Thalassocentricism K
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Exploration and discovery of the world’s oceans propagates the ordering of queerness
and nontraditional forms of sovereignty and existence. The drive to increase our
knowledge of the oceans is rooted in colonialism and western epistemes that inflict
violence and ecological destruction.
Montroso 14, (Alan Montroso, graduate teaching assistant at George Washington University, “Ocean
is the New East: Contemporary Representations of Sea Life and Mandeville’s Monstrous Ecosystems,”
March 23, 2014, http://bacchanalinthelibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/ocean-is-new-eastcontemporary.html) Magotes
Spring Break was, well, hardly a break at all, but I celebrated its conclusion with some friends from Ohio
who were visiting for the weekend. We dined, we drank, we danced and we toured a few of the MUST
SEE sights of DC. Our last stop was the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where I
reveled in the gorgeous new exhibit: The Sant Ocean Hall. The only one of our cadre enamored of
oceanic discoveries, I hurried from display to display, basking in bioluminescent beings, awe-struck at
extremophiles and trembling before the model of Phoenix, the North Atlantic right whale. Deeply
affected by these strange strangers, I stretched my imagination towards the inconceivable and
wondered at the sheer breadth of possibilities for ways of living in these still-occult abyssopelagic
regions. I found solace in the evidence that so many vast and heterogeneous lives can flourish
without the intrusive light of the sun or human reason , and that such animacy is possible in the
darkness, in a “world where the Copernican revolution is irrelevant.” (1) I attempted to think with and
alongside such creatures, to make myself uncomfortable by imagining myself breathing without
oxygen, thriving at thermal vents, manifesting light with my own body, an aqueous and somewhat
amorphous body squeezed and strangled by the only just bearable pressures of the deep sea. I
attempted a posthumanist thought project similar to what Stacy Alaimo describes in “Violet-Black,”
her contribution to Prismatic Ecology, in which she insists that “Thinking with and through the
electronic jellyfish, seeing through the prosthetic eye, playing open-ended, improvisational language
games with deep-sea creatures, being transformed by astonishment and desire enact a posthumanist
practice.” (2) Responding to the highly-stylized illustrations in books from the Census of Marine Life,
Alaimo finds in such affective imagery an invitation to new ways of thinking life, and consequently
the possibility for the dethronement of terrestrial ideas of sovereignty. Each Smithsonian display, like
each vibrantly hued illustration of marine life, defamiliarizes this planet and renders a world that
simply will not surrender to humanity’s hubristic desire for authority. Each impossible way of being,
now proven possible, works to dismantle what Mel Y. Chen calls the “animacy hierarchy” by begging
us to reconsider just what the hell comprises an “animate” body anyway. (3) And yet, as I wandered
from station to station examining these oceanic bodies summoned from the abysses of the sea, lifeless,
entombed in glass jars and carefully arranged for an American viewing public , I could not forget the
relation between observers and observed, nor that human science and politicking still fashion a
sovereign/subject relation between humans and the myriad strangers that populate the seas . Thus as
I wandered the Sant Ocean Hall, I thought about what it means to “wander,” who gets the privilege of
wandering (Americans, human knowledge-seekers), and what remains the stationary object of
scrutiny (the nonhuman body, the foreign object, the subject of scientific knowledge). These
marvelous displays are discrete islands of monstrous creatures that underscore humanity’s desire to
safely navigate strange waters. I chose the adjective “marvelous” very carefully, for my wandering
about the various exhibits reminded me of a medieval journey to the marvels of the East and, more
specifically, of Mandeville’s travels around the monstrous islands just past the Holy Lands and off the
coasts of Africa and India. For the ocean , it seems, is the new East , compared against the way the
medieval Western hegemony represented the East in its travel literature. The inhabitants of Earth’s
oceans are put on display to be navigated, plundered, studied and represented by the sovereign
powers of Western thought . Like Mandeville’s tale of fish that deliver themselves to the shore for
human consumption, we expect the seas to divulge their mysteries for our ravenous desire to control
by means of knowledge-making .
Seeking to know and develop the natural world guarantees extinction – prioritization
of humanity and human use for the environment perpetuates ecocide
Sivil 01, (Richard Sivil studied at the University of Durban Westville, and at the University of Natal,
Durban. He has been lecturing philosophy since 1996. "Why we Need a New Ethic for the Environment",
Cultural Heritage 2(7): 103 – 116 (2001))
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 nonhuman natural world is deemed acceptable, provided that it does not interfere with other human
beings. It could be argued that there is nothing essentially wrong with anthropocentric assumptions,
since it is natural, even instinctual, to favour one’s self and species over and above all other forms of
life. However, it is problematic in that such perceptions influence our actions and dealings with the
world to the extent that the well-being of life on this planet is threatened, making the continuance of
a huge proportion of existing life forms "tenuous if not improbable" (Elliot 1995: 1). Denying the nonhuman world ethical consideration, it is evident that anthropocentric assumptions provide a rationale
for the exploitation of the natural world and, therefore, have been largely responsible for the present
environmental crisis (Des Jardins 1997: 93). Fox identifies three broad approaches to the environment
informed by anthropocentric assumptions, which in reality are not distinct and separate, but occur in a
variety of combinations. The "expansionist" approach is characterised by the recognition that nature
has a purely instrumental value to humans. This value is accessed through the physical transformation
of the non-human natural world, by farming, mining, damming etc. Such practices create an economic
value, which tends to "equate the physical transformation of ‘resources’ with economic growth" (Fox
1990: 152). Legitimising continuous expansion and exploitation, this approach relies on the idea that
there is an unending supply of resources. The "conservationist" approach, like the first, recognises the
economic value of natural resources through their physical transformation, while at the same time
accepting the fact that there are limits to these resources. It therefore emphasises the importance of
conserving natural resources, while prioritising the importance of developing the non-human natural
world in the quest for financial gain. The "preservationist" approach differs from the first two in that it
recognises the enjoyment and aesthetic enrichment human beings receive from an undisturbed
natural world. Focusing on the psychical nourishment value of the non-human natural world for
humans, this approach stresses the importance of preserving resources in their natural states. All three
approaches are informed by anthropocentric assumptions. This results in a one-sided understanding
of the human-nature relationship. Nature is understood to have a singular role of serving humanity,
while humanity is understood to have no obligations toward nature. Such a perception represents "not
only a deluded but also a very dangerous orientation to the world" (Fox 1990: 13), as only the lives of
human beings are recognised to have direct moral worth, while the moral consideration of non-human
entities is entirely contingent upon the interests of human beings (Pierce & Van De Veer 1995: 9).
Humanity is favoured as inherently valuable, while the non-human natural world counts only in terms of
its use value to human beings. The "expansionist" and "conservationist" approaches recognise an
economic value, while the "preservationist" approach recognises a hedonistic, aesthetic or spiritual
value. They accept, without challenge, the assumption that the value of the non-human natural world
is entirely dependent on human needs and interests. None attempt to move beyond the assumption
that nature has any worth other than the value humans can derive from it, let alone search for a
deeper value in nature. This ensures that human duties retain a purely human focus, thereby avoiding
the possibility that humans may have duties that extend to non-humans. This can lead to viewing the
non-human world, devoid of direct moral consideration, as a mere resource with a purely
instrumental value of servitude. This gives rise to a principle of ‘total use’, whereby every natural area
is seen for its potential cultivation value, to be used for human ends (Zimmerman 1998: 19). This
provides limited means to criticise the behaviour of those who use nature purely as a warehouse of
resources (Pierce & Van De Veer 1995: 184).
Thus, the alternative is to reject the 1AC. We must distance ourselves form the
ordering and objectivity of the 1AC – only then can the process of transcorporeality
enable us to alter our conceptions of agency and animacy.
Alaimo 11, Stacy Alaimo, researcher and professor of environmental humanities, animal studies,
posthumanism, science studies, new materialism, gender theory, cultural studies, and multicultural
studies at the Univeristy of Texas, Arlington, “New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the
Submersible,” December 2011, Taking Turns, NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research,
Vol. 19, No. 4, pg 280-284, Magotes
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, transcorporeality 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 ourselves and others” (Alaimo 2010:
158). Although trans-corporeality 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,3 we dwell within and as part of a dynamic, intraactive, emergent, material world that demands new forms of ethical thought and practice. I would
like to invite feminists, queer theorists, new materialists, and post-humanists to follow the submersible.
Links – Topic Specific
Link – Generic
Exploration and discovery of the world’s oceans propagates the ordering of queerness
and nontraditional forms of sovereignty and existence. The drive to increase our
knowledge of the oceans is rooted in colonialism and western epistemes that inflict
violence and ecological destruction.
Montroso 14, (Alan Montroso, graduate teaching assistant at George Washington University, “Ocean
is the New East: Contemporary Representations of Sea Life and Mandeville’s Monstrous Ecosystems,”
March 23, 2014, http://bacchanalinthelibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/ocean-is-new-eastcontemporary.html) Magotes
Spring Break was, well, hardly a break at all, but I celebrated its conclusion with some friends from Ohio
who were visiting for the weekend. We dined, we drank, we danced and we toured a few of the MUST
SEE sights of DC. Our last stop was the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where I
reveled in the gorgeous new exhibit: The Sant Ocean Hall. The only one of our cadre enamored of
oceanic discoveries, I hurried from display to display, basking in bioluminescent beings, awe-struck at
extremophiles and trembling before the model of Phoenix, the North Atlantic right whale. Deeply
affected by these strange strangers, I stretched my imagination towards the inconceivable and
wondered at the sheer breadth of possibilities for ways of living in these still-occult abyssopelagic
regions. I found solace in the evidence that so many vast and heterogeneous lives can flourish
without the intrusive light of the sun or human reason , and that such animacy is possible in the
darkness, in a “world where the Copernican revolution is irrelevant.” (1) I attempted to think with and
alongside such creatures, to make myself uncomfortable by imagining myself breathing without
oxygen, thriving at thermal vents, manifesting light with my own body, an aqueous and somewhat
amorphous body squeezed and strangled by the only just bearable pressures of the deep sea. I
attempted a posthumanist thought project similar to what Stacy Alaimo describes in “Violet-Black,”
her contribution to Prismatic Ecology, in which she insists that “Thinking with and through the
electronic jellyfish, seeing through the prosthetic eye, playing open-ended, improvisational language
games with deep-sea creatures, being transformed by astonishment and desire enact a posthumanist
practice.” (2) Responding to the highly-stylized illustrations in books from the Census of Marine Life,
Alaimo finds in such affective imagery an invitation to new ways of thinking life, and consequently
the possibility for the dethronement of terrestrial ideas of sovereignty. Each Smithsonian display, like
each vibrantly hued illustration of marine life, defamiliarizes this planet and renders a world that
simply will not surrender to humanity’s hubristic desire for authority. Each impossible way of being,
now proven possible, works to dismantle what Mel Y. Chen calls the “animacy hierarchy” by begging
us to reconsider just what the hell comprises an “animate” body anyway. (3) And yet, as I wandered
from station to station examining these oceanic bodies summoned from the abysses of the sea, lifeless,
entombed in glass jars and carefully arranged for an American viewing public , I could not forget the
relation between observers and observed, nor that human science and politicking still fashion a
sovereign/subject relation between humans and the myriad strangers that populate the seas . Thus as
I wandered the Sant Ocean Hall, I thought about what it means to “wander,” who gets the privilege of
wandering (Americans, human knowledge-seekers), and what remains the stationary object of
scrutiny (the nonhuman body, the foreign object, the subject of scientific knowledge). These
marvelous displays are discrete islands of monstrous creatures that underscore humanity’s desire to
safely navigate strange waters. I chose the adjective “marvelous” very carefully, for my wandering
about the various exhibits reminded me of a medieval journey to the marvels of the East and, more
specifically, of Mandeville’s travels around the monstrous islands just past the Holy Lands and off the
coasts of Africa and India. For the ocean , it seems, is the new East , compared against the way the
medieval Western hegemony represented the East in its travel literature. The inhabitants of Earth’s
oceans are put on display to be navigated, plundered, studied and represented by the sovereign
powers of Western thought . Like Mandeville’s tale of fish that deliver themselves to the shore for
human consumption, we expect the seas to divulge their mysteries for our ravenous desire to control
by means of knowledge-making .
Link – Robot Exploration
Separating the body from the mind in exploration and science distances us from the
material world, perpetuating masculine domination of knowledge and experience
Alaimo 11, Stacy Alaimo, researcher and professor of environmental humanities, animal studies,
posthumanism, science studies, new materialism, gender theory, cultural studies, and multicultural
studies at the Univeristy of Texas, Arlington, “New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the
Submersible,” December 2011, Taking Turns, NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research,
Vol. 19, No. 4, pg 280-284, Magotes
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 zone1 but 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 smith 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 Coole 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,2 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.
Link – Technology
Seafaring technological advancements gave rise to civilization – the domination of the
unknown and the unlimited space of the ocean furthers a humanist, anthropocentric
agenda that gave way to colonialism and imperialism
Messier and Batra 11, Vartan Messier, assistant professor of English at the City University of New
York, and professor of English at University of Puerto Rico, “The Multitudinous Seas: Matter and
Metaphor,” 2011, This Watery World: Humans and the Sea, Pg. 17-19. ***GENDERED LANGAUGE NOT
ENDORSED*** Magotes
While the land/water opposition was taken up by Barthes as we have seen earlier, Bachelard extends
the antithetical relationship not merely to that between water and land, but to fresh water/sea water as
well. Bachelard distinguishes between the human response to fresh water and sea water: “La mer
donne des contes avant de donner des rêves” (206) the sea generates stories better generating dreams
(translation ours)], noting that the first experience of the sea is in the shape of a story: “la première
expérience de la mer est de l’ordre du récit” (emphasis his, 206). Bachelard’s observation suggests that
the timelessness and signlessness that humans have seen in the sea have produced the desire to order
and temporize it, and thus to establish a sense of order and sequence. In an extended sense, he sees
this desire borne out of the ways in which our understanding of human existence is mediated by
narrative as it systemizes and orders our experiences of the world both spatially and temporally.
Juxtaposed against the sea’s vast cultural void, the advent of seafaring produced not only new
territories but an entire culture, claimed Michel Foucault, one exemplified by “heterotopia,” which
“juxtapos[e] in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are themselves incompatible.”
Heterotopias are not utopias but “real emplacements” that “simultaneously represent, contest and
reverse...all the other real emplacements in their environment,” and for him “the ship is the heterotopia
par excellence” (178-81). Meanwhile, W.H Auden suggests that domination of the sea marks not
merely the beginning of biological life but the beginning of civilization, observing that “the sea, in
fact, is that state of barbaric vagueness and disorder out of which civilization emerged” (6).
Domination of the sea thus encapsulates the ordering of nature by humans and, as Philip de Souza
points out, was “crucial to both the best and the worst aspects of civilisation” (cover blurb). Although
the first boats were probably created for rivers and lakes rather than for the sea (de Souza 7), seafaring
has produced the world as we now know it through the “discovery and exploitation of new territories,
new peoples and new ideas,” which led the way to the expansion of the world’s history, its cultures
and religions, and to economic globalization as we now have it. In addition, as Bernhard Klein has
shown, it is the early modem era that produced “permanent maritime links and trade routes across vast
oceanic spaces” in contrast to earlier “great seafaring empires” (such as the Roman, Carthaginian, Viking
and Ming), which lacked the “technical means” to effect a permanent expansion of their borders on
other shores. In contrast, the history-making voyages of Vasco da Gama, Magellan and Columbus,
among others, paved the way for imperialism. Klein therefore places the imperial project of the
sixteenth century as marking the “true beginning of globalisation” (Klein, “Historicizing”) Nevertheless
while these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century oceanic voyages might have changed history, the most
famous theoretic argument for the Free Sea was produced in the early years of the seventeenth century
in Hugo Grotius’ 1604 Mare Liberum (or Freedom of the Sea), which argued (on behalf of the Dutch East
India Company) for freedom of not only the oceans and coastal waters but of seafaring, trade and
tithing on the grounds that the law of the land (private property) could not be applied to the boundless
sea. Initially, it was opposed by the British: John Selden’s 1635 Mare Clausum argued that the sea could
indeed be possessed. Eventually Mare Liherum was superceded by Cornelius Bunkeshoek’s De domino
maris (1702), which set cannon range as the limit of maritime control and was eventually adopted at the
three-mile limit.’The tension between this human imposition of a limit on the apparent limitlessness
of the sea echoes the idea mentioned above of the human desire to order the sea along spatiotemporal coordinates and hence, for Hegel, ocean-going activated Western history. The geographical
opportunity for ocean exploration was the condition of possibility for Western Europe’s entry into
world history: The sea gives us the idea of the indefinite, the unlimited, and the infinite; and in feeling
his own infinite in that Infinite, man is stimulated and emboldened to stretch beyond the limited: the
sea invites man to conquest, and to piratical plunder, but also to honest gain and to commerce. The
land, the mere valley-plain attaches him to the soil; it involves him in an infinite multitude of
dependencies, but the sea carries him out beyond these limited circles of thought and action. (90)
Without a doubt, the broader human outlook on the sea seems to have changed in the past few
centuries with the advent of seafaring technology that permitted long-range exploration, commerce,
conquest, and colonization, particularly by Western European and Euro-Americancivilizations.3 This
change of attitude runs parallel to historical shifts in the cultural trends of the so-called “old
continent” and the coming of age of “humanism”; Enlightenment ideas transformed European society
and in the modern era the development of empiricism in the sciences was perceived as a means to
attain absolute knowledge about what constitutes human existence. In parallel, dominion of the sea
was asserted by similar advances in the field of technology and the increased opportunity for
transoceanic voyages, which in turn gave way to a reconsideration of the relationship between
humans and the sea. This reconsideration towards the sea has been attributed to largely material
causes by Alain Corbin in his informative book The Lure of the Sea. The Discovery of the Seaside in the
Western World 1750-1840. Once considered a sinister, threatening power that was home to monsters,
the sea has shifted its cultural signification in the West since the eighteenth century. He shows how
attitudes to the sea altered with the Enlightenment and concurrent changes in art and literature, so that
bathing in the sea became viewed as therapeutic and regenerative rather than unhealthy. This change
became reflected at all levels, from the political in the exploration that resulted from an increased
interest in travel, to the economic in the rise of sea towns, and to the cultural level in artistic and literary
production.
Links – Advantages
A2 Link of Omission
Their ignorance of violence against animals ensures that anthropocentrism continues
– causes extinction
Bell 2k, York University department of education, and Russell, Lakehead University associate professor,
2k (Anne C. and Constance L., department of education, York University, Canada, and Canadian Journal
of Environmental Education, “Beyond Human, Beyond Words: Anthropocentrism, Critical Pedagogy, and
the Poststructuralist Turn,” CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 25, 3 (2000):188–203,
http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf, p. 192)
We come to critical pedagogy with a background in environmental thought and education. Of primary
concern and interest to us are relationships among humans and the “more-than-human world”
(Abram, 1996), the ways in which those relationships are constituted and prescribed in mo- dern
industrial society, and the implications and consequences of those constructs. As a number of scholars
and nature advocates have argued, the many manifestations of the current environmental crisis (e.g.,
species extinction, toxic contamination, ozone depletion, topsoil depletion, climate change, acid rain,
deforestation) reflect predominant Western concepts of nature, nature cast as mindless matter, a
mere resource to be exploited for human gain (Berman, 1981; Evernden, 1985; Merchant, 1980). An
ability to respond adequately to the situation therefore rests, at least in part, on a willingness to
critique prevailing discourses about nature and to consider alternative representations (Cronon, 1996;
Evernden, 1992; Hayles, 1995). To this end, poststructuralist analysis has been and will continue to be
invaluable.It would be an all-too-common mistake to construe the task at hand as one of interest only to
environmentalists. We believe, rather, that dis- rupting the social scripts that structure and legitimize
the human dom- ination of nonhuman nature is fundamental not only to dealing with environmental
issues, but also to examining and challenging oppressive social arrangements. The exploitation of
nature is not separate from the exploitation of human groups. Ecofeminists and activists for environmental justice have shown that forms of domination are often intimately connected and mutually
reinforcing (Bullard, 1993; Gaard, 1997; Lahar, 1993; Sturgeon, 1997). Thus, if critical educators wish to
resist various oppressions, part of their project must entail calling into question, among other things,
the instrumental exploitive gaze through which we humans distance ourselves from the rest of nature
(Carlson, 1995).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 (Sadovnik, 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- ifests
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, hier- archical 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 crea- tures because we are able to rise above monotonous,
species-determined 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 con- fronting inequities (see Britzman,
1995). The primacy of the human enter- prise is simply not questioned.Precisely how an
anthropocentric pedagogy might exacerbate the en- vironmental 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.1p.
190-192
Link – Agamben
Agamben is anthropocentric- his foundational structures of thought are all
determined by the concept of the human.
Calarco 2k (Matthew Calarco, “On the borders of language and death: Agamben on the question of
the animal,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 44, p. 91)
Even where Agamben ventures a figure beyond the refugee in order to rethink community (such as
"whatever singularity" in The Coming Community or the "sacred person" in Homo Sacer), these
"concepts" remain analogous in form to the refugee. Whatever singularities, sacred persons, and
refugees all find their being in im-propriety, in ex-propriation, in a form of existence that is irreducible
to bios and the State. What is troubling about these figures as they function in Agamben's discourse is
that they are all to a certain extent limited to human beings alone. While we do not mean to imply
here that Agamben relies on a humanist subject to ground his politics, we do want to suggest that his
rethinking of the ground of the coming community remains anthropocentric. And it is this
anthropocentric limit to which we are responding in forming our question.
Link – 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.
Link – Biotech/nanotech
Bio and nanotech ensures the ontological and physical death of the entire biosphere –
the ultimate goal is order and control the world as we see fit.
Lee 99, (Keekok Lee, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, 1999, The Natural and the
Artefactual p. 81.)
This chapter examines, in the main, two issues: (a) in the first section, a conceptual clarification of the
notion of nature and its cognate, that of 'the natural' in order to highlight a crucial sense, namely,
'natural^' which in turn is tied up with the notion of independence—the book goes on in Chapter 5,
however, to argue that independence, unlike intricacy, complexity, sentience or other such attributes,
is a primary characteristic and, therefore, constitutes an ontological rather than an axiological value;
(b) in the next two sections, an examination of the ambiguities surrounding the notion of 'human
impact upon the environment,' by distinguishing unwanted side-effects of technological impact from
the deliberate and systematic transformation of the natural to become the artefactual. The final two
sections are used to illustrate further some of the key points raised in the preceding ones and the
relationship between them. These clarifications are attempts to put in place a further stage in
establishing the fundamental thesis of the book, namely, that nature has independent value and that
the most radical and critical threat to it is yet to come. The threat amounts to its elimination, both
ontologically and empirically, via the science and technology of our modern civilization, especially
when its most recent technologies—biotechnology and computer technology—will combine with
certain others promised in the near future, such as molecular nanotechnology, to produce powerful
synergistic effects in a profound transformation of the natural to become the artefactual.1
Link – Death
All things are “alive” – the binary between living/nonliving facilities environmental
destruction and extinction.
Rowe 96, (Stan Rowe, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, 1996, “From Shallow To
Deep Ecological Philosophy,” Trumpeter, Volume 13, Number 1, Available Online at
http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/278/413, Accessed 07-26-2011)
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 life-supporting 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 insidethe-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.
Link – Development
Do we really need a card that says “development” is anthropocentric..?
Sachs 93, (Wolfgang Sachs, “The Global Ecology and the Shadow of Development” in Deep Ecology for
the 21st Century, ed. George Sessions, p. 433-434)
"Development" is, above all, a way of thinking. It cannot, therefore, be easily identified with a
particular strategy or program, but ties many different practices and aspirations to a common set of
assumptions. . . . Despite alarming signs of failure throughout its history, the development syndrome
has survived until today, but at the price of increasing senility. When it became clear in the 1950s that
investments were not enough, "man-power development" was added to the aid package; as it became
obvious in the 1960s that hardship continued, "social development" was discovered; and in the 1990s,
as the impoverishment of peasants could no longer be overlooked, "rural development" was included in
the arsenal of development strategies. And so it went on, with further creations like "equitable
development" and the "basic needs approach." Again and again, the same conceptual operation was
repeated: degradation in the wake of development was redefined as a lack which called for yet
another strategy of development. All along, the efficacy of "development" remained impervious to
any counterevidence, but showed remarkable staying power; the concept was repeatedly stretched
until it included both the strategy which inflicted the injury and the strategy designed for therapy. This
strength of the concept, however, is also the reason for its galloping exhaustion; it no longer manifests
any reactions to changing historical conditions. The tragic greatness of "development" consists in its
monumental emptiness. "Sustainable development," which UNCED enthroned as the reigning slogan of
the 1990s, has inherited the fragility of "development." The concept emasculates the environmental
challenge by absorbing it into the empty shell of "development" and insinuates the continuing validity
of developmentalist assumptions even when confronted with a drastically different historical
situation. In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the book which gave rise to the environmental movement in
1962, development was understood to inflict injuries on people and nature. Since the "World
Conservation Strategy" in r98o and later the Brundtland Report, development has come to be seen as
the therapy for the injuries caused by development. What accounts for this shift? Firstly, in the 1970s,
under the impact of the oil crisis, governments began to realize that continued growth depended not
only on capital formation or skilled manpower, but also on the long-term availability of natural
resources. Foods for the insatiable growth machine, such as oil, timber, minerals, soils, genetic
material, seemed on the decline; concern grew about the prospects of long-term growth. This was a
decisive change in perspective: not the health of nature but the continuous health of development
became the center of concern. In 1992, the World Bank summed up the new consensus in a laconic
phrase: "What is sustainable? Sustainable development is development that lasts.” Of course, the task
of development experts does not remain the same under this imperative, because the horizon of their
decisions is now supposed to extend in time, taking into account also the welfare of future generations.
But the frame stays the same: "sustainable development" calls for the conservation of development, not
for the conservation of nature. Even bearing in mind a very loose definition of development, the
anthropocentric bias of the statement springs to mind; it is not the preservation of nature's dignity
which is on the international agenda, but to extend human centered utilitarianism to posterity.
Needless to say, the naturalist and biocentric current of present-day environmentalism has been cut out
by this conceptual operation. With "development" back in the saddle, the view on nature changes. The
question now becomes: which of nature's "services" are to what extent indispensable for further
development, Or the other way around: which "services" of nature are dispensable or can be
substituted by, for example, new materials or genetic engineering In other words, nature turns into a
variable, albeit a critical one, in sustaining development. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that
"nature capital" has already become a fashionable notion among ecological economists.
