more powerful technological fixes poses severe risks
idea of a technological fix become clear. (Ibid.) The
for the earth. The solution, according to Drengson is to modify our values and goals; once we do this we will see the limits of a
technological fix (Ibid.).
Technological growth has hurt non-human forms of life
Grey, ’93 (William, prof. @ University of Queensland, taught at Australian National University, Temple
University, Philadelphia, and the University of New England. “ Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology”,
Australiasian Journal of Philosophy , Vol 71, No 4 (1993), pp. 463-475. RC)
Moral philosophy aims to provide a rational critique or justification of the principles which guide or govern human conduct. In this inquiry it is
of course assumed that these principles are accessible to reason. Human activity, particularly when amplified by sophisticated science-based
technologies, now extends far beyond the stone age boundaries which constrained our actions for most of human history. The
chain saw
and the drift net have transformed biological systems far more rapidly and violently than the neolithic
axe and spear. The rapid and accelerating technologically-driven modification of our natural
surroundings has changed them beyond the wildest neolithic dreams. It is these changes which have
prompted the question whether constraints on human conduct should take into consideration more
than purely human interests. Environmental philosophers have proposed a critique of traditional Western moral thought, which, it is
alleged, is deficient for providing a satisfactory ethic of obligation and concern for the nonhuman world. This concern, it is claimed,
needs to be extended, in particular, toward nonhuman individuals, wilderness areas, and across time
and species. The project of extending our concern in the latter two cases—over time and over species—is a central concern of this paper.
Humans cannot use technology to shape, change or restore nature
Katz, 1992 (Eric, New Jersey Institute of Technology, “The Call of the Wild: The Struggle against
Domination and the Technological Fix of Nature”,
http://books.google.com/books?id=dtksC4M5gukC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=The+Call+of+the+Wild+
The+Struggle+against+Domination+and+the+Technological+Fix+of+Nature&source=bl&ots=7OlI6gVuiP&
sig=5nenU2pK5M18gRxaOAyFbMMDqfA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1zrIUvGMuiC8AGIw4HIBQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=The%20Call%20of%20the%20Wild%20The%2
0Struggle%20against%20Domination%20and%20the%20Technological%20Fix%20of%20Nature&f=false,
RC)
In this essay, I explore this "call of the wild "-our attraction to value that exists in a natural world outside of human control. To understand
this value, we must understand the relationship between technology and the natural world, the ways in
which humanity attempts to "fix" and mold nature to suit human purposes. Thomas Birch has described this project
as the "control of otherness” a form of domination that includes an control of nature and all such outsiders of human society. Here I bring
together several ideas about the philosophy of technology And the nature of artifacts and combine them with themes raised by Birch. I
that value exists in nature to the extent it avoids the domination of human technological practice.
Technology can satisfy human wants by creating the artifactual products we desire, but it can- not
supply, replace, or restore the wild.
argue
Aquaculture
Aquaculture is an attempt by humans to assert dominance over nature—
domestication, genetic alteration
Carlos M. Duarte, Nuria Marba, and Marianne Holmer in 2007, (Carlos M., UWA Oceans Institute & School of
Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia; CSIC, Spain)(IMEDEA (CSIC-UIB))(Professor Marianne Holmer, co-editor in Chief, Aquaculture
Environment Interactions), “Rapid Domestication of Marine Species.”, April 20, 2007,
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.umkc.edu/stable/pdfplus/20036052.pdf?&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true, 7/16/14, AD
Domestication of wild species to produce food means that the breeding, care, and feeding of organisms
are controlled by humans (4). By 2000 years ago, an estimated 90% of the species presently cultivated
on land had been domesticated. Since the industrial revolution, the increase in the numbers of
domesticated land plant and animal species has been modest (~3%) (see the figure). In contrast, the rise
of aquaculture is a contemporary phenomenon (5). About 430 (97%) of the aquatic species presently in
culture (see the table) have been domesticated since the start of the 20th century, and an estimated
106 aquatic species have been domesticated over the past decade (see the figure) (6). The number of
aquatic species domesticated is still rising rapidly (see the figure) (6). Even allowing that the rates for
early domesticates are estimates, aquatic domestication rates are ~100 times as fast as the rates of
domestication of plant and animal species on land over the period when domestication was fastest (see
the table) (6). Despite a vastly longer history, the domestication of land species has been less successful
than that of marine species (7), particularly for animals: 0.08% of known land plant species and 0.0002%
of known land animal species have been domesticated (7), compared with 0.17% of known marine plant
species and 0.13% of known marine animal species. Effective genetic improvement programs for many
aquaculture species (8) should be facilitated by their huge reproductive output and short generation
times compare.
Aquaculture is driven by consumption rather than conservation. The AFF prioritizes
income and yield over ecologically viable genetic variability.
Rexhepi et al 12
AGIM REXHEPI*¶ , KURTESH SHERIFI, HYSEN BYTYQI, BEHLUL BEHLULI, (University of Prishtina, Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary, Kosova),
“Review: importance of establishing and running a breeding program in ¶ the developing fish farming industry”, 17 December 2012,
Agricultural University of Tirana, p. 78, ISSN: 2218-2020, July 16, 14, TL
In order to utilize the maximum farm production ¶ potential, the breeding plan must start as soon as ¶
possible in order to achieve highest yield . Investments ¶ in this field need to be multidirectional such as ¶ establish breeding
station, well educated personnel in ¶ quantitative genetics, and training of fish farmers in ¶ order to maintain what is achieved. ¶ Individual
selection is the most common method ¶ of selection used in fish breeding, because is simple to ¶ apply and efficient
in improving growth rate. Reports ¶ of very good genetic gain per generation in average ¶ should encourage farmers and government support ¶
promising genetic improvement. Taking
into account ¶ the heritability of economically important traits, ¶ breeding
program must be established in fish farming ¶ which improves feed conversion, improve growth rate ¶
and disease resistance, including improvements of ¶ quality traits. The initiatives could come from several ¶ directions
including the fish farmers, genetic ¶ researchers, or government in order to stimulate ¶ aquaculture production. The dissemination of ¶
improved fish could be directly with eggs, fry or ¶ broodfish from breeding station. This
might have a ¶ direct impact on
developing industry and direct ¶ increase of fish farmer’s income . ¶ In countries where fish farming is in developing ¶
phase and without any established fish breeding ¶ program, inbreeding can be a serious constraint. The ¶ improper use of selection methods
may cause negative ¶ and unfavorable inbreeding depression and ¶ consequently the negative effects reducing genetic ¶ variation, fitness and
growth rate. The rate of ¶ inbreeding using mass selection is determined from ¶ the number used as parents. Thus, recommended in ¶ different
authors by selecting 50 pairs for each sex the ¶ rate of inbreeding might be kept at 1% per generationis the recommended limit to minimize loss
of genetic ¶ variation or to avoid loss of fitness [2] and minimize ¶ an immediate loss of heterozygosity or genetic ¶ variation [5, 8, 31].
Economy
Prioritization of economic benefits over the implications of the plan in terms of the
biosphere is anthropocentric.
Suzuki and Moola 09
David Suzuki with Faisal Moola, (Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist. He graduated from Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1958 with an Honours BA in
Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961.), (professor in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Forestry,
and regularly has his work published in books and journals on ecology, conservation biology and environmental policy.), “It's time for a new
economic paradigm”, August 21, 2009, http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2009/08/its-time-for-a-new-economic-paradigm/,
July 17, 14, TL
I list ecosystem _and _other species deliberately because we
have become a narcissistic, self-indulgent species. We
believe we are at the centre of the world, and everything around us is an "opportunity" or "resource"
to exploit. Our needs or demands trump all other possibilities. This is an anthropocentric view of life.¶ Thus, when faced with a
choice of logging or conserving a forest, we focus on the potential economic benefits of logging or not
logging. When the economy experiences a downturn, we demand that nature pay for it. We relax
pollution standards, increase logging or fishing above sustainable levels, or (as the federal government
has decreed) lift the requirement of environmental assessments for new projects.¶ A fundamentally different
perspective on our place in the world is called "biocentrism". In this view, life's diversity encompasses all and we humans are a part of it,
ultimately deriving everything we need from it. Viewed this way, our well-being, indeed our survival, depends on the health and well-being
of the natural world. I believe this view better reflects reality.¶ The
most pernicious aspect of our anthropocentrism has
been to elevate economics to the highest priority. We act as if the economy is some kind of natural
force that we must all placate or serve in every way possible. But wait! Some things, like gravity, the speed of light,
entropy, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics, are forces of nature. There's nothing we can do about them except live within the
boundaries they delimit.¶ But
the economy, the market, currency — we created these entities, and if they
don't work, we should look beyond trying to get them back up and running the way they were. We
should fix them or toss them out and replace them.¶ When economists and politicians met in Bretton Woods, NH, in
1944, they faced a world where war had devastated countrysides, cities, and economies. So they tried to devise solutions. They pegged
currency to the American greenback and looked to the (terrible) twins, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to get
economies going again.¶ The postwar era saw amazing recovery in Europe and Japan, as well as a roaring U.S. economy based on supplying a
cornucopia of consumer goods. But the economic system we've created is fundamentally flawed because it is disconnected from the
biosphere in which we live. We cannot afford to ignore these flaws any longer.¶ Flaw 1: Beyond its obvious value as the source of raw
materials like fish, lumber, and food, nature performs all kinds of "services" that allow us to survive and flourish .
Nature creates
topsoil, the thin skin that supports all agriculture. Nature removes carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere and returns oxygen. Nature takes nitrogen from the air and fixes it to enrich soil. Nature
filters water as it percolates through soil. Nature transforms sunlight into molecules that we need for
energy in our bodies. Nature degrades the carcasses of dead plants and animals and disperses the
atoms and molecules back into the biosphere. Nature pollinates flowering plants.¶ I could go on, but I think you catch my
drift. We cannot duplicate what nature does around the clock, but we dismiss those services as
"externalities" in our economy.¶ Flaw 2: To compound the problem, economists believe that because there are no limits to
human creativity, there need be no limits to the economy. But the economy depends on having healthy people, and
health depends on nature's services, which are ignored in economic calculations. Our home is the
biosphere, the thin layer of air, water, and land where all life exists. And that's it; it can't grow. We are
witnessing the collision of the economic imperative to grow indefinitely with the finite services that
nature performs. It's time to get our perspective and priorities right. Biocentrism is a good place to start.
Economic development is rooted in the ideology of anthropocentrism where value is
not intrinsic but rather is determined by how useful something is to human beings.
Yang in 2010 (Shun-Chung-Ph. D. candidate and works at the National Taiwan University at the
Department of Geosciences), “Alternative Ways of Life in Response to Economic Recession - A
Theological Stand”, October 2010,
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer /pdfviewer?sid=44378b7f-98b14b1e-a439-2ffa842ce0ec%40sessionmgr111&vid=6&hid=120, AD & Young$-7/19/14
From contemporary economic development we can realize that behind development there is the
ideology of anthropocentrism. Especially the will to power of human beings. With this logic. Human
beings use nature for their own benefit. Not only by oppressing human beings. But using nature as just
an instrument for development. Under the impact of anthropocentrism. Our earth is held in an
"environmental apartheid." Nature exists only for humans and their interests. With no regard for the
inherent worth" of the beings of nature, human beings make use of them for the ends of human
subjectivity. A Human beings become organized in a way that is centered on themselves. They make
everything-nature, living beings, and plants. Animals, and even other human beings- to serve them. They
take possession of those things and subject them to their own interests. They disrupt the natural kinship
with all things. Such self- centeredness does not bring the immortality we desire but rather the
disruption of all connections and connectedness."