Link – Environmentalism
Their calls for widespread change fall into the same logic of progress that has resulted
in speciesist violence and the destruction of the environment
Kochi and Ordan 08, (Tarik Kochi, Queen’s University School of Law lecturer, and Noam Ordan,
linguist, Borderlands Volume 7 Number 3, 2008, "An Argument for the Global Suicide of Humanity,")
In another sense the ethical demand to respond to historical and present environmental destruction
runs onto and in many ways intensifies the question of radical or revolutionary change which
confronted the socialist tradition within the 19th and 20th centuries. As environmental concerns have
increasingly since the 1970s come into greater prominence, the pressing issue for many within the 21st
century is that of social-environmental revolution. [9] Social- environmental revolution involves the
creation of new social, political and economic forms of human and environmental organisation which
can overcome the deficiencies and latent oppression of global capitalism and safeguard both human
and non-human dignity. Putting aside the old, false assumptions of a teleological account of history,
social-environmental revolution is dependent upon widespread political action which short-circuits and
tears apart current legal, political and economic regimes. This action is itself dependent upon a
widespread change in awareness, a revolutionary change in consciousness, across enough of the
populace to spark radical social and political transformation. Thought of in this sense, however, such a
response to environmental destruction is caught by many of the old problems which have troubled
the tradition of revolutionary socialism. Namely, how might a significant number of human individuals
come to obtain such a radically enlightened perspective or awareness of human social reality (i.e. a
dialectical, utopian anti-humanist ‘revolutionary consciousnesse’) so that they might bring about with
minimal violence the overthrow of the practices and institutions of late capitalism and colonialspeciesism? Further, how might an individual attain such a radical perspective when their life,
behaviours and attitudes (or their subjectivity itself) are so moulded and shaped by the individual’s
immersion within and active self-realisation through, the networks, systems and habits constitutive of
global capitalism? (Hardt & Negri, 2001). While the demand for social-environmental revolution grows
stronger, both theoretical and practical answers to these pressing questions remain unanswered. Both
liberal and social revolutionary models thus seem to run into the same problems that surround the
notion of progress; each play out a modern discourse of sacrifice in which some forms of life and modes
of living are set aside in favour of the promise of a future good. Caught between social hopes and
political myths, the challenge of responding to environmental destruction confronts, starkly, the core of
a discourse of modernity characterised by reflection, responsibility and action. Given the increasing
pressures upon the human habitat, this modern discourse will either deliver or it will fail. There is little
room for an existence in between: either the Enlightenment fulfils its potentiality or it shows its hand as
the bearer of impossibility. If the possibilities of the Enlightenment are to be fulfilled then this can only
happen if the old idea of the progress of the human species, exemplified by Hawking’s cosmic
colonisation, is fundamentally rethought and replaced by a new form of self-comprehension. This selfcomprehension would need to negate and limit the old modern humanism by a radical antihumanism. The aim, however, would be to not just accept one side or the other, but to re-think the
basis of moral action along the lines of a dialectical, utopian anti-humanism. Importantly, though,
getting past inadequate conceptions of action, historical time and the futural promise of progress may
be dependent upon radically re-comprehending the relationship between humanity and nature in
such a way that the human is no longer viewed as the sole core of the subject, or the being of highest
value. The human would thus need to no longer be thought of as a master that stands over the non-
human. Rather, the human and the non-human need to be grasped together, with the former bearing
dignity only so long as it understands itself as a part of the latter.
Link – Heidegger
Heidegger’s basis for human subjectivity footnotes all alternative forms of existence
and being
Irwin 03, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Volume 22, Numbers 3-4, May 2003, pp. 227-244(18)
HEIDEGGER AND NIETZSCHE; THE QUESTION OF VALUE AND NIHILISM IN RELATION TO EDUCATION
The ‘potential’ and ‘fruition’ of Being has been strongly influenced by Aristotle’s notion of essence –
which ‘causes’ the substance to be formed in a way that shows what it is. Guignon argues that
Heidegger distinguished himself from Aristotle because neither Being nor Dasein has an inevitable telos.
Taking a Nietzschean stance, the subject, das Dasein ‘styles’ her/himself by projecting towards the
future (promising), and recouping the past in a process which looks at one’s life as a whole, and as an
ongoing becoming. But the future is not linear, as it is for Aristotle. There is no precise goal in this
collation of our finite life as a whole. Similarly to Nietzsche, there is no determinant end point; no Ideal
of the ‘good’ or heaven to guide or complete a life. Any faith resides in ‘life’, and ‘fate’ for Nietzsche,
and in Being for Heidegger. Thus, as an entity, humans are an example of how Being exhibits itself.
More than this though, Heidegger argues that humans have a unique relation to Being because unlike
any other animal, vegetable or mineral, we are open to comprehending the appearance of Being
which ‘shines forth’ from beings, (A) privileged, unique relation arises between (beings as a whole)
and the act of questioning. For through this questioning beings as a whole are for the first time opened
up as such with a view to its possible ground, and in the act of questioning it is kept open (Heidegger,
1973a, p. 4). On the one hand, Heidegger recognises that humans are insignificant in the scale of the
history of the earth, let alone the universe. “What is the temporal extension of a human life amid all
the millions of years?” (ibid.). On the other hand, Heidegger has developed Kant’s theory of time, such
that time is not simply a priori to subjectivity but emerges commensurately with human subjectivity.
There is the pure possibility that man might not be at all. After all there was a time when man was not.
But strictly speaking we cannot say: There was a time when man was not. At all times man was and is
and will be, because time produces itself only insofar as man is. There is no time when man was not,
not because man was from all eternity and will be for all eternity but because time is not eternity and
time fashions itself into a time only as a human, historical being-there [Dasein] (ibid., p. 84). The term
Dasein was invented in the 19th century as a Germanic transliteration of ‘existence’ (Guignon, 1999,
private communication). Heidegger has limited the term into a technical designation for the human
relation with the ‘world’. Das Dasein is a play on words. On the one hand, Dasein translates as ‘das’,
‘the’ and ‘ein’ or ‘one’; ‘the one’ or ‘any one’. Alternatively ‘Da’ means ‘there’ and ‘sein’ is ‘being’;
‘being-there’. Anyone being there projects Dasein away from ‘here’ towards a future. Being-there is
the movement of potentiality.
Link – Human Rights
Questioning the human/nonhuman is on the only way to prevent humanitarian
violence
Deckha 10, Maneesha Associate Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law in Victoria,
Canada. “It’s time to abandon the idea of human rights”, The Scavenger, dec 10
Time for a new discourse That the human/subhuman binary continues to inhabit so much of western
experience raises the question of the continuing relevance of anthropocentric concepts (such as
“human rights” and “human dignity”) for effective theories of justice, policy and social movements.
Instead of fighting dehumanization with humanization, a better strategy may be to minimize the
human/nonhuman boundary altogether. The human specialness claim is a hierarchical one and relies
on the figure of an Other – the subhuman and nonhuman – to be intelligible. The latter groups are
beings, by definition, who do not qualify as “human” and thus are denied the benefits that being
“human” is meant to compel. More to the point, however, a dignity claim staked on species difference,
and reliant on dehumanizing Others to establish the moral worth of human beings, will always be
vulnerable to the subhuman figure it creates. This figure is easily deployed in inter-human violent
conflict implicating race, gender and cultural identities as we have seen in the context of military and
police camps, contemporary slavery and slavery-like practices, and the laws of war – used in these
situations to promote violence against marginalized human groups. A new discourse of cultural and
legal protections is required to address violence against vulnerable humans in a manner that does not
privilege humanity or humans, nor permit a subhuman figure to circulate as the mark of inferior beings
on whom the perpetration of violence is legitimate. We need to find an alternative discourse to
theorize and mobilize around vulnerabilities for “subhuman” humans. This move, in addressing
violence and vulnerabilities, should be productive not only for humans made vulnerable by their
dehumanization, but nonhumans as well.
The affirmative’s appeal for “human rights” is fundamentally exclusive—it
perpetuates and legitimizes speciesism
Tittle 98, “The Humanist View of Animal Rights”
First, if humanism 'just' emphasized human-as-opposed-to-god, that is, if it were merely a reaction to
belief in the supernatural, it would put at its centre, the natural. But it goes one further, it goes one
narrower, it puts at its centre the human. It's called humanism, not naturalism.In fact, humanism seems
to pride itself on not being merely 'a reaction to.' On more than one occasion, and in "Are You a
Humanist?" in particular, it compares itself to atheism: atheism is merely reactionary, negative, antireligion; humanism, on the other hand, is proactive, positive, pro-human. So whereas naturalism is more
general and would include non-human animals, humanism seems specifically, almost intentionally, to
exclude them.Second, humanism, "as defined in most dictionaries, [is] a way of life centred on human
interests and values..." ("The Humanist Alternative" p.1, emphasis added). Now this is not to say that
non-humans can't also be in the centre. But the word 'human' appears in so many principles, the
specific-ness seems hardly accidental: "Humanism aims at the full development of every human being"
(#1, emphasis added); "Humanists uphold the broadest application of democratic principles in all
human relationships" (#2, emphasis added); "Humanists affirm the dignity of every person and the
right of the individual to maximum possible freedom compatible with the rights of others" (#4
emphasis, added); "Humanists acknowledge human interdependence, the need for mutual respect,
and the kinship of all humanity..." (#5, emphasis added); "Humanists call for continuous improvement
of the quality of life so that no living human being may be deprived of the basic necessities of life" (#6,
emphasis added); "Humanists support the development and extension of fundamental human
rights..." (#7 emphasis added).Given such a relentless focus on human development, relationships, and
quality of life, one hardly needs to ask, regarding the third principle, "Humanists advocate the use of the
scientific method, both as a guide to distinguish fact from fiction, and as a tool to develop beneficial and
creative uses of science and technology"--beneficial for who?And though a hierarchy with humans at the
top is not described, I believe this view of human at the centre puts animals as much in a subordinate
area. Indeed, "...humanists regard ethical inquiry as evolving like any other human endeavour, changing
over time to meet the changing needs of the human species" ("The Humanist Alternative" p.2, emphasis
added) [5].My third reason for thinking that the humanist view leans away from animal rights is that
any extrapolations I can make from the principles that might support animal rights are rather weak. The
fourth principle insists that the rights of the individual to freedom must be compatible with "the rights
of others" and the ninth principle speaks of "a sense of responsibility to oneself and to others." Could
those others include animals? It didn't say "the rights of other humans" or "the responsibility to...other
humans." But I think I'm grasping at straws here.The eleventh principle states that "Humanists affirm
that human and world problems can be resolved only by means of human reason, compassion, and
intelligent effort." World problems might involve animals, yes? And the compassion we are directed to
use might at least justify their right not to be tortured, yes? Maybe.Given these weak arguments and the
overwhelmingly strong focus on human interests, it seems to me that the only animal rights
arguments humanists would accept are instrumental ones. Instrumental arguments, such as those put
forth by Baxter [6], Passmore [7], and Guthrie [8], claim that animals have rights only insofar as they
are of value to us. Animals are viewed, thus, as means to our ends, as instruments for our
development, our interests, our quality of life.Contrary, perhaps, to initial assumptions, instrumental
arguments do not necessarily lead to rather limited animal rights. Animals may have scientific and
medical value (they may be good for research), commercial value (parts of them can be sold, they can be
used for income-generating activities), game value (they're used for food), observational value (we like
to look at them, in zoos and sanctuaries), recreational value (they're fun to play with), and/or ecological
value (the species may be important to the ecosystem) [9].So insofar as their rights are derived from
their value [10], they may have many rights (or at least the most important ones). Humanists can argue
that cows have the right to graze (rather than be fed a chemical diet) because it's in our best interests to
eat such cows (and not the ones pumped full of steroids and what have you). And I can argue that
because my happiness depends on chessie's happiness [11], she has a right to be happy (and therefore
will get a new stuffed toy for her birthday). In fact, the more we understand that we live in a complex
web of life, that we depend on the ecosystem's stability for our survival, the more favourably we'll
consider the other lifeforms in that ecosystem [12]. So humanists may argue that plankton have rights
too.Even though instrumental arguments might justify a sufficiently broad range of animal rights, I'm
uncomfortable with stopping here. There's something a little distasteful about using others--any
others--as a means to one's own ends. And there's something very egocentric, very speciesist [13] in
the anthropocentricity of this view. Isn't it selfish exploitation, pure and simple? If it gives pleasure
and thus improves the quality of our lives to injure and sometimes kill animals just for the hell of it,
well, that would be justified on instrumental grounds. It seems then that humanism must condone
sport hunting.
Link – Nuke War
Focus on flashpoint violence and nuclear war marginalizes the ongoing ecological
catastrophe of the developing world
Pölling-Vocke 05, (Bernt, Master of International Relations. Victoria University, Wellington, New
Zealand, “’The End of Poverty’: The globalization of the unreal and the impoverishment of all,”
http://www.hockeyarenas.com/berntpv/jeffreysachs/endofpovertydeepecology.pdf)
These world affairs are “dark”, “and the old rough equivalency of GNP with “Gross National Pollution”
still holds.280 “Hundreds of millions of years of evolution of mammals and especially of large, territorydemanding animals will come to a halt”281 and perceptions, as by Jeffrey Sachs, that “that which is not
of value to any human being is not of value at all”, are egocentric. “Newton’s laws were made by
Newton, but stones fall without him”, and value statements are only uttered by Homo sapiens, but not
necessarily the only values, just because values are formulated not “by mosquitos in mosquito
language”282. Humanity uses its uniqueness and “special capacities among millions of kinds of other
living beings” for constant domination and mistreatment283, but “life is fundamentally one”284. For
millions of animals, disasters feared by humans are commonplace, as “these animals live and die in a
nuclear war today”, locked away in laboratories and tortured for experiments285. A lack of
identification leads to indifference286. Wilderness has become so scare that many national parks are
“so overloaded with people that extremely strict regulations have been introduced” – “instead of
entering a realm of freedom, one feels that one is in some kind of museum ruled by angry owners”287.
Responsible participants of contemporary societies have “slowly but surely begun to question whether
we truly accept this unique, sinister role we have previously chosen”, our roles within a “global culture
of a primarily techno-industrial nature”288. How dire are these world affairs? The threat of
ecocatastrophe has become apparent289. “Apocalypse now” is happening all around, and only
continued deterioration of human life conditions may strengthen and deepen the deep ecological
movement, hopefully resulting in major changes in economic, political and ideological
structures290.Then, human development might follow another path and abandon Jeffrey Sachs’ ladder
of modern, economic growth. The process is probably slow and its “direction revolutionary”, but its
“steps are reformatory”291.
Link – Marx
Marx’s alternative is anthro – doesn’t concern animal rights or socio-economic
constructions
Barr 95, Judi Bar, EarthFirst!, Judi Bari Web Site of the Redwood Summer Justice Project. 1995 ,
http://www.judibari.org/revolutionary-ecology.html
As you can probably tell, my background in revolutionary theory comes from Marxism, which I consider
to be a brilliant critique of capitalism. But as to what should be implemented in capitalism's place, I
don't think Marxism has shown us the answer. One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that communism,
socialism, and all other left ideologies that I know of speak only about redistributing the spoils of
raping the earth more evenly among classes of humans. They do not even address the relationship of
the society to the earth, Or rather, they assume that it will stay the same as it is under capitalism - that
of a gluttonous consumer. And that the purpose of the revolution is to find a more efficient and
egalitarian way to produce and distribute consumer goods. This total disregard of nature as a life
force, rather than just a source of raw materials, allowed Marxist states to rush to industrialize
without even the most meager environmental safeguards. This has resulted in such noted disasters as
the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the oil spill in the Arctic Ocean, and the ongoing
liquidation of the fragile forests of Siberia. It has left parts of Russia and Eastern Europe with such a toxic
legacy that vast areas are now uninhabitable. Marx stated that the primary contradiction in industrial
society is the contradiction between capital and labor. I believe these disasters show that there is an
equally important contradiction between industrial society and the earth.
All economics are inherently anthropocentric – alt merely reinscribe power dynamics
over the animal
Pölling-Vocke 05, (Bernt, Master of International Relations. Victoria University, Wellington, New
Zealand, “’The End of Poverty’: The globalization of the unreal and the impoverishment of all,”
http://www.hockeyarenas.com/berntpv/jeffreysachs/endofpovertydeepecology.pdf)
Under capitalism, nature can be privately owned. “Most of nonhuman nature is regarded as “stuff”
which can be owned and disposed of as a right of the owner”. It is disenchanted of intrinsic value and
viewed as “raw materials” and “raw resources” 306 – thus, as Jeffrey Sachs puts it, “natural
capital…(ought to provide) the environmental services needed by human society”307. Consequently,
“nonhuman nature is not seen as what it is but as what it might become” 308. The whale isn’t
primarily a whale, but either a steak or something to showcase to buzzing video-cameras from around
the world. Under capitalism, the future is frequently discounted, and “economic “rationality” requires
that the distant future be disregarded”309. Scarcities of resources tend to fasten their depletion, unless
a business is remodelled, as in the case of whales. Economic “rationality” can only be overcome with
sufficient wealth and a desire for a sustainable yield, but “capitalistic economies will not likely be
ecologically rational”310. The whale might have gotten away, but it is the exception. There are no
grounds to assume that socialism, as an alternative to contemporary capitalism, would embrace
nature any different, as “there is no compelling reason to believe that a society evolved beyond
human relations involving domination would also automatically reject domination over the rest of
nature”311. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, Karl Marx once
stated, prompting Garrett Hardin to challenge “And then what?”312
Link – Objectivity
Ethics is thinking, feeling, acting. You CANNOT Objectively Survey Existence –Reject
1AC Anthropocentrism to Attune Your Decision to the Creative-Destructive Flows of
the Cosmos.
Henning 09, (Brian, ‘Trusting in the ‘Efficacy of Beauty: A Kalocentric Approach to Moral Philosophy”,
Ethics and the Environment)
Final truths (whether in religion, morality, or science) are unattainable not only due to the finitude and
fallibility of human inquirers, but because we live in what the theologian John F. Haught calls an
“unfinished universe” (2004). The notion that one could achieve anything like a final or absolute
formulation in any field of study presupposes that one’s object is static. Thankfully, we do not live in
such a universe. Over the last century scientists have consistently discovered that the universe is not a
plenum of lifeless, valueless facts mechanistically determined by absolute laws. Rather, we live in a
processive cosmos that is a dynamic field of events organized in complex webs of interdependence,
rather than a collection of objects interacting via physical laws. The intuition that the universe is
fundamentally a clockwork machine successfully guided science in the wake of Newton’s inspirational
formulation of the laws of mechanics, but this metaphor proved increasingly inadequate as Newton’s
work was supplanted in the early 20th century by both general relativity and quantum mechanics. Even
at its peak, the mechanical metaphor created difficulties for thinking about human beings, who were
never effectively illuminated by the assumption that they were complex machines. At the level of
elementary particles, quantum mechanics disclosed a world of wave-like particles spread out in space
and inextricably entangled with other particles in the local environment. The notion of autonomous
“individual” particles disappeared. Although all metaphors are misleading to some degree, the
metaphor of the world as an evolving organism has become more helpful than the old mechanical
model of the world as a clock. This, in a sense, is the founding insight of Whitehead’s “philosophy of
organism,” which took as its starting point the view that individuals—particles, plants, and people are
not discrete facts walled off from each other but parts of complex and intersecting wholes. Conceived of
as an organic process, every individual is inextricably intertwined and interconnected with every other.
The fundamental reality is no longer individual entities but rather the ongoing processes by which
they interact and create novel structures. 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 ever richer 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).
Given that every individual in our universe, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, has some
degree of value, the scope of our direct moral concern15 can exclude nothing. Thus, in rather sharp
contrast to the invidious forms of anthropocentrism that characterize much of western moral thought,
our scope of direct moral concern cannot be limited to humans, to sentient beings, or even to all living
beings. Morality is not anthropocentric, but neither is it sentientcentric or biocentric. In affirming the
value of every individual, we must begin to recognize that every relation is potentially a moral relation.
As Whitehead vividly puts it, “ The destruction of a man, or of an insect, or of a tree, or of the
Parthenon, may be moral or immoral.… Whether we destroy or whether we preserve, our action is
moral if we have thereby safeguarded the importance [or value of experience so far as it depends on
that concrete instance in the world’s history” (1938, 14–15). Morality is not merely about how we ought
to act toward and among other human beings, other sentient beings, or even other living beings.
Morality is fundamentally about how we comport ourselves in the world, how we relate to and
interact with every form of existence. To summarize our position thus far, in recognizing the fallibility of
human knowers and the dynamic nature of the known, a Whiteheadian approach insists that moral
philosophers steadfastly recognize the limits of moral inquiry, carefully navigating between the rocks of
dogmatic absolutism and gross relativism. The recognition of nature’s dynamism furthermore requires
that philosophers abandon finally the artificial bifurcations (dualisms) and unjustified reductions
(physicalism and materialism) that distort and destroy the interdependent relationships constituting
reality. The world revealed by the last century of scientific investigation can no longer support a
mechanistic model that describes the natural world in terms of vacuous facts determined by absolute
laws. In its place, I am defending the adoption of an organic model that conceives of reality as vibrant,
open, and processive. On this model, individuals are conceived of as ongoing events situated in vast
webs of interdependence, each achieving value for themselves, for others, and for the whole of reality.
Link – Oil Spills
The BP oil spill proves that the narrative of ecological recovery will always be coopted
by the economy, perpetuating crisis and ecological destruction.
Chen 12, (Mel Y. Chen, associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of
California Berkeley, Animacies: Bipolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, Duke University Press,
2012, pages 223-224.) Magotes
On September 19, 2010, the oil well in the Macondo Prospect region of the Gulf of Mexico—which had
ruptured five months earlier, on April 20, spilling an estimated two hundred million barrels of oil into the
Gulf—was finally declared to be sealed. This closure led to a wave of relief that the threat had
somehow been contained, and that further pollution of the Gulf would no longer occur (at least not at
such an uncontrollable pace). The next day, the spill’s National Incident Commander, Thad Allen,
acknowledged in an interview that “we’re actually negotiating how clean is clean,” going on to explain
that this phrase was “a euphemism we use at the end of an oil spill to say, is there anything else we
can do? And, sometimes, there will still be oil there, but then the agreement is that there can be no
more technical means applied to it, and we’re all going to agree that this one is done as far as what
we can do.”1 Allen concluded the interview with a lively mixture of metaphors : both immediate
“ cleanup ” and long-term “ recovery ” should be the goal: the residents of the coast have had “a lot of
stuff laid at their door” and they “have a way of life that has been threatened down there.” It was
unclear whether “recovery” meant the health of the Gulf or the economic well-being of the human
residents of the Gulf , but clearly some kind of affliction was implied. Of course, metaphors of health
and treatment have a peculiar history in national economic discourses ; consider the phrase shock
therapy (commonly associated with the economist Jeffrey Sachs) used to describe a radical economic
reform in the direction of free markets, deregulation, and public disinvestment.2 More often than not,
articulations of the oil’s danger, or the oil dispersant’s toxicity (untested at such quantities), to sea
creatures were made not for their sake but for the purpose of identifying a risk to an economic
source of “livelihood” for the human professional residents of the U.S. Gulf shores, the fishermen and
fisherwomen and the economy built around them. Many of the fishermen and -women (though it is
unclear how many, and it is hard to disentangle such language from locally controlled ni’ media
interests) were content to rely on their symbiotic relationship to their local environment, using cash
payments and barter systems, and did not see fit to record and report income to the IRS tax system,
habits of nonengagement which imperiled their future compensation by bp. In interviews with those
workers, however, the distinction between “sources of revenue” and “living beings” was often
blurred: their expressed pain did not appear to distinguish between the lost generations of shrimp
and their own generativity of income.
Link – Politics
The political is already ceded—investigation of values offer the only hope for radical
change in the face of environmental destruction.
Best 04, (Steven, professor of philosophy at Texas El Paso, “From Earth Day to Ecological Society”
http://www.drstevebest.org/Essays/FromEarthDay.htm, date accessed: 7/27/11
Homo sapiens have embarked on an insane, destructive, and unsustainable path of existence. The
human species is driving off a cliff at 100 miles an hour without brakes, and yet people live is if the
most urgent issue of the day is Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” or who will win American Idol.
There is much talk about “national security” but nothing is said about the basis of all security –
environmental security. Problems like global warming, desertification, and food and water shortages
will wreak havoc throughout the planet. As Homeland Security turns ever-more fascist,
environmentalists are vilified as eco-terrorists and legal forms of activism are criminalized under the
Patriot Act. While Ashcroft prosecutes activists working to help the planet, corporate eco-terrorists
continue to pillage and plunder. Meanwhile, Americans, who make up less than 5% of the world’s
population, consume 30% of its resources and produce 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
Whatever forces striving to save the environment are doing, it is not to ward off corporate and state
Pac-men greedily devouring the planet. National environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club
are tepid, compromise-based, reform-oriented bureaucracies unable to challenge corporate and state
power, and grass-roots forces are not great enough in force and numbers. We are in the midst of a
major ecological crisis that stems from a social crisis rooted in corporate power and erosion of
democracy. In Greek, the word “crisis” means decision, suggesting that humanity, currently poised at a
critical crossroads in its evolution, has crucial decisions and choices to make concerning its existence on
the planet. Human identity, values, ethics, worldviews, and mode of social organization need major
rethinking and reconstruction. In Chinese, “crisis” means both calamity and opportunity. In a diseased
individual, cancer often provides the catalyst for personal growth. As a diseased species, human beings
can perish, survive in dystopian futures prefigured by films like Mad Max and Waterworld, or seize
their opportunity to learn from egregious errors and rise to far higher levels of social and moral
evolution. The Human Plague The crisis in human existence is dramatically reflected in the 1996 film,
Independence Day. The movie is about hostile aliens with no respect for life; they come to earth to kill
its peoples, devour its natural resources, and then move onto other planets in a mad quest to find more
fuel for their mega-machines and growth-oriented culture. The film is a veiled projection of our own
destructive habits onto monstrous beings from another world. We are the aliens; we are the parasites
who live off the death of other life forms; we are the captains of the mega-machines that are
sustainable only through violence and ecological destruction. We do to the animals and the earth
what the aliens do to human life -- the only difference is, we have no other planet to move on to, and
no superheroes to save us. We are trapped in a Dawn of the Dead living nightmare where armies of
hideous corpses, people thought long dead and buried, walk again with a will to destroy us. The dead
represent all the waste, pollution, and ecological debts accrued to our growth culture that we thought
we could walk away from unscathed and never again face. But we are waking up to the fact that the
“dead” are storming our neighborhoods, crashing through our doors and windows, and hell-bent on
devouring us. In his article entitled “A Plague of Human Proportions,” Mark Lynas frames the crisis this
way: “Within the earth's biosphere, a single species has come to dominate virtually all living systems.
For the past two centuries this species has been reproducing at bacterial levels, almost as an infectious
plague envelops its host. Three hundred thousand new individuals are added to its numbers every day.
Its population of bodies now exceeds by a hundred times the biomass of any large animal species that
has ever existed on land since the beginning of geological time. The species is us. Now numbering more
than six billion souls, the human population has doubled since 1950. Nothing like this has happened
before in the earth's history. Even the dinosaurs, which dominated for tens of millions of years, were
thinly spread compared to the hairless primate Homo sapiens.” Thus, a single biological type has
wreaked havoc on the estimated ten million other species in habiting the planet. Lynas suggests that
because Homo sapiens dominates the planet today as dinosaurs did one hundred million years ago, “We
are entering a new geological era: the Anthropocene.” According to a March 2004 Earth Policy Institute
report, “Humans have transformed nearly half of the planet's ice-free land areas, with serious effects
on the rest of nature … Each year the earth's forest cover shrinks by 16 million hectares (40 million
acres), with most of the loss occurring in tropical forests, where levels of biodiversity are high … A recent
study of 173 species of mammals from around the world showed that their collective geographical
ranges have been halved over the past several decades, signifying a loss of breeding and foraging area.”
While insipid ideologues like Tibor Machan still publish books such as Putting Humans First: Why we are
Nature’s Favorite (2004), it is more accurate to see Homo sapiens as the invasive species and agent of
mass extinction par excellence -- not “nature’s favorite” but rather nature’s bete noir.
Link – Racism (Focus)
Their focus on liberation requires re-affirmation of a distinction between “human”
and “animal” – re-entrenches specieism
Kim 09, Claire Kim, UC Irvine political science professor, “Slaying the Beast: Reflections on Race,
Culture, and Species”, http://aapf.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/kalfou.pdf)
Dyson gives a perfunctory nod to the animal question and then turns to focus on the issue of true
moral significance and urgency: racism . It is as if defending the humanity of Black people requires
reaffirming the animality of animals, their categorical subordination . Similarly, feminist Sandra Kobin
asks why Vick was treated more harshly than professional athletes who beat their wives and
girlfriends, writing: “Beat a woman? Play on; Beat a dog? You’re gone” (Kobin 2007). Kobin does not
critique dog fighting for its promotion of masculinist violence or show any appreciation of the fact that
women and animals are both victims of male violence. Instead, she bristles at the idea that dogs might
be valued more than women and insists that women are the victims that really matter. What is
troubling about the racial persecution narrative advanced by Vick’s defenders is not that it is wrong
per se but that it subsumes, deflects, and ultimately denies the other moral question being raised,
the animal question. Its response to the interdependency of Blackness and animalness in the white
imagination is not to deconstruct both notions but rather to vigorously affirm that Blacks are human
and therefore deserving of better treatment than animals. It is a narrative that embraces an ideology
of human supremacy in the name of fighting white supremacy and sees no contradiction in this
position. It is as if Dyson and Kobin are saying that people of color and women have the most at stake
in reinscribing the impassable line between humans and animals, whereas these groups may in fact
have the most at stake in its erasure. Most humans are unaccustomed to thinking about how their
politics reinscribe notions of human superiority over all other species, but the notion of species-free
space is as improbable as that of race-free space. Categories of difference saturate our thinking, our
discourse, our experience, and our actions.
Anthro is the root cause of racism – the distinction as less than human psychologically
structures all oppression and discrimination
Singer 02, (Peter Singer is the author of Writings on an Ethical Life, Practical Ethics; and Rethinking Life
arid Death; among many others. Re is currently the Ira W. De Camp Professor of Bio ethics at Princeton
University’s Center for Human Values Animal Liberation 2002. Pg. 8-9.)
If a being suffers there cart be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into
consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its
suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—insofar as rough comparisons can he made—of
any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness there
is nothing to be taken into account. So the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient if not
strictly accurate shorthand for the capacity to suffer and/or experience) is the only defensible boundary
of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other character tic like
intelligence or rationality Would he to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other
characteristic, like skin color? Racist violate the principle of equ1ity by giving greater weight to the
interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests
of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own
sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of members of their own species to override the greater
interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
Link – Science
Modern science has reframed nature anthropocentrically such that it has been pushed
beyond the ontological boundaries of reality.
Pölling-Vocke 05, (Bernt, Master of International Relations. Victoria University, Wellington, New
Zealand, “’The End of Poverty’: The globalization of the unreal and the impoverishment of all,”
http://www.hockeyarenas.com/berntpv/jeffreysachs/endofpovertydeepecology.pdf)
Our modern regard of nature reached an unprecedented scale with the enlightenment project, and the
rise of the scientific worldview. Ever since, the world seems to operate according to “certain clear,
calculable, and unchanging laws, not by the whims of any living, sentient being”318. Jeffrey Sachs feels
deeply indebted, as “all of us who work toward a brighter future are intellectually indebted to the aweinspiring geniuses of the Enlightenment, who first glimpsed the prospect of conscious social actions to
improve human well-begin on a global scale”319. With the rise of the western, modernist project,
nature ceased to be “either beautiful or scary”, but “merely there”, ready to be used “by humans, for
humans”320, Sale argue. It became de-mystified and was interpreted as slave and raw material321,
Arne Naess adds. For radical environmentalists as them, Sachs’ vision of an “enlightened globalization”
– “a globalization of democracies, multilateralism, science and technology, and a global economic
system designed to meet human needs” 322 is troublesome. If Sachs’ program of development allows
each and everyone of humanity to join in on the rising tide of globalization, non-human life will be
drowned out. When Rene Descartes, often claimed to be the father of modernity, started doubting
everything he could manage to doubt, arithmetic and geometry stood out as more certain than sensual
perceptions323, and the cornerstone for Sachs’ “enlightened globalization” was placed. For Descartes, it
become impossible to appraise the world by intuition, and the method of critical doubt brought to
completion the detachment of man from nature, the dualism “of man and the rest of nature that
reserved goals and purposes for humans alone”324. For Descartes, reasoning and science allowed a
reduction of chemistry and biology to mechanics, thus “the process by which a seed develops into an
animal or plant is purely mechanical”325, therefore “animals are automata326”. Nowadays, modern
sciences, indebted to the enlightenment project, often portray nature along the lines of “a
meaningless and colourless collision of lifeless atoms falling through the void”327. By comparison,
“only humans have minds and bodies, while animals have only bodies”328. Industrialism and
urbanization have transformed experiences of nature, as “the earth itself is sold in plastic bags” and,
for many urbanized city-dwellers, contact with unmediated nature is contained in parks, “where
ironically the sense of danger resides in encounters with one’s fellow citizens”. The constructed
“reality of urban life” is confirmed by contrast with lesser “realities” as Disneyland, but in essence, “the
real is no longer real”329. Furthermore, the rampant urbanization led to the establishment of national
parks, but since parks are limited, they often cannot qualify as areas of what Arne Naess describes as
“friluftsliv”330, because heavy usage in the era of mass tourism severely restricts what “friluftsliv” is
about; one cannot walk off path, camp wild, prepare food except in provided grills and so on331. Naess
remarks that “instead of entering a realm of freedom, one feels that one is in some kind of museum
ruled by angry owners”. Additionally, a highly unnatural “outfitting pressure” exists, and “norms about
equipment replacement are impressed upon and accepted by large sections of the population”,
therefore “people swallow the equipment hook…lengthen their work day and increase stress in the city
to be able to afford the latest” 332. If this is in accordance with what we, en-masse, regard as nature,
the real is once again no longer real.
Science and technology go hand in hand to aid in environmental exploitation in the name of security.
Lee 99, [Keekok Lee, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, 99 [The Natural and the
Artefactual p. 62-64, $$]
Initially, one would be tempted just simply to distinguish between Phase I and Phase II by proposing that
the word "technology" be confined only to the former, and that some other term, such as "applied
science," be used in connection with the latter. It follows from this proposed usage that (a) the
relationship between science and technology in Phase I is a contingent one, and (b) the relationship
between science and applied science in Phase II is more than contingent. However, this possible way
of defining terms may not find favor, as it produces too much of a discontinuity in the history of
humans in their attempts to modify nature in order to secure their own ends, be it survival,
improvement of material well-being or whatever. The new technology is but a form of technology in
the long history of that subject. It would be less misleading and distorting in recognizing it as such. So it
would be clearer to say that science and technology are really two separate, though related, forms of
activities, and that the very intimate relationship that has grown up between the two since roughly
1850 is, nevertheless, a contingent one, in spite of the avowed aim of modern science to produce a
technology which can control nature in a thoroughly systematic manner, guided by theoretical
understanding rather than crude empirical happenstance. To prevent misunderstanding of what has
just been said, one needs to return to one of the main points raised in the last chapter. There, it was
argued that (a) modern science from its first beginnings was backed up by the new philosophy, in
particular by its metaphysics of Scientific Naturalism, and (b) its ideological goal was the advancement
of material well-being via its technology to control and manipulate nature. These two theses may be
said to constitute the Modern Project of Science and Technology. The ideological goal to control and
manipulate nature renders the Modern Project au fond a technologically oriented one. Under the
Modern Project, modern science may be said to be really theoretical technology, a view associated
with, for instance, Heidegger and Jonas. From this standpoint, the science and the technology appear
to be inextricably linked—the linkage is more than an accidental one. As such, it is more than merely
contingent. It is, then, not surprising that such Science should eventually spawn successful Technology,
even though the Modem Project itself took over two hundred years, since its inception, 'to deliver the
goods,' so to speak. To quote Mitcham: For Heidegger what lies behind or beneath modern technology
as a revealing that sets up and challenges the world is what he calls Ge-stell. Ge-stell names, to use
Kantian language, the transcendental precondition of modern technology. ... "Ge-stell" refers to the
gathering together of the setting-up that sets up human beings, that is, challenges them, to reveal
reality, by the mode of ordering, as Bestand" or resource. ... "Ge-stell refers to the mode of revealing
that rules in the essence of modern technology and is not itself anything technological." ... Not only does
Ge-stell "set-up" and "challenge" the world ... it also sets upon and challenges human beings to set upon
and challenge the world. ... "The essence of modern technology starts human beings upon the way of
that revealing through which reality everywhere, more or less distinctly, becomes resource."32 The
same point about Heidegger is, more or less, made by Zimmerman: Far from being a dispassionate quest
for truth, scientific methodology had become the modern version of the power-oriented salvific
methodologies developed in the Middle Ages. Hence, Heidegger argued, even though modern science
preceded the rise of modern technology by about two hundred years, modern science was already
essentially "technological" in character, i.e., oriented toward power. ... Science ... seeks not to let the
entity show itself in ways appropriate to the entity in question, but instead compels the entity to
reveal those aspects of itself that are consistent with the power aims of scientific culture.31 Jonas has
written in the same vein about Bacon's view of science: Theory must be so revised that it yields
"designations and directions for works," even has "the invention of arts" for its very end, and thus
becomes itself an art of invention. Theory it is nonetheless, as it is discovery and rational account of first
causes and universal laws (forms). It thus agrees with classical theory in that it has the nature of things
and the totality of nature for its object; but it is such a science of causes and laws, or a science of such
causes and laws, as then makes it possible "to command nature in action." It makes this possible
because from the outset it looks at nature gua acting, and achieves knowledge of nature's laws of
action by itself engaging nature in action—that is,-in experiment, and therefore on terms set by man
himself. It yields directions for works because it first catches nature "at work." A science of "nature at
work" is a mechanics, or a dynamics, of nature. For such a science Galileo and Descartes provided the
speculative premises and the method of analysis and synthesis. Giving birth to a theory with inherently
technological potential, they set on its actual course that fusion of theory and practice which Bacon was
dreaming of.34 In the light of the above and of the points raised in the preceding section, there is,
perhaps, some justification in saying that Modern Science is Theoretical Technology. But all the same,
Modern Technology, nevertheless, is applied science. To see why this latter claim may be justified,
one must distinguish the Modern Project itself—embedded in a certain metaphysical and ideological
framework—from (a) the formulation and the testing of specific scientific theories in the history and
philosophy of science, (b) the relationship, if any, between a specific theoiy and a related specific
technology, and (c) the epistemic goals of theory formulation and theory testing on the one hand, and
the testing of technological hypotheses on the other. Here, as we have seen, the linkage in the case of
any one specific theory and any one specific technology throughout the modern period, in particular
during Phase I, appears to be much looser than the postulated linkage between Science and Technology
in the Modern Project itself. (However, in Phase II and especially IIB the intensely intimate causal
relationship does obtain between certain specific theories and the specific technologies they induce and
render possible.35) Moreover, the epistemic goals of theory formulation and testing are also perceived
to be somewhat different and distinct from those of testing hypotheses in the technological domain
even in Phase II.
Link – Survival
All of these survival claims are not neutral but rather already presume the annihilation
of the nonhuman as the “raw material” for preserving human survival. This hidden
foundation of species war has also perpetuated patriarchy, colonialism, and genocide
Kochi 09, “species war: law, violence, and animals”, 353-359
The natural law theories of Hugo Grotius23 and Thomas Hobbes24 are often viewed as laying down the
theoretical justifications for the modern secular state, the legitimacy of sovereign violence, and the
Westphalian international order. Within the context of bloody intra-state civil wars such as the Thirty
Years War (1618–48) and moments of domestic chaos such as the English Civil War (1642–51) thinkers
such as Grotius and Hobbes reacted to widespread social violence often motivated by actors party to
differing Christian confessions all claiming adherence to a universal religious, moral or political truth.
Grotius and Hobbes, albeit in different ways, responded by producing a de-sacralized natural law that
was grounded not upon theological conceptions of right and justice but upon more earthly, “secular,”
concepts of the preservation of human life and survival. For these thinkers the chaos of civil war and
intra-state civil war could be nullified if the criteria of what counted as legitimate violence were
determined by an institution that guaranteed peace and security.25 Roughly, Grotius and Hobbes
attempted to theoretically re-order territory and space around the figure of sovereignty and intersovereign relations. The legitimacy of human violence is no longer grounded upon a universal
conception of divine authority but is instead located around the figure and office of the sovereign who
maintains peace and security over a particular, limited territory.26 Such an approach to the chaos of
civil war can be termed the juridical ordering of the concept of war. This de-legitimisation of the right
to private violence in the name of peace creates what Max Weber later describes as the “state’s
monopoly upon the legitimacy of violence.”27 Modern war, juridically ordered, takes on the definition
of a form of violence waged between sovereigns, who hold a particular status. By this definition
violence carried out by the state against a non-sovereign group is excluded from the language of “war
proper” as is private violence (including rebellion, sabotage and terrorism) which is defined as crime.
Grotius and Hobbes are sometimes described as setting out a prudential approach,28 or a natural law of
minimal content29 because in contrast to Aristotelian or Thomastic legal and political theory their
attempt to derive the legitimacy of the state and sovereign order relies less upon a thick conception of
the good life and is more focussed upon basic human needs such as survival. In the context of a
response to religious civil war such an approach made sense in that often thick moral and religious
conceptions of the good life (for example, those held by competing Christian Confessions) often drove
conflict and violence. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the categories of “survival,”
“preservation of life” and “bare life” are neutral categories. Rather survival, preservation of life and
bare life as expressed by the Westphalian theoretical tradition already contain distinctions of value – in
particular, the specific distinction of value between human and non-human life. “Bare life” in this
sense is not “bare” but contains within it a distinction of value between the worth of human life placed
above and beyond the worth of non-human animal life. In this respect bare life within this tradition
contains within it a hidden conception of the good life. The foundational moment of the modern
juridical conception of the law of war already contains within it the operation of species war. The
Westphalian tradition puts itself forward as grounding the legitimacy of violence upon the preservation
of life, however its concern for life is already marked by a hierarchy of value in which non-human animal
life is violently used as the “raw material” for preserving human life. Grounded upon, but concealing the
human-animal distinction, the Westphalian conception of war makes a double move: it excludes the
killing of animals from its definition of “war proper,” and, through rendering dominant the modern
juridical definition of “war proper” the tradition is able to further institutionalize and normalize a
particular conception of the good life. Following from this original distinction of life-value realized
through the juridical language of war were other forms of human life whose lives were considered to be
of a lesser value under a European, Christian, “secular”30 natural law conception of the good life.
Underneath this concern with the preservation of life in general stood veiled preferences over what
particular forms of life (such as racial conceptions of human life) and ways of living were worthy of
preservation, realization and elevation. The business contracts of early capitalism,31 the power of
white males over women and children, and, especially in the colonial context, the sanctity of European
life over non-European and Christian lives over non-Christian heathens and Muslims, were some of the
dominant forms of life preferred for preservation within the early modern juridical ordering of war.
Modern international humanitarian law both inherits aspects of the Westphalian system and moves
beyond it. While international humanitarian or human rights law still relies upon the sovereignty of
nation-states and accepts to a limited degree the state’s right to go to war and its internal monopoly
upon the legitimacy of violence, each of these forms of right are re-shaped and limited in accordance
with a higher standard of legit imacy located around the ideals of international peace and the
cosmopolitan concept of “humanity.” By attempting to place “human rights” as a category that stands
above or at least challenges the traditional rights of the state, international humanitarian law morally
orders war and sets out a cosmopolitan and global conception of the good life. While the category of
peace is held onto, survival is displaced by human rights as the central category for deriving the
legitimacy of the international order and the legitimacy of war. Of course, the category of survival is not
erased completely as the human-animal distinction of species war continues to operate at a
subterranean level. One of the first thinkers to sketch out the theoretical justifications for such a reordering of inter-state relations and the legitimacy of global violence was Immanuel Kant.32 In
proposing a universal moral theory which attempted to equally value all members of humanity, Kant
rejected the way in which previous Western intellectual traditions had legitimated particular forms of
violence and killing by valuing the lives of Europeans over non-Europeans. Further, Kant challenged the
over-valuation of the “life” of the state against the lives of humans in general. In re-thinking the relation
between war and law Kant enunciated a form of sovereignty located around the idea of humanity. On
the basis of this higher and universal right of humanity Kant’s approach demanded that state action be
guided by moral reasoning and moral duty and in this respect Kant asked that the juridical persona of
states adopt a distinctly moral persona – states are conceptualized and expected to act as if they are
moral persons.33 One common critique of the Kantian, cosmopolitan approach to the law of war and of
international humanitarian law is put forth by Carl Schmitt. For Schmitt, the use of concepts such as
“peace” and “humanity” to justify war hides less altruistic motivations. Behind a grand language of
peace and humanity reside the political motivations of assisting friends and destroying enemies and the
pursuit of political and economic interests.34 In contemporary times the abuse of the language of
peace, humanity and human rights by states who wish to legitimate their aggressive acts of war has
become widespread.35 While “humanity” in general is invoked to justify war, only particular humans
within particular territorial states (and particular groups within these) benefit from these aggressive
acts. As such, one can discern within the use of the term “humanity” distinctions with regard to the
relative values of differing human lives. By viewing the notion of humanitarian war as neither politically
nor economically neutral one can see evidence of the way in which a practice of making determinations
about life-value are inherited by international humanitarian law from its Westphalian predecessor. The
law of war under international humanitarian law inherits the foundational human-animal distinction of
life-value from the Westphalian tradition. While international humanitarian law makes more open
claims about the nature of the good life being focussed upon the “human” it also re-instates the
foundational moment of species war. This foundation may be seen to re-assert itself in the ways in
which the category of humanity is so easily manipulated by warring actors to realize the desires of
particular humans against others. The cosmopolitan or international humanitarian law approach to war
does, however, open-up a possible mode of introducing species war back into the modern legal
definition of war. Kant’s move of extending the concept of war from state’s rights to include universal
human rights could again be extended to include non-human animal rights. For example, one could
envision the possibility of the crime of genocide under international law being extended to cover the
genocide of non-human animals and following this, the United Nation’s intervention by force to protect
the lives of non-human animals who would otherwise not be protected by domestic courts under the
crime of murder.36 The opportunity for a cosmopolitan extension of moral standing to nonhuman
animals so as to bring non-human animals into the legal concept of war may, however, turn out to be
missed because of recent events in history. A contemporary tendency towards the re-sacralization of
war may see the Enlightenment movement of human rights, and their possible extension towards nonhuman animal rights, be displaced. This displacement may occur because of the reassertion of
hierarchies of cosmic life-value prescribed by particular fundamentalist Jewish, Christian and Muslim
world views which similarly presuppose species war. The possibility of such a historical turn can be
viewed more clearly by considering the relation between the moral ordering of war and religious war. To
the extent that the act of war might be used to defend humanity, human rights or to secure peace, the
moral ordering of war can be seen to draw upon older religious, Christian traditions of “just war
thinking” in which a universal moral or religious truth justifies and legitimates acts of violence.37 In
some respects the moral ordering of war opens up a re-sacralized realm of war located around
transcendent concepts such as “justice,” “humanity,” and “freedom.” These are drawn upon by both
genuine moral believers and by manipulative political actors who use a moral language as a propaganda
or rhetorical device to legitimate violence driven by other interests. In what can be termed post-secular
war the moral ordering of war marks a renewal of pre-Westphalian religious wars but undertaken in a
new form. Within this movement the Westphalian form of ordering the legitimacy of violence around
secular state sovereignty is re-shaped. What grounds legitimate violence is no longer control over
particular territory but a claim to an adherence to principles governing a non-terrestrial conceptual
realm. This is not to say that the Westphalian ordering of the state is completely done away with, but
that it loses its monopoly upon the ordering of legitimate violence cases trump a state’s right to mastery
over its own territory and in others are mobilized by states to pursue moral, religious, economic and
other interests. While thinkers such as Carl Schmitt had seen the re-emergence of religious war within
the moral and humanitarian claims of twentieth century international law, the contemporary resacralization of war has been taken a step further by the language and motivations of the so-called “war
on terror.” In many ways competing actors within the climate of contemporary post-secular war no
longer hide behind the language and concepts of secular cosmopolitan morality but now more openly
justify the asserted “legitimacy” of their acts of war with reference to religious faith, divine law and the
word of God.38 This breakdown of the Westphalian order is driven further by the renewal of partisan,
guerrilla, or non-sovereign warfare39 carried out by groups who justify their violence with reference to
transcendent religious concepts. Precisely what this might mean for the future of “secular” and
humanitarian international law is unclear. It is possible that the humanism of twentieth century
international law and its attempts to ground the legitimacy of violence upon human rights might, in
the not too distant future, be displaced by a more dominant conceptual language that places
“humanity” again as secondary to “God” – a clash of messianisms between Jewish, Christian and
Islamic fundamentalists. Such a movement involving the re-assertion of religious, cosmic hierarchies of
life-value pushes species war further out of mainstream conceptions of what constitutes the laws of
war. Viewed from the perspective of species war, the breakdown of the Westphalian international order
and the re-sacralization of war via an emerging clash of messianisms does not really usher-in anything
new. The Westphalian conception of war, international human rights law and the cosmic hierarchies of
life-value invoked by Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalists all share a conception of the “good”
that contains at its heart the everyday slaughter of non-human animals. From the perspective of species
war, all of these conceptions, regardless of whether they are secular, humanist, liberal or religious, are
“fundamentalist,” in that they rigidly and uncompromisingly hold onto a world-view that promotes the
killing of non-human animals.
Link – Sustainability
Sustainable development destroys nature—it relies on the belief that everything was
put here so that humans could use it.
Worster 93, (Donald, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of
Kansas. “The Shaky ground of Sustainability”, ” in Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, ed. George
Sessions, p. 424-425)
I find the following deep flaws in the sustainable development ideal: First, it is based on the view that
the natural world exists primarily to serve the material demands of the human species. Nature is
nothing more than a pool of "resources" to be exploited; it has no intrinsic meaning or value apart
from the goods and services it furnishes people, rich or poor. The Brundtland Report ,makes., this point
clear on every Page: the "our" in its title refers to people. exclusively, and the only moral issue it raises
is the need to share what natural resources there are more equitably among our kind, among the
present world population and among the generations to come. That is not by any means an unworthy
goal, but it is not adequate to the challenge. Second, sustainable development, though it acknowledges
some kind of limit on those material demands, depends on the assumption that we can easily
determine the carrying capacity of local regional ecosystems. Our knowledge is supposedly adequate
to reveal the limits of nature and to exploit resources safely up to that level. In the face of new
arguments suggesting how turbulent, complex, and unpredictable nature really is, that assumption
seems highly optimistic. Furthermore, in light of the tendency of some leading ecologists to use such
arguments to justify a more accommodating stance toward development, any heavy reliance on their
ecological expertise seems doubly dangerously they are experts who lack any agreement on what the
limits are. Third, the sustainability ideal rests on an uncritical, unexamined acceptance of the
traditional worldview of progressive, secular materialism. It regards that worldview as completely
benign so long as it can be made sustainable. The institutions associated with that worldview, including
those of capitalism, socialism, and industrialism, also escape all criticism, or close scrutiny. We are led to
believe that sustainability can be achieved with all those institutions and their values intact.
Link – Technology
The affirmative’s dependence on technology detaches humanity from the
environment.
Bodain and Naess 88, (Arne, Norwegian philosopher and the founder of deep ecology. Former
professor at the University of Oslo, founder of the deep ecology movement. “Simple in Means Rich in
Ends An interview with Arne Naess in Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, ed. George Sessions, p. 32)
S.B.: Some people, particularly in this country, have great faith that, once we've perfected our
computer technology and can process all the available information, we'll be able to make informed
decisions. You, on the other hand, have spoken about the importance of admitting that we don't know,
admitting our ignorance in the face of the complexity of nature, and at the same time be willing to trust
our intuition and stand up and say, "l know in my heart that this is what we need to do." Naess: I think
that, one hundred and fifty years ago, in government decision making in America and in Europe, more
information was available in proportion to the amount needed than is available today. Today, we are
using thousands of new chemicals, and we don’t know their combined long-range effects. We
interfere a million times more deeply in nature than we did one hundred years ago, and our ignorance
is increasing in proportion to the information that is required. S.B.: In other words, many more
questions are being raised, but fewer answers are being provided. NAESS: Exactly. One indication is
that, if you take the number of scientific articles published each year with neat, authoritative
conclusions and divide it by the number of questions posed to scientists by responsible people
concerned with the consequences of our interventions in nature, )you will find that the quotient
approaches zero. That is, the number of questions is becoming indefinitely large very quickly, whereas
the number of answers is increasing very slowly indeed. And, in any case, within a hundred years, we'll
run out of paper to print the billion articles that supply the relevant answers needed each year. S.B.: So
you don't think that, if we just perfect our science and technology, our answers will somehow catch up
with the number of questions being raised ? NAESS: On the contrary, technology is more helpless than
ever before because the technology being produced doesn't fulfill basic human needs, such as
meaningful work in a meaningful environment. Technical progress is sham progress because the term
technical Progress is a cultural, not a technical term. Our culture is the only one in the history of
mankind in which the culture has adjusted itself to the technology, rather than vice versa. In traditional
Chinese culture, the bureaucracy opposed the use of inventions that were not in harmony with the
general cultural aims of the nation. A vast number of technical inventions were not used by the
populace because it was simply not permitted. Whereas here we have the motto, "You can't stop
progress," you can't interfere with technology, and so we allow technology to dictate cultural forms.
Link – Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is anthropocentric — it’s myopic viewpoint takes into account only the
needs of humans, and it fundamentally contradicts with principles of ecological
protection
Katz 97, Eric Katz, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1997 [Nature As Subject: Iluman Obligation and
Natural Community]
I argue that Martin’s view is wrong, that utilitarianism in its most basic forms cannot explain or justify
the preservationist position in the preservation vs. development debate—although it often appears to
do so. In fact, the widespread use of utilitarian arguments to justify policy decisions about the
protection of the environment is detrimental to preservation. The essential elements of utilitarianism
only provide a justification for the satisfaction of human need, for this satisfaction is the standard by
which utilitarianism measures goodness or moral worth. But human needs and the needs of the
natural environment are not necessarily similar or in harmony; thus, any ethical theory—such as
utilitarianism—which tries to explain the preservation of the natural environment by means of the
satisfaction of human wants, need, and desires will be only contingently true: it will depend on the
factual circumstances, the actual desires of the human community at any given time. This empirical
limitation does not bode well for the security of the preservationist argument.
Link – Value to Life
Value to life claims are inherently anthropocentricCline 06, Austin Cline, Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Arts from
Princeton University. studied both religion and philosophy, “Meaning of Life: Is there a Question to be
Answered? (Book Notes: Losing Faith in Faith)” Tuesday April 4, 2006,
http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/04/04/meaning-of-life-is-there-a-question-to-be-answered-booknotes-losing-faith-in-faith.htm
Who said life must have meaning? Why can’t life just be life? My family has three cats, We enjoy
watching them play, eat, sleep, lie in the sun and chase bugs. Do they ask themselves what is the
meaning of life? Is their life any less livable because they possess no coherent purpose for existence?
Since we humans have larger brains with a greater rational capacity and self consciousness than other
animals we somehow assume we must be worthy of a higher purpose. Isn’t that arrogance? To ask the
question about the meaning in life one must first assume the presence of someone to bestow that
meaning. This usually amounts to granting the existence of a transcendent reality, a supernatural
realm to which we can somehow relate in a “meaningful manner.” If you can live without the need for
meaning in life, then you will likewise not need the invented frame of reference, the plan and purpose
of a divine will. To many people life is its own meaning, and the word “meaning” becomes
meaningless
Link – War
The juridical war language of their impact claims mask the species war at the
foundation of the law of war. Their control over the framing of what constitutes war
enables all forms of coercion, mass extermination, and cultural annihilation.