GPS
GPS distances humanity from the earth by reducing it to pure navigational data – that
replaces everyday living spaces with navigational coordinates, creating a flat surface
for human management and intervention
Joronen ‘8
Joronen, Mikko. Department of Geography, University of Turku. 2008. “The Age of Planetary Space: On
Heidegger, Being, and Metaphysics of Globalization.”
https://www.doria.fi/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10024/66733/AnnalesAII257Joronen.pdf?sequence=1
From all of the ways modern technology has transformed us, the world, and the earth, spatial magnitude may be the one having consequences
most comprehensive and pervasive. In the appendix to one of his best-known essays, The Age of the World Picture, German philosopher Martin
Heidegger (1889–1976) describes this technological transformation in terms of what has apparently become
known as the process of globalization, an increasingly spreading globe-wide connectedness of things from
societal practices to the use of natural entities. We are now faced with the “planetary imperialism of
technologically organized man”, Heidegger writes, with a technology of “organized uniformity” that has
become “the surest instrument of total rule over the earth” (Heidegger 1977d:152). Although it has become somewhat selfevident that after a couple of decades of rapid intensification this technological conquest of planetary space has grown in monumental heights, it
is equally apparent that the issue of globalization is not solely emptied into recent speeding up of the loss of the sense of distance.
The globe
rather seems to provide a symbol for an entire age of technological conquest and ordering. In fact, it is
this technological conquest, as Heidegger points out in his other much sited essay Question Concerning Technology, which is not a
mere “order of a machine” but a way of revealing, that constitutes an entire era of ‘gigantic’ ‘enframing’ (Gestell) of the
terrestrial globe, the planetary earth (1977a:23). In a fundamental sense of the word, we contemporaries are being
caught up in a “cyber-world of the real”, thrown into a world governed by technical command revealing
the whole of the earth as nothing but a reserve on call for the networks of its commanding orderings.
By implicitly indicating fundamental levelling and ever-heightening possession of the space of the earth,
such ordering of things has
turned the earth into a planetary resource to be used up by the manipulative powers of technological
societies. It is this technological power, which evermore reaches ahead by calculating and arranging
things as functions according to its own ordering power that defines the fundamental outcome of the
technological revealing of planetary space: the uniform capturing and positioning of spatial relations of
things into a framework of total orderings.
Life/Death
The AFFs inherently equates “organisms” with “life”, however such a view subjugates
what is thought of as dead- this justifies exploitation of ecosystems as a whole.
Rowe 96
Stan Rowe, (Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan and author of many books and articles.), “From Shallow To Deep Ecological
Philosophy”, 1996, The Trumpeter, Vol 13, No 1 , http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/278/413, July 17, 14, TL
The hierarchical series organ-organism-ecosystem-ecosphere represents a scale of increasing complexity and creativity. The last member,
the ecosphere, is the leading candidate for embodiment of the organizing principle called “life.” What
gives life to the cell? The living organ that is its surrounding environment. What give life to the organ? The living organism within
which it is embodied. What gives life to the organism? The surrounding living ecosystem and the global ecosphere.¶
The October ’94 issue of Scientific American, titled “Life in the Universe,” presented a state-of-the-art account of how planet Earth and
organic earthlings—creaturely relatives and ourselves—came to be. Throughout the text the words “organisms”
and “life” were
used as synonyms. Two contributors made a stab at clarifying what the second concept might or might not mean. Robert Kates
suggested that “life is simply organic matter capable of reproducing itself,” or “the mix of living things that fill the places we are familiar
with.” More circumspect, Carl Sagan was content to falsify current definitions, implying that a satisfactory meaning for “life” has yet to be
found.¶ Organisms
can be “alive” one moment and “dead” the next with no quantitative difference. The
recently deceased organism has lost none of its physical parts yet it lacks “life”—an unknown quality of
organization (perhaps that mystery called “energy?”) but not the organization itself. A still stronger reason exists for
not equating “life” and “organisms.” The latter only exhibit “aliveness” in the context of lifesupporting systems, though curiously the vitality of the latter has mostly been denied. By analogy, it is
as if all agreed that only a tree trunk’s cambial layer is “alive” while its support system—the tree’s bole
and roots of bark and wood that envelops and supports the cambium—is “dead.” Instead we perceive
the whole tree as “alive.”¶ The separation of “living” organisms from their supportive but “dead” environments
is a reductionist convention that ecology disproves. Both organic and inorganic are functional parts of enveloping
ecosystems, of which the largest one accessible to direct experience is the global ecosphere. To attribute the organizing principle “life” to
Earth—to the ecosphere and its sectoral aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems—makes more sense than attempting to locate it in organisms
per se, divorced from their requisite milieus. The aquatic ecologist Lindeman (1942) who pioneered examination of lakes as energetic
systems adopted the ecosystem concept because of the blurred distinction between “living” and “dead” in the components of the
Minnesota lakes he studied.¶ The Biological Fallacy, equating organisms with life, is the result of a faulty inside-the-system view (Rowe
1991). Pictures of the blue-and-white planet Earth taken from the outside are intuitively recognized as images of a living “cell.” Inside that
“cell,” cheated by sight, people
perceive a particulate world separable into important and unimportant parts:
the “organic” and the “inorganic,” “biotic” and “abiotic,” “animate” and “inanimate,” “living” and
“dead.” Religions, philosophies and sciences have been constructed around these ignorant
taxonomies, perpetuating the departmentalization of a global ecosystem whose “aliveness” is as much expressed
in its improbable atmosphere, crustal rocks, seas, soils and sediments as in organisms. When did life begin? When did any kind of creative
organization begin? Perhaps when the ecosphere came into existence. Perhaps earlier at time zero and the Big Bang.¶ Important
human attitudes hinge on the idea of life and where it resides. If only organisms are imbued with life, then things like
us are important and all else is relatively unimportant. The biocentric preoccupation with organisms subtly supports
anthropocentrism, for are we not first in neural complexity among all organisms? Earth has traditionally been
thought to consist of consequential entities—organisms, living beings—and their relatively inconsequential dead environments. What
should be attended to, cared for, worried about? The usual answer today is “life” in its limited sense
of “organisms,” of biodiversity. Meanwhile sea, land and air—classified as dead environment—can be
freely exploited. In the reigning ideology as long as large organisms are safeguarded, anything goes.¶
We demean Earth by equating “life” and “organisms,” then proving by text-book definition that Earth is dead because
not-an-organism. In this way mental doors are barred against the idea of liveliness everywhere. Certainly Earth is not an organism, nor is it a
super organism as Lovelock has proposed, any more than organisms are Earth or mini-Earth. The planetary ecosphere and its sectoral
volumetric ecosystems are SUPRA-organismic, higher levels of integration than mere organisms. Essential to
the ecocentric idea
is assignment of highest value to the ecosphere and to the ecosystems that it comprises.¶ Note the use of
“ecosphere” rather than “biosphere,” the latter usually defined as a “life-filled” (read “organism-filled”) thin shell at Earth’s surface. The
meaning of “ecosphere” goes deeper; it is Earth to the core, comprising the totality of gravity and electro-magnetic fields, the molten
radioactive magma that shifts the crustal plates, vulcanism and earthquakes and mountain building that renew nutrients at the surface, the
whole dynamic evolving “stage” where organisms play out their many roles under the guidance of the larger whole, shaped at least in part
by the “morphic fields” of the living Gaia (Sheldrake 1991:162).¶ In different times and places the source of life has been attributed to the air,
to soil, to water, to fire, as well as to organisms. As with the blind men touching the elephant, each separate part has been the imagined
essential component of the whole Earth. Now that the planet has been conceptualized as one integrated entity, can we not logically
attribute the creative synthesizing quintessence called “life” to it, rather than to any one class of its various parts?¶ When
life is
conceived as a function of the ecosphere and its sectoral ecosystem the subject matter of Biology is
cast in a bright new light. The pejorative concept of “environment” vanishes. The focus of vital interest
broadens to encompass the world. Anthropocentrism and biocentrism receive the jolting shock they
deserve. The answer as to where our preservation emphasis should center is answered: Earth spaces
(and all that is in them) first, Earth species second. This priority guarantees no loss of vital parts.¶ The implications of
locating animation where it belongs, of denying the naive “Life = Organisms” equation, are many. Perhaps most important is a broadening of
the Schweizerian “reverence for life” to embrace the whole Earth. Reverence
for life means reverence for ecosystems.
We should feel the same pain when the atmosphere and the seas are poisoned as when people are
poisoned. We should feel more pain at the destruction of wild ecosystems, such as the temperate rain
forest of the West Coast, than at the demise of any organism, no matter how sad the latter occasion,
because the destruction of ecosystems severs the very roots of evolutionary creativity.
Critical Pedagogy/Empowerment/Freedom
Critical pedagogy is anthropocentric- its concepts of “freedom” and language as purely
human phenomena place the concept of human superiority at the base of its beliefs
Bell and Russell, 2000 (Anne and Constance, “Beyond Human, beyond Words: Anthropocentrism,
Critical Pedagogy, and the Poststructuralist Turn,” Canadian Journal of Education 25.3, p.193-194)
To be fair, Bowers understates the extent to which these assumptions are being questioned within critical pedagogy (e.g., Giroux, 1995; Peters,
1995; Shapiro, 1994; Weller & Mitchell, 1992, pp. 1,5). Nevertheless, his main point is well taken: proponents
of critical pedagogy
have yet to confront the ecological consequences of an educational process that reinforces beliefs and
practices formed when unlimited economic expansion and social progress seemed promised (Bowers,
1993b, p. 3). What happens when the expansion of human possibilities is equated with the possibilities of
consumption? How is educating for freedom predicated on the exploitation of the nonhuman? Such
queries push against taken-for-granted understandings of human, nature, self, and community, and thus
bring into focus the underlying tension between “freedom” as it is constituted within critical pedagogy
and the limits that emerge through consideration of humans’ interdependence with the more-thanhuman world. This tension is symptomatic of anthropocentrism . Humans are assumed to be free
agents separate from and pitted against the rest of nature, our fulfillment predicated on overcoming material constraints.
This assumption of human difference and superiority, central to Western thought since Aristotle (Abram. 1996, p. 77), has
long been used to justify the exploitation of nature by and for humankind (Evernden, 1992, p. 96). It has also been
used to justify the exploitation of human groups (e.g., women, Blacks, queers, indigenous peoples) deemed to be closer to nature — that is,
animalistic, irrational, savage, or uncivilized (Gaard, 1997; Haraway, 1989, p. 30; Selby, 1995, pp. 17-20; Spiegel, 1988), This “organic
apartheid” (Evernden, 1992, p. 119) is bolstered by the belief that language is an exclusively human property
that elevates mere biological existence to meaningful, social existence. Understood in this way, language
undermines our embodied sense of interdependence with a more-than-human world. Rather than being a
point of entry into the webs of communication all around us, language becomes a medium through which we set
ourselves apart and above. This view of language is deeply embedded in the conceptual framework of
critical pedagogy including poststructuralist approaches. So too is the human/nature dichotomy upon
which it rests. When writers assume that “it is language that enables us to think, speak and give meaning to the world around us,” that
“meaning and consciousness do not exist outside language” (Weedon, 1987, p. 32) and that “subjectivity is constructed by and in language”
(Luke & Luke, 1995, p. 378), then their
transformative projects are encoded so as to exclude any consideration of
the nonhuman. Such assumptions effectively remove all subjects from nature. As Evemden (1992) puts it, “if subjectivity, willing,
valuation, arid meaning are securely lodged in the domain of humanit the possibility of encountering
anything more than material objects in nature is nil” (p. 108). What is forgotten? What is erased when the real is
equated with a proliferating culture of commodified signs (see Luke & Luke, 1995, on Baudrillard)? To begin, we
forget that we humans are surrounded by an astonishing diversity of life forms. We no longer perceive or give
expression to a world in which everything has intelligence, personality, and voice. Polyphonous echoes are reduced to
homophony, a term Kane (1994) uses to denote “the reduced sound of human language when it is used under the assumption that speech
is something belonging only to human beings” (p.192). We forget too what Abram (1996) describes as the gestural,
somatic dimension of language, its sensory and physical resonance that we share with all expressive
bodies (p. 80). The vast forgetting to which these scholars allude is a culturally and historically specific phenomenon. In Western culture,
explains Evemden (1992), it is to the Renaissance that we owe the modern conceptualization of nature from which all human qualities,
including linguistic expression, have been segregated and dismissed as “projection.”
Once scoured of any normative content
assigned to humanity nature is strictly constrained, knowable, and ours to interrogate (pp. 28, 39—40, 48). It
is objectified as a “thing,” whereas any status as agent or social being is reserved for humans (Haraway,
1988, p. 592).
Critical pedagogy is entrenched in the goal of human empowerment that is necessarily
ignores the non-human world. This prevents us from ever understanding how truly
interconnected all beings are.
Bell and Russell, 2000 (Anne and Constance, “Beyond Human, beyond Words: Anthropocentrism,
Critical Pedagogy, and the Poststructuralist Turn,” Canadian Journal of Education 25.3, p.198-199)
For instance, carrying forward the concerns and convictions of Dewey (1938/1963) and the progressive education movement,
theorists of critical pedagogy have written extensively about the disjuncture between the kinds of environments and
interactions necessary for active and transformative learning and the social relations we enter into through academic training
(e.g.. McKenna, 1991). They recommend practices situated in students’ cultures (e.g.. Shor, 1992, p. 44) and in the
particular communities, schools, and other social groups of which students are a part (e.g., Walsh, 1991, p. 99). In so doing,
they stress the importance of relationships, contexts, and local histories in defining who we are, calling
into question the individualistic and universalistic narratives that shape curriculum and schooling
generally (e.g., Giroux, 1991, p. 24; Weiler & Mitchell, 1992, pp. 1,5). So far, however, such queries in critical
pedagogy have been limited by their neglect of the ecological contexts of which students are a part and
of relationships extending beyond the human sphere. The gravity of this oversight is brought sharply
into focus by writers interested in environmental thought, particularly in the cultural and historical dimensions of
the environmental crisis. For example, Nelson (1993) contends that our inability to acknowledge our human
embeddedness in nature results in our failure to understand what sustains us. We become inattentive to
our very real dependence on others and to the ways our actions affect them. Educators, therefore,
would do well to draw on the literature of environ mental thought in order to come to grips with the
misguided sense of independence, premised on freedom from nature, that informs such notions as
“empowerment.” Further, calls for educational practices situated in the life-worlds of students go hand
in hand with critiques of disembodied approaches to education. In both cases, critical pedagogy
challenges the liberal notion of education whose sole aim is the development of the individual, rational
mind (Giroux, 1991, p. 24; McKenna, 1991, p. 121; Shapiro, 1994). Theorists draw attention to the
importance of nonverbal discourse (e.g., Lewis & Simon, 1986, p. 465) and to the somatic character of
learning (e.g., Shapiro, 1994, p. 67), both overshadowed by the intellectual authority long granted to
rationality and science (Giroux, 1995; Peters, 1995; S. Taylor, 1991). Describing an “emerging discourse
of the body” that looks at how bodies are represented and inserted into the social order, S. Taylor (1991)
cites as examples the work of Peter McLaren, Michelle Fine, and Philip Corrigan. A complementary vein of enquiry is
being pursued by environmental researchers and educators critical of the privileging of science and
abstract thinking in education. They understand learning to be mediated not only through our minds but
also through our bodies. Seeking to acknowledge and create space for sensual, emotional, tacit, and
communal knowledge, they advocate approaches to education grounded in, for example, nature
experience and environmental practice (Bell, 1997; Brody, 1997; Weston, 1996). Thus, whereas both critical pedagogy
and environmental education offer a critique of disembodied thought, one draws attention to the ways in which the body
is situated in culture (Shapiro, 1994) and to “the social construction of bodies as they are constituted within discourses of race,
class, gender, age and other forms of oppression” (S. Taylor, 1991, p. 61). The other emphasizes and celebrates our
embodied relatedness to the more-than-human world and to the myriad life forms of which it is
comprised (Payne, 1997; Russell & Bell, 1996). Given their different foci, each stream of enquiry stands to be enriched by a
sharing of insights. Finally, with regard to the poststructuralist turn in educational theory, ongoing investigations stand
to greatly enhance a revisioning of environ mental education. A growing number of environmental educators
question the empirical-analytical tradition and its focus on technical and behavioural aspects of curriculum (A. Cough, 1997;
Robottom, 1991). Advocating more interpretive, critical approaches, these educators contest the discursive
frameworks (e.g., positivism, empiricism, rationalism) that mask the values, beliefs, and assumptions
underlying information, and thus the cultural and political dimensions of the problems being considered
(A. Cough, 1997; Huckle, 1999; L.ousley, 1999). Teaching about ecological processes and environmental hazards in a supposedly objective and
rational manner is understood to belie the fact that knowledge is socially constructed and therefore partial (A. Cough, 1997; Robertson, 1994;
Robottom, 1991; Stevenson, 1993).
Heidegger Link
Heidegger’s notion of Dasien is inherently anthropocentric.
Wood, 11
(David, “Toxicity and Transcendence,” Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 16.4, p.33, arc)
An alternative to this sort of ethical naturalism would contest any narrowly reductive sense of what it
would mean to put man at the center. Surely at the heart of any minimally normative understanding of
the human is a certain trans- cendence of species-narcissism or indeed any other kind? This, I believe,
is the logic of Heidegger’s position, and, moreover, that of Kant and Hegel. For Heidegger, man qua
Dasein is the site for the first appearance of freedom, truth, and ontological self-interrogation. The
privilege of the human is not to privilege the human but to have a certain access to Being. On this model,
birds are justified in privileging flying not just because they are distinctively good at it but because of what flying truly enables
them to see. Dasein, Heidegger will say, is world-forming, while the animal is ‘‘poor in world,’’ and the
stone altogether ‘‘worldless’’ (Fundamental 197). The pressing question with regard to Heidegger’s
treatment of ‘‘the animal,’’ indeed the question raised by Derrida, Llewelyn, and others, is whether in
the end Heidegger’s entire strategy of the displacement of man towards his openness to Being is not a
covert vehicle for entrenching traditional humanistic preferences. Wherever we locate this more enlightened
anthropocentrism, the claim is that we can and routinely do transcend our species self-interest. On this view, even if it is
made possible by virtue of tools developed for other purposes, we humans do indeed have an
objectively superior perspec- tive; we may then understand ourselves as the vehicle for its realization.
In his essay ‘‘The Other Heading’’ Derrida argues that one could imagine continuing to endorse a privilege to Europe as the leading edge of a
certain historical ‘‘progress’’ if it were to offer itself as an extended ‘‘city of refuge,’’ if it offered hospitality to all who needed it. Would
something parallel with regard to anthropocentr- ism – that its privilege depends on just how it understands ‘‘man’’ – allow us to circumvent
what might be called the paradox of auto- immunity, as discussed above? This paradox of auto-immunity addresses the way in which states and
other complex systems, in seeking to preserve themselves, behave in suicidal ways. (To defend its freedoms, America suspends civil liberties.)
Instead of the originally suicidal exclusion and subordination of other creatures to the point of their extinction (which also threatens us),
anthropocentrism could avoid this logic if it put hospitality towards the other at the heart of its understanding of man.
Suffering/Evil Links
The affirmatives presentation of suffering as a moral “evil” is anthropocentric- it
creates value systems based purely on human perspective
Kowalsky 06
( N athan Kowalsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He also teaches
philosophy courses for the University of Alberta's Department of Philosophy as an affiliated faculty member. Furthermore, he is Adjunct
Professor of Religious Studies and, through a secondment agreement, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology & Society, both through the
Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Alberta), “ The Range of Evil: Multidisciplinary Studies of Human Wickedness”,
http://www.academia.edu/420914/Anthropocentrism_and_Natural_Suffering, Young$-7/18/14
One task of environmental ethics is to delineate our duties ¶ toward the values in nature. The existence of natural
evil makes this¶ project problematic. Evil is thought to be present in nature because the¶ world is rife
with naturally-caused suffering, and suffering equals evil. But¶ the values concerned are¶ in¶ nature, so
anthropocentric accounts of natural¶ value (good or bad) are generally to be rejected. I present three
arguments¶ for why equating suffering with evil is anthropocentric. First, to equate¶ suffering with evil
is to make interpersonal norms the template for ¶ nonhuman behaviour, which is an anthropocentric move.
Second, equating¶ suffering with evil requires an anthropocentric principle, namely the¶ is/ought
dichotomy. Third, the equation is itself anthropocentric, as it¶ presupposes morally atomistic preferencesatisfaction and organismic¶ invulnerability as ecologically ideal. Therefore, even the presence of ¶
gratuitous suffering in nature cannot count as evidence against the value-¶ claims of environmental
ethics. This conclusion would also hold for the¶ theological problem of natural evil.
Efforts to stop human suffering are in nature anthropocentric- it shows we view our
needs above those of the environment
Kowalsky 06
( N athan Kowalsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He also teaches
philosophy courses for the University of Alberta's Department of Philosophy as an affiliated faculty member. Furthermore, he is Adjunct
Professor of Religious Studies and, through a secondment agreement, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology & Society, both through the
Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Alberta), “ The Range of Evil: Multidisciplinary Studies of Human Wickedness”,
http://www.academia.edu/420914/Anthropocentrism_and_Natural_Suffering, Young$-7/18/14
In culture, to
equate human suffering with prima facie evil¶ implies that the human individual and its
preferences should remain¶ inviolate, all else being equal. This equation is clearly anthropocentric,¶
regardless of whether or not it is a good inter-personal rule. It is¶ not ¶ a good¶ basis for a
nonanthropocentric environmental ethic, which ought to govern¶ our interspecific behaviour. Therefore, it is¶ even worse¶ for
nonhumans to¶ be expected to behave this way.
MPX
Ecocide
The impact to the k is ecocide – this out-weighs the aff because it violates and
destroys all being, not just human beings. It is when we no longer know ourselves as a
part of our environment that we enable the destruction of the atmosphere, non
human beings and human beings. This is a far more violent level of extinction.
Gottlieb, 94 (Roger - professor of humanities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Ethics and Trauma:
LEVINAS, FEMINISM, AND DEEP ECOLOGY, http://www.crosscurrents.org/feministecology.htm)
I speak of the specter of ecocide, the continuing destruction of species and ecosystems, and the growing
threat to the basic conditions essential to human life. What kind of ethic is adequate to this brutally new and potentially
most unforgiving of crises? How can we respond to this trauma with an ethic which demands a response, and does not remain marginalized?
¶
Here I will at least begin in agreement with Levinas. As he rejects an ethics proceeding on the basis of self-interest, so I believe the
anthropocentric perspectives of conservation or liberal environmentalism cannot take us far enough.