Kochi 09, “species war: law, violence, and animals”, 353-359
In everyday speech, in the words of the media, politicians, protestors, soldiers and dissidents, the
language of war is linked to and intimately bound up with the language of law. That a war might be
said to be legal or illegal, just or unjust, or that an act might be called “war” rather than terror or crime,
displays aspects of reference, connection, and constitution in which the social meaning of the concepts
we use to talk about and understand war and law are organised in particular ways. The manner in which
specific terms (i.e. war, terror, murder, slaughter, and genocide) are defined and their meanings
ordered has powerful and bloody consequences for those who feel the force and brunt of these words
in the realm of human action. In this paper I argue that the juridical language of war contains a hidden
foundation – species war. That is, at the foundation of the Law of war resides a species war carried out
by humans against non-human animals. At first glance such a claim may sound like it has little to do
with law and war. In contemporary public debates the “laws of war” are typically understood as
referring to the rules set out by the conventions and customs that define the legality of a state’s right to
go to war under international law. However, such a perspective is only a narrow and limited view of
what constitutes the Law of war and of the relationship between law and war more generally. Here the
“Law” of the “Law of war” needs to be understood as involving something more than the limited sense
of positive law. The Law of war denotes a broader category that includes differing historical senses of
positive law as well as various ethical conceptions of justice, right and rights. This distinction is clearer
in German than it is in English whereby the term Recht denotes a broader ethical and juristic category
than that of Gesetz which refers more closely to positive or black letter laws.1 To focus upon the
broader category of the Law of war is to put specific (positive law) formulations of the laws of war into a
historical, conceptual context. The Law of war contains at its heart arguments about and mechanisms
for determining what constitutes legitimate violence. The question of what constitutes legitimate
violence lies at the centre of the relationship between war and law, and, the specific historical laws of
war are merely different juridical ways of setting-out (positing) a particular answer to this question. In
this respect the Law of war (and thus its particular laws of war) involves a practice of normative thinking
and rule making concerned with determining answers to such questions as: what types of coercion,
violence and killing may be included within the definition of “war,” who may legitimately use coercion,
violence and killing, and for what reasons, under what circumstances and to what extent may particular
actors use coercion, violence and killing understood as war? When we consider the relationship
between war and law in this broader sense then it is not unreasonable to entertain the suggestion that
at the foundation of the Law of war resides species war. At present, the Law of war is dominated by two
cultural-conceptual formulations or discourses. The Westphalian system of interstate relations and the
system of international human rights law are held to be modern foundations of the Law of war. In the
West, most people’s conceptions of what constitutes “war” and of what constitutes a “legitimate” act of
war are shaped by these two historical traditions. That is to say, these traditions have ordered how we
understand the legitimate use of violence.2 These discourses, however, have been heavily criticized. By
building upon a particular line of criticism I develop my argument for the foundational significance of
species war. Two critiques of sovereignty and humanitarian law are of particular interest: Michel
Foucault’s notion of “race war” and Carl Schmitt’s notion of “friend and enemy.” Foucault in Society
Must Be Defended set out a particular critique of the Westphalian juridical conception of state
sovereignty and state power.3 Within the Westphalian juridical conception, it is commonly argued that
sovereign power and legitimacy are grounded upon the ability of an institution to bring an end to
internal civil war and create a sphere of domestic peace. Against this Foucault claimed that war is never
brought to an end within the domestic sphere, rather, it continues and develops in the form of “race
war.” Connected to his account of bio-power, Foucault suggests a historical discourse of constant and
perpetual race war that underlies legal and political institutions within modernity.4 In The Concept of
the Political, Carl Schmitt offered a critique of the liberal conception of the state grounded upon the
notion of the “social contract” and criticized legal and political conceptions of the state in which
legitimacy (and the legitimacy of war) was seen to be grounded upon the notion of “humanity.”5 For
Schmitt the juridical notion of the state (and international human rights law) presupposes and
continually re-instates through violence the distinction and relation between “friend and enemy.”
Schmitt claimed that the political emerges from the threatening and warlike struggle between friends
and enemies and that all political and legal institutions, and the decisions made therein, are built upon
and are guided by this distinction.6 In relation to the issue of war/law these two insights can be taken
further. I think Foucault’s notion of race war can be developed by putting at its heart the differing
historical and genealogical relationships between human and non-human animals. Thus, beyond race
war what should be considered as a primary category within legal and political theory is that of
species war. Further, the fundamental political distinction is not as Schmitt would have it, that of
friends and enemies, but rather, the violent conflict between human and non-human animals. Race
war is an extension of an earlier form of war, species war. The friend-enemy distinction is an extension
of a more primary distinction between human and non-human animals. In this respect, what can be
seen to lay at the foundation of the Law of war is not the Westphalian notion of civil peace, or the
notion of human rights. Neither race war nor the friend-enemy distinction resides at the bottom of the
Law of war. Rather, what sits at the foundation of the Law of war is a discourse of species war that
over time has become so naturalised within Western legal and political theory that we have almost
forgotten about it. Although species war remains largely hidden because it is not seen as war or even
violence at all it continues to affect the ways in which juridical mechanisms order the legitimacy of
violence. While species war may not be a Western monopoly, in this account I will only examine a
Western variant. This variant, however, is one that may well have been imposed upon the rest of the
world through colonization and globalization. In what will follow I offer a sketch of species war and show
how the juridical mechanisms for determining what constitutes legitimate violence fall back upon the
hidden foundation of species war. I try to do this by showing that the various modern juridical
mechanisms for determining what counts as legitimate violence are dependent upon a practice of
judging the value of forms of life. I argue that contemporary claims about the legitimacy of war are
based upon judgements about differential life-value and that these judgements are an extension of an
original practice in which the legitimacy of killing is grounded upon the valuation of the human above
the non-human. Further, by giving an overview of the ways in which our understanding of the legitimacy
of war has changed, I attempt to show how the notion of species war has been continually excluded
from the Law of war and of how contemporary historical movements might open a space for its possible
re-inclusion. In this sense, the argument I develop here about species war offers a particular way of
reflecting upon the nature of law more generally. In a Western juridical tradition, two functions of law
are often thought to be: the establishment of order (in the context of the preservation of life, or
survival); and, the realization of justice (a thick conception of the “good”). Reflecting upon these in light
of the notion of species war helps us to consider that at the heart of both of these functions of law
resides a practice of making judgements about the life-value of particular “objects.” These objects are,
amongst other things: human individuals, groups of humans, non-human animals, plants, transcendent
entities and ideas (the “state,” “community,” etc.). For the law, the practice of making judgements
about the relative lifevalue of objects is intimately bound-up with the making of decisions about what
objects can be killed. Within our Western conception of the law it is difficult to separate the moment of
judgement over life-value from the decision over what constitutes “legitimate violence.” Species war
sits within this blurred middle-ground between judgement and decision – it points to a moment at the
heart of the law where distinctions of value and acts of violence operate as fundamental to the founding
or positing of law. The primary violence of species war then takes place not as something after the
establishment of a regime of law (i.e., after the establishment of the city, the state, or international law).
Rather, the violence of species war occurs at the beginning of law, at its moment of foundation, as a
generator, as a motor.7In J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals 8 the protagonist Elizabeth Costello draws
a comparison between the everyday slaughter of non-human animals and the genocide of the Jews of
Europe during the twentieth century. “In addressing you on the subject of animals,” she continues, “I
will pay you the honour of skipping a recital of the horrors of their lives and deaths. Though I have no
reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at this
moment in production facilities (I hesitate to call them farms any longer), in abattoirs, in trawlers, in
laboratories, all over the world, I will take it that you concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these
horrors and bring them home to you with adequate force, and leave it at that, reminding you only that
the horrors I here omit are nevertheless at the center of this lecture.”9 A little while later she states:
“Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which
rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise
without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the
purpose of killing them.” “And to split hairs, to claim that there is no comparison, that Treblinka was so
to speak a metaphysical enterprise dedicated to nothing but death and annihilation while the meat
industry is ultimately devoted to life (once its victims are dead, after all, it does not burn them to ash or
bury them but on the contrary cuts them up and refrigerates and packs them so that they can be
consumed in the comfort of our own homes) is as little consolation to those victims as it would have
been – pardon the tastelessness of the following – to ask the dead of Treblinka to excuse their killers
because their body fat was needed to make soap and their hair to stuff mattresses with.”10 Similar
comparisons have been made before.11 Yet, when most of us think about the term “war” very seldom
do we bother to think about non-human animals. The term war commonly evokes images of states,
armies, grand weapons, battle lines, tactical stand-offs, and maybe even sometimes guerrilla or partisan
violence. Surely the keeping of cattle behind barbed wire fences and butchering them in abattoirs
does not count as war? Surely not? Why not? What can be seen to be at stake within Elizabeth
Costello’s act of posing the modern project of highly efficient breeding and factory slaughtering of
non-human animals beside the Holocaust is a concern with the way in which we order or arrange
conceptually and socially the legitimacy of violence and killing. In a “Western” philosophical tradition
stretching at least from Augustine and Aquinas, through to Descartes and Kant, the ordering of the
relationship between violence and legitimacy is such that, predominantly, non-human animals are
considered to be without souls, without reason and without a value that is typically ascribed to humans.
For example, for Augustine, animals, together with plants, are exempted from the religious injunction
“Thou shalt not kill.” When considering the question of what forms of killing and violence are legitimate,
Augustine placed the killing of non-human animals well inside the framework of religious and moral
legitimacy.12
Impacts
Impact – Benocide
Impact is benocide – this species contingent paradigm creates unending genocidal
violence demened politically unqualified.
Kochi and Ordan 08, “An argument for the global suicide of humanity”, vol 7, no 4
What can be seen to be at stake within Elizabeth Costello’s act of posing the modern project of highly
efficient breeding and factory slaughtering of non-human animals beside the Holocaust is a concern
with the way in which we order or arrange conceptually and socially the legitimacy of violence and
killing. In a “Western” philosophical tradition stretching at least from Augustine and Aquinas, through to
Descartes and Kant, the ordering of the relationship between violence and legitimacy is such that,
predominantly, non-human animals are considered to be without souls, without reason and without a
value that is typically ascribed to humans. For example, for Augustine, animals, together with plants, are
exempted from the religious injunction “Thou shalt not kill.” When considering the question of what
forms of killing and violence are legitimate, Augustine placed the killing of non-human animals well
inside the framework of religious and moral legitimacy.12 Of relevance is the practice by which the
question of legitimate violence is ordered – that is, the manner in which it is organised by philosophical,
moral and cultural justifications in a way that sets out how particular acts of violence are to be
understood within social-material life. Within a Western efficiency, property rights, hygiene and
cruelty, the breeding of animals for killing is widely accepted as a legitimate act. Such that, the killing
of one animal is not considered murder and the killing of a geographical group of animals is not
considered an act of genocide or species war. Yet, this ordering of the legitimacy of violence is not in
anyway natural and eternal. Rather, it is contingent and both historically and cosmically temperamental.
Consider a hypothetical situation where a group of “aliens” emerged from deep space with forms of
technology that far surpassed our own and possessed levels of intelligence that humans could not
imagine. These aliens considered humans to be without souls, they considered humans to be so devoid
of reason that they made no effort to communicate with us. Our behaviour and language appeared to
them just as the movements of ants, the song of birds, and the efforts of chimpanzees appear to us.
Further, these aliens cared little for human suffering. If these aliens decided to enslave and breed
humans for food, would this be an act of species war? Even if humans rallied together, Hollywood style,
(or, like a swarm of bees protecting their hive) and called this an act of “war,” might not the aliens
simply laugh, or grumble about how their new animals struggle and go on to devise new methods of
capture and killing so that we humans might not bruise our flesh.13 While such an example appears at
first bizarre, it is not out of the range of future possibility. Further, the example draws upon an already
present heritage of anthropological, racial and colonial forms of thinking belonging to many Western
traditions in which acts of violence were legitimised historically by those in positions of power and
often never officially called “war.” Aspects of this historical comparison are made by Elizabeth Costello
– the Nazi portrayal of Jews as “animals” playing a role in both Nazi conceptions of legitimate violence
and our horror at the illegitimacy of the Holocaust: “ ‘They went like sheep to the slaughter.’ ‘They died
like animals.’ ‘The Nazi butchers killed them.’ Denunciation of the camps reverberates so fully with the
language of the stockyard and slaughterhouse that it is barely necessary for me to prepare the ground
for the comparison I am about to make. The crime of the Third Reich, says the voice of accusation, was
to treat people like animals.”14 One response to the comments so far might be to reject the notion of
“species war” and counter-claim that what is going on in the relationship between humans and animals
is not “war” as such but merely a struggle for biological survival between species. It might be argued by
some that the correct concept for this case is not war but survival. Viewed through such a lens the
violence carried out by humans against non-human animals is understood as similar to the killing that
takes place between different animal species as they rely upon the eating of each other for food and
the violence some species use to ward competitors and predators away from their territory. In this
sense what would really be going on here between humans and non-humans is merely the playing-out
of behaviors linked to biological need – the biological imperative which appears to be programmed into
life and issues the command: though shalt survive! Such an account is somewhat compelling and it has
sat at the basis of a Western narrative which for a long time has attempted to justify violence used by
humans against non-human animals. However, the account can only ever be a part of the story and not
its whole if we accept the notion that humans possess certain capacities for reflection15 that allow us
to make decisions about how we behave in relation to particular ends. So even given the human
biological demand for survival, with regard to our treatment of animals, humans are able to make a
range of choices about how we ought to behave. In this respect a distinction drawn by Aristotle,16
Thomas Hobbes17 and more recently by Giorgio Agamben,18 between mere life or bare life and a life
which is bound up with some form of normative content of the good is relevant here. The former can
be thought as something like the pure demand for survival – sometimes even in circumstances of the
survival of life that we might view as not worth living. The latter contains value judgments about the
quality, ethos and consequences of the life which is lived. The distinction between bare life and the good
life is a legal-political distinction. It has, at least since Aristotle, resided at the foundation of Western
legal and political theory. The law which holds together and governs the political community is posited
with the view of not merely sustaining the bare needs of life, but of establishing and realizing some form
of the good life. However, the distinction between bare life and the good life already contains within it a
prior distinction, one which arises when the survival of humans is distinguished from and affirmed
against the survival of non-human animals. At the basis of the distinction between bare life and the
good life, and hence, at the basis of law, resides the human-animal distinction – a determination of
value that the human form of life is good and that it is worth more or better than the lives of nonhuman animals. There is a certain Nietzschean sense of the term “good” which can be drawn upon
informatively here. My argument is that what occurs prior to the racial and aristocratic senses of the
term “good” suggested by Nietzsche19 as residing genealogically with the concept of the “good life,” is
more deeply, an elevated sense of life-worth that humans in the West have historically ascribed to
themselves over and above the life-worth of non-human animals. Following this, when the meaning of
the term “war” is explained by legal and political theorists with reference to either the concepts of
survival or the good life, the linguistic and conceptual use of the term war already contains within it a
value-laden human-animal distinction and the primary violence of species war. Survival and the
biological imperative (survive!) may be seen as components of a concept of “war” broadly defined.20
For non-human animals the killing and violence that takes place between them (and with respect to
their eating of plant life) may be viewed not as species war but merely as action driven by the biological
imperative. However, for humans the acts of killing and violence directed at non-human animals can be
understood as species war. While such violence and killing may be thought to be driven, in part, by the
biological imperative, these acts also take place within the context of normative judgments made with
respect to a particular notion of the good often drawing upon a cosmic hierarchy of life-value
established by religious theories of creation or scientific theories of evolution This reflection need not be
seen as carried out by every individual on a daily basis but rather as that which is drawn upon from time
to time within public life as humans inter-subjectively coordinate their actions in accordance with
particular enunciated ends and plan for the future.21 In this respect, the violence and killing of species
war is not simply a question of survival or bare life, instead, it is bound up with a consideration of the
good. For most modern humans in the West the “good life” involves the daily killing of animals for
dietary need and for pleasure. At the heart of the question of species war, and all war for that matter,
resides a question about the legitimacy of violence linked to a philosophy of value.22 The question of
war-law sits within a wider history of decision making about the relative values of different forms of life.
“Legitimate” violence is under-laid by cultural, religious, moral, political and philosophical conceptions
about the relative values of forms of life. Playing out through history are distinctions and hierarchies of
life-value that are extensions of the original human-animal distinction. Distinctions that can be
thought to follow from the human-animal distinction are those, for example, drawn between: Hellenes
and barbarians; Europeans and Orientals; whites and blacks; the “civilized” and the “uncivilized”;
Nazis and Jews; Israeli’s and Arabs; colonizers and the colonized. Historically these practices and
regimes of violence have been culturally, politically and legally normalized in a manner that replicates
the normalization of the violence carried out against non-human animals. Unpacking, criticizing and
challenging the forms of violence tradition the killing of animals is typically not considered a form of
war because violence against animals is placed far within the accepted framework of legitimate
killing. The meanings attached to the words we use are significant here. Many of our linguistic
categories have been formulated along the distinction between human and non-human and offer
different meanings based upon what object within this distinction a word denotes. Words like “killing”
and “slaughter” evoke different meanings and different responses when applied to humans as opposed
to chickens or cattle or insects. While most people would react in horror to the brutal killing of a child,
they accept the daily slaughter of thousands of calves. Although there exists a bureaucratic language of
regulation governing issues of, which in different historical moments appear as “normal,” is one of the
ongoing tasks of any critic who is concerned with the question of what war does to law and of what
law does to war? The critic of war is thus a critic of war’s norm-alization.
Impact – Biopower
Anthropocentrism sets up the binary to cause violence – deeming which lives are
livable and which are not culminates in extinction
Trenell 06, [Paul, September, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, “The
(Im)possibility of ‘Environmental Security’”]
It is a relatively recent realisation that human activity over the past two centuries has taken a
detrimental toll on the natural environment. The first tentative contentions that the economic modes
of production and consumption established by the industrial revolution were exerting a negative impact
on the ecosystems which sustain human life were made in the mid twentieth century (Revelle & Suess,
1957). Since then it has become widely acknowledged that human activity is altering the planet‟s
climatic make-up. As the science behind environmental degradation grows ever more certain, the
security impacts of these developments are constantly unfolding. Among the ways in which
environmental degradation poses direct risks to continued human survival are starvation stemming
from reduced crop productivity, disease stemming from increasingly conducive conditions for air and
vector borne diseases, and good old fashioned physical destruction stemming from sea level rises and
increased storm frequency and intensity4. Given that “nature is the precondition for everything else”
(Dobson, 2006: 175), its ongoing destruction is an extremely disconcerting process, and one that takes
on an even more alarming character when it is noted that “the developing world is only just
undergoing its industrial revolution” (Brown: 1995: 7).
Before tracing the response to the emergence of environmental hazards it is necessary to say a word
about the causes of environmental degradation. By this I refer not to the scientific explanations of the
process, but the deeply rooted societal and philosophical developments that have allowed the process
to continue. As Simon Dalby has detailed, environmental threats “are the result of the kind of society
that the current global political economy produces. Industrial activity, agricultural monocultures, and
rampant individual consumption of “disposable items” (all of which are efforts to enhance some
forms of human welfare through domination and control of facets of nature) produce other forms of
insecurity” (1992a: 113). A large hand in the development of contemporary environmental problems
must be attributed to the enlightenment faith in human ability to know and conquer all. In the quest
for superiority and security, an erroneous division between humanity and nature emerged whereby
the natural world came to be seen as something to be tamed and conquered rather than something to
be respected (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1973). Over time, this false dichotomy has become accepted as
given, and as a result humankind has lost sight of its own dependence on nature. It is this separation
which allows the continued abuse of planetary resources with such disregard for the long-term
implications. What is at stake in how we respond to environmental insecurity is the healing of this rift
and, in turn, the preservation of human life into the future. Any suggested solutions to environmental
vulnerability must account for these concerns and provide a sound basis for redressing the imbalance
in the humanity-nature relationship.
Impact – Environmentalism
Humans first has produced the basis for environmental destruction – our mindset of
control and development makes ecological crisis inevitable
Sivil 01, (Richard Sivil studied at the University of Durban Westville, and at the University of Natal,
Durban. He has been lecturing philosophy since 1996. "Why we Need a New Ethic for the Environment",
Cultural Heritage 2(7): 103 – 116 (2001))
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 nonhuman natural world is deemed acceptable, provided that it does not interfere with other human
beings. It could be argued that there is nothing essentially wrong with anthropocentric assumptions,
since it is natural, even instinctual, to favour one’s self and species over and above all other forms of
life. However, it is problematic in that such perceptions influence our actions and dealings with the
world to the extent that the well-being of life on this planet is threatened, making the continuance of
a huge proportion of existing life forms "tenuous if not improbable" (Elliot 1995: 1). Denying the nonhuman world ethical consideration, it is evident that anthropocentric assumptions provide a rationale
for the exploitation of the natural world and, therefore, have been largely responsible for the present
environmental crisis (Des Jardins 1997: 93). Fox identifies three broad approaches to the environment
informed by anthropocentric assumptions, which in reality are not distinct and separate, but occur in a
variety of combinations. The "expansionist" approach is characterised by the recognition that nature
has a purely instrumental value to humans. This value is accessed through the physical transformation
of the non-human natural world, by farming, mining, damming etc. Such practices create an economic
value, which tends to "equate the physical transformation of ‘resources’ with economic growth" (Fox
1990: 152). Legitimising continuous expansion and exploitation, this approach relies on the idea that
there is an unending supply of resources. The "conservationist" approach, like the first, recognises the
economic value of natural resources through their physical transformation, while at the same time
accepting the fact that there are limits to these resources. It therefore emphasises the importance of
conserving natural resources, while prioritising the importance of developing the non-human natural
world in the quest for financial gain. The "preservationist" approach differs from the first two in that it
recognises the enjoyment and aesthetic enrichment human beings receive from an undisturbed
natural world. Focusing on the psychical nourishment value of the non-human natural world for
humans, this approach stresses the importance of preserving resources in their natural states. All three
approaches are informed by anthropocentric assumptions. This results in a one-sided understanding
of the human-nature relationship. Nature is understood to have a singular role of serving humanity,
while humanity is understood to have no obligations toward nature. Such a perception represents "not
only a deluded but also a very dangerous orientation to the world" (Fox 1990: 13), as only the lives of
human beings are recognised to have direct moral worth, while the moral consideration of non-human
entities is entirely contingent upon the interests of human beings (Pierce & Van De Veer 1995: 9).
Humanity is favoured as inherently valuable, while the non-human natural world counts only in terms of
its use value to human beings. The "expansionist" and "conservationist" approaches recognise an
economic value, while the "preservationist" approach recognises a hedonistic, aesthetic or spiritual
value. They accept, without challenge, the assumption that the value of the non-human natural world
is entirely dependent on human needs and interests. None attempt to move beyond the assumption
that nature has any worth other than the value humans can derive from it, let alone search for a
deeper value in nature. This ensures that human duties retain a purely human focus, thereby avoiding
the possibility that humans may have duties that extend to non-humans. This can lead to viewing the
non-human world, devoid of direct moral consideration, as a mere resource with a purely
instrumental value of servitude. This gives rise to a principle of ‘total use’, whereby every natural area
is seen for its potential cultivation value, to be used for human ends (Zimmerman 1998: 19). This
provides limited means to criticise the behaviour of those who use nature purely as a warehouse of
resources (Pierce & Van De Veer 1995: 184).
Impact – Extinction
Anthropocentrism causes extinction—it divorces our relationship with the natural
world and makes ecocide on a cosmic scale inevitable.
Gottlieb 94, Roger S. Gottlieb, Professor of Humanities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, holds a
Ph.D. in Philosophy from Brandeis University, 1994 (“Ethics and Trauma: Levinas, Feminism, and Deep
Ecology,” Crosscurrents: A Journal of Religion and Intellectual Life, Summer, Available Online at
http://www.crosscurrents.org/feministecology.htm, Accessed 07-26-2011)
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-inrelation-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-forgranted 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 lifethreatening 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.
Impact – Oppression
Animal death should be morally equivalent to the death of humans. Suffering and
death must be evaluated equally among all beings, failure to do so justifies all forms
of oppression
Singer 02, (Peter Singer is the author of Writings on an Ethical Life, Practical Ethics; and Rethinking Life
arid Death; among many others. Re is currently the Ira W. De Camp Professor of Bio ethics at Princeton
University’s Center for Human Values Animal Liberation 2002 : P 8-9)
If a being suffers there cart be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into
consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its
suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—insofar as rough comparisons can he made—of
any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness there
is nothing to be taken into account. So the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient if not
strictly accurate shorthand for the capacity to suffer and/or experience) is the only defensible boundary
of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other character tic like
intelligence or rationality Would he to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other
characteristic, like skin color? Racist violate the principle of equ1ity by giving greater weight to the
interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests
of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own
sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of members of their own species to override the greater
interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
Impact – Root Cause
They have it backwards—human centered politics destroys the natural other—the alt
solves.
Marina 09, (Daniel, Södertörns högskola | Institutionen för Kultur och Kommunikation,
“Anthropocentrism and Androcentrism – An Ecofeminist Connection”
http://www.projectsparadise.com/anthropocentrism-androcentrism/)
These three terms suggest a spatial image. Something, in this case humanity, is situated at the centre
of something. There are numerous settings in which humans can be claimed to occupy the centre. For
example, an anthropocentric cosmology would claim that humanity occupies the physical centre of
the universe.31 In environmental philosophy the terms are mainly applied to morality. Here I shall
analyze the ways in which humans are said to occupy the privileged spot of that specific universe. The
starting point shall be Val Plumwood’s liberation model of anthropocentrism. I am beginning with
Plumwood because she offers a detailed account of what centrism and anthropocentrism is. Plumwood
defines centrism as a structure that is common to and underlies different forms of oppression, like
colonialism, racism, and sexism. The role of this structure is to generate a Centre and the Periphery, an
oppressor and the oppressed, a Centre and the Other. The shared features are: 1. Radical exclusion:
Those in the centre are represented as radically separated from and superior to the Other. The Centre
is represented as free from the features of an inferiorized Other, and the Other as lacking the defining
features of the Centre. Differences are exaggerated to the point of preventing or hindering any sense of
connection or continuity, to the point that “identification and sympathy are cancelled.”32 2.
Homogenization: Those on the periphery are represented as alike and replaceable. Similarities are
exaggerated and differences are disregarded within that group. “The Other is not an individual but is
related to as a member of a class of interchangeable items.”33 Differences are only acknowledged
when they affect or are deemed relevant to the desires and well-being of those in the centre. 3. Denial:
The Other is represented as inessential. Those in the centre deny their own dependency on those on
the periphery. 4. Incorporation: Those in the centre do not admit the autonomy of the Other. The Other
is represented as a function of the qualities of the Centre. The Other either lacks or is the negation of
those qualities that characterize those in the centre, being these qualities at the same time the most
cherished and esteemed socially and culturally. 5. Instrumentalism: Those in the centre deny the Other
its independent agency. Those on the periphery are represented as lacking, for instance, ends of its
own. The Centre can consequently impose its own ends upon them without any conflict. The Other
becomes a means or a resource the Centre can make use of to satisfy its own needs, and is accordingly
valued for the usefulness the Centre can find in it. A second reason for beginning with Plumwood is
that all the iniquitous senses of anthropocentrism that I have come across in the literature can, I think,
be identified as either instrumentalism or denial. Warwick Fox’s passive sense of anthropocentrism
would be an example of denial. In this sense he speaks of anthropocentric ecophilosophy as one that
focuses on social issues only, on interhuman affairs and problems. For these environmentalists “the
nonhuman world retains its traditional status as the background against which the significant action –
human action – takes place.”34 According to them the environmental crisis would then be solved
within that human sphere by ensuring the well-being of humanity. There would be no need to deal
with the way humanity relates to nature. The other senses would be examples of either instrumentalism
or of outcomes of instrumentalism: Andrew Dobson’s strong anthropocentrism (“The injustice and
unfairness involved in the instrumental use of the non-human world”35); the account Robert Sessions
gives of how deep ecology describes the anthropocentric attitude (“(1) Nonhuman nature has no value
in itself, (2) humans (and/or God, if theistic) create what value there is, and (3) humans have the right
(some would say the obligation) to do as they please with and in the nonhuman world as long as they do
not harm other human’s interests”36); Tim Hayward’s account of the ethical criticism of
anthropocentrism (“The mistake of giving exclusive or arbitrarily preferential consideration to human
interests as opposed to the interests of other beings”37); Andrew Dobson’s description of what
environmentalists consider a basic cause of ecological degradation and a potential cause of disaster
(“Concern for ourselves at the expense of concern for the non-human world”38); and Warwick Fox’s
aggressive sense of anthropocentrism, according to which anthropocentrism is the overt
discrimination against the nonhuman world.
Impact – VTL
Survival is not an end in itself – it is justified only by the abstract, unknown values it
supposedly leaves the possibility for – this creates a hopeless, vacuous life.
Palakova 04, [Chapter Ii The Struggle For Human Dignity In Extreme Situations Jolana
Poláková http://www.crvp.org/book/Series04/IVA-18/chapter_ii.htm]
An animal which finds itself in a life endangering situation tries to escape quite unambiguously and at
any cost, although sometimes in a mediated fashion as dictated by the instinctive attachment to one’s
offspring, mate or herd. Under such a situation humans do not always behave so unequivocally.