Our relations with nonhuman nature are poisoned and not just because we have set up feedback loops
that already lead to mass starvations, skyrocketing environmental disease rates, and devastation of
natural resources.¶ The problem with ecocide is not just that it hurts human beings. Our uncaring
violence also violates the very ground of our being, our natural body, our home. Such violence is done
not simply to the other -- as if the rainforest, the river, the atmosphere, the species made extinct are
totally different from ourselves. Rather, we have crucified ourselves-in-relation-to-the-other, fracturing
a mode of being in which self and other can no more be conceived as fully in isolation from each other
than can a mother and a nursing child.¶ We are that child, and nonhuman nature is that mother. If this image seems too
maudlin, let us remember that other lactating women can feed an infant, but we have only one earth mother. What moral stance will be
shaped by our personal sense that we are poisoning ourselves, our environment, and so many kindred spirits of the air, water, and forests? To
¶
¶
begin, we may see this tragic situation as setting the limits to Levinas's perspective. The
other which is nonhuman nature is not
simply known by a "trace," nor is it something of which all knowledge is necessarily instrumental. This
other is inside us as well as outside us. We prove it with every breath we take, every bit of food we eat,
every glass of water we drink. We do not have to find shadowy traces on or in the faces of trees or lakes,
topsoil or air: we are made from them.¶ Levinas denies this sense of connection with nature. Our "natural" side represents for
him a threat of simple consumption or use of the other, a spontaneous response which must be obliterated by the power of ethics in general
(and, for him in particular, Jewish religious law(23) ). A "natural" response lacks discipline; without the capacity to heed the call of the other,
unable to sublate the self's egoism. Worship of nature would ultimately result in an "everything-is-permitted" mentality, a close relative of
Nazism itself. For Levinas, to think of people as "natural" beings is to assimilate them to a totality, a category or species which makes no room
for the kind of individuality required by ethics.(24) He refers to the "elemental" or the "there is" as unmanaged, unaltered, "natural" conditions
or forces that are essentially alien to the categories and conditions of moral life.(25)¶ One can only lament that Levinas has read nature -- as to
some extent (despite his intentions) he has read selfhood -- through the lens of masculine culture.
It is precisely our sense of
belonging to nature as system, as interaction, as interdependence, which can provide the basis for an
ethics appropriate to the trauma of ecocide. As cultural feminism sought to expand our sense of personal identity to a sense of
inter-identification with the human other, so this ecological ethics would expand our personal and species sense of
identity into an inter-identification with the natural world.¶ Such a realization can lead us to an ethics appropriate to our
time, a dimension of which has come to be known as "deep ecology."(26) For this ethics, we do not begin from the uniqueness
of our human selfhood, existing against a taken-for-granted background of earth and sky. Nor is our body
somehow irrelevant to ethical relations, with knowledge of it reduced always to tactics of domination. Our knowledge does not
assimilate the other to the same, but reveals and furthers the continuing dance of interdependence. And
our ethical motivation is neither rationalist system nor individualistic self-interest, but a sense of connection to all of life.¶ The deep ecology
sense of self-realization goes beyond the modern Western sense of "self" as an isolated ego striving for hedonistic gratification. . . . . Self, in this
sense, is experienced as integrated with the whole of nature.(27)¶ Having gained distance and sophistication of perception [from the
development of science and political freedoms] we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. . . . we are our world knowing itself. We
can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful
way.(28)¶ Ecological ways of knowing nature are necessarily participatory. [This] knowledge is ecological and plural, reflecting both the
diversity of natural ecosystems and the diversity in cultures that nature-based living gives rise to.¶ The recovery of the feminine principle is
based on inclusiveness. It is a recovery in nature, woman and man of creative forms of being and perceiving. In nature it implies seeing nature
as a live organism. In woman it implies seeing women as productive and active. Finally, in men the recovery of the feminine principle implies a
relocation of action and activity to create life-enhancing, not life-reducing and life-threatening societies.(29)¶ In this context, the knowing ego
is not set against a world it seeks to control, but one of which it is a part. To continue the feminist perspective, the mother knows or seeks to
know the child's needs. Does it make sense to think of her answering the call of the child in abstraction from such knowledge? Is such
knowledge necessarily domination? Or is it essential to a project of care, respect and love, precisely because the knower has an intimate,
emotional connection with the known?(30) Our ecological vision locates us in such close relation with our natural home that knowledge of it is
knowledge of ourselves. And this is not, contrary to Levinas's fear, reducing the other to the same, but a celebration of a larger, more inclusive,
and still complex and articulated self.(31) The noble and terrible burden of Levinas's individuated responsibility for sheer existence gives way to
a different dream, a different prayer:¶ Being rock, being gas, being mist, being Mind, Being the mesons traveling among the galaxies with the
speed of light, You have come here, my beloved one. . . . You have manifested yourself as trees, as grass, as butterflies, as single-celled beings,
and as chrysanthemums; but the eyes with which you looked at me this morning tell me you have never died.(32)¶ In this prayer, we are, quite
simply, all in it together. And,
although this new ecological Holocaust -- this creation of planet Auschwitz -- is
under way, it is not yet final. We have time to step back from the brink, to repair our world. But only if
we see that world not as an other across an irreducible gap of loneliness and unchosen obligation, but as
a part of ourselves as we are part of it, to be redeemed not out of duty, but out of love; neither for our
selves nor for the other, but for us all.
Root Cause of Environment Mpx
Anthropocentric logic is the root cause of environmental disasters and the looming
collapse.
Sivil, 2000 (Richard, Richard Sivil studied at the University of Durban Westville, and at the ¶ University
of Natal, Durban. He has been lecturing philosophy since ¶ 1996. His primary interest lies in the field of
Ethics, Evnironmental Philosophy, Buddhist ¶ Philosophy and Quantum Physics, WHY WE NEED A NEW
ETHIC FOR¶ THE ENVIRONMENT, 2000, http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/II-7/chapter_vii.htm)
Three most significant and pressing factors contributing to the environmental crisis are the ever
increasing human population, the energy crisis, and the abuse and pollution of the earth’s natural
systems. These and other factors contributing to the environmental crisis can be directly linked to anthropocentric
views of the world. The perception that value is located in, and emanates from, humanity has resulted in
understanding human life as an ultimate value, superior to all other beings. This has driven innovators in
medicine and technology to ever improve our medical and material conditions, in an attempt to
preserve human life, resulting in more people being born and living longer. In achieving this aim, they have
indirectly contributed to increasing the human population. Perceptions of superiority, coupled with developing technologies have
resulted in a social outlook that generally does not rest content with the basic necessities of life.
Demands for more medical and social aid, more entertainment and more comfort translate into demands for
improved standards of living. Increasing population numbers, together with the material demands of modern society,
place ever increasing demands on energy supplies. While wanting a better life is not a bad thing, given the
population explosion the current energy crisis is inevitable, which brings a whole host of environmental implications in
tow. This is not to say that every improvement in the standard of living is necessarily wasteful of energy or polluting to the planet, but rather it
is the cumulative effect of these improvements that is damaging to the environment. The
abuses facing the natural
environment as a result of the energy crisis and the food demand are clearly manifestations of
anthropocentric views that treat the environment as a resource and instrument for human ends. The
pollution and destruction of the non-human natural world is deemed acceptable, provided that it does
not interfere with other human beings.
Generic Extinction
Anthropocentrism is degrading the environment and spiraling us toward extinction
leaving ecocentrism as the only viable alternative to slow or prevent mass extinction
Dalile, 12
(Boushra- Student at Swinburne University of Technology (Open Universities Australia), currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Psychology. Research
interests in human behaviour, cognitive psychology, social psychology, psychodynamics, philosophy and morality), “
Environmental Ethics: Between Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism”, http://www.academia.edu/1476524
/Environmental_Ethics_Between_Anthropocentrism_and_Ecocentrism, Young$-7/19/14
Environmental ethics is defined as the moral relationship between humans and the natural environment(Buzzle 2011). It is an area of
environmental philosophy that faces a lot of conflict due to the various subdivisions in terms of ethical perceptions. For traditional and religious
views, some
people believe that hey were given dominion¶ over nature’s plants and animals to serve their
needs. The idea of a human-centered nature, or anthropocentrism, explicitly states that humans are the
sole bearers of intrinsic value and all other living things are there to sustain¶ humanity’s existence¶
(MacKinnon 2007, p. 331). The¶ ‘ecological footprint’¶ (Gaston 2005, p. 239) that resulted from humans¶ ’¶ greediness
has lead over the decades to massive alteration in¶ nature’s balance¶ , as well as to many recognizable
environmental crises the world is facing today. By contrast, ecocentrism recognizes a nature-centered
system of values, and extends the inherent worth to all living things regardless of their usefulness to
humans (MacKinnon2007, p. 336). It is believed that the human race have the responsibility to all biological life on Earth because, aside from
being the most consuming specie of all, they are capable of thinking and perceiving Earth as a whole. ¶ Humans’ ill¶ -treatment
towards the environment is not only drastically altering the ecosystem, but also threatening human¶ s’¶
survival; researchers and scientists are aware that the end of the world is present some point in the
future, and the only thing people can control is the rate of facing¶ humanity’s¶ extinction. This essay will
demonstrate different approaches to environmental ethics, and focus on the effects yielded on the environment as a result of human¶ s’¶
selfishness. In addition, it will deepen further to the fundamentals of how the human-nature relationship should flow in order to prevent
possible exploitation.
Biopower/Root Cause
Anthropocentrism reduces nonhuman animal existence to bare life- where humans
have taken control over whether the animal lives or dies. This is the root cause of all
conflict.
Dinesh Wadiwel in 2008, Adj researcher at Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies Social
Policy Research Group “Three Fragments from a Biopolitical History of Animals: Questions of Body, Soul,
and the Body Politic in Homer, Plato, and Aristotle” Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 6.1, GH
www.criticalanimalstudies.org/JCAS/Journal_Articles_download/Issue_8/Wadiwel17_31.pdfThe civil
political sphere – that space where human public politics occurs, where the political is declared,‘ often through government,
representation, measured participation and the ballot - has inherent limitations that frustrate the project of ending
violence towards animals. Animals are ―by nature‖ always, at best, secondary entities, not due the
political agency that is naturally bestowed upon humans. In this way a perceived fundamental
differentiation undermines any claim for equivalent political agency between human and non human,
and assures that animals, even if granted consideration, will always be owed a lesser degree of
responsibility. These limitations very clearly underpin animal welfare approaches, which seek to
minimise animal suffering without necessarily changing the frameworks of violence and power that
perpetuate this suffering. For example, the notion that slaughter houses are tolerable once perceived pain is eliminated.
Animal rights approaches often fare better in this regard by seeking to demonstrate the existence of
unjustifiable speciesism in order to guarantee equal protections. One of their principle arguments is that
the life that is held by both non human and human animals alike has an intrinsic value. Yet rights
approaches themselves face constraints that reproduce the same fundamental differentiation – the gap
– between human and non human. For instance, in the ―life boat case,‖ Tom Reagan stops short of agreeing that the death of an
animal would constitute the same harm as the death of a human (2004: 324). Recent work by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (see
1998, 1999 and 2004) provides an opportunity to consider the place of animals within politics from a different standpoint than other
approaches, such as animal rights or animal welfare interventions. Agamben‘s focus on the concept of biopolitics, his attention to the
relationship of politics to violence and to legitimation and the relation between the human and the non human, make his work worthy of
analysis by those interested in the violence perpetrated by humans against non human animal life, even if Agamben‘s own conclusions are
approach differs from animal rights
or welfare strategies in that it focuses concern on the nature and meaning of politics itself and its
relationship to animality (Agamben understands the political sphere as a space that aims to exclude animal life as its primary activity),
this approach does not seek to promote action within the terms of the civil political space. Rather it challenges the very
boundaries of this space itself. Thus, although Agamben is no champion of animal rights or welfare, his philosophy offers a
different way to conceptualize ―the problem of the animal.‖ The term ―biopolitics‖ is taken from Michel Foucault‘s
themselves not aimed at finding solutions to these problems (see Wadiwel, 2003). While this
description of the contemporary focus of power towards biological life, its vicissitudes, its requirements, and its essence. An example of the
effect of biopower within contemporary government is the focus upon meeting the broad biological needs of human populations: today
government concerns itself with the deployment of resources for education and training, public health, the facilitation of relationships and
organisations, fertility and ―family‖ planning, the management of the economy, and the generalized financial well being of populations. Where
Foucault treats biopolitics as a relatively modern form of rationality, tied closely with the emergence of government and the disciplines,
Agamben suggests that the connection between biopower and the political space is much more significant and enduring. According to
Agamben, biological
life is given both place and meaning within the domain of sovereignty through its
position of vulnerability in relation to sovereign power. Following Walter Benjamin, Agamben defines the life
constituted by exception as ―bare life,‖ which he identifies as the ―bearer of the link between life and
law‖ (1998: 65). Bare life represents life contained within the ―zone of indistinction‖ or the sovereign
ban, a life which is neither constituted by law, nor by divine justice, where it is licit for sovereign power
to ―kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice‖ (83). It is for this reason that Agamben
insists in his definition of bare life,‘ that sovereignty constitutes life within the context of a power over life and
death: in Agamben‘s words ―human life is included in the political order in being exposed to an
unconditional capacity to be killed‖ (85). Biopolitical rationales become inseparable from the exceptional character of sovereign
power, since the constitution of the political sphere itself necessarily entails the constitution of life (181). Thus, in so far as political
sovereignty in the Western tradition defines itself through the capture of biological life, it is biopolitical
in origin. Further, Agamben suggests that this view of political sovereignty assists to resolve the apparent tension between Foucault‘s two
apparently divergent foci of study: namely, ―political techniques‖ associated with the State and government and ―technologies of the self‖
relating to the disciplines and individuated power (5). In Agamben‘s insistence that biopolitics is synonymous with the whole history of politics
in the West, he identifies a process that unites the activity of state sovereignty with the evolution of individuated forms of biological control.