Their attitude to their own life is not determined solely by instinct, but is freer and more
complicated. Humans are capable not only of saving their own life, but also of sacrificing it; they are
capable of running the risk of losing their life and even of giving it up in passive resignation. Such a
free and differentiated approach attests to the fact that humans do not identify what they intrinsically
are with their physical existence; somehow they can confirm their humanity independently of their
own survival, sometimes even against it. Evidently, they strive to exist somewhat differently than a
biological entity, trying to transcend their physical existence. To put it in positive terms: they strive for
a spiritually independent existence. Only on such a basis is it possible to compare life with other values
and freely avail oneself of it. This spiritual existence implements a purely human possibility of selftranscendence through a principal attachment to values. Humans can sacrifice or save their life
because of something that exceeds the value of biological life. That is, because of values towards
which their life aspires, on which it is based, in which humans invest, with which they identify
themselves, and to which they attach supreme meaning. Only a threat to such values — "sublime" or
"mundane", but always vitally important — constitutes an extreme situation characteristic of man. If
the principal values of his life have been destroyed or devalued, one’s bare life retains value only if
and as one is capable of retaining at least some hope of discovering or creating new values. Then life
becomes, provisionally, a supreme value only in the name of those unknown values and in linkage
with them. From a human viewpoint, mere survival does not appear to be an end in itself.It is not
something absolute or unconditioned, but rather something to which one can assume a personal
attitude; that is, one which is not arbitrary but spiritually free and connected with values. The fact that
one carries within oneself something one protects more than one’s own life and without which one’s
life would lose its meaning and humanity points to the conclusion that, unlike other live beings, one’s
specific extreme situation involves a threat to values which one regards as supreme. A threat to life is
perceived by humans as an extreme situation only insofar as it jeopardizes also their possibility of
living for certain values. In a situation of a total value vacuum and hopelessness life tends to become
virtually irrelevant to a human person. Thus, one may attach to a certain value, rather than to one’s
bare life,that which is intrinsically one’s own, one’s most profound identity, namely, independence
and integrity. This reveals the ontologically unique spiritual nature of the person. What seems to be
significant in extreme human situations, therefore, is not any boundary of human potential for
biological survival, but rather a limit of this or that individual’s value orientation and attachment.
Framework
Epistemology Key
Examining our knowledge production and challenging the way in which we relate to
the world is necessary to challenge the empirical parochialism which lies at the root of
the ecological crisis.
Cheney 05, [Jim Cheney, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin- Waukesha and inaugural
Visiting Scholar of Ecophilosophy and Earth Education at Murdoch University, 2005 (ethics and the
environment, 10.2, 101-135, “Truth, Knowledge and the Wild World”, accessed online 07-14-08,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ethics_and_the_environment/v010/10.2cheney.html)]
What Shepard adds to Lovibond's argument is the idea that if we test our world-views only against
those of other human communities, we are far from emancipating ourselves from "empirical
parochialism." Indeed, [End Page 110] the brunt of his argument is that we, in our very nature as
homo sapiens sapiens, are so deeply embedded in the natural world around us that only by renewing
sustained communication with the geo- and biological world which made us the beings we are
through long stretches of evolutionary time can we escape an ever-increasing descent into what we
might call "species autism." Again: What we become in our modern isolation from the world which gave
us birth as the species we are, in our insistence that we are the knowers and the nonhuman world is
merely the object of our knowing, is an autistic diminishment of what we are when we engage in
active and reciprocal communication with the world around us. What the natural world provides (and
what we can come to understand and emulate only through sustained communication with that world)
is the fullest, most complete model of health and well-being available to us as the ecologically embodied
creatures we are. If we draw a circle around our existence as humans and draw our models of health
and well-being only from within this human circle, we effectively cut ourselves off from the source of
our own species existence, a source that not only brought us into existence, but one that continually
nourishes us. The Lovibond-Shepard argument is powerful. As "creatures with a certain physical
constitution and a certain ecological location" our knowledge is necessarily parochial
(transcendentally parochial), but we need not accept the myriad forms of empirical parochialism in
which we are currently mired. Active and reciprocal communication with the source of our species
existence alone—the natural world—can enable us to reach the transcendental limits of this
parochialism. When we become the creatures we are in this way, we will then once again become
what Aldo Leopold hoped for us: plain members and citizens of the land community (Leopold 1970,
240).12 Once we have acknowledged the ethical dimension of the epistemologies we bring to the
world, the physically and culturally situated nature of knowledge and the ethical and political
responsibility that goes along with this, and nature's participation in the construction of knowledge—
as Henry Sharp puts it: "symbols, ideas, and language . . . are not passive ways of perceiving a
determined positivist reality but a mode of interaction shared between [people] and their environment"
(Sharp 1988, 144–145)—it is but a short step to Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin's conclusion that
"defeat and confusion are built into the notions of truth [End Page 111] and certainty and
knowledge." Perhaps we should, as do Goodman and Elgin, relegate these notions to the periphery of
philosophical concern and centralize concepts of "rightness," "adoption," and "understanding"
instead. One alternative to such a shift in terminology would be to radically rethink our notions of
knowledge and truth.
Ethics First
D-Rule to preserve nature.
Marina 09, (Daniel, Södertörns högskola | Institutionen för Kultur och Kommunikation,
“Anthropocentrism and Androcentrism – An Ecofeminist Connection”
http://www.projectsparadise.com/anthropocentrism-androcentrism/)
Environmentalism is the movement that works to end naturism. Environmentalists assert that the
domination of nature by humans exists and that this domination is wrong. Some environmentalists
carry out the work to end naturism from the discipline of philosophy. Environmental philosophy is
work carried out within some philosophical field – mainly ethics – that is motivated by the general
goal of the environmental movement. Despite the differences between the various positions, there is
one assumption shared by most environmental philosophers, namely nature deserves moral
consideration in its own right. As Warren explains, mainstream Western ethics has traditionally
neglected nature. The standard notion has been that humans only have moral obligations towards
humans. Nature has merely had instrumental value. Environmental philosophers endeavour to
elucidate the connections between environmental problems and traditional philosophical
conceptions. They set themselves the task of identifying how naturism manifest itself in philosophy, that
is, of countering when philosophers deliberately or accidentally articulate the already privileged world
of humans maintaining its status over nature. Some of the environmental ethical positions are: (1) the
individualistic approaches of Peter Singer and Tom Regan: moral consideration is due to all those
individuals who possess the morally relevant capacities, namely sentiency (Singer) and to be the
subject of a life (Regan); (2) the holistic approach of Aldo Leopold whose focus is on populations,
species, ecosystems, and the biosphere: it is not only individual animals that enjoy moral value, but
also plants and the non-living elements of the natural world; (3) deep ecology that expects humans to
develop an ecological sensitivity: a respect that reflects the fact that each organism is essentially
related to the other elements of the “biospherical net” and the fact that every life form possesses an
intrinsic value independently of the instrumental values that it may possess in the eyes of a human
beholder; (4) social ecology that identifies a structural and institutional root of the environmental
crisis, specifically a society that has been permeated by authoritarian hierarchies and a capitalist
market economy, and a natural world that has been arranged in accordance with a hierarchal order of
beings: it underlines then the vital connection between social problems and environmental problems,
that is, between the way humans relate to humans and the way humans relate to nature. Ecofeminism
is the approach that merges the goal of the environmental movement with the goal of the feminist
movement. Warren explains that it does this because ecofeminists believe that both environmentalism
and feminism have their shortcomings, and that they should complement each other. According to her
environmentalists will not be able to fully and correctly understand, and consequently successfully
abolish, naturism unless they cease to disregard the connections existing between the domination of
nature and the domination of women. They will not be able to elaborate theories that do not
contribute to oppression unless they recognize the role and configuration of oppressive conceptual
frameworks and the conceptual connections between naturism and sexism they give rise to. They will
not be sensitive to the specific realities and perspectives of women unless they admit gender as a
fundamental category of analysis. Feminism needs, in a similar way, to understand the connections
between sexism and naturism.
Alt
Animacy – redefinition good
Rethinking and resignifying animacy frees us from western, conceptual forms of
thought that revises biopolitics and ordering. Such distancing from the Cartesian
subject prevents oppression and heteronormative violence.
Chen 12, (Mel Y. Chen, associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of
California Berkeley, Animacies: Bipolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect, Duke University Press,
2012, pages 2-4.) Magotes
Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect draws upon recent debates about sexuality,
race, environment, and affect to consider how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, deathly,
or otherwise “wrong” animates cultural life in important ways. Animacies interrogates how the fragile
division between animate and inanimate—that is, beyond human and animal—is relentlessly
produced and policed and maps important political consequences of that distinction. The concept of
animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal
rights debates to biosecurity concerns, yet it has gone undertheorized. This book is the first to bring
the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and
disability theory. It is a generative asset that the word animacy, much like other critical terms, bears no
single standard definition. Animacy—or we might rather say, the set of notions characterized by family
resemblances— has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, and
liveness.3 In the last few decades, animacy has become a widely debated term within linguistics, and it
is in fact within linguistics that animacy has been most extensively developed and applied. A path
breaking work written in 1976 by the linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein suggested that
“animacy hierarchies” were an important area of intersection between meaning and grammar, on the
basis of evidence that spanned many languages.4 Within linguistics today, animacy most generally
refers to the grammatical effects of the sentience or liveness of nouns, but this ostensibly simple
meaning opens into much wider conversations. How does animacy work linguistically? To take one
popular ex ample involving relative clauses, consider the phrase “the hikers that rocks crush”: what
does this mean? 5 The difficulty frequently experienced by English speakers in processing this phrase
has much to do with the inanimacy of the rock (which plays an agent role in relation to the verb crush)
as compared to the animacy of the hikers, who in this scenario play an object role. “The hikers that
rocks crush” thus violates a cross-linguistic preference among speakers. They tend to prefer animate
head nouns to go with subject extracted relative clauses (the hikers who rushed ¡1w rock), or inanimate
head nouns to go with object -extracted relative clauses (the rock that the hiker crushed_). Add to this
that there is a smaller plausibility that rocks will agentively crush hikers than that hikers will agentively
crush rocks: a conceptual order of things, an animate hierarchy of possible acts, begins to take shape.
Yet more contentious examples belie the apparent obviousness of this hierarchy, and even in this case,
it is within a specific cosmology that stones so obviously lack agency or could be the source of
causality. What if nonhuman animals, or humans stereotyped as passive, such as people with
cognitive or physical disabilities, enter the calculus of animacy: what happens then? Using animacy
as a central construct, rather than, say, “life” or “liveliness” —though these remain a critical part of
the conversation in this book— helps us theorize current anxieties around the production of
humanness in contemporary times, particularly with regard to humanity’s partners in definitional
crime: animality (as its analogue or limit), nationality, race, security, environment, and sexuality.
Animacy activates new theoretical formations that trouble and undo stubborn binary systems of
difference, including dynamism/stasis, life/death, subject/object, speech/nonspeech, human/animal,
natural body/cyborg. In its more sensitive figurations, animacy has the capacity to rewrite conditions
of intimacy, engendering different communalisms and revising biopolitical spheres, or, at least, how
we might theorize them . Interestingly, in most English language dictionaries, including MerriamWebster’s and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word animacy does not appear, though the
related adjective animate does. The related senses of animate (ppl., adj., n.) found in the OED—of
which only the adjective remains contemporary—are denoted as having the following Latin
etymology: “ad. L. animatus filled with life, also, disposed, inclined, f. animare to breathe, to quicken;
f. anima air, breath, life, soul, mind.” As an adjective, animate means “endowed with life, living,
alive”: “lively, having the full activity of life”; “pertaining to what is endowed with life: connected to
animals”; and “de noting living beings.” Animus, on the other hand, derives from the Latin, meaning
“(i) soul, (2) mind, () mental impulse, disposition, passion,” and is defined as “actuating feeling,
disposition in a particular direction, animating spirit or temper, usually of a hostile character: hence,
animosity.” We might find in this lexical soup some tentative significations pertaining to materialization,
negativity, passion, live- ness, and a possible trace of quickened breath. Between these two, animate
and animus, is a richly affective territory of mediation between life and death, positivity and negativity,
impulse and substance; it might be where we could imagine the territory of animacy to reside. As I
argue, animacy is much more than the state of being animate, and it is precisely the absence of a
consensus around its meaning that leaves it open to both inquiry and resignification.
Reimagine Being
The mythos of the ocean and the beings that live there enables us to reconceptualize
ecological sovereignty – that creates a heterogeneous ideology of being that
transcends anthropocentricism. Exploration and science forecloses our potential to
imagine.
Montroso 14, (Alan Montroso, graduate teaching assistant at George Washington University, “Ocean
is the New East: Contemporary Representations of Sea Life and Mandeville’s Monstrous Ecosystems,”
March 23, 2014, http://bacchanalinthelibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/ocean-is-new-eastcontemporary.html) Magotes
In Chapter 13 of the Defective Version of The Book of John Mandeville (ed. Kohanski and Benson), the
narrator announces that, having completed his tour of the Holy Lands, he intends to “telle of yles and
diverse peple and bestes” (1380). This rather lengthy chapter is rich in peculiarity and marvel, a veritable
encyclopedia of the monstrous. An allegory-generating female spirit grants riches and doles out
commensurate consequences for her supplicants’ greed. Gendered diamonds mate and spawn
resplendent children, challenging notions about the inertness of lithic objects. Nudists, cannibals, blood
drinkers, as well as pygmies, dog-headed creatures and headless bodies with ocular and oral orifices on
their chests and shoulders roam these foreign shores. Mandeville fulfills the European desire to believe
the East is wholly Other, a monstrous and invitingly dangerous land abundant in resources and
passively awaiting representation by the Western imagination. Yet, although his descriptions of the
diverse beings of the East are certainly mythical, Mandeville also lends a certain scientific explanation
for the monstrous by repeatedly attending to the extreme heat of this region; Mandeville offers a
climatological cause for the wonders he claims to encounter. Ethiopians hide from the sun under feet
large enough to shield their bodies; men on the isle of Ermes suffer their “ballockys hongeth doun to her
shankes” (1557). In such intolerable climates precious stones spill from river banks, reptiles grow to
enormous proportions and, as I mentioned above, fish are so “plenteuous” that they offer themselves
up for consumption. Heat is generative, and the corporeal peculiarities of the deserts as well as the
fecundity of the tropical East are, in Mandeville, responses to extreme climate - much like the
extremophiles surviving sulfuric blasts of scorching heat from deep sea vents. Each coastal country and
island in The Book of John Mandeville is a unique ecology, an oikos or home to the various and varying
creatures that inhabit these spaces, and like contemporary scientific attempts to understand the
porosity between bodies and ecosystems once thought uninhabitable, Mandeville offered something
like a medieval ecological justification for the diversity of beings he describes. Thus I wonder if we can
assume that the imaginative spaces – and the marvelous creatures inhabiting those spaces – drawn
by medieval travel literature generated new ways of thinking about an environmentally and
ecologically complex world. Can we not find in such texts an anxiety and ambivalence about an earth
more vast and verdant than God’s rubric allowed? Although giants erupt from Biblical origins, and blood
drinkers, flesh eaters and necrophiliacs may mark anxieties about their obvious Catholic analogues–
remember, Christians believe a man came back from the dead, a man whose actual body and blood
Catholics consume at every Mass – what of the other strange strangers that emerge from the pages of
Mandeville, the Cynocephales and headless figures with sensory organs in their chest? Are these curious
beings the imagined consequences of thinking through previously un-thought ecosystems? Although
fictitious, these tropical creatures seems to signal the disorienting encounter with evidence that the
Earth and its beings are more heterogeneous than previously believed. There is something
disanthropocentric, then, to Mandeville’s imagining the wondrous creatures of the East, just as Alaimo
insists that encountering the enchantingly strange creatures of the ocean’s depths is a sort of
posthumanist practice. The Smithsonian’s website might argue that “It’s hard to imagine a more
forbidding place than the icy cold, pitch black, crushing environment of the deep sea ocean. It’s even
hard to imagine anything living there,” (4) yet, like Mandeville, we MUST imagine new possibilities of
living on this Earth, we must see through the eyes of the abyssal aliens, feel the torturous heat with
medieval monsters, if we are ever to dethrone Humanity from the heights of ecological sovereignty.
A2 Aff Args
A2 Perm
First, perm is either severance or intrinsicness –
Second, The perm will not “overcome” the link. The 1AC treats nature as a knowable
good we can maximize. You cannot go north and south at the same time.
Taylor 98, [Prue Taylor, Senior Lecturer of law and a founding member of the New Zealand Centre for
Environmental Law at the University of Auckland,1998 An Ecological Approach to International Law:
Responding to the Challenges of Climate Change (Hardcover) p. 39-42, 45-48]
The question 'are ecocentric ethics really necessary?' is frequently asked. Could we not, for example,
achieve our environmental goals by more rigorous environmental legislation? Obviously much could
be improved as a consequence of tighter controls, but two important limitations would remain. First,
the question of 'how clean is clean' would continue to be answered solely by reference to human
needs and standards. Thus water quality would he determined by interests such as human welfare,
recreation needs and aesthetic values. The interests of nature and the needs of fully functioning
ecosystems, which full below a human-centred threshold, would be left unprtxected. By taking into
account a much larger and more complex set of ecocentrically determined interests, tougher
environmental standards would he achieved.217 Second, as Bosselmann points out,
decision-makers would not be able to make the important paradigm jump to protecting nature for its
own sake. Worse, in cases where decision-makers felt morally committed to such a jump, they would
be forced to find constrained logic to justify their decisions. The variety of ethical approaches to
environmental decision-making has raised the question of moral pluralism. Stone, for example, has
suggested that situations can be resolved according to either anthropocentric or ecocentric views
depending on the nature of the problem. Thus decision makers are able to switch from one value
system to another. Such a process is rejected by commentators such as 3. Baird Callicott who believes
that ecocentric ethics are 'not only a question of better rational arguments but the expression of a
fundamentally changed attitude to nature. Callicott reminds Stone that anthropocentric attitudes and
ecocencric ethics represent quite different paradigms. That in reality people do not follow
anthropocentric attitudes in the morning, only to switch to ecocentric ethics after lunch. In the context
of New Zealand's primary environmental legislation, this debate is currently being worked through in
practice. The Resource Management Act 1991 (1RMA') is guided by 'sustainable management',
a concept which is defined in both anthropocentric and ecocentric terms, leaving room for tension
between the supporters of alternative approaches." 221 To date the RMA has been largely dominated
by anthropocenisic interests due to a failure by key authorities, such as the Environment Court and local
govern- ment, to make the significant changes in attitude required by the Act's ecocentric principles. It
has been suggested that this tension, evident in implementation of the RMA, can only be resolved by an
interpretation of sustainable management' which is ecological
Third, Can’t sever your reps – they have an effect as soon as they’re uttered, especially
when you make a call for the ballot based on your impact story
Arieli 84, [Arieli Prof History Hebrew Univ, 1984 Yehoshua, "History as Reality," Images and Reality in
International Politics, p. 58-59]
All expressions and dimensions of human life are permeated and shaped by representations
(Vorstellungen,) ideas, conceptions beliefs purposes and ages that transform the basic and recurrent
biological and psychological needs and behavior patterns into a world dominated by meanings and
mental con-structs. images and symbols. Thev are constituent parts of human reality. We can neither
conceive nor"understand the individual and society unless we relate to mental constructs and images
inherent in their make-up. The units comprising social reality are conscious agents, a myriad of wills,
minds, mentalities and behavior patterns held together by semiconscious and conscious relations that
contain structures of meanings and images of a meta- natural world. The way to understand this world
is by understanding its language and forms of communication; by analyzing the intentions, motives,
conceptions and purposes embodied in actions, Institutions and patterns of behavior, as well as the
nature and the logic of the relations between individuals and groups; by taking account of material,
social and mental resources organized for the satisfaction of needs and the employment of power.
While images and representations of nature cannot influence or change nature unless an action taken is
based on a correct understanding of its structure, images about nature or the human world can change
human reality irrespective of their truth value, as soon as they are translated into actions and patterns
of behavior and gain power over the minds of men [people]
Fourth, Cooption DA – there is no way to free ourselves form human centered politics
and do the plan. Only a risk that status quo is entrenched.
Papadopoulos 10, (Dimitris, Reader in Sociology and Organisation University of Leicester, Epherema
vol 10 “Insurgent posthumanism” 2010)
It is true that left politics have largely ignored the complexity and unpredictability of the
entanglement between a deeply divided society and that of a deeply divided nonhuman world. The
principle avenue for social transformation, at least in the main conceptualisations of the political left 3
, passes through seizing the centres of social and political power. The dominant motivation for left
politics after the revolutions of 1848 (and definitely since 1871) has been how to conquer institutional
power and the state. Within this matrix of radical left thinking the posthumanist moment becomes
invalidated, subsumed to a strategy focused solely on social power. But here I want to argue that a
post-humanist gesture can be found at the heart of processes of left political mobilisations that create
transformative institutions and alternatives. This was the case even when such moves were distorted at
the end, neutralised or finally appropriated into a form of left politics solely concerned with institutional
representation and state power. What such an appropriation conceals is that a significant part of the
everyday realities put to work through radical left struggles have always had a strong posthumanist
character through their concentration on remaking the mundane material conditions of existence
beyond and outside an immediate opposition to the state. In what follows I will try to excavate this
posthumanist gesture from the main narratives of radical left political struggles along the following
three fault lines: the first is about the exit from an alienated and highly regulated relation to the
material, biological and technological realms through the making of a self-organised common world – a
move from enclosed and separated worlds governed by labour to the making of ecological commons. A
second posthumanist move is one that attacks the practice of politics as a matter of idea and
institutions and rehabilitates politics as an embodied and everyday practice – an exit from the
representational mind to the embodiment of politics. Finally, the third, involves the decentring of the
human subject as the main actor of history making. History is a human affair but it is not made (only)
by certain groups of humans – a move towards a post-anthropocentric history.
Fifth, Masking DA – the perm would be an “ethical compromise” in an attempt to
convince us that we have done enough. Alt must come first – it’s a question of
sequencing.
Lupisella & Logsdon 97, (Mark, masters degree in philosophy of science at university of Maryland
and researcher working at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and John, Director, Space Policy Institute
The George Washington University, Washington, “DO WE NEED A COSMOCENTRIC ETHIC?”
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.25.7502)
Steve Gillett has suggested a hybrid view combining homocentrism as applied to terrestrial activity
combined with biocentrism towards worlds with indigenous life.32 Invoking such a patchwork of
theories to help deal with different domains and circumstances could be considered acceptable and
perhaps even desirable especially when dealing with something as varied and complex as ethics. Indeed,
it has a certain common sense appeal. However, instead of digging deeply into what is certainly a
legitimate epistemological issue, let us consider the words of J. Baird Callicott: “But there is both a
rational philosophical demand and a human psychological need for a self-consistent and all-embracing
moral theory. We are neither good philosophers nor whole persons if for one purpose we adopt
utilitarianism, another deontology, a third animal liberation, a fourth the land ethic, and so on. Such
ethical eclecticism is not only rationally intolerable, it is morally suspect as it invites the suspicion of
ad hoc rationalizations for merely expedient or self-serving actions.”33
A2 Animals Can’t Feel
Animals have the ability to suffer
Patell 10, Gautam Patell “animal rights, human wrongs”
http://www.prisonerofagenda.com/environment/wildlife/animal_rights_human_wrongs.php 2010
The brilliant 1982 film by Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, shows just how much life on our planet is
utterly out of balance. For this reason, too, questions about whether or not animals have personas and,
therefore, whether or not humans have an obligation to protect them, and whether animals have a right
to protection, all suggest their own answers. We now know at least this: that the earlier concepts that
animals do not feel pain ‘like us’, that they do not ‘grieve’ and do not have the ‘feelings’ we do are all
now shown by research to be quite wrong. There is quite often a deliberate obfuscation of the very real
difference between sentience (the ability to feel) and sapience (wisdom, or the ability to reason). The
argument that animals are never sentient must now be discarded as anthropocentric twaddle; the
evidence against is just too overwhelming. Even the argument that humans alone are sapient seems to
be losing ground. A January 2010 the Sunday Times of London reported that researchers had published
findings showing that dolphins—long known to be intelligent—are in fact second only to humans in
intellectual ability, and are even ‘cultural’ in that they learn, adapt and progress from what they learn,
and can learn from each other. Their communication is very similar to that of humans, and their native
intelligence is higher than chimpanzees. Physiologically, dolphin brains display many characteristics of
high intelligence. A zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, Lori Marino, did MRI scans of dolphin
brains and found them to be actually larger than human brains, with a size second only to humans when
corrected for body size. The work of Marino and others shows that dolphins have individual
personalities, self-identity and—this is incredible—” can think about the future ”. Like us, and our
children, they learn from one another. One, a rescue, was trained to tail-walk during a three-week
convalescence. On her release, scientists saw the tail-walk move being learned by her fellow dolphins in
the wild. Diana Reiss of Hunter College at CUNY reported that dolphins quickly learned to recognize
their reflections in mirrors and began using these to inspect their bodies, something that was so far
thought to be limited to human and great apes. They respond too to efforts to find a species-neutral
communication system based on simple symbols; and this is nothing if not a language. Swine flu
threats cause pedestrians and motor scooterists in Pune to hold surgical masks over their noses; off
the Western Australia coast, dolphins hold sponges over their snouts to protect them from sharp
objects on the ocean floor. Both are acquired adaptations to environmental situations. The
conclusions are irresistible. In February 2010, these scientists and other academics presented their
studies at the 2010 annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Among the speakers at the conference was Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount
University. He suggested that dolphins are actually non-human persons. At the “Intelligence of
Dolphins: Ethical and Policy Implications” sessions, Marino, Reiss and White argued that the cognitive
and affective sophistication of dolphins have vital ethical and policy implications that make it
unjustifiable to confine them for amusement, hunt them or even allow their accidental deaths in
fishing operations (some 300,000 dolphins and whales are murdered like this each year).
Animals are sentient creatures and deserve the same rights as any other human
Murti 95, [Vasu Murti, writer and activist, degrees in Physics and Applied Mathematics from the
University of California. “Similar Principles: The Animal Rights Movement, Feminism, and Abortion
Opponents, Feminism & Nonviolence Studies.” Fall 1995 http://www.all-creatures.org/murti/artarfemabort.html ]
As far as the moral issue of animal rights is concerned, we may safely conclude that full grown animals
do have rights. It is merely a matter of time before our courts, legislatures, and Constitution recognize
this self-evident truth, as was the case with the rights of Blacks and the rights of women. Animals are
autonomous beings, possessing levels of conscious awareness comparable to those of small human
children (or at least the mentally handicapped). Full grown animals are highly complex creatures,
possessing a brain, a central nervous system and a sophisticated mental life. Animals suffer at the
hands of their human tormentors and exhibit "such 'human' behaviors and feelings as fear and physical
pain, defense of their children, pair bonding, group/tribal loyalty, grief at the loss of loved ones, joy,
jealousy, competition, territoriality, and cooperation."[4] Dr. Tom Regan, the foremost intellectual
leader of the animal-rights movement and author of The Case for Animal Rights, notes that animals
"have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future;
preference and welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a
psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life
fares well or ill for them, logically independent of their utility for others and logically independent of
their being the object of anyone else's interests."[5] Similarly, research psychologist Theodore Barber
writes in his 1993 book, The Human Nature of Birds, that birds are intelligent beings, capable of flexible
thought, judgment, and the ability to express opinions, desires, and choices just as humans do.