Agamben remarks: ―It
can be said that the production of a biopolitical body is the original activity of
sovereign power. In this sense, biopolitics is at least as old as the sovereign exception‖ (6). Not only does
Agamben identify closely the relation between biology and the political sphere, but he also identifies this process as
constitutive of the human / animal divide. In The Open: Man and Animal, Agamben states: ―In our culture, the
decisive political conflict, which governs every other conflict, is that between the animality and the
humanity of man. That is to say, in its origin Western politics is also biopolitics.‖ (Agamben, 2004: 80). I should be
clear here that is not controversial in itself that Agamben should consider animal life within his understanding of biopolitics. After all, Foucault
himself was aware of the long philosophical connection between human life and that of animals that gave shape to biopower: thus Foucault
states ―modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question‖ (Foucault, 1998: 143). But what is interesting
in relation to Agamben‘s understanding is that
the contestation between human and animal should figure as defining
of biopolitics itself, rather than a mere feature. Biopower (or politics in the West) is, before anything else, a question of
determining the distinction between human and animal.
AT: Extinction Mpx
Their extinction impact is irrelevant in comparison because the universe will still have
value without humanity.
Lee 99 (Keekok, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, The Natural and the Artefactual,
1999)
We should not delude ourselves that the humanization of nature will stop at biotic nature or indeed be
confined only to planet Earth. Other planets in our solar system, too, may eventually be humanized;
given the technological possibility of doing so, the temptation to do so appears difficult to resist on the
part of those always on the lookout for new challenges and new excitement. To resist the ontological
elimination of nature as 'the Other,' environmental philosophy must not merely be earthbound but,
also, astronomically bounded (at least to the extent of our own solar system). We should bear in mind that while there may
be little pristine nature left on Earth, this does not mean that nature is not pristine elsewhere in other
planets. We should also be mindful that while other planets may not have life on them, this does not
necessarily render them only of instrumental value to us. Above all, we should, therefore, bear in mind that nature,
whether pristine or less than fully pristine, biotic or abiotic, is ontologically independent and
autonomous of humankind--natural forms and natural processes are capable of undertaking their own
.trajectories of existence. We should also remind ourselves that we are the controllers of our science and our technology, and not
allow the products of our intellectual labor to dictate to us what we do to nature itself without pause or reflection. However, it is not the plea
of this book that humankind should never transform the natural to become the artefactual, or to deny that artefacticity is not a matter of
differing degrees or levels, as such claims would be silly and indefensible. Rather its remit is to argue that in
systematically
transforming the natural to become the artefactual through our science and our technology, we are at
the same time systematically engaged in ontological simplification. Ontological impoverishment in this
context is wrong primarily because we have so far failed to recognize that nature embodies its own
fundamental ontological value. In other words, it is not true, as modernity alleges, that nature is devoid of all
value and that values are simply humanly conferred or are the projections of human emotions or
attitudes upon nature. Admittedly, it takes our unique type of human consciousness to recognize that nature possesses ontological
value; however, from this it would be fallacious to conclude that human consciousness is at once the source
of all values, or even the sole locus of axiologically-grounded intrinsic values. But most important of all,
human consciousness does not generate the primary ontological value of independence in nature;
nature's forms and processes embodying this value exist whether humankind is around or not.
Alt
Trans-corporeality
The alternative is to reject the aff in favor of a “trans” ethic that recognizes humans
and more-than-humans are interconnected and entirely dependent on one another.
Only by submersing ourselves in the nonhuman world can we overcome the
anthropocentric divide that threatens the entire globe. Oceans are a unique
opportunity to interrogate our human entanglement with the rest of the natural
world.
Alaimo, 11
(Stacy, “New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible,” NORA- Nordic Journal of
Feminist and Gender Research 19.4, 2011, arc)
Like Karen Barad, I would argue that material feminisms and other new¶ materialisms should embrace a post-humanist ethics by “taking
account of the¶ entangled materializations of which we are a part” (Barad 2007: 384). In Bodily¶ Natures: Science, Environment, and the
Material Self, I argue that the literature, film,¶ photography, and activist web sites of the environmental justice and environmental¶ health
movements manifest epistemologies that emerge from the material¶ interconnections between the human body and the environment. By
emphasizing¶ the movement across bodies, trans-corporeality reveals the interchanges and¶
interconnections between various bodily natures. But by underscoring that “trans”¶ indicates
movement across different sites, trans-corporeality also opens up a mobile¶ “space” that
acknowledges the often unpredictable and unwanted actions of human¶ bodies, non-human
creatures, ecological systems, chemical agents, and other actors.¶ Acknowledging that material
agency necessitates more capacious epistemologies¶ allows us to forge ethical and political positions
that can contend with numerous late¶ twentieth/early twenty-first century realities in which
“human” and “environment”¶ can no longer be considered separate. Trans-corporeality, as a
theoretical site, is¶ where feminist theory, environmental theories, and science studies intertwine.¶
Furthermore, the movement across human corporeality and non-human nature¶ necessitates rich, complex modes of analysis that travel
through the entangled¶ territories of material and discursive, natural and cultural, biological and textual. As¶ the material self cannot be
disentangled from networks that are simultaneously¶ economic, political, cultural, scientific, and substantial, what was once the ostensibly¶
bounded human subject finds herself in a swirling landscape of uncertainty where¶ practices and actions that were once not considered in
ethical or political terms¶ suddenly become the very stuff of the crises at hand. Activists, as well as everyday¶ practitioners of
environmental health, environmental justice, and climate change¶ movements, work to reveal and reshape the flows
of material agencies across regions,¶ environments, animal bodies, and human bodies—even as global
capitalism and the¶ medical-industrial complex reassert a more convenient ideology of solidly bounded,¶ individual consumers
and benign, contained, products. At the conclusion of Bodily¶ Natures I call for an ethics “that is not circumscribed
by the human but is instead accountable to a material world that is never merely an external place
but always the¶ very substance of our selves and others” (Alaimo 2010: 158). Although transcorporeality begins as an anthropocentric moment, it unravels the¶ Human as such, by tracing the
material interchanges between each human body and¶ the substances, flows, and forces that are
ultimately global in nature. The current¶ crisis in ocean ecologies calls us to examine human
entanglements with the far reaches¶ of pelagic and benthic zones—the very limits of transcorporeality. It is difficult—¶ scientifically and imaginatively—to trace how terrestrial human bodies
are¶ accountable to and interconnected with as yet unknown creatures at the bottom of¶ the sea;
moreover, even the Western conception of the ocean as “alien”, or as so vast¶ as to be utterly
impervious to human harm, encourages a happy ignorance about the¶ state of the seas. Nonetheless,
the ocean creatures themselves embody something akin¶ to the ontologies that new materialisms
and post-humanisms advocate. Take, for¶ example, the jelly-fish, which seems barely to exist as a
creature, not only because it is¶ a body without organs but because it is nearly indistinguishable from
its watery¶ world. Seemingly flimsy and fragile, these gelatinous creatures are nonetheless¶ thriving,
provoking fear of a clear planet in which jellies over-populate the degraded¶ oceans, causing harm to
fisheries, mining operations, ships, and desalination plants. ¶ More generally, the nekton (swimming organisms) in the oceans
may be considered¶ “ecosystem engineers”, because, as they transport themselves, they “take a portion of ¶ their original
environment with them”, and thus they “actively support the chemical¶ and biological processes on which they depend”
(Breitburg et al. 2010: 194). Thinking¶ with marine life fosters complex mappings of agencies and
interactions in which—for¶ humans as well as for pelagic and benthic creatures—there is, ultimately,
no firm¶ divide between mind and matter, organism and environment, self and world.¶ Thinking with
sea creatures may also provoke surprising affinities, from Elizabeth Brown Blackwell’s feminist musings on the
¶
parenting duties of male sea-horses¶ (Brown Blackwell 1875: 74) to Eva Hayward’s recent exploration of what her own¶ “being
transsexual knows about being starfish” (Hayward 2008: 82). Submersing ourselves, descending rather than
transcending, is essential lest our tendencies toward Human exceptionalism prevent us from
recognizing that, like our hermaphroditic, aquatic evolutionary ancestor, we dwell within and as part
of a dynamic, intra-active, emergent, material world that demands new forms of ethical though and
practice. I would like to invite feminists, queer theorists, new materialists, and post-humanists to follow the submersible.
Alt – Ext
The alternative allows us to see the inherent value in all of the world’s elements.
Recognizing that everything is interconnected allows us to stop viewing the world
from the dualist perspective that has allowed for the devaluation of our surroundings.
Henning, 9 (Brian G., Trusting in the 'Efficacy of Beauty': A Kalocentric Approach to Moral Philosophy,
Ethics & the Environment, Volume 14.1 p.108-110)
Once we recognize that every individual—from a subatomic event to¶ a majestic sequoia—brings together the
diverse elements in its world in¶ just this way, just here, and just now, we see that nothing is entirely
devoid¶ of value and beauty. This process whereby many diverse individuals are¶ brought together into the unity of one new
individual, which will eventually¶ add its energy to future individuals, characterizes the most basic¶ feature of reality and is what Whitehead
calls the “category of creativity.”¶ On this view, reality is best characterized not as an unending march of¶ vacuous facts, but as an incessant
“creative advance” striving toward everricher¶ forms of beauty and value.¶
Noting its emphasis on interdependence and
interrelation, many scholars¶ have rightly noted that Whitehead’s metaphysics is uniquely suited¶ to
provide a basis for making sense of our relationship to the natural¶ world.10 Decades before modern ecologists
taught us about ecosystems,¶ Whitehead was describing individuals as interrelated societies of societies.¶ No individual, Whitehead insisted,
can be understood apart from¶ its relationship to others.11 Indeed, whereas ecologists only explain how¶ it is that macroscopic individuals are
related in interdependent systems,¶ Whitehead’s organic metaphysics of process provides a rich account of¶ how individuals
at every
level of complexity—from subatomic events to¶ ecosystems, and from oak trees to galaxies—arise and
are perpetuated.12 What is more, Whitehead’s philosophy of organism places a premium on¶ an
individual’s dependence on and relationship to the larger wholes of¶ which it is a part without making
the mistake of subsuming the individual¶ into that larger whole.13 With the philosophy of organism we need not¶
choose between either the one or the many, “the many become one and¶ are increased by one” (Whitehead [1929] 1978, 21).¶ By providing a
robust alternative to the various forms of reductive¶ physicalism and destructive dualism that currently dominate many¶ branches of science
and philosophy, the philosophy of organism is an¶ ideal position from which to address the complex social and ecological¶ challenges
confronting us. First,
if who and what I am is intimately and¶ inextricably linked to everyone and everything
else in the universe, then I¶ begin to recognize that my own flourishing and the flourishing of others¶
are not independent. Not only do I intimately and unavoidably depend on¶ others in order to sustain myself, with varying degrees of
relevance, how I¶ relate to my environment is constitutive of who and what I am. As we are¶ quickly learning, we
ignore our interdependence with our wider environment¶ at our own peril.¶ Moreover, in helping us to
recognizing our connection to and dependence¶ on our larger environment, an organic model forces us to abandon¶
the various dualisms that have for too long allowed us to maintain the¶ illusion that we are set off from
the rest of nature. Adopting an organic¶ metaphysics of process forces us finally to step down from the
self-constructed¶ pedestal from which we have for millennia surveyed nature and¶ finally to embrace the lesson
so compellingly demonstrated by Darwin:¶ humans are not a singular exception to, but rather a grand exemplification¶ of, the processes at
work in the universe.14 In this way we
ought¶ finally to reject not only the materialisms of contemporary science,
but¶ also the dualisms that often undergird our religious, social, political, and¶ moral understandings of
ourselves and our relationship to the natural¶ world. As John Dewey concisely put it, “man is within nature, not a little¶
god outside” (1929, 351). Until we shed our self-deluding arrogance¶ and recognize that who and what we are as a species is
fundamentally¶ bound up in and dependent on the wider scope of events unfolding in the¶ universe, the ecological crisis will only
deepen. Taken seriously, our understanding¶ of reality as composed of vibrant, organically interconnected¶
achievements of beauty and value, has a dramatic effect on how we conceive of ourselves, of nature,
and of our moral obligations—morality can¶ no longer be limited merely to inter-human relations.¶ In rejecting modernity’s notion
of lifeless matter, we come to recognize¶ that every form of actuality has value in and for itself, for others,¶ and for the whole. In aiming at and
achieving an end for itself, every¶ individual—no matter how ephemeral or seemingly insignificant—has intrinsic¶ value for itself and in
achieving this self-value it thereby becomes¶ a value for others and for the whole of reality. Every individual, from the¶ most fleeting event in
deep space to centuries old redwoods, has value for¶ itself, for others, and for the whole of reality and it is from this character¶ of reality that
our moral obligations derive (Whitehead 1938, 111).
Alt – Pre-req
The alternative is a prerequisite to the aff – humanity will never be able to maintain a
healthy relationship to its environment until humans recognize their place within the
larger system, as opposed to above it.
Rowe, 2000 (Stan, geo-ecologist and environmentalist with a background in botany, forestry and
terrain (landscape) ecology & was a prof of Plant Ecology at the University of Saskatchewan, An EarthBased Ethic for Humanity, http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/RoweEarthEthics.html)
The proposition advanced here is that the planet, the living Ecosphere (literally the Homesphere), is the reality of
greatest worth and merit that humans can know intimately and directly through the senses. Therefore
the Ecosphere is the preeminent moral object. Compared to it all other realities are insignificant.
Further, humanity will never adequately "protect the environment" until it is recognized that the
Ecosphere's values surpass the high status that the human species confers on itself. ¶ Because moral
standards and ethical actions are tied to beliefs, faiths and understandings, they are human creations,
formed by people and therefore homomorphic (anthropomorphic). This does not mean that they are necessarily
homocentric (anthropocentric), focused only on the human race (Hanson 1989). Ethical action can be extended to whatever we
choose, whenever and wherever the values and importance of things outside our skins are recognized. Specifically , we need
not confine moral concerns to those protoplasmic fragments of the world that are conscious or sentient,
for such organic parts though important have no monopoly on importance. Even biocentrism that limits
value-laden concerns to people, to endangered species, to animal rights and to biological phenomena in general
(as in the phrase "preserving biodiversity") is a dangerous detour from the necessary goal, which is placing
primary value on the largest and most complete realities that create and sustain all of life.¶ Ecospheric
ethics is based on the ecological valuation of Earth as source and support of humanity. It is strengthened by the
belief and faith that what has for years been thought of as mere "environment" is a reality more important
than me, you, and all of us. Humans are parts of the Ecosphere, the whole that brings into being and
sustains all organic creatures. ¶ Only a strong sense of the Ecosphere's creative and sustaining values
can make it the ethical object of prime importance for humanity. Confirmed as such, its maintenance will
merit high-priority consideration in national and international policy matters, legislation, and global
agreements.
Alt – First Step
The alt recognizes the intrinsic value in our surroundings in order to transfer to an
ecocentric world – this is a critical first step.
Dalile 12
(Boushra- Student at Swinburne University of Technology (Open Universities Australia), currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Psychology. Research
interests in human behaviour, cognitive psychology, social psychology, psychodynamics, philosophy and morality), “
Environmental Ethics: Between Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism”, http://www.academia.edu/1476524
/Environmental_Ethics_Between_Anthropocentrism_and_Ecocentrism, Young$-7/19/14
In conclusion, if
humanity is born with greediness, it is intelligent enough to see that it is only facing a dark
future. Failing to take action towards the betterment of the environment will witness our irresponsibility over nature’s species leading to
ultimate extinction. Abandoning anthropocentrism is impossible instantly; however we can distinguish our
nature-consumption outcomes and intervene when the need is vital to our survival, and not because it is
a desire or interest. Ethical decisions towards nature can be quite conflicting, and the decent choice
would yield less harm to the surroundings. Granting a tree, a mountain and a bird intrinsic value is the
first step towards an ecocentric world and a better planet.
Alt –can solve econ
We need to change our economy from that of a human-centric one to an ecocentric
one
Yang in 2010 (Shun-Chung-Ph. D. candidate and works at the National Taiwan University at the
Department of Geosciences), “Alternative Ways of Life in Response to Economic Recession - A
Theological Stand”, October 2010,
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer /pdfviewer?sid=44378b7f-98b14b1e-a439-2ffa842ce0ec%40sessionmgr111&vid=6&hid=120, AD & Young$-7/19/14
What is needed is an ecological economics, and this is called "the Great Economy (the economy of
nature)?" Economics is the management of a community that works for the benefit of all, including the
ecosystem. That is, economics must be an "ecological" economics. Ecological economics does not
pretend to be value-free its preference is for the well-being and sustainability of our true household,
planet earth. Therefore, ecological economics is first of all a vision of how human beings ought to live on
planet earth in light of the perceived reality of where and how we live. That is, our focus is not
principally on human beings; rather, we human beings are seen to benefit when the entire system is
healthy. Our benefit is through sharing in the basics of a good life and not through amassing wealth for
ourselves." In the sustainable eco-centered community, it is "economics for community. Therefore, we
must re-establish economics as an ecological economy. However, as we know, our lives depend on the
life-support systems of the natural world which is now over-extended. Therefore, we must adjust
ourselves to the principles of a life-centered "spaceship economics." This ecological economy is also a
new economy. The new economy must be life-sustaining in three respects: it must satisfy human being's
basic needs; the life of all our fellow creatures on Earth; the life of future generations. It is also an
"economy from below." An "economy from below" must replace the "economy from above." Such an
economy is based on people and the earth. The social and environmental perspectives are always
fundamentally related to a democratic perspective. In the new system, people are players, not economic
objects." That is, we must return to the traditional view that the economy should be in the service of the
community which includes the whole ecosystem.
We must reject anthropocentrism by rejecting the global economy and embracing a
global consciousness and local economy.
Yang in 2010 (Shun-Chung-Ph. D. candidate and works at the National Taiwan University at the
Department of Geosciences), “Alternative Ways of Life in Response to Economic Recession - A
Theological Stand”, October 2010,
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer /pdfviewer?sid=44378b7f-98b14b1e-a439-2ffa842ce0ec%40sessionmgr111&vid=6&hid=120, AD & Young$-7/19/14
Beginning with a local need, therefore, we can develop the whole system, at the global level, the ethics
of sustainable economy must include both the local ' community and larger communities. However, our
challenge is to create a global system that is biased toward the small, the local, the cooperative, the
resource- conserving, and the long-term-one that empowers people to create a good living in balance
with nature, That is, people in the modern world are unified not by a global economy but by a global
consciousness that we share the same planet and a common destiny. We must transform the global
system to create a bias toward the local. However, this does not mean that global institutions will or can
be eliminated, especially facing the shortage of food which is caused by high-price oil and global
warming. We must use local resources to meet local needs, and resist the external colonization of their
markets and resources, and from the local level develop real co-operative relationships at the global
level from the viewpoint of nature. When we realize that a sustainable eco-centered community must
be generated from localizing economies, with globalizing consciousness, we, for example as Taiwan,
must strive to reach two goals. Firstly, we must criticize the contemporary idea of "good life" and
change our life-style. We must realize that the western standard of living, which the Taiwanese always
prefer to pursue, cannot be universalized, because it can only be sustained at the expense of the people
in the Third World, at the expense of coming generations, and at the expense of the earth. So, when the
ecological crisis happens, it is not just an ecological crisis; nor can it be solved merely by technology. We
need a kind of fundamental conversion of convictions and it is just as necessary as a conversion in
attitudes to life and in life-style.
Alt – Ocean Literacy
*basic, easy to understand alternative in the context of ocean policy BUT depending
on what links you are reading could be problematic (maybe links to natural resources
links)
Luther et al, 13
(Rachel A. Luther and Deborah J. Tippins from the U of Georgia & Purita P. Bilbao, Andrew Tan and Ruth
L. Gelvezon from Iloilo City, Philippines, “The Story of Mangrove Depletion: Using Socioscientific Cases to
Promote Ocean Literacy, Science Activities 50, 2013, arc)
The Ocean Literacy Principles (U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy 2004) clearly emphasizes than an
ocean-literate person should be able to think critically about issues related to the ocean and its
resources and use his or her knowledge of the ocean to engage in democratic discourse. An oceanliterate person can use the broad notion of texts to analyze current national or international events or
those specific to their community to determine the authors’ stand on the issue. Additionally, an
ocean-literate person can determine what the power issue are, and through their knowledge, what
viable options are for community and environmental justice and protection. Ocean-literate individuals
take action, and through active participation in marine science experiences, attach emotion and
values to the ocean and its resources. Action, too, links ocean understandings to economic, environmental, and social
issues, promoting an even deeper understanding. Finally, the ocean-literate individual understands that his or
her literacy can bridge gaps of inequality. There are countless inequalities related to the ocean and its
resources, from varying fish populations among communities due to overfishing to polluted beaches and waterways. ¶ Ocean
literacy provides a way for individuals to work with their communities to remedy these types of
inequalities and change behaviors to reduce negative impacts on the ocean and its resources, ensuring
that a healthy ocean will be available for future generations. Ocean literacy does not strictly have to
occur in formal education contexts; it can include knowledge from one’s home, culture, or
community, or knowledge from some other domain. In this article, we explore the relationship between humans
and mangrove ecosystems, specifically within the Philippines. The cases and activities are designed to promote ocean literacy
so that students are better prepared to tackle issues such as mangrove depletion within their community or take responsibility
for actions that might lead to an issue such as harm to an aquatic ecosystem.
AT: Perm
The perm still links and doesn’t solve – 4 reasons.