According to Barber, birds can make and use tools, work with abstract concepts, exhibit grief, joy,
compassion and altruism, create musical compositions, and perform intricate mathematical calculations
in navigation.[6] Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to the author of a book that, in order to refute the
then common view that they had limited intellectual capacities, emphasized the notable intellectual
achievements of Blacks : "Whatever be their degree of talent, it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir
Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or
persons of others."[7] If a higher amount of intelligence does not entitle one human being to use
another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle human animals to exploit nonhuman animals for
the same purpose? The eloquent abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth dealt with this point in her
famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech when addressing the question of "this thing in the head," the intellect:
"What's that got to do with woman's rights or Negro's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours
holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"[8] Similarly, Jeremy
Bentham pondered what reasons were sufficient to abandon a sensitive being to the caprice of a
tormentor: "Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog
is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a
week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not,
'Can they reason?,' nor 'Can they talk?,' but 'Can they suffer?'"[9] The animal-rights movement thus
rejects belonging to the human race as the criterion for "personhood," or membership in our moral
community, as a form of discrimination, comparable to racism or sexism. Sentience, or the ability to
experience pleasure and pain, is recognized as the only morally relevant criteria
A2 Anthro Good
This is an independent link – human superiority is socially constructed and not
factually accurate – viewing every being as significant allows for a radical change in
the way we give meaning to the world
Bell 2k, York University department of education, and Russell, Lakehead University associate professor,
2k (Anne C. and Constance L., department of education, York University, Canada, and Canadian Journal
of Environmental Education, “Beyond Human, Beyond Words: Anthropocentrism, Critical Pedagogy, and
the Poststructuralist Turn,” CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 25, 3 (2000):188–203,
http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE25-3/CJE25-3-bell.pdf, p. 195-97)
The human/nature dichotomy is not a frame of reference common to all cultures, and although it
prevails today in Western societies, even here there are and always have been alternative ways of
understanding and giving expression to a more-than-human world. These can be found, for example,
in myth (Kane, 1994, p. 14), poetic expression, certain branches of philosophy and environmental
thought, natural history, and children’s literature and films (Wilson, 1991, pp. 128–139, 154).Even within
the natural sciences, voices attest to the meaningful exist- ence of nonhuman beings as subjects
(McVay, 1993). In animal behaviour research, for instance, numerous studies have challenged the
assertion of human superiority based on a narrow definition of language that excludes nonhuman
communication. Chimpanzee Washoe and orangutan Chantek use American Sign Language, and other
primates, like bonobo Kanzi, are fluent in symbolic language, thereby altering the boundaries commonly
drawn between language and mere communication (Gardner, Gardner, & Canfort, 1989; Miles, 1994;
Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker, & Taylor, 1998). And though the bilingual great apes may exhibit language
patterns the most similar to those of humans, there are many examples of sophisticated
communication in other animals, including mammals, birds, and insects (Griffin, 1992).Meeting the
criteria of language implies, of course, that these studies compare and judge other animals against a
human yardstick. In other words, a hierarchical divide is still assumed, although its position may shift
somewhat to include, on humanity’s side, some of the “higher” animals.For a more radical reframing,
one that seeks to acknowledge all life forms as subjects of significance, let us turn to the work of
philosopher David Abram. Drawing from phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Abram (1996)
argues that all sensing bodies are active, open forms con- stantly adjusting to a world that is itself
continually shifting (p. 49). To demonstrate how all beings incessantly improvise their relations to
other things he describes the spontaneous creativity of a spider:Consider a spider weaving its web, for
instance, and the assumption still held by many scientists that the behavior of such a diminutive
creature is thoroughly “programmed in its genes.” Certainly, the spider has received a rich genetic inheritance from its parents and predecessors. Whatever “instructions,” however, are enfolded within the
living genome, they can hardly predict the specifics of the microterrain within which the spider may find
itself at any particular moment. They could hardly have determined in advance the exact distances
between the cave wall and the branch that the spider is now employing as an anchorage point for her
current web, or the exact strength of the monsoon rains that make web-spinning a bit more difficult on
this evening. And so the genome could not explicitly have commanded the order of every flexion and
extension of her various limbs as she weaves this web into its place. However complex are the inherited
“programs,” patterns, or predispositions, they must still be adapted to the immediate situation in which
the spider finds itself. However determinate one’s genetic inheritance, it must still, as it were, be
woven into the present, an activity that necessarily involves both a receptivity to the specific shapes
and textures of that present and a spon- taneous creativity in adjusting oneself (and one’s
inheritance) to those contours. (Abram, 1996, p. 50)An equally illuminating insect story, intended to
evoke, once again, the subjective world of a nonhuman being, is found in Evernden’s The Natural Alien
(1985, pp. 79–80). Borrowing from the work of biologist Jakob von Uexkull, Evernden invites readers “to
imagine that we are walking through a meadow and that we discern ‘a soap bubble around each
creature to represent its own world, filled with the perceptions which it alone knows’ ” (p. 79). He then
attempts to describe what might be the world of a wood tick. The wood tick, he explains, is literally and
figuratively blind to the world as we know it. What we readily perceive about our environment would
be unknown, unknowable, and irrelevant to her. Her world is composed of three elements: light,
sweat, and heat. These are all that she needs to complete her life cycle. Light will lead her to the top of a
bush, where she will cling (for as long as 18 years!) until the smell of sweat alerts her to a passing
animal. She will then drop, and if she lands on a warm animal, she will indulge in a blood meal, fall to the
ground, lay her eggs, and die.Like Abram, Evernden (1985) challenges commonplace, mechanistic
assumptions that reduce other life forms to programmed automatons and intimates instead a
meaningful life-world completely unlike and outside our own:To speak of reflexes and instincts is to
obscure the essential point that the tick’s world is a world, every bit as valid and adequate as our
own. There is a subject, and like all subjects it has its world . . . The tick is able to occupy a world that
is per- ceptually meaningful to it. Out of the thousands or millions of kinds of information that might be
had, the tick sees only what is of significance to it. The world is tailored to the animal; they are entirely
complementary . . . This is quite a different view of existence from our usual one in which the animal is
simply an exploiter of certain natural resources. We are not talking just about observable interactions
between subjects and objects but rather about a very complete interrelation of self and world, so
complete that the world could serve as a definition of the self. Without the tick there is no tick-world, no
tick-space, no tick-time, – no tick-reality. (pp. 80–81)Evernden’s remarks are significant for the
possibilities they open up in our understanding both of the nonhuman and of ourselves. On one hand,
they contest the limited notion that awareness is a specifically human attribute. On the other, they
remind us that we humans too have bodies that respond to light, sweat, and heat; we too know the
world through our bodies in a way that is not entirely dependent upon language; and this bodily
knowledge plays an important role in defining our world and giving meaning to it.
A2 Cede the Political
The political is already ceded—only a radical form of politics can regain it from
transnational companies and political technophiles.
Best 06, (Steven, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas El Paso, “Revolutionary
Environmentalism: An Emerging New Struggle for Total Liberation” 2006)
George W. Bush’s feel-good talk of progress and democracy, given an endless and uncritical airing by
mainstream corporate media, masks the fact that we live in an unprecedented era of social and
ecological crisis. Predatory transnational corporations such as ExxonMobil and Maxxam are pillaging
the planet, destroying ecosystems, pushing species into extinction, and annihilating indigenous peoples
and traditional ways of life. War, globalization, and destruction of peoples, species, and ecosystems
march in lockstep: militarization supports the worldwide imposition of the "free market" system, and
its growth and profit imperatives thrive though the exploitation of humans, animals, and the earth (see
Kovel 2002; Tokar 1997; Bannon and Collier 2003). Against the mindless optimism of technophiles, the
denials of skeptics, and complacency of the general public, we depart from the premise that there is a
global environmental crisis which is the most urgent issue facing us today. If humanity does not
address ecological problems immediately and with radical measures that target causes not symptoms,
severe, world-altering consequences will play out over a long-term period and will plague future
generations. Signs of major stress of the world’s eco-systems are everywhere, from shrinking forests
and depleted fisheries to vanishing wilderness and global climate change. Ours is an era of global
warming, rainforest destruction, species extinction, and chronic resource shortages that provoke wars
and conflicts such as in Iraq. While five great extinction crises have already transpired on this planet, the
last one occurring 65 million years ago in the age of the dinosaurs, we are now living amidst the sixth
extinction crisis, this time caused by human not natural causes. Human populations have always
devastated their environment and thereby their societies, but they have never intervened in the
planet’s ecosystem to the extent they have altered climate. We now confront the “end of nature” where
no natural force, no breeze or ripple of water, has not been affected by the human presence (McKribben
2006). This is especially true with nanotechnology and biotechnology. Rather than confronting this crisis
and scaling back human presence and aggravating actions, humans are making it worse. Human
population rates continue to swell, as awakening giants such as India and China move toward western
consumer lifestyles, exchanging rice bowls for burgers and bicycles for SUVs. The human presence on
this planet is like a meteor plummeting to the earth, but it has already struck and the reverberations are
rippling everywhere. Despite the proliferating amount of solid, internationally assembled scientific data
supporting the reality of global climate change and ecological crisis, there are still so-called
environmental “skeptics,” “realists,” and “optimists” who deny the problems, often compiling or citing
data paid for by ExxonMobil. Senator James Inhofe has declared global warming to be a “myth” that is
damaging to the US economy. He and others revile environmentalists as “alarmists,” “extremists,” and
“eco-terrorists” who threaten the American way of life. There is a direct and profound relationship
between global capitalism and ecological destruction. The capitalist economy lives or dies on constant
growth, accumulation, and consumption of resources. The environmental crisis is inseparable from the
social crisis, whereby centuries ago a market economy disengaged from society and ruled over it with
its alien and destructive imperatives. The crisis in ecology is ultimately a crisis in democracy, as
transnational corporations arise and thrive through the destruction of popular sovereignty. The western
environment movement has advanced its cause for over three decades now, but we are nonetheless
losing ground in the battle to preserve species, ecosystems, and wilderness (Dowie 1995; Speth 2004).
Increasingly, calls for moderation, compromise, and the slow march through institutions can be seen
as treacherous and grotesquely inadequate. In the midst of predatory global capitalism and biological
meltdown, “reasonableness” and “moderation” seem to be entirely unreasonable and immoderate,
as “extreme” and “radical” actions appear simply as necessary and appropriate. As eco-primitivist
Derrick Jensen observes, “We must eliminate false hopes, which blind us to real possibilities.” The
current world system is inherently destructive and unsustainable; if it cannot be reformed, it must be
transcended through revolution at all levels—economic, political, legal, cultural, technological, and,
most fundamentally, conceptual. The struggles and changes must be as deep, varied, and far-reaching
as the root of the problems.
Radical environmental movements are more effective at creating change – our
evidence is comparative.
Best 06, (Steven, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas El Paso, “Revolutionary
Environmentalism: An Emerging New Struggle for Total Liberation” 2006)
Revolutionary environmentalism is based on the realization that politics as usual just won’t cut it
anymore. We will always lose if we play by their rules rather than invent new forms of struggle, new
social movements, and new sensibilities. The defense of the earth requires immediate and decisive:
logging roads need to be blocked, driftnets need to be cut, and cages need to be emptied. But these are
defensive actions, and in addition to these tactics, radical movements and alliances must be built from
the perspective total liberation. A new revolutionary politics will build on the achievements of
democratic, libertarian socialist, and anarchist traditions. It will incorporate radical green, feminist, and
indigenous struggles. It will merge animal, earth, and human standpoints in a total liberation struggle
against global capitalism and its omnicidal grow-or-die logic. Radical politics must reverse the growing
power of the state, mass media, and corporations to promote egalitarianism and participatory
democratization at all levels of society – political, cultural, and economic. It must dismantle all
asymmetrical power relations and structures of hierarchy, including that of humans over animals and
the earth. Radical politics is impossible without the revitalization of citizenship and the repoliticization of life, which begins with forms of education, communication, culture, and art that
anger, awaken, inspire, and empower people toward action and change.
A2 Consequentialism
Utilitarianism is anthropocentric — it’s myopic viewpoint takes into account only the
needs of humans, and it fundamentally contradicts with principles of ecological
protection
Katz 97, Eric Katz, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 1997 [Nature As Subject: Iluman Obligation and
Natural Community]
I argue that Martin’s view is wrong, that utilitarianism in its most basic forms cannot explain or justify
the preservationist position in the preservation vs. development debate—although it often appears to
do so. In fact, the widespread use of utilitarian arguments to justify policy decisions about the
protection of the environment is detrimental to preservation. The essential elements of utilitarianism
only provide a justification for the satisfaction of human need, for this satisfaction is the standard by
which utilitarianism measures goodness or moral worth. But human needs and the needs of the
natural environment are not necessarily similar or in harmony; thus, any ethical theory—such as
utilitarianism—which tries to explain the preservation of the natural environment by means of the
satisfaction of human wants, need, and desires will be only contingently true: it will depend on the
factual circumstances, the actual desires of the human community at any given time. This empirical
limitation does not bode well for the security of the preservationist argument.
Ethical obligation to preserve nature
Marina 09, (Daniel, Södertörns högskola | Institutionen för Kultur och Kommunikation,
“Anthropocentrism and Androcentrism – An Ecofeminist Connection”
http://www.projectsparadise.com/anthropocentrism-androcentrism/)
Environmentalism is the movement that works to end naturism. Environmentalists assert that the
domination of nature by humans exists and that this domination is wrong. Some environmentalists
carry out the work to end naturism from the discipline of philosophy. Environmental philosophy is
work carried out within some philosophical field – mainly ethics – that is motivated by the general
goal of the environmental movement. Despite the differences between the various positions, there is
one assumption shared by most environmental philosophers, namely nature deserves moral
consideration in its own right. As Warren explains, mainstream Western ethics has traditionally
neglected nature. The standard notion has been that humans only have moral obligations towards
humans. Nature has merely had instrumental value. Environmental philosophers endeavour to
elucidate the connections between environmental problems and traditional philosophical
conceptions. They set themselves the task of identifying how naturism manifest itself in philosophy, that
is, of countering when philosophers deliberately or accidentally articulate the already privileged world
of humans maintaining its status over nature. Some of the environmental ethical positions are: (1) the
individualistic approaches of Peter Singer and Tom Regan: moral consideration is due to all those
individuals who possess the morally relevant capacities, namely sentiency (Singer) and to be the
subject of a life (Regan); (2) the holistic approach of Aldo Leopold whose focus is on populations,
species, ecosystems, and the biosphere: it is not only individual animals that enjoy moral value, but
also plants and the non-living elements of the natural world; (3) deep ecology that expects humans to
develop an ecological sensitivity: a respect that reflects the fact that each organism is essentially
related to the other elements of the “biospherical net” and the fact that every life form possesses an
intrinsic value independently of the instrumental values that it may possess in the eyes of a human
beholder; (4) social ecology that identifies a structural and institutional root of the environmental
crisis, specifically a society that has been permeated by authoritarian hierarchies and a capitalist
market economy, and a natural world that has been arranged in accordance with a hierarchal order of
beings: it underlines then the vital connection between social problems and environmental problems,
that is, between the way humans relate to humans and the way humans relate to nature. Ecofeminism
is the approach that merges the goal of the environmental movement with the goal of the feminist
movement. Warren explains that it does this because ecofeminists believe that both environmentalism
and feminism have their shortcomings, and that they should complement each other. According to her
environmentalists will not be able to fully and correctly understand, and consequently successfully
abolish, naturism unless they cease to disregard the connections existing between the domination of
nature and the domination of women. They will not be able to elaborate theories that do not
contribute to oppression unless they recognize the role and configuration of oppressive conceptual
frameworks and the conceptual connections between naturism and sexism they give rise to. They will
not be sensitive to the specific realities and perspectives of women unless they admit gender as a
fundamental category of analysis. Feminism needs, in a similar way, to understand the connections
between sexism and naturism.
A2 Death Bad
The aff commits the Biological Fallacy by equating organisms to life—everything is
“alive” and attempts to distinguish between life and non-life cause ecosystem
destruction and extinction.
Rowe 96, Stan Rowe, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, 1996 (“From Shallow To
Deep Ecological Philosophy,” Trumpeter, Volume 13, Number 1, Available Online at
http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/278/413, Accessed 07-26-2011)
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 life-supporting 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 insidethe-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.
The living/nonliving distinction is irrelevant – even nonliving aspects of the
environment have intrinsic value.
Nicholson 92, (Shirley J. Nicholson, former chief editor of Quest Books , Krotona Institute of
Theosophy in Ojai, CA, "Gaia's Hidden Life: The Unseen Intelligence of Nature" 1992,
http://books.google.com/books?id=dLJW84nISZYC&dq=gaia+nicholson&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s,
Google Books)
If this vital force, like Sheldrake's "immaterial" and "subtle" something that makes a body alive, is the
energy that is equivalent to all matter (E=mc2), then indeed everything is alive, including those things
we usually consider inanimate, such as rocks, water, and molecules. Esoteric philosophy has long held
that everything is alive. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in her source book of ancient wisdom The Secret
Doctrine, confirms this view: "It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything
inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, "Inorganic substance,' means simply that
the latent life slumbering in the molecules of so called 'inert matter' is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and
every atom of every mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our comprehension and perception, because
it is outside the ranger of the laws known to those who reject Occultism" In this view even the remains
of a dead animal contain potential life force that permeates everything in the universe, but it becomes
obvious to us only when the organism is imbued with purpose and self regulation, as is a living plant
or a human being. There are certainly those who would vehemently disagree with this interpretation
of what in our world (and perhaps in the universe, too) can be considered as life. Lovelock mentioned in
his definition of life, similar to Blavatsky's, that this sort of definition would also apply to flowing
streams, to hurricanes, to flames, or possibly even to objects made by humans. However, Lovelock
and Margulis, after much soul-searching, have come to observe that the boundary between life and
what we consider inanimate (the fire, the flowing steam, rocks), which most of us intuitively believe
not to be alive, may not be so easily drawn after all. They studied the complex interactions on our
Gaian earth, the way plant becomes rock becomes gas becomes a part of plant again. They considered
that matter and energy appear to be completely different yet completely interchangeable. They
concluded that one can substitute living organisms and their inorganic environment for each other.
This is tantamount to stating that at least all matter on earth is alive, and perhaps this includes all
matter in the universe as well. According to Lovelock, "there is no clear distinction anywhere on the
Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going
form the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells."
A2 Disease Turn
Should not use animals for research — testing on humans solves disease better, and is
no more morally reprehensible
Godel 97, [Kelly Godel, writer for the Animal Liberation Front, 1997 [The evasive tactics and deceptive
arguments of animal research proponents.
http://’w ww.animalliberationfront.com/Saints/Stories/how to vivisect vivisectors.htrnJ ]
“Anthropocentric Myopia.” That is, the glycol and practical arguments they use in an tempt touts’ the
harm caused to animals, fail to address and counter the effects these very same arguments would have
if applied fairly and equally to humans. It is this oversight which poses the greatest challenge to the
animal research defense, and the greatest opportunity for the animal activist. Anthropocentrism and the
myth of human superiority will be addressed in more detail later on, however it is worthwhile to
remember its importance as we examine the following pro-vivisection arguments. Anthropocentric
Myopia: By stating that medical research is of the utmost importance the animal research proponent
is faced with answering this dilemma: Why not use other humans, either volunteers(offered
substantial financial benefits to themselves and families) or criminals for medical experiments since the
results would presumably be faster and safer than using non-human subjects who differ in physiolo!y
from the human patients? If the goal is to find cures for diseases, and Wit is of the utmost importance.
would not the best course of action be an obligation? Most vivisections would quickly respond with
alarm or disgust. answering that they would never use other humans even if they could cure cancer by
experimenting upon one human test subject. This betrays their argument that medical research is of
the utmost importance.
A2 Ecofascism
Turn: Anthropocentrism IS ecofascism
Orton 2k, David Orton. Deep ecologist and philosopher, February 2000, [http://home .ca.
inter.netkgreenweb/Ecofasc ism.html, A Left Biocentric Analysis]
the second justification, the one that I feel has some ecofascist echos, is that “the larger good”
requires such research and any negatives to the “researched” animals have to be accepted from this
perspective. (This larger good is defined variously as the goals of the Wildiands Project; the health of the
wildlife populations being studied; the well being of the ecosphere; or work towards implementing the
goals of the Deep Ecolo’ Platform.) One thinks here of the fascist goals of ‘the nation” or “the
fatherland” as justification to sacrifice the individual human or groups of humans considered
expendable. For me, the defense of intrusive research on nonhuman life forms and their
expendability, in the name of a human- decided larjer good, although couched in ecological language,
is the ultimate anthropocentrism and could legitimately be called an example of ecofascism.
Anthropocentric environmental destruction, not ecocentric perspectives, is ecofascism
Orton 2k, David Orton. Deep ecologist and philosopher, February 2000, [h ttp://home.ca. inter.
netkgreenweb/Ecofascism .htm I, A Left B locentric Analysis
What seems to have happened with “ecofascism”. is that a term whose origins and use reflect a
particular form of human social, political and economic organization, now, with a prefix “eco”.
becomes used against environmentalists who generally are sympathetic to a particular non-human
centered and Nature-based radical environmental philosophy - deep ecology. Yet supporters of deep
ecology, if they think about the concept of ecofascism, see the ongoing violent onslaught against Nature
and its non-human life forms (plant life, insects, birds, mammals, etc.) plus indigenous cultures, which
is justified as economic ‘progress”. as ecofascist destruction! An ethic of respcct for nature does not
cause ecofascism
A2 Extinction First
Framing issue: the aff’s strict utilitarian calculus directly excludes the natural world
and cannot accurately make decisions—you should always prioritize an ethic that
recognizes the value of the natural world.
Katz 97, (Eric, Director of Science, Technology, and Society Program at the New Jersey Institute of
Technology, “Nature as Subject” 1997)
One approach within this conception of environmental philosophy would be to seek these
"'environmentally appropriate" ethical principles in the direct application of traditional ethical
theories--such as utilitarianism, Kantianism, rights theory, or contractarianism--to the newly emerging
problems of the environmental crisis. From this perspective, environmental philosophy would be a
version of a basic applied ethics. Its subject matter--the justification of environmental policies--would be
new, but the philosophical principles and ethical ideals used to analyze and solve these new problems
would be the familiar positions and ideas of Western philosophy. A rather different approach to
environmental philosophy would eschew the traditional versions of ethical theory and offer a radical
reinterpretation or critique of the dominant philosophical ideas of the modern age. From this critical
perspective, traditional ethical systems must be modified, expanded, or transcended in order to deal
with the fundamental philosophical issues raised by the existence of the contemporary environmental
crisis. The crucial change would be an expansion of ethical thought beyond the limits of the human
community to include the direct moral consideration of the natural world. In these essays I have
chosen this second path. My basic critical idea is that human-centered (or "anthropocentric") ethical
systems fail to account for a moral justification for the central policies of environmentalism. From this
negative account of anthropocentrism I derive my fundamental position in environmental ethics: the
direct moral consideration and respect for the evolutionary processes of nature. I believe that it is a
basic ethical principle that we must respect Nature as an ongoing subject of a history, a life-process, a
developmental system. The natural world--natural entities and natural ecological systems--deserves our
moral consideration as part of the interdependent community of life on Earth. Hence the title of this
collection. I consider Nature as analogous to a human subject, entitled to moral respect and subject to
traditional ethical categories. I do not anthropomorphize Nature; I do not ascribe human feelings and
intentions to the operations of natural processes. I do not consider natural processes to be sentient or
alive. I merely place Nature within the realm of ethical activity. The basis of a moral justification of
environmental policy is that we have ethical obligations to the natural world, just as we have ethical
obligations to our fellow human beings. In these essays I explain and analyze this nonanthropocentric
perspective in environmental philosophy. Mass extinction is key to evolution.
Their anthropocentric impact calculus is just moral prejudice—the burden is on them
to prove why humans are the center of value.
Regan 90, (Tom, Professor of Philosophy at NC State, “Christianity and Animal Rights: The Challenge
and Promise” 1990)
I addressed this question in a recent speech, reminding my audience of a few "extreme" moral positions
upon which we are all agreed: The murder of the innocent is always wrong. Rape is always wrong. Child
molestation is always wrong. Racial and sexual discrimination are always wrong. I went on to note
that when an injustice is absolute, as is true of each of the examples just adduced, then one must
oppose it absolutely. It is not a reformed, "more humane" rape that an enlightened ethic calls for; it is
the abolition of all rape that is required; it is this extreme position we must uphold. And analogous
remarks apply in the case of the other human evils I have mentioned. Once this much is acknowledged it
is evident -- or at least it should be -- that those who oppose or resist the animal rights question will
have to do better than merely attach the label "extreme" to it. Sometimes "extreme" positions about
what is wrong are right. Of course there are two obvious differences between the animal rights position
and the other examples of extreme views I have given. The latter views are very generally accepted,
whereas the former position is not. And unlike these very generally accepted views, which concern
wrongful acts done to human beings, the animal-rights position concerns the wrongfulness of treating
animals (nonhuman animals, that is) in certain ways. Those who oppose or resist the animal rights
position might seize upon these two differences in an effort to justify themselves in accepting
extreme positions regarding rape and child abuse, for example, while rejecting the "extremism" of
animal rights. But neither of these differences will bear the weight of justification. That a view,
whether moral or otherwise, is very generally accepted is not a sufficient reason for accepting it as
true. Time was when the shape of the earth was generally believed to be flat, and time was when the
presence of physical and mental handicaps were very generally thought to make the people who bore
them morally inferior. That very many people believed these falsehoods obviously did not make them
true. We don’t discover or confirm what’s true by taking a vote. The reverse of the preceding also can
be demonstrated. That a view, moral or otherwise, is not generally accepted is not a sufficient reason
for judging it to be false. When those lonely few first conjectured that the earth is round and that
women are the moral equals of men, they conjectured truly, notwithstanding how grandly they were
outnumbered. The solitary person who, in Thoreau’s enduring image, marches to a different drummer,
may be the only person to apprehend the truth. The second difference noted above is more
problematic. That difference cites the fact that child abuse and rape, for example, involve evils done to
human beings, while the animal-rights position claims that certain evils are done to nonhuman animals.
Now there is no question that this does constitute a difference. The question is, Is this
a morally relevant difference -- a difference, that is, that would justify us in accepting the extreme
opposition we judge to be appropriate in the case of child abuse and rape, for example, but which
most people resist or abjure in the case of, say, vivisection? For a variety of reasons I do not think that
this difference is a morally relevant one. Viewed scientifically, this second difference succeeds only in
citing a biological difference: the victims of rape and child abuse belong to one species (the species
Homo sapiens) whereas the victims of vivisection and trapping belong to another species (the
species canis lupus, for example). But biological differences inside the species Homo sapiens do not
justify radically different treatment among those individual humans who differ biologically (for
example, in terms of sex, or skin color, or chromosome count). Why, then, should biological
differences outside our species count morally? If having one eye or deformed limbs does not
disqualify a human being from moral consideration equal to that given to those humans who are
more fortunate, how can it be rational to disqualify a rat or a wolf from equal moral consideration
because, unlike us, they have paws and a tail? Some of those who resist or oppose the animal-rights
position might have recourse to "intuition" at this point. They might claim that one either sees that the
principal biological difference at issue (namely, species membership) is a morally relevant one, or one
does not see this. No reason can be given as to why belonging to the species Homo sapiens gives one a
superior moral status, just as no reason can be given as to why belonging to the species canis lupus gives
wolves an inferior moral status (if wolves have a moral status at all). This difference in moral status can
only be grasped immediately, without making an inference, by an exercise of intuitive reason. This moral
difference is self-evident -- or so it will be claimed by those who claim to intuit it. However attractive
this appeal to intuition may seem to some, it woefully fails to bear the weight of justification. The
plain fact is, people have claimed to intuit differences in the comparative moral standing of
individuals and groups inside the human species, and these alleged intuitions, we all would agree, are
painful symptoms of unquestioned and
A2 Inevitable
Obviously some degree of killing is inevitable and necessary for survival; however, we
have an obligation to minimize such exploitation as much as possible, or we justify
racism and other forms of social domination
Weebler 03, Accessed in 2003 [Animal Rights Activist.. “Animal Rights and Vegetarianism”,
http:f/www.an imalliberationfront.com/ALFrontlAnimal%2ORights%2OFAQ.htmj
The issue is not about avoiding all killing but avoiding it as much as possible. Some may counter that
plants are living beings too, and to eat them would be unethical. No ethical view--no mailer how
consistent-can take into account the interests of everyone at all times. One can certainly say the line of
moral regard is not drawn at animals--that it is wrong to exploit trees and other plants (an argument
found in the philosophy of Fruitarianism). If there are problems in implementing such a policy, then it is
true of all potential beneficiaries of moral conduct. No one can be perfect, either in compassion or
cruelty. --especiajjy when you come down to a microscopic level. Refuting the Human Supremacy
argument doesn’t mean the line is drawn at animals--one can say that it is wrong to exploit trees and
other plants.. .the problem is in implementing such a policy—yet that is true of all potential
beneficiaries of moral conduct. No one can be perfect, either in compassion or cruelty. BUT the failure
to be morally perfect does not then mean one has to fall back to some safe line like species to focus
one’s discrimination pictices. If one argues for that-- then there is no reason why the line cannot be
drawn at race, or religion, or intelligence etc. Thus, the need to prove human supremacy still applies.
The human supremacist is shackled to it. All you can do as a compassionate person is to try your best
according to each situation, following a moral standard that endeavors to be fair and just--allowing you
to be as compassionate as possible, as opposed to the alternative.
A2 Realism
Manipulating the factors that create the preconditions for state action solves for
realism claims—if we are reflexive in our approach to policymaking, we can avoid
totalizing ideology, which is really the crux of our criticism.
Berejikian and Dryzek 2k, [Jeffrey (Political Science at Georgia) and John (Political Science at
Melbourne); “Reflexive Action in International Politics”; British Journal of Political Science; vol 30].
Political order in the international system is a fragile accomplishment in that it can be undermined as a
byproduct of the instrumental acts of states, as demonstrated in the previous section. Such
undermining may be the last thing that state leaders have on their minds, but so long as they behave
according to realist precepts, that is exactly what they will do. Thus realism is nothing more or less than
a self-fulfilling prophecy; the anarchic world that realists accept with weary resignation is in truth a
creation of states behaving in accordance with realist precepts, if only as a matter of habit rather than
conscious choice. These actors could create different situations, and so ultimately a different world,
but do not do so. To create different situations does not require co-ordinated collective action (of the
sort specified, for example, by liberals); all it requires is that actors think through the consequences of
their individual actions. To create a different world is a somewhat larger matter of reflexive behaviour
on the part of a critical mass of key actors.
Realism cannot deal with multiple causes to consequences. If we fail to look at the
underlying problems with national interests, we still don’t provide realism an
untainted framework, meaning that realism will fail now.
Berejikian and Dryzek 2k, [Jeffrey (Political Science at Georgia) and John (Political Science at
Melbourne); “Reflexive Action in International Politics”; British Journal of Political Science; vol 30; p.
196-197].
We develop this argument by revealing that the self-help behaviour specified by realists always and
inevitably either creates or undermines social sources of order, whether actors want it to or not. Thus
realism as a set of principles for state action turns out to be logically flawed. Rather than focus
narrowly upon the degree to which alternative means promote particular ends in a fixed and
inimutable context of anarchy, international actors should focus more broadly on the degree to which
their actions themselves help to modify the structure of anarchy and order in the system. To behave
in the way realists prescribe means actually helping to create the kind of Hobbesian anarchy that
realism accepts with resignation as the basic and unchangeable context of international action. In
effect, such action implies blindness to the consequences of one’s actions, surely the cardinal sin for
realists.
***AFF WORK***
***Topic Specific
Permutation—Accountability
Lack of public knowledge about the oceans means the alternative is destined to fail –
only the permutation increases public and government accountability to produce
productive knowledge regarding oceanic resources. The issue is not the policies, but
individuals.
Lilley 10, Jonathan Lilley, professor of philosophy and marine studies, PhD from the University of
Delaware, Navigating a Sea of Values: Understanding Public Attitudes Toward the Ocean and Ocean
Energy Resources, Summer 2010, Pg. 195-. Magotes
It was noted at the beginning of this study that for policies to succeed they must have public backing
and it seems clear from the data here that, at least in the abstract, policies aimed at protecting and
preserving the ocean would have high levels of public support. However, it appears equally apparent
that if ocean-related issues are placed against other issues, then public support for the ocean would
be less robust. In terms of framing ocean issues, it is thus important to recognize this difference. The
high level of support for ocean issues overall bodes well for those involved in ocean literacy. As Steel et
al. (2005) note, improving public knowledge is vital for increasing public support for ocean policies,
and the findings of this study support this assertion. Given the high levels of responsibility felt toward
the ocean, it appears it is not apathy that is preventing the public from undertaking more pro-ocean
behavior, but rather a lack of knowledge — in particular, knowledge regarding our individual’s personal
impact on the ocean. In a general sense. most people (both coastal and inland residents) understand
that one can affect the marine environment even when living far from it bitt people living inland are
less likely to think their personal actions have an impact on the ocean. However, in saying this, it is
important to acknowledge that despite levels of awareness concerning individual action being lower
than those relating to societal responsibility toward the ocean, at 71% they are still remarkably high. The
fact that seven in ten people believe their actions do affect the ocean provides a lever for advocacy
that could be used by those working on ocean conservation efforts.
Permutation—Humans Key
Human involvement in the ocean is too engrained into society – new ethics of
accountability and consequentialism resolves the impacts while maintaining
development and exploration of the oceans. The permutation is key to resolve
differences between ethics.
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 5556. Magotes
As became clear in the previous sections, humans have already interfered profoundly with the marine
ecosystems. The Anthropocene also manifests itself in the oceans, and this signals the dawn of a
new era of human responsibility for shaping the future of marine ecosystems . A return to a situation
in which people’s influence reverts back to pre-industrial levels seems neither possible nor desirable.
Similarly, continuing the current momentum of anthropogenic changes cannot be the goal either ,
since this would put the maintenance of ecosystem functions and services at great risk. The question
remains, therefore, what should guide the interactions between humanity and the oceans in the future.
This implies a challenge for science to explore and explain the range of possibilities for future
developments by assessing the consequences of different options. The question as to which principles
should be used as a basis for assessing policy options and creating norms to guide actions is a question
of ethics (WBGU, 1999b), while deciding which consequences and developments are desirable must be
a societal issue. In the WBGU’s view, it is time to develop a new ethics for the Anthropocene. One
starting point here is to avoid the kind of anthropogenic developments that are threatening the lifesupport systems of present and future human civilization. In its 1999 report entitled Environment and
Ethics, the WBGU initially describes two different positions from which ecosystem services and
biodiversity can be assessed: anthropocentrism and biocentrism (WBGU, 1999b). The anthropocentric
view places humanity and their needs at the fore; Nature’s own original demands are alien to this view.
Interventions in nature are allowed if they are useful to man. A duty to make provisions for the future
and to conserve nature exists in the anthropocentric view only to the extent that natural systems are
classed as valuable to people today and subsequent generations and that nature can be classed as a
means and guarantor of human life and survival. In the biocentric concept, which forms an opposite
pole to the anthropocentric view, the needs of humanity are not placed above those of nature. Here,
every living creature, whether human, animal or plant, has intrinsic rights with regard to the chance to
develop its own life within the framework of a natural order. Merit for protection is justified in the
biocentric view by an inner value that is unique to each living creature. Nature has a value of its own
that does not depend on the functions that it fulfils today or may fulfil later from the human point of
view (WBGU, 1999b). Neither pure anthropocentrism nor pure biocentrism seemed acceptable to the
WBGU at the time; rather, the Council preferred a moderate form of anthropocentrism . From this
perspective, humanity and their needs are in the foreground, but the value of the biosphere for
humans is defined very broadly. In WBGU’s 1999 report, distinctions were made between the following
value categories in the process of determining the ‘total economic value’ of biospheric services: > Usedependent values: This category contains economic benefit — for instance for purposes of production or
consumption — (e.g. cereals as food, wood for bioenergy, relaxation in a natural landscape), functional
benefit (ecosystem services, such as the protection of coasts by mangroves or the hydrologicalcycle),
and symbolic value for religious or spiritual uses (e.g. sacred trees or heraldic animals). > Non-usedependent values: This category includes the existence value, which expresses the human being’s
appreciation of the existence of nature, species or ecosystems without this being linked to any specific
benefit. > Option values: These relate to the potential uses that lie in the future, are not specifically
foreseeable today and are therefore difficult to assess, e.g. the potential medical benefit of genetic
resources in drug development (Section 1.3.3). In practice, moderate anthropocentrism and moderate
biocentrism are likely to lead to similar conclusions when it comes to action norms. Until such time as a
new ethics has been developed for the Anthropocene, the WBGU will also draw upon this view in the
present report.
Permutation—Stewardship
There is no reason that stewardship and anthro are mutually exclusive – combining
the alternatives ethics of accountability and responsibility to the environment and the
affs protection of the environment prevents the worse forms of anthropocentric and
anthropogenic violence
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 5658. Magotes
In the WBGU’s view the challenge for human interaction with the oceans in the Anthropocene is to
combine two goals. The first is to keep or reach a ‘good state’ for the oceans which secures marine
biodiversity and eco system services in the long term for both the present and future generations. The
second goal is to make it possible for the oceans to be used in a sustainable way, so they can make
important contributions to food and energy supplies and, in more general terms, to the necessary
transformation towards sustainability. Stewardship of the oceans should take its orientation from the
following three fundamental approaches. Think systemically: Regard and maintain the sea as an
ecosystem and as part of the Earth system An ecosystem is a dynamic complex of plants, animals,
micro-organisms and the nonliving environment, all interacting as a functional unit (MA 2005a), Human
kind depends fundamentally on ecosystem services, which in turn depend on the maintenance of
biological diversity (CBD, 2010a). At the same time, human beings are an integral part of the
ecosystems. The WBGU believes that humanity should strive for healthy, productive and resilient
marine ecosystems, including their biological diversity. A precondition for achieving this goal is
avoiding damaging effects on the oceans that can threaten ecosystems. These include pollution
(contaminants, nutrients, sediments), acidification, climate change, etc. It is also essential to avoid the
overexploitation of marine biological resources and to prevent the ongoing drastic loss of marine
biodiversity Developed in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 2000, 2004c), the
ecosystem approach is in the meantime a widely recognized concept in the intergovernmental field
and beyond; it is used in many areas of ecosystem management. For example, the implementation
plan of the Rio+10 Summit in Johannesburg calls on countries to establish the approach in fisheries by
2010 (WSSD, 2002: §29d), and the FAO regards the ecosystem approach as a way to achieve
sustainability in fisheries and aquaculture (FAO, 2003, 2009a, Sections 4.1.3.1, 4.2.3.1). The WBGU
supports this approach. However, it remains relatively abstract and needs to be fleshed out for each
specific application. The marine ecosystems are furthermore integral parts of the Earth system. Acting as
a huge store for heat and carbon, it plays a major role in determining the Earth’s climate, partly via the
ocean currents. Coral reefs and mangroves once protected tens of thousands of kilometres of mainland
and island coasts from storms and floods. Not only in the oceans, but also in other parts of the Earth
system, do critical developments take place that run counter sustainable development; one important
example is anthropogenic climate change. Managing the ocean’s ecosystems cannot, therefore, be
viewed in isolation, but must always be assessed in the context of its interaction with other
subsystems of the Earth system. For example, marine conservation that does not consider the
requirements of climate protection or the protection of the terrestrial biosphere is not to be
recommended. In many cases, this view in turn indirectly serves marine conservation, since the
subsystems of the Earth system interact: for example, a reduction in CO2 emissions simultaneously
slows down ocean warming and acidification. Not least, a systemic perspective includes taking into
account the guard rails for ocean conservation developed by the WBGU (Box 1-1). Act in a
precautionary way : Take uncertainty and ignorance into account The precautionary principle has been
established for a long time in the context of environmental and development policy. According to this
principle, ‘where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty
shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environ mental
degradation (UNCED, 1992 a). This is of particular importance for the oceans because many systemic
relationships have only recently become known, and in many cases the complex interactions render
precise pre dictions about future developments impossible. Many marine ecosystems are
simultaneously subjected to several sources of stress — such as the growing acidification of sea water,
the input of pollutants and overfishing, or the physical destruction of ecosystems, whose interactions
are poorly researched (Section 1.2.8). For these reasons, it is often not clear whether, and under what
circumstances, extensive damage might be done to ecosystems. Furthermore, the ocean is
characterized by high levels of inertia, so that many effects of human activity only become visible
after a delay and corrections take time. In the WBGU’s view, therefore, it is appropriate to exercise
great caution in the use of the seas. In addition, decisions on human interaction with the oceans
should be flexible and reversible to make it possible to respond to new scientific evidence on the
effects of human actions. Cooperate : overcoming the tragedy of the commons Many parts of the
oceans are freely accessible as commons’, often without any restrictions or monitoring. Many human
interventions follow the pattern of the frequently-described tragedy of the commons’, according to
which freely available, but finite resources are under threat from over-exploitation (Hardin, 1968). At
the same time, the oceans are being exposed to all kinds of new uses. Examples include shipping
routes opening up as the Arctic ice melts, prospecting for and extracting energy and mineral resources
in the deep sea, generating renewable energy on and in the sea, and offshore aquaculture. These uses
generate new pressures of use and pose new threats to marine ecosystems, sometimes in a
cumulative way. In many cases, they also are competing with each other. Studies conducted by Ostrom
et al. (1999) on local common goods (water, lakes, pasture land) show that the overuse of common
goods is primarily due to a lack of rules, for example the fact that no rights of use are allocated. In the
WBGU’s view the aim must be to continue to allow the use of the seas as a common good, but to
subject this use to dear rules to avoid overuse. In the WBGIJ’s view, regarding the sea as the common
heritage of mankind’ is a good starting point for rules on the sustainable use of the sea. This concept has
already been enshrined in international law in relation to the mineral resources of the seabed outside
national state jurisdiction under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCL.OS; Section 3.2). The
WBGU proposes applying this principle consistently to the oceans, which should thus belong to all
people, both today and in the future (Section 7.2.1). The concept should be linked with the idea of
humanity taking on responsibility in the Anthropocene and with the concept of sustainability. Finally,
a clear assignment of rights of use and duties to protect the heritage of mankind, as well as an equitable
distribution of the benefits and costs that are involved, could prevent the unregulated access to the
marine ecosystems and the overexploitation that often results. In this way, the character of the oceans
can be preserved as they are — as a global common good that is accessible to all and whose use can
benefit everyone — while at the same time the requirements of maintaining the life-support systems
are taken into account.
Anthro Good – Contaminants
Human oceanic management is the critical to remove and prevent contamination from
a number of organic and inorganic substances
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 3133. Magotes
Consciously or subconsciously, humankind has long used the sea as a dump for waste, sewage and
toxic substances of all kinds. It has become a sink for all kinds of often harmful substances which find
their way into the sea, having been fed into rivers or the groundwater, dumped by ships (Section 1.13)
or drilling plat forms, flushed out of aquaculture farms, absorbed from the atmosphere, discharged
from land, or leaked in the course of oil extraction (Section 1.1.5). For a long time, waste constituted
humankind’s most pronounced interference with the deep sea, because its inaccessibility kept it safe
from direct intervention . However, this impact has since been surpassed by the powerful influence
of fisheries and the extraction of fossil fuels and minerals, and in the future even this could be
overtaken by the consequences of climate change and CO2 absorbed by the sea from the
atmosphere (Section 1.2.5; COML. 2011). A large proportion of the inputs that find their way from the
land into the sea originate from agricultural and industrial production or from household and municipal
sewage. The substances involved include nutrients, pesticides, heavy metals, toxic substances used in
industrial production, as well as plastic and other waste. Radioactive inputs and dumping are two
further sources. Coastal regions are worst affected by pollution and its consequences, because the
concentration of substances is greatest here. At the same time, unpopulated regions far removed from
urban centres — places such as the Arctic and the deep sea itself — are also under threat from pollution
caused for example by plastic waste and toxic substances. The following section quotes a number of
examples and cites the volumes involved to illustrate the scale of substance input to the seas. The
impact of pollution and the associated threat to the environment and human kind are described in detail
in Sections 1.2.3 and 44.4. Nutrients from agriculture Inorganic fertilizers have been manufactured on an
industrial scale as plant nutrients for use in agriculture since the late 1940s (Mackenzie et aL, 2002) and
have been used in increasing volumes ever since. The anthropogenic production of reactive nitrogen
has increased tenfold since industrialization (from approximately 15 to approximately 156 Mt N per
year); today it actually exceeds natural flows. Its use is expected to increase even further to
approximately 267 Mt N per year by 2050 (Galloway et al., 2004; Bouwman et al., 2009). A significant
proportion of these nutrients end up in inland waterways and coastal regions. As a result, marine
inputs of phosphorus have risen from an estimated 1.1 Mt per year in the pre-agricultural’ age to
approximately 9 Mt per year today (Rockström et al., 2009). These inputs can lead to increased algae
growth and eutrophication, plus a growing lack of oxygen and damage to local ecosystems (Sections
1.2.6 and 4.4.3). POPs and heavy metals as examples of chemical pollutants Chemical pollutants that
find their way into the sea include heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, and what are
known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The latter include the insecticide DDT, the
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that used to be used in industry, and polyfluorinated compounds
(PFCs). Some of these substances were, and still are, manufactured for agricultural or industrial use,
others are created as by-products of certain industrial and combustion processes. Heavy metals, on
the other hand, are also specifically extracted or used in the mining of other metals (WHO, 2007a). It is
still difficult to trace the sources and emissions of POPs globally, because production and usage data are
often confidential or not regularly recorded. However, several global and, above all, regional emissions
registers have now been set up (Lohmann et al., 2007). Data series for the EU and studies of marine
organisms show a decline in POP inputs (Islam and Tanaka 2004; Denier van der Gon et al., 2005;
Lohmann et al., 2007) and heavy metals into the sea — e. g. in parts of the North Atlantic (OSPAR, 201
Ob). The primary threats posed by POPs and heavy metals are that their accumulation in the food
chain can harm marine fauna and, ultimately, human health too (Sections 1.2.3.1 and 444). Plastic
waste and microplastics Global plastic production has increased more than a hundredfold since the
1950s and today stands at over 280 million tonnes a year, of which about 20% is manufactured in the EU
(Figure 1.1-3). On average, global production of plastic increases by about 9% per annum
(PlasticsEurope, 2012). Disposable packaging accounts for a large proportion of production (about 38%
in Europe; UNEP, 2011c). Every year, large quantities of plastic waste find their way into the sea,
although the exact amounts are difficult to quantify. The vast majority comes from land-based sources
such as rivers and beaches (Andrady, 2011:1597; Cole et al., 2011). Marine-based sources include
shipping traffic and drilling platforms. The total volume of plastic waste in the ocean is currently
estimated at approximately 100 million tonnes (UNEP 2011c). Little is known about the lifespan of
plastics in marine environments. Estimates assume a period of several hundred years (UNEP, 201 ic).
Ultra-violet (UV) radiation, mechanical and biological processes can break down larger pieces of
plastic into microplastics, and the latter are also specifically manufactured as an industrial material
(granules) and can find their way into the sea from production centres or during transportation (UNEP
201 ic; Cole et al., 201 1). Larger pieces of plastic and microplastics pose a serious threat to the
marine environment and marine organisms (Section 1.2.3.2; 4.4.4). Radioactive substances
Anthropogenic radioactive substances have been finding their way into the environment since the
1940s and, because of the ratio of land to sea on our planet, usually end up in the sea (Aarkrog, 2003;
Sections 1.2.3.3 and 4.4.4). The largest source is the global radioactive fallout from tests of nuclear
weapons conducted in the Earth’s atmosphere (mainly in the 1950s and 1960s); their effects are still
measurable today (UNSCEAR, 2000). The 1986 Chernobyl reactor accident is a further major source
(Aarkrog 2003), although the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011 surpasses the effects of Chernobyl on
the sea (Buesseler et al., 2011). The fourth major source is the — still legal — practice of feeding
radioactive waste water into the sea from nuclear fuel-reprocessing plants (Livingston and Povinec,
2000). Other anthropogenic sources, such as the dumping of radioactive waste and smaller accidents
at nuclear power stations, can have a local or regional impact, but play a less important role on a
global scale (Aarkrog 2003). However, the radioactive substances (like other pollutants too) can be
quickly spread around the world by ocean currents (AMAP 2010).
Anthro Good – Econ
Oceanic and coastal resources offer and absurd amount of capital to be tapped into –
methodological changes increase value and offer sustainability
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 36.
Magotes
It is difficult to calculate the economic value of marine and coastal ecosystems. To date, the only study
of the overall value of marine ecosystems — whose method ology it must be said, is extremely
controversial — is a paper by scientists who worked with Robert Costanza and is dated 1997. The
study put the total value of the global biosphere at around US$33,000 billion per annum (at 1994
prices), of which roughly two thirds , i.e. roughly US$21,000 billion per annum, was accounted for by
marine and coastal ecosystems (Costanza et al., 1997). Of this US$21,000 billion, US$8,400 billion was
assignable to the oceans and US$12,600 billion to the coastal ecosystems, i.e. to estuaries, seagrass
beds and kelp forests, coral reefs and the continental shelf. According to this study, the value of
marine and coastal ecosystems was thus equivalent to about 80% of global GDP at the time, which
stood at around US$27,000 billion (at 1994 prices; ¡MF, 2012). Even though these numbers are based
on simplified and methodologically debatable calculations, they at least give an idea of the magnitude
of the value of marine ecosystem services (UNDP and GEE 2012a). To this day, scientists assume that
marine and coastal ecosystems account for two thirds of the Earth’s total natural capital (Beaudoin
and Pendleton, 2012). Calculations such as those conducted by Costanza et al., 1997, also highlight the
tremendous methodological challenges that confront attempts to measure the overall economic value
of marine and coastal ecosystems, as not all aspects of these ecosystems can usefully be expressed in
monetary terms. Examples include the nutrient cycle, the way ecosystems work and genetic resources
(Noone et al., 2012). One of the problems with the estimates of Costanza et al. (1997) is that, for want
of available studies, not all biomes and not all types of ecosystem services were taken into account in
the overall estimate. Moreover, the studies referred to were based on the willingness of the population
alive at the time of the survey to pay, while the valuations of future generations were disregarded
entirely. The findings of these studies were linearly extrapolated to the global level which caused
inaccuracies. Nor were tipping points or irreversible issues factored into the study. Lastly, it also added
together different subtotals — a practice that does not do justice to the complex interdependencies
between different biomes and eco system services. More recent studies have attempted to improve on
the weaknesses of Costanza et al. (1997). To date, however, there is no topical, comprehensive
evaluation of the global marine and coastal ecosystem services that also takes account of
interdependencies between the different ecosystems. Few studies have yet concerned themselves
with the value of marine ecosystems, and of those that do, even fewer examine deep-sea ecosystems
(Naber et al., 2008). Evaluation studies exist for individual ecosystem services or biomes, especially for
coral reefs, coastal ecosystems and mangroves (TEEB, 2009; Beaudoin and Pendleton, 2012). For
instance, TEEB (2009), working on the basis of various studies, puts the value of coral reefs as high as
US$ 1.2 million per hectare per annum. Another example is a UNEP study of the annual value of the
ecosystems in the Mediterranean, whose minimum estimate came to €26 billion for 2005. This figure
includes the provision of food, recreational uses, climate regulation, the regulation of natural hazards
and waste assimilation (tJNEP WCMC, 2011). All these studies underscore the considerable economic
importance of marine and coastal ecosystems.
Anthro Good – Energy
Oceans are critical to oil reserves and alternative energy. Continued exploitation of
marine ecosystems is critical for long term development and sustainability of energy
resources
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 3334. Magotes
The extraction of fossil energy carriers from the sea has grown in importance over the years. Still
negligible as late as the mid20th century (Priest, 2007), off shore extraction accounted for 37% of the
world’s oil extraction and 27% of its natural-gas extraction in 2007 (BGR, 2009:44, 80). For both oil and
gas there is a noticeable trend towards more offshore extraction compared to extraction on land.
Offshore natural- gas extraction, for example, increased its share of gas production by 20% between
2001 and 2007 alone (BGR, 2009). Reserves are defined as deposits that can be quantified with great
accuracy and extracted at any time today without technical or economic problems — and about 26% (of
oil reserves) or a third (of natural- gas reserves) are situated offshore. New technologies are
increasingly making it possible to tap oil wells and gas fields in ever deeper waters. In the Gulf of
Mexico, for example, offshore oil production was in decline in 2003. Not until it became possible to
extract oil at depths of more than 1.500m was this trend reversed (Keit 2012). Technologies are now
also being developed that enable oil and gas to be extracted in ice-covered waters. However, the
international public has also become aware of the dangers involved in this form of extraction — at the
latest since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, spilling 4.4
million barrels of oil into the sea (according to estimates by Crone and Tolstoy, 2010). A study by the US
National Academy of Science (Committee on Oil in the Sea, 2003) came to the conclusion (albeit before
the above-mentioned disaster) that only about 5% of anthropogenic oil input into the oceans worldwide
is caused by prospecting for and extracting oil, while as much as 22% is attributable to oil transport. By
far the biggest share of anthropogenic oil inputs into the sea — 70% — is caused by the use of oil i.e.
by ships, cars or the run-off from land (from increasingly sealed urban spaces, for example). Yet
although prospecting extraction and transport account for only a small proportion of oil inputs, they
cannot be neglected, as they still have the potential to cause significant damage because of the
concentrated volumes involved. By contrast, inputs from the use of oil tend to be continuous and are
usually distributed over wide areas. In addition, a volume of oil comparable to that which comes from
anthropogenic sources seeps naturally into the oceans from sources on the seabed. It is in the nature of
things that this seepage often occurs in regions where oil is extracted, because the oil deposits are
located there, and this makes it difficult to unambiguously identify the causes in some cases.
Alongside oil and conventional natural gas, the sea also contains deposits of gas hydrates, i.e. ice-like
solid- state compounds of water and methane gas. Similar to terrestrial gas hydrates in pennafrost
regions, marine methane hydrates occur at low temperatures and under high pressure. In the sea, they
are found at depths in excess of 400m, usually on the edges of continental slopes. Identifying the
dimensions of deposits is difficult: current estimates vary between 500 and 3,000 Gt of carbon (WBGU,
2006), i.e. up to 300 times the current annual fossil carbon emissions. Deposits have been confirmed off
the coast of the USA, Canada, Russia, Japan and some countries in Central America and West Africa.
Further deposits are suspected off the coasts of India, China, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia,
New Zealand and various South American countries (Tréhu et al., 2006). Japan, India, China, Canada
and the USA are researching ways to extract marine gas hydrates for commercial use. If it became
possible to do so for marine methane hydrates, available fossil-energy resources will increase
considerably and the transition to an energy system based on renewable energy sources will probably
be further delayed. Moreover, it must be assumed that, as with the spreading commercial extraction
of shale oil and shale gas, more countries than in the past will be able to satisfy their demand for gas
from their own resources and will no longer be dependent on imports. However, a shift in demand for
gas and in gas trade flows as a result of the extraction of marine methane hydrates — as the
International Energy Agency (lEA) already expects as a result of the exploration of shale gas — will very
probably have implications that are difficult to foresee but that could alter the conditions determining
international climate policy. The seabed is increasingly attracting attention as a dump for unwanted
substances left over from the extraction of fossil energy carriers. Since as far back as 1996, the
Norwegian Statoil group has been injecting about a million tonnes of CO2 a year into a sandstone
formation 800 to 1,000m below the seabed (WBGU, 2006:86; Schrag 2009). The CO2 in question is
generated locally in the process of offshore gas extraction, so it is not specially transported to this
storage area. Due to public opposition to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects on land, even the
offshore storage of terrestrial CO2 close to heavily populated coastal areas appears attractive (Schrag,
2009). Up to now, however, there is no experience with storing a flow of CO2 as large as would be
generated by CO2 capture in power plants. Nor have the dangers of leakage from the stores been
sufficiently clarified. Renewable energy sources from the sea are of a much more recent vintage than
the use of fossil energy carriers from the sea. Ocean energy in the narrower sense includes
technologies to use the water’s kinetic energy temperature gradients and salt concentration
gradients. Although some of the basic principles have been known for decades or even centuries,
technological development did not begin to make progress until the 1970s (Lewis et al., 2011). With the
exception of tidal power plants, these technologies are still at the development or demonstration
phase. At the end of 2009, installed capacity barely reached 300 MW (Lewis et al., 2011). Accordingly,
ocean energy tends to be regarded more as a long-term option in the energy system. Offshore wind
power is likewise a relatively new application. At year-end 2009, a mere 1.3% of global wind-power
generation capacity was installed offshore (Lewis et ala, 201 1), However, renewable energy from the
sea has the potential to make a sustainable contribution to a global energy transformation towards
sustainability (Section 1.3.1 and Chapter 5).
Anthro Good – Fisheries
Human management of fish populations is critical to sustain fisheries, develop aqua
culture, and maintain economic growth
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 2728. Magotes
Closely linked to its cultural importance is the use of the sea for human sustenance. The seas have
tradition ally served humankind as a source of food: sea fish and other marine organisms are rich in
valuable proteins, vitamins, minerals and fatty acids. With regard to fishing. Jackson et al. (200fl
distinguish between three phases in the human use of marine ecosystems. These three phases are
distributed in terms of geography and evolved at different times. The first phase is the early use of
coastal-water ecosystems for subsistence purposes involving relatively simple technologies. The second
is the colonial phase in which coastal and continental-shelf regions were exploited by colonial powers,
who channeled their profits into the nascent market economy. The third is the global phase of intensive
and more extensive exploitation of fishing grounds, driven by global consumption patterns and often
accompanied by the collapse of fish stocks. Yet even the original forms of ocean use applied hundreds
or thousands of years ago were enough to bring significant change to fished populations.
Archaeological finds on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, for instance, point to a sharp decline in the
size of the reef fish eaten there between the initial settlement of the island around 1500 BC and 560 BC
(Pinnegar and Engelhard, 2007). Commercially significant fish were already being caught on the
continental shelf around North America and Europe centuries ago. Later, this development spread
around the globe. Pole-and-line fishing gave way to beam-trawl fishing in the 18th century; and the
latter practice was intensified in the 19th century with the deployment of diesel- and steam-powered
ships (Jackson et aL 2001). The first steam ships built especially for fishing were deployed in the North
Sea in the 1880s — and quadrupled the catches compared to sailing boats (Mackinson, 2001; Pinnegar
and Engelhard, 2008). In Australia, too, fishing spread on a large scale along the Great Barrier Reef and
the country’s subtropical east coast in the mid- 19th century. In the first half of the 20th century,
Australia then imported its first steam ships, whereupon catches of the most widely fished species
quickly declined and, later, collapsed entirely (Klaer, 2004).Today, the global fishery industry is in a
critical state . Despite the increased effort being put into fishing and the fact that hitherto
unexploited regions (such as the deep sea) are now also being fished, yields have been stagnating for
years. Today, nearly 90% of global stocks are dassed as either overfished or completely exhausted
(FAO, 2012b: 11; Sections 1.2.2 and 4.1). Growing worldwide demand for fish and seafoods can no
longer be satisfied by fisheries alone; it is therefore increasingly being serviced by aquaculture,
mostly in inland waterways, but also in coastal regions and in the sea. Aquaculture has a very longstanding tradition. It was, for example, practised in fish ponds in China as early as 4,000 years ago. As of
the 1st to 3rd centuries AD, farmers in China also began to breed fish in rice fields (FAO, 2000). In the
course of the 12th and 1 3th centuries, the construction of pools and dams for breeding freshwater fish
spread across large swathes of Europe. When the practice peaked, 25,000 hectares of land in Upper
Silesia and 40,000 hectares in France were used for fish farming in freshwater pools (Roberts,2007:26).
It was probably the low-cost development of the teeming marine hunting grounds that ultimately
stifled demand for freshwater fish and, towards the end of the Middle Ages, brought freshwater
aquaculture to a standstill (Roberts, 2007). The world’s oldest coastal aquaculture farms probably
emerged in Egyptian brackish water pools 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. On Java, the farming of milkfish in
brackish water dates back 600 to 800 years. The cultivation of algae began around 400 years ago in
Japan, shellfish farming about 600 years ago in France. Most other types of coastal aquaculture are
relatively young, having emerged only in the latter decades of the 20th century (Edwards and
Demaine, 1998). Since the 1970s, aquaculture (mainly the freshwater variety but also marine
aquaculture) has experienced a very pronounced worldwide upswing in terms of both production
volume and economic significance. Today, it is one of the fastest growing branches of the economy,
especially in Asia. In 2010 aquaculture already contributed around 47% of global fishery and aquaculture
production for human consumption, and the trend is rising (FAO, 2012b:24, 26). Saltwater and brackishwater farming today accounts for approximately 38% of total aquaculture (excluding plants) in volume
terms. In marine aquaculture, shellfish farming dominates by far in volume terms (roughly 75%),
followed by fish and crustaceans (FAO, 2012b:34, 36; Section 4.2.2.1). At present, aquaculture is in many
cases linked to considerable negative effects on the environment and ecosystems, primarily through
pollution, the trans mission of diseases and the threat to the gene pool of wild fish stocks (Tacon et al..
2010; Section 4.2.2.3). The farming of carnivorous species continues to be a particular problem,
because this branch of aqua culture remains dependent on catches of forage fish, which ultimately
exacerbates the overfishing of marine stocks (Naylor and Burke, 2005; Bostock et al., 2010; Section
4.3). However, production systems (such as recycling systems, integrated multitrophic systems and feed
substitutes) are being developed to help reduce the negative impact of aquaculture production
(Sections 1.3.4, 42.2.4, 4.3.3).
Anthro Good – Trade
Utilizing the ocean is critical to maintain global commerce route that control the entire
economy
Schellnhuber et. al 13, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and chair of the Governing Board of the
Climate-KIC of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology, Dirk Messner, director of the
German Development Institute, Bonn and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global
Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Claus Leggewie, Director of the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen, Institute for Advanced Study of the University Alliance
Metropolis Ruhr and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Studies on Global Cooperation Research,
University Duisburg-Essen, Reinhold Leinfelder, Professor at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Free
University Berlin, focus on geobiology, biodiversity, anthropocene science and science communication,
Nebosja Nakicenovic, Professor of Energy Economics, Vienna University of Technology and Deputy
Director, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, Stefan
Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University and head of the Climate System
department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Sabine Schlacke, Professor of Public
Law, specializing German, European and International Environmental and Administrative Law, Bremen
University, Jurgen Schmid, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System
Technology (IWES), Kassel, Renate Schubert, Professor for Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute for
Technology and director of the Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), “World
in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage,” German Advisory Council on Global Change, 2013, Pg. 2829. Magotes
Humans have also been using the oceans as a means of transport since very early on in their history
While air traffic is increasingly shaping human mobility around the globe, the sea has remained by far
the most important means of intercontinental transport for trade in raw materials and freight.
Maritime global trade Global long- distance merchandise trade is conducted almost exclusively (95%)
by sea (Flottenkommando der Marine, 2011:94) and has witnessed forceful growth in recent years .
Few ocean regions are still completely devoid of shipping transport (Figure 1.1-1). Container shipping
in particular - and especially maritime trade with Asia - has been growing and continues to grow Oil arid
petroleum products accounted for 32.7% of all goods traded by sea in 2010. The five most important
bulk commodities — iron ore, coal, bauxite, aluminum oxide and phosphate — accounted for 27.7%,
while other freight goods made up 23.5% (Figure 1.1-2).16% of all goods traded by sea were transported
in containers in 2010 (UNCTAD, 2011:10). Asia has today become the foremost maritime trading region,
followed by America and Europe (UNCTAD, 2011). The volume of international maritime trade
quadrupled in the space of 40 years compared to 1968. In 2009 regular (non chartered) shipping lines
alone carried goods worth a total of US$4. S billion (World Shipping Council, 2012), equivalent to
nearly a tenth of global GDP. The transport of oil and bulk materials such as coal and iron ore adds up
to a similar amount.
***General
Permutation—General
Only the permutation enables tough decision-making—the alternative alone results in
policy and ethical paralysis.
Grey 93, [ William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
There are a number of problems with such a permissive criterion of moral considerability. One is that
there are conflicts of interest between goal-directed entities, and something needs to be said about
how these are to be resolved. Smallpox and HIV no doubt have their own viral autonomy (as well as
being the products of natural historical processes), but for all that it is perfectly legitimate to
disregard their interests when they conflict with our own. Yet it is hard to see how a decision to deny
them a place in the scheme of things can be defended except by appeal to a value system which
favours human interests. Plumwood allows that in casting the moral net widely we will have to "make
distinctions for appropriate treatment within each class of items" (p. 147). It seems reasonable to
suspect that human standards of appropriateness will be brought to bear to settle cases where such
conflicts arise. Another difficulty with this approach is that goal-directedness is a very general and
very pervasive characteristic of both organic and inorganic systems. It is implausible to suppose that
we have any obligation to respect the equilibrium states of inorganic systems, goal directed though
they may be. Energy moves in the direction of increasing entropy (downhill all the way); planets have
stable and predictable paths which are the outcomes of continuing processes. Teleology is just too
pervasive and too indiscriminate a characteristic to provide a plausible foundation for moral
considerability. It may be prudent to reflect on the consequences of perturbing inorganic systems
which have a natural direction, but it is not at all plausible to construe this as an obligation to those
systems. Moreover as Thompson (1990, pp. 152f.) has pointed out, the criterion of goal-directedness
is problematic even when restricted to the organic world. Parts of organisms, such as kidneys, as well
as populations of organisms, can be characterized teleologically, but it is implausible to suppose that
this fact carries any moral clout. Plumwood is right in responding to Thompson to say that what is
wrong is that this objection ignores the importance of different organic levels of organization
(Plumwood 1991, p. 146), but choosing the right level of organization is an interest-sensitive matter.
The permutation is better than the alternative alone—key to ethical decision-making.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
My aim however is not to bury anthropocentrism, but to defend it, at least in a qualified form. My
claim is that if we attempt to step too far outside the scale of the recognizably human, rather than
expanding and enriching our moral horizons we render them meaningless, or at least almost
unrecognizable. The grand perspective of evolutionary biology provides a reductio ad absurdum of
the cluster of non-anthropocentric ethics which can be found under the label "deep ecology". What
deep ecology seeks to promote, and what deep ecologists seek to condemn, needs to be articulated
from a distinctively human perspective. And this is more than the trivial claim that our perspectives,
values and judgements are necessarily human <464> perspectives, values and judgements. Within the
moral world we do occupy a privileged position.
Environmental solutions must be sustainable—ignoring human needs means there will
be an inevitable backlash that dismantles the alternative.
Farber 99, [Daniel, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota. Eco-Pragmatism, Pg. 12-3.]
The ultimate challenge for environmental law is social sustainability. It will do little good to save the
planet today, only to lose it tomorrow. Thus, we need an approach that not only embodies our firm
commitment to the environment, but also recognizes competing goals and the need to keep up with
changing scientific knowledge. Otherwise, we will have a regulatory structure that is too draconian
for us to live with in the long run. Among the components of the global eco-system are the clever,
idealistic, aggressive, acquisitive creatures known as homo sapiens. Environmental law must create a
hospitable environment for them as well as for other organisms. Environmental law must be
pluralistic and flexible if it is to endure. Eco-pragmatism is a rough and ready approach to
environmental policy, perhaps lacking in elegance, but durable enough for hard wear. The need to
make environmental law “sustainable” is a theme that runs through much of the book. It helps drive
arguments on a wide range of topics. For instance, chapter 2 argues that we should reject the premise
that economic interests are mere “preferences,” entitled to little or no consideration compared with
environmental values. Underlying the argument, in part, is a concern about sustainability. Given the
nature of human behavior in modern societies, it is unrealistic to expect environmental programs
base on such an austere premise to endure long. In chapter 4, for similar reasons, I argue that we
should be prepared to modify environmental regulations whenever their costs are grossly
disproportionate to any possible benefits. Chapter 5 discusses the extent to which current generations
can realistically be expected to make sacrifices on behalf of distant descendants, and among other
topics, chapter 6 considers how we can prevent outmoded regulations from eroding the overall
credibility of environmental law. In taking these positions, my goal is not to undermine environmental
values, but to implement them in a way that we can expect to endure, as opposed to heroic efforts
that are likely to fade after a few years. Environmental protection is a marathon, not a sprint.
Permutation solves best—understanding that nature has both intrinsic and
instrumental value creates pragmatic conservation.
Minteer 06, [Ben A., Assistant Professor in the Human Dimensions of Biology Faculty in the School of
Life Sciences at Arizona State University. “The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and
Environmental Thought in America,” p. 3, Google Books. ]
Although I describe it more fully in the individual chapters, one of the noteworthy features of the third
way tradition in environmental thought is its embrace of a pluralistic mode of environmental value
and action that accommodates both the prudent use and the preservation of nature, rather than
demanding that we must always choose between these commitments. It is a way of thinking, in other
words, that accepts the interpenetrating character of intrinsic and instrumental values in experience,
the basic continuity of means and ends in environmental thought and practice. As such, the third way
tradition is a strand within environmentalism that cannot be accurately characterized as either narrowly
anthropocentric or ecocentric. Rather, it incorporates critical elements of both sensibilities in a more
holistic, balanced, and practical vision of human environmental experience. Furthermore, this
pragmatic strain in environmental thought views humans as thoroughly embedded in natural systems.
Yet this recognition does not lead to the conclusion that humans have carte blanche with respect to
the natural world, or that there is no moral limit to the domination of human will over the landscape.
Instead, the third way view supports a wider and more integrative perspective in which human ideals
and interests (including economic interests, but also other nonmaterial social, cultural, and political
values) are understood to be wrapped up in the natural and built environment, and are secured and
promoted through deliberate and broad-based planning and conservation efforts . While respectful of
wilderness geographies and values, this tradition nevertheless represents a retreat from pure
preservationist forms of environmentalism to views that accommodate ecologically benign and adaptive
forms of technological enterprise and sustainable community development on the landscape.
Permutation—Weak Anthropocentrism
The permutation is weak anthropocentrism—solves their impact and the case.
Brown 95, [Charles S. Brown, Professor of Philosophy at Emporia State University, 1995
(“Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: the quest for a new worldview,” The Midwest Quarterly, Volume
36, Number 2, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Information Access)]
The feminist critique of deep ecology suggests a strategy for developing a benign form of
anthropocentrism by noting that political and ecological oppression have been perpetrated by certain
classes in the interest of those classes. Deep ecology is theoretically equipped to handle the charge that
it is not humanity in general which is responsible for political oppression and ecological destruction but
only certain classes by noting that these oppressive classes have always legitimated their control not on
the basis that they were men, or Capitalists, or Christian, but as Fox says "rather on the ground that they
have most exemplified whatever it is that has been taken to constitute the essence of humanity (e.g.
being favored by God or processing rationality)". Such social classes have implicitly assumed that they
were the rightful agents to act in the name of humanity because they, as males, as Christians, as
Capitalists, as Marxists, more nearly approached the essence of humanness. It is true that
anthropocentrism takes on an androcentric flavor when the most powerful class of social agents is men.
When anthropocentrism is in the service of Capitalism it is the Hobbesian man seeking ever greater
degrees of power that is seen to constitute the essence of humanity. When anthropocentrism is in the
service of Marxism it is the unalienated worker transforming nature into serviceable goods that
exemplifies true humanity. Deep ecologists are free to recognize that anthropocentrism has always
been articulated from the interests of one class or group which assumes its interests represents the
true interest of humanity. Deep ecologists maintain that by eliminating anthropocentrism we shall
remove this bottom line legitimation from any group seeking to universalize its own interests.
Nevertheless, the fact that anthropocentrism has served as the most fundamental kind of legitimation
employed by repressive classes everywhere does not show that anthropocentrism per se is
responsible for such repression. At most it shows that anthropocentrism coupled with some class bias
concerning the essence of human nature which serves to devalue the interests of weaker classes and
absolutize the interests of stronger classes is inherently a non-egalitarian ideology useful for
sanctioning the oppression of weaker classes. Deep ecologists, however, are quick to point out that
even if anthropocentrism were not infected with some class bias and the legitimating ideologies for nonegalitarian societies were removed, such a framework would still clearly separate the human from the
non-human and would be ecologically exploitative. Removing class bias from the articulation of
anthropocentrism only alleviates the oppression of classes whose interests are antithetical to the
interests of the dominating classes. In any form of anthropocentrism the particular dualism of human
and non-human, or culture and nature, remains intact. If all human liberation were to be achieved,
nature would still be considered to be inferior and subordinate to anthropocentric concerns. Even if the
deep ecologists are right on this point, the feminist critique allows us to see that anthropocentrism
comes in a variety of flavors with some possibly more lethal than others. The general strategy of
unmasking class-biased articulations of anthropocentrism suggests the possibility that there may exist
other articulations of anthropocentrism incorporating biases which transcend those of particular classes.
I have in mind biases which reflect the shapes of entire historical epochs. Henryk Skolimowski traces the
current ecological crisis to a form of anthropocentrism wedded with the objective thinking inherent in
our scientific-technological worldview. The belief present in Christianity and in the ideologies of modern
industrial states (Capitalism and Marxism), that nature is the dominion given to humanity for its own
use, and our current technological prowess with its emphasis on technological solutions to all problems
have generated the ecological disaster towards which we are leading. To quote Skolimowski: The
language may be different in each case but the basic premise is the same. Nature and environment are
for us; it is a dominion given to man by God (Christianity); it is a natural resource which can and should
be used for the amelioration of mankind (Marxism). (110)
Animals Have No Rights
Animals can’t have rights—they aren’t moral agents.
Feinberg 74, [Joel, American political and social philosopher who taught at institutions including
Brown University, UCLA, Princeton, retired as Regents Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University
of Arizona. “The Rights of Animals and Future Generations,” Philosophy and Environmental Crisis,
http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/feinberg01.htm.]
Even if we allow, as I think we must, that animals are the directly intended beneficiaries of legislation
forbidding cruelty to animals, it does not follow directly that animals have legal rights; and Gray
himself, for one, refused to draw this further inference. Animals cannot have rights, he thought, for the
same reason they cannot have duties, namely, that they are not genuine "moral agents." Now, it is
relatively easy to see why animals cannot have duties, and this matter is largely beyond controversy.
Animals cannot be "reasoned with" or instructed in their responsibilities; they are inflexible and
unadaptable to future contingencies; they are incapable of controlling instinctive impulses. Hence,
they cannot enter into contractual agreements, or make promises; they cannot be trusted; and they
cannot (except within very narrow limits and for purposes of conditioning) be blamed for what would
be called "moral failures" in a human being. They are therefore incapable of being moral subjects, of
acting rightly or wrongly in the moral senses, of having, discharging, or breaching duties and
obligations . But what is there about the intellectual incompetence of animals (which admittedly
disqualifies them for duties) that makes them logically unsuitable for rights? The most common reply to
this question is that animals are incapable of claiming rights on their own. They cannot make motion,
on their own, to courts to have their claims recognized or enforced; they cannot initiate, on their own,
any kind of legal proceedings; nor are they capable of even understanding when their rights are being
violated, or distinguishing harm from wrongful injury, and responding with indignation and an
outraged sense of justice instead of mere anger or fear.
Anthro Inevitable
It’s impossible to escape anthropocentrism—the alt fails.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
The attempt to provide a genuinely non-anthropocentric set of values, or preferences seems to be a
hopeless quest. Once we eschew all human values, interests and preferences we are confronted with
just too many alternatives, as we can see when we consider biological history over a billion year time
scale. The problem with the various non-anthropocentric bases for value which have been proposed
is that they permit too many different possibilities, not all of which are at all congenial to us. And that
matters. We should be concerned to promote a rich, diverse and vibrant biosphere. Human
flourishing may certainly be included as a legitimate part of such a flourishing. The preoccupations of
deep ecology arise as a result of human activities which impoverish and degrade the quality of the
planet's living systems. But these judgements are possible only if we assume a set of values (that is,
preference rankings), based on human preferences. We need to reject not anthropocentrism, but a
particularly short term and narrow conception of human interests and concerns. What's wrong with
shallow views is not their concern about the well-being of humans, but that they do not really
consider enough in what that well-being consists. We need to develop an enriched, fortified
anthropocentric notion of human interest to replace the dominant short-term, sectional and selfregarding conception. Our sort of world, with our sort of fellow occupants is an interesting and
engaging place. There is every reason for us to try to keep it, and ourselves, going for a few more
cosmic seconds [10].
The alternative fails—can’t escape anthropocentrism.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
There is an obvious tension which arises when attempting to rectify the first two worries at the same
time. For extolling the virtues of the natural, while at the same time vilifying the man-made or
artificial, depends on a distinction between the natural and the artificial which the stress on a
continuity between human and nonhuman (the focus of the second worry) undermines. On the one
side there is emphasis on continuity and dependency, and on the other on distinctness and
separation. It seems that, while we are a part of nature, our actions are nevertheless unnatural. This
is one of the points where deep ecologists often risk lapsing into an incoherence, from which they are
able to save themselves (as I will illustrate) with the help of a little covert anthropocentrism. Or
putting the point another way, a suitably enriched (non-atomistic) conception of humans as an integral
part of larger systems—that is, correcting the misconception of humanity as distinct and separate
from the natural world—means that anthropocentric concern for our own well-being naturally flows
on to concern for the nonhuman world. If we value ourselves and our projects, and part of us is
constituted by the natural world, then these evaluations will be transmitted to the world. That we
habitually assume characteristically anthropocentric perspectives and values is claimed by deep
ecologists to be a defect. And as a corrective to this parochialism, we are invited to assume an
"ecocentric" (Rolston 1986, Callicott 1989) or "biocentric" (Taylor 1986) perspective. I am not
persuaded, however, that it is intelligible to abandon our anthropocentric perspective in favour of one
which is more inclusive or expansive. We should certainly abandon a crude conception of human
needs which equates them (roughly) with the sort of needs which are satisfied by extravagant
resource use. But the problem with so-called "shallow" views lies not in their anthropocentrism, but
rather with the fact that they are characteristically short-term, sectional, and self-regarding. A
suitably enriched and enlightened anthropocentrism provides the wherewithal for a satisfactory ethic
of obligation and concern for the nonhuman world. And a genuinely non-anthropocentric view
delivers only confusion.
The alternative can’t replace anthropocentric values.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
Other natural properties—such as biodiversity, beauty, harmony, stability, and integrity—have been
proposed to provide a non-anthropocentric basis for value. But unless we smuggle in some
anthropocentric bearings, they fare no better than the property of being the outcome of a natural
process in providing an intuitively plausible ordering of better and worse states of the world. For
example, if biodiversity is taken as a basic value-giving characteristic, then the state of the planet just
after the Cambrian explosion (about 570 million years ago) would be rated much more highly than the
world of the present, as it was far richer in terms of the range and diversity of its constituent
creatures. Most biology textbooks recognize between twenty and thirty extant animal phyla—the
phylum being the fundamental design plan of an organism (and the second broadest classification,
following 'kingdom', in biological taxonomy). Yet the Burgess Shale, one small quarry in British
Columbia dating back some 530 million years, contains the remains of fifteen to twenty organisms so
unlike one another, or anything now living, as to each constitute a separate phylum (Gould 1989). In
terms of basic diversity, a far greater range of radically different anatomical types existed at that
epoch of evolutionary development. These examples disclose a serious difficulty for a view such as
Goodin's which seeks a non-anthropocentric naturalistic basis for value [9]. The fundamental problem
is that we can rank preferences only given some anthropocentric bearings. An austerely ecocentric or
biocentric perspective delivers no determinate answer as to which of the abundant and wonderfully
various unfolding planetary biotas should be preferred.
Anthropocentrism has become inevitable and impassable.
Arnould & Debus 08, [Jacques Arnould & André Debus. An ethical approach to planetary protection.
Advances in Space Research 42 (2008) 1089–1095.]
Scientific development, as earlier alluded, has put humanity in a singular position. On the one hand,
modern sciences have demonstrated (sometimes to an inordinate extent) that human species is
immersed in a cosmic, bio- logical as well as historical reality, and that human beings are only one part
among a multitude of others – thus depriving us of any possible claim to occupy a central or pinnacle
position. And on the other, these same sci- ences have at the same time demanded and contributed to
unprecedented levels of technological expertise: people in the 20th century were the first to become,
albeit partially, what Rene Descartes called the ‘‘masters and possessors of nature”, achieving greater
autonomy with respect to nature and in the same time increasing responsibility for it. Indeed,
Dominique Bourg proposes a dis- tinction between speculative anthropocentrism (based on the former
reasoning of different cultures on the place of humankind within nature) and practical anthropocentrism
(resulting from the actual and responsible central place occupied by human societies) (Bourg, 1993, p.
227). Of course, in the great scheme of the cosmos and its history, ‘‘the world began without man,
and it will end without him. . .” to quote the famous words of Claude Le v́ i-Strauss (Le ́vi-Strauss, 1955,
p. 447); but, for the moment at least, this practical anthropocentrism remains impassable. The
position of humanity on the Earth would seem incompat- ible with the idea of equality between all
species ; or, as Joseph Ki-Zerbo wisely noted: ‘‘If humankind has the same status as all other living
creatures, then why blame humans alone for all current disasters?” (Ki-Zerbo, 1992, p. 30). That being
the case, who can humanity count on to act or to set standards and values, if not on itself? It is the
principle of modern humanism that places humanity as both the source of values and the supreme end
in itself. The humanist position should not necessarily be under- stood as requiring a profession of
atheism or a total disin- terest in everything non-human. On the contrary, the sentiment of contingency
associated with contemporary humanism calls for greater attention and care with respect to the
consequences of human actions. While not seen as a partner, the terrestrial biosphere can no longer be
consid- ered as simply a backdrop of minor importance to the human comedy or tragedy. The same is
now true, though to a lesser extent, of the broader space environment made up of the other celestial
bodies. Whether they arouse the interest of scientists, the desire of businessmen or the imag- ination of
utopian visionaries, these celestial bodies fall nonetheless within the sphere of human influence, real or
potential. Contemporary humanism is tinged with universalism.
Anthro Good – Biosphere
Anthropocentrism is inevitable and good—the alternative links to the critique and
makes it impossible to protect the biosphere.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)
The attempt to provide a genuinely non-anthropocentric set of values, or preferences seems to be a
hopeless quest. Once we eschew all human values, interests and preferences we are confronted with
just too many alternatives, as we can see when we consider biological history over a billion year time
scale. The problem with the various non-anthropocentric bases for value which have been proposed
is that they permit too many different possibilities, not all of which are at all congenial to us. And that
matters. We should be concerned to promote a rich, diverse and vibrant biosphere. Human
flourishing may certainly be included as a legitimate part of such a flourishing. The preoccupations of
deep ecology arise as a result of human activities which impoverish and degrade the quality of the
planet's living systems. But these judgements are possible only if we assume a set of values (that is,
preference rankings), based on human preferences. We need to reject not anthropocentrism, but a
particularly short term and narrow conception of human interests and concerns. What's wrong with
shallow views is not their concern about the well-being of humans, but that they do not really
consider enough in what that well-being consists. We need to develop an enriched, fortified
anthropocentric notion of human interest to replace the dominant short-term, sectional and selfregarding conception. Our sort of world, with our sort of fellow occupants is an interesting and
engaging place. There is every reason for us to try to keep it, and ourselves, going for a few more
cosmic seconds [10].
Anthro Good – Environment
Rejection of anthropocentrism undermines pragmatic attempts at environmental
protection.
Light 02, [Andrew Light, July 2002. Associate professor of philosophy and environmental policy, and
director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University. “Contemporary Environmental
Ethics From Metaethics to Public Philosophy,” Metaphilosophy 33.4, Ebsco.]
With this variety of views in the field, how should environmental ethics proceed? One answer would be
that it will simply proceed, whether it should or not, as a new set of debates between the more
traditional non anthropocentric views and the biocentric, anthropocentric, or other alternative views
briefly mentioned at the end of the previous section. Many anthropocentric environmental ethicists
seem determined to do just that (see Norton 1995 and Callicott 1996). There is, however, an alternative:
in addition to continuing the tradition of most environmental ethics as philosophical sparring among
philosophers, we could turn our attention to the question of how the work of environmental ethicists
could be made more useful in taking on the environmental problems to which environmental ethics is
addressed as those problems are undertaken in policy terms. The problems with contemporary
environmental ethics are arguably more practical than philosophical, or at least their resolution in
more practical terms is more important than their resolution in philosophical terms at the present
time. For even though there are several dissenters from the dominant traditions in environmental
ethics, the more important consideration is the fact that the world of natural-resource management
(in which environmental ethicists should hope to have some influence, in the same way that medical
ethicists have worked for influence over the medical professions) takes a predominantly
anthropocentric approach to assessing natural value, as do most other humans (more on this point in
the next section). Environmental ethics appears more concerned with overcoming human interests
than redirecting them toward environmental concerns. As a consequence, a nonanthropocentric form
of ethics has limited appeal to such an audience, even if it were true that this literature provides the
best reasons for why nature has value (de-Shalit 2000).9 And not to appeal to such an audience
arguably means that we are not having an effect either on the formation of better environmental
polices or on the project of engendering public support for them. As such, I would argue, environmental
ethics is not living up to its promise as a field of philosophy attempting to help resolve environmental
problems. It is instead