Sivil, 2000 (Richard, Richard Sivil studied at the University of Durban Westville, and at the ¶ University
of Natal, Durban. He has been lecturing philosophy since ¶ 1996. His primary interest lies in the field of
Ethics, Evnironmental Philosophy, Buddhist ¶ Philosophy and Quantum Physics, WHY WE NEED A NEW
ETHIC FOR¶ THE ENVIRONMENT, 2000, http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/II-7/chapter_vii.htm, arc)
I argue that anthropocentric value systems are not suitable to the task of developing a comprehensive
environmental ethic. Firstly, anthropocentric assumptions have been shown to be largely responsible for
the current environmental crisis. While this in itself does not provide strong support for the claim, it does cast a dim light on any
theory that is informed by such assumptions. Secondly, an environmental ethic requires a significantly wide range of
focus. As such, it should consider the interests of a wide range of beings. It has been shown that
anthropocentric approaches do not entertain the notion that non-human entities can have interests
independent of human interests. "Expansionist", "conservationist" and "preservationist" approaches
only acknowledge a value in nature that is determined by the needs and interests of humans.¶ Thirdly,
because anthropocentric approaches provide a moral account for the interests of humans alone, while
excluding non-humans from direct moral consideration, they are not sufficiently encompassing. An
environmental ethic needs to be suitably encompassing to ensure that a moral account is provided for all entities that constitute the
environment. It could be argued that the indirect moral concern for the environment arising out of an anthropocentric approach is sufficient to
ensure the protection of the greater environment. In response,
only those entities that are in the interest of humans will
be morally considered, albeit indirectly, while those entities which fall outside of this realm will be seen to
be morally irrelevant. Assuming that there are more entities on this planet that are not in the interest of
humans than entities that are, it is safe to say that anthropocentric approaches are not adequately
encompassing. Fourthly, the goals of an environmental ethic should protect and maintain the greater
environment. It is clear that the expansionist approach, which is primarily concerned with the transformation of nature for economic
return, does not meet these goals. Similarly, neither does the conservationist approach, which is arguably the same as the expansionist
approach. The preservationist approach does, in principle satisfy this requirement. However, this is problematic for such preservation is based
upon the needs and interests of humans, and "as human interests and needs change, so too would human uses for the environment" (Des
Non-human entities, held captive by the needs and interests of humans, are open to
whatever fancies the interests of humans. In light of the above, it is my contention that anthropocentric
value systems fail to provide a stable ground for the development of an environmental ethic.
Jardins 1997: 129).
The perm is merely symbolic – it’s anthropocentrism in disguise.
Deckha, 10 (Maneesha, Associate Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in Victoria,
Canada. ¶ Professor Deckha‘s research interests include critical animal studies, intersectionality, feminist
analysis of law, law ¶ and culture, animal law, and bioethics, The Subhuman as a Cultural Agent of
Violence, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 2010, http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/09/JCAS-Special-Issue-Women-of-Color-November-FINAL-2010.pdf, p.46 arc)
It is for the same reason that merely extending rights or other legal interests to ¶ nonhumans is an
insufficient response to their frequently abject legal and cultural ¶ condition. While creating a non-property status
or affording other rights to nonhumans might better protect them from human exploitation, this approach will not ¶ disrupt the
subhuman/human boundary zones that enable violence in the first place. ¶ As feminists know very well, a mere
extension of rights with nothing more does not ¶ interrogate the logic of exclusion contained within
¶
traditional moral/ethical categories ¶ (Nedelsky, 1993; Adams and Donovan, 1996; Oliver, 2009). Oliver explains the ¶ inability of
merely extending rights without undoing humanism when she writes: …focusing on rights or equality and extending them to
animals does not ¶ address more essential issues of conceptions of the animal, man, or ¶ human. It does
not challenge the presumptions of humanism that makes ¶ man the measure of all things, including
other animals and the earth. ¶ Insofar as it leaves intact traditional concepts of man and animal and the traditional values
associated with them, it cannot transform our ways of ¶ thinking about either. The consequences of Western
conceptions of man, ¶ human, and animal are deadly for both animals and various groups of ¶ people
who have been figured as being like them. Without interrogating ¶ the man/animal opposition on the symbolic
and imaginary levels, we can ¶ only scratch the surface in understanding exploitation and genocide of ¶
people and animals (Oliver, 2009).¶ Oliver proceeds from this insight to note its connection to Agamben‘s concern, ¶ discussed above,
¶
around understanding western concepts of ―animal‖ and ―animality‖ ¶ in order to, in turn, understand oppression of those humans we cast
as subhuman or ¶ even nonhuman (Oliver, 2009). Whether motivated by a focus on human vulnerability, ¶ nonhuman vulnerability, or both,
pursuing anti-violence projects with the current ¶ anthropocentric status quo seriously undercuts those
very same projects.
AT: FW
The alternative does not preclude policy action - even an incomplete environmental
ethic is better than a band-aid solution policy. The alt is a pre-requisite to policy
action.
Hassoun, 10
Nicole, “The Anthropocentric Advantage”, paper presented at the Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase
@ CMU, http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1361&context=philosophy, p.18-19,
arc)
Besides, the fact that a theory is incomplete and cannot provide definitive reason ¶ to accept any
climate change policies right now is not a reason to reject it. For many ¶ theories are incomplete
without being valueless. Incomplete theories may provide insight. ¶ They may even provide
important guidance. Inclusive environmental ethics tell us a lot 19¶ about the nature of
environmental value and provide reasons (though, perhaps, not ¶ definitive reasons) in favor of many
policies. Theoretical incompleteness may just be a ¶ reason to reject a theory’s application, rather than
the theory itself.xxx¶ ¶ Finally, inclusive environmental ethicists might even go further to argue that we
¶ should be optimistic about the prospects for some inclusive environmental ethics to ¶ address
climate change. Without a complete theory, it is not clear how inclusive ¶ environmental ethicists can
provide a deductive argument for this conclusion. They ¶ might, however, challenge a common
presumption that may undergird the ¶ anthropocentric liberal’s skepticism. Inclusive environmental
ethicists might challenge ¶ the presumption that it is often impossible to protect all of the things that
matter to them. ¶ In doing so, they can also illustrate a general strategy for addressing climate change
– ¶ implementing their preferred policies and addressing potential problems as they arise.
AT: People first/Animal Rights Activists are
Cray
Their humans first argument continues to ignore the interconnect nature of existence
– the long-term interests of people and nature are intimately intertwined.
(*This K does not mean we are animal rights activists who go on species “rescue and
save” missions – we think we should let nature run its course.)
Hassoun, 10
Nicole, “The Anthropocentric Advantage”, paper presented at the Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase
@ CMU, http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1361&context=philosophy, p. 19-21,
arc)
Consider, first, how it is possible to respond to the claim that there is no way to ¶ protect people’s basic interests (including their
interest in freedom) and other parts of ¶ nature (Rolston 2002). David Schmidtz makes the case that the interests of people
and¶ nature align much more closely than many have thought. He does this by considering the ¶ purported
conflict between preservationist and conservationist theories (Schmidtz 2002a; ¶ Schmidtz 2002b). Preservationists often argue
for “no use” policies because they believe ¶ we should preserve nature (protecting it even if doing so is not in human interests). ¶
Conservationists often argue for “wise use” policies that conserve nature (protecting it ¶ whenever doing so is in human’s
interests). Schmidtz suggests that we must sometimes ¶ preserve nature to conserve it. In some
circumstances, wise use may be no use at all. It ¶ may not be wise to even consider using nature if there is some risk
that doing so will ¶ expose us to unknown dangers. But, Schmidtz suggests, to really protect nature, we ¶ sometimes have
to use it wisely. Hunting may, for instance, be a good way of protecting ¶ elephants. Hunters will pay
to maintain nature reserves that would otherwise be turned ¶ into towns (Schmidtz 2002a; Schmidtz
2002b).xxxi Schmidtz suggests that the real tension is not between saving people and nature ¶ but
between saving non-human individuals and protecting species and ecosystems. He ¶ recalls the
debate between animal rights activists and forest rangers concerned about ¶ species preservation and
the Yellowstone ecosystem. When a herd of sheep in ¶ Yellowstone got pink-eye, the rangers did not
save the sheep. They let nature take its ¶ course. Animal rights activists were incensed especially since, a
¶¶
few years before, the ¶ rangers had gone to heroic lengths to save a grizzly and her cub trapped on a quickly ¶ melting island of
ice. The rangers argued, however, that it was important to save the ¶ grizzly and let the sheep die to
preserve the health of the species and the Yellowstone ¶ ecosystem. Similarly, Schmidtz argues, only
animal rights activists should object to 21¶ hunting in national parks when hunting is the best way to
preserve wildlife (Schmidtz ¶ 2002a; Schmidtz 2002b).
AT: Humans are better/more important –
Also AT: Anthro Inevitable
Wood, 11
(David, “Toxicity and Transcendence,” Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 16.4, p.32-33, arc)
Yet anthropocentrism is not one univocal concept: some versions are more plausible or productive than others. Some would
argue, for example, for a necessary or logical anthropocentr- ism – that any position we (humans)
articulate is a human position, so there is no escaping anthropocentrism. But this is of little interest. It
confuses anthropogenic with anthropocentric. On this view, even the most biocentric view is an example of
anthropocentrism. A more substantive, candid and unapologetic anthropocentrism could be fashioned along the lines of Rorty’s
affirmation that we are (typically) WASPS – white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. This is nothing to be ashamed of. We are
humans, and hence are entitled to promote and project our own standpoint and interests. Is it not
preferable, more honest, to say ‘‘This is where I stand’’ rather than insisting on telling you how we stand? Politically this
position does have some merit. Coupled with democratic empowerment of the other, the others, it gives a premium to respect
for others, in their own voice. I do not need to take responsibility for producing the whole picture. But I can more modestly
make an honest contribution to it. Such a position, however, is not unproble- matic. It seems blind to power:
its plausibility presupposes a political arena in which a multi- plicity of voices can fairly participate.
And this arena cannot merely be notional. We can perhaps imagine, with Latour, a parliament of things, but we
cannot suppose we are being just simply by acting in a way that anticipates its actuality. Moreover, it is a mistake to
suppose that we can at best attest to a certain solidarity with our own kind. Why? Because it is
genuinely contestable who ‘‘our kind’’ are. Solidarity is elastic in scope – our gender, our race, our nation, class,
species are all candidates. In many of our ‘‘natural’’ preferences, we might be privileging the mammalian!2 On what grounds
could one affinity group be definitively privileged over another? Just as problematically, it is impossible to determine in
some neutral fashion what shape that solidarity should take. If one were to identify the human with
its scientific (or religious) achievements, it would take a very different – probably more elitist – shape
than would a concern with global social justice. A naive focus on human self-interest just begs the
question – politically and in other ways – long before one charges it with parochialism. In short,
affirming solidarity with ‘‘one’s own kind’’ offers no specific basis for anthropocentrism.
AFF ANSWERS
Anthro Good
Agency and the capacity for hope prove humans are distinctly different and above the
rest of the world.
Donahue, 10
(Thomas, “Anthropocentrism and the Argument from Gaia Theory” Ethics & the Environment 15.2,
2010, arc)
Let us then turn to the second argument. This we may call “the argu- ment from special dignity.” The main idea is that any
being that has the following feature must have a special dignity and rank, a dignity which far outstrips the
dignity of any being that does not have it. This feature is: Membership in a class in which all members have
the potential for, and most of whose members frequently exhibit, the following traits: (1) plan- ful
rational agency, (2) self-conscious moral agency, (3) the ability to hope that one can leave things
better than they were in the past. Let’s examine each of these three traits in turn. By “planful rational agency,”
I mean the frequently exercised ability to act for plans, inten- tions, and reasons, where one often acts
according to the long-term plans one has set. A long-term plan is a set of intentions which picks out certain ends or
goals and which specifies means to achieving those ends.21 Self-conscious moral agency is a two-part condition.
For one has this kind of agency if (a) one is capable of acting and living in ways that make a moral and
ethical difference—in ways that satisfy, exceed, or violate the requirements and aspirations of
morality and ethics; and (b) one is aware, first, that one has the capability described in (a), and,
second, that the re- quirements and aspirations of morality and ethics apply to oneself as well as to all
other moral agents. Take finally the ability to hope that one can leave things better than in the past. To have this ability, three
conditions must be met. First, one must have a sense of history, which is a set of beliefs about the way things were in the
past, combined with the belief that matters are different now than they were then. Second, one must have a judgment about how mor- ally
good or bad things were in the past. Third, one must have the desire that things will be better, partly as a result of one’s own actions, than they
were in the past. So the
dignity argument’s main idea is that any member of a class in which all members
have the potential for, and most of whose members frequently exhibit, these three traits, must have a
special and unequalled dignity and rank.22 The reason is that only the members of that class can be
full-blooded moral agents. Since full-blooded moral agency deserves more respect than anything else in
the universe, the members of the class of beings who can be full-blooded moral agents have a dignity
and rank that outstrips that of any other beings. With these master premises in hand, the argument moves to anthropocentric conclusions. It relies on the findings of science and various skep- tical arguments against the existence of gods and angels to argue
that human beings are the only class of beings in which all members have the potential for, and most
of whose members frequently exhibit, the three traits in question. So as far as we know, the argument runs, not
even highly intelligent animals like dolphins, elephants, or non-human great apes display all of these
traits: planful rational agency, self-conscious moral agency, and the ability to hope that one can leave things better than in the past. From
this, the dignity argument infers that human beings are the only beings in the universe who have a special, unequalled, dignity and rank. The
argument then lodges a final premise: that those
and only those be- ings which have such dignity have intrinsic
value; and the same goes for their desires, needs, and purposes, and the satisfaction of those. Hence
anthropocentrism.
We can have an anthropocentric ethic that recognizes the intrinsic value in nature and
that is preferable to the alternative – 3 reasons.
Lilley, 10
(Jonathon Charles, NAVIGATING A SEA OF VALUES: UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD THE
OCEAN AND OCEAN ENERGY RESOURCES, doctoral dissertation at the University of Delaware for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Studies, arc)
Given that above it was stated how instrumental value and resource value are often taken as synonyms, it might be assumed
that such an attitude would be anti- environmental – that all of nature is simply seen as a resource for humankind to use.
Although it is true that society’s recent exploitation of the environment has been conducted with an
anthropocentric mindset, this does not necessarily mean that holding an anthropocentric ethic results
in nature being valued only for short-term resource use. There are at least four reasons why this is not
the case. First, regarding resource use, there is the issue of posterity and the duties that current
society has towards future generations (de-Shalit, 1995; Hardin, 1977). An anthropocentric ethic
should: take into account future human generations; and ensure that enough natural resources
remain for their use and that the environment is healthy enough for their survival. Second, there is
the issue of the essential, life-giving services that the earth provides – over and above the resources humans
directly extract from the environment. In 1997, a research group led by Robert Costanza estimated that natural ecosystems
provide at least US$33 trillion worth of services annually. They suggested that 63% (US$20.9 trillion yr-1) of this value stems
from marine ecosystems, slightly over half of which (US$10.6 trillion yr-1) comes from coastal ecosystems (Costanza, et al.,
1997). Third, it can be argued that, in addition to providing resources for human consumption and services for our survival,
nature also provides a different set of resources which are necessary for human well-being. Alan Gewirth (2001) notes how
“the natural environment, entirely apart from its supplying food and other practical necessities for human beings,
fulfills the human need to appreciate and to marvel at the majestic structure of the natural world”
(Gewirth, 2001, p. 211). All of these three attitudes are anthropocentric – they all assume that to have
value, nature requires a human valuer – yet they all hold that nature is more than simply a resource
to be used in any way the present generation deems fit. ¶ The fourth reason why an anthropocentric ethic
might be concerned with preserving the environment relates to the Judeo-Christian concept of stewardship. Although Lynn
White, in his now well-know article, blamed Christianity for the exploitation of nature (White, 1967), other scholars assert that
the Judeo-Christian tradition preaches that nature is a resource to be used wisely. Patrick Dobel, for example, cites numerous
passages from the Bible which support the notion that God is the ultimate ruler of the earth, and although God bestowed the
earth upon humans as a gift, the “gift comes under covenanted conditions, and the covenant is ‘forever’” (Dobel, 1977, p. 26).
This concept thus leads to the idea of stewardship and ties into the notion of intergenerational equity – that humans hold the
earth in trust for those yet to come. As Dobel continues “[t]rue stewardship requires both respect for the trusteeship and
covenanted imperatives and an active effort to improve the land for the future and to use it in a manner to benefit others”
(Dobel, 1977, p. 27). This Judeo- Christian religious attitude to nature should not be confused with other religious concepts such
as those found within Pantheism or Buddhism. While these religions also assert the importance and value of nature, it is more
from a nonanthropocentric perspective rather than from an anthropocentric outlook.
Anthro can be a workable environmental ethic.
Lilley, 10
(Jonathon Charles, NAVIGATING A SEA OF VALUES: UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD THE
OCEAN AND OCEAN ENERGY RESOURCES, doctoral dissertation at the University of Delaware for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Studies, arc)
Norton sees strong anthropocentrism as being grounded in felt preferences and weak anthropocentrism as being based upon
considered preferences. In Norton’s words, strong anthropocentrism “takes unquestioned felt preferences of human
individuals as determining value” (Norton, 1984, p. 135). It follows that if society values consumption and development, then
their felt preferences (or their interests) will result in nature being used in an exploitative fashion. As there are no checks on felt
preferences within strong anthropocentrism, then there exists no way to criticize those who used nature solely as a source of
raw materials to be used for human development. In contrast, weak anthropocentrism “recognizes that felt
preferences can either be rational or not (in the sense that they can be judged not consonant with a rational world
view)” (Norton, 1984, p. 135). Weak anthropocentrism then provides a foundation for the critical
assessment of value systems that result in the exploitation of the environment. By stressing the
importance of human/nature relationships, weak anthropocentrists can argue for ideals that
emphasize living in harmony with nature. Such ideals can in turn be used to criticize more exploitative
human preferences. Norton also notes how weak anthropocentrism “places value on human experiences that provide the basis for
value formation” (Norton, 1984, p. 135). As weak anthropocentrism places value on both felt preferences and “the process of value formation
embodied in the criticism and replacement of felt preferences with more rational ones” it is possible to appeal to the “value of experiences of
natural objects and undisturbed places in human value formation” (Norton, 1984, p. 135).
Norton argues that if it can be shown
that human values are informed by contact with nature, then nature has value in being a source of
human values. In Norton’s words, nature “need no longer be seen as a mere satisfier of fixed and
often consumptive values – it also becomes an important source of inspiration in value formation”
(Norton, 1984, p. 135).
Inevitable
Anthropocentrism inevitable—we are bound by human nature to be anthropocentric
Wendy Lynne Lee in 2009, (Wendy Lynne Lee is professor of philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania), “Restoring HumanCenterednes to Environmental Conscience: The Ecocentrist's Dilemma, the Role of Heterosexualized Anthropomorphizing, and the Significance
of Language to Ecological Feminism”, Ethics & the Environment, Spring 2009,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.library.umkc.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v014/14.1.lee.html#back, 7/17/14, AD
Whatever the strengths of each of these approaches—and there are many—none, I think, can
accomplish an effective critique of human chauvinism [End Page 30] and its related forms of oppression
without initiating a divorce of it from human-centeredness. There are at least two reasons why. First,
there are very good reasons to think that human-centeredness is not in any sense a voluntary feature of
human being, but rather an indigenous feature of human consciousness—unchosen and ineradicable.
Second, I'll argue, not only do no negative consequences follow from this divorce, but rather the very
positive consequence of an opportunity to rethink and re-value human-centeredness as a locus of
practicable moral responsibility. However plastic and evolving the somatic, perceptual, cognitive,
psychological, epistemic and affective capacities native to Homo sapiens, they are still specific to
human—and not Chimpanzee or dolphin—being. Human consciousness is, in other words, informed by
the unique articulation and interaction of capacities that characterize human embodiment, capacities
whose exercise creates the conditions for human experience. To be clear, I am not suggesting that what defines humancenteredness is that human beings have capacities that other species of creatures do not—this may or may not be true given
any particular comparison. What I am suggesting is that the unique configuration of capacities that describes
Homo sapiens informs an experience unique to this species and thereby define this consciousness in
terms of this configuration. A human-centered consciousness cannot then be displaced, disavowed, or
disowned—the notion that we could get "outside" of human centeredness makes as little sense as the notion that there's an
"outside" for human consciousness (other than permanent coma or death). Hence, I can care profoundly about the
welfare of chimpanzees—I can try to imagine what it might be like to be a chimpanzee, and I might make excellent guesses given all of
the perceptual, somatic, and psychological similarities we do appear to share in light of the behavioral, anatomical, and other evidence. But I
cannot experience the world like a chimpanzee because there is no "outside" to my experience as a
member of Homo sapiens.
Perm
The alt alone doesn’t solve – the perm is necessary to see real-world results of their
theory.
Lilley, 10
(Jonathon Charles, NAVIGATING A SEA OF VALUES: UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD THE
OCEAN AND OCEAN ENERGY RESOURCES, doctoral dissertation at the University of Delaware for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Marine Studies, arc)
While there is no doubt that environmental ethics has greatly added to our understanding of our
relationship with the natural world, a number of philosophers have questioned the real-world impact
the discipline has had. The seemingly intransient positions taken by proponents of the various ethical positions
has led to much debate, but to little action in terms of policy formation or how humans interact with the
nonhuman world. Recently, there has been a call for philosophers to get more involved in the policy
arena and conduct interdisciplinary work with public agencies, policy makers, and the private sector (Frodeman, 2006).
However, if environmental ethics is to have any real sway in environmental decision making, then there
will likely be a need to move away from the traditional, polarizing arguments. As Bryan Norton notes in his
book, Towards Unity among Environmentalists, “[i]n the context of political debate, individual rights, moral
obligations to protect species, and scientifically articulated thresholds or constraints inherent in fragile ecological
systems must all be factored into a process that sets goals, objectives, and standards for environmental
programs” (Norton, 1991, p. 190). Norton continues by listing seven worldviews (the Judeo-Christian stewardship ethic, deep
ecology, transcendentalism, constrained economics, scientific naturalism, ecofeminism, and pluralism/pragmatism) which can
provide a foundation for either conservation or exploitative tendencies. Taking an obviously pluralistic approach, Norton states
that environmentalists often appeal to all seven worldviews to varying degrees.
There is a critical distinction between vulgar anthropocentrism and enlightened
anthropocentrism – the perm is enlightened anthropocentrism.
Wood, 11
(David, “Toxicity and Transcendence,” Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 16.4, p.34, arc)
On this reading, anthropocentrism is not the issue. Rather, it is important to avoid a vulgar
anthropocentrism, one that would either model the value of other creatures on what we value about man (giving us a
scale based on intelligence or reason, for example), or would value the Earth as a whole and its systems and other
inhabitants in terms of our human self-interest, however myopically grasped. An ‘‘enlightened’’
anthropocentrism, on the other hand, would draw on what may well be uniquely human attributes to
construct an account of, or a conversation about, man’s place in nature, or options for a sustainable
future. As a marker of seriousness here, it must be possible for enlightened anthropocentrism to conclude, perhaps sadly,
that despite our being uniquely gifted analytically and imaginatively in being able to understand the
situation, there is a dark side to these and/or allied capacities that renders our human presence toxic
to the planet. And it must be possible that such an analysis would recom- mend the termination of the human project, its
modification, or its posthuman redirection (for example by gene therapy, or by being taken up in a Singularity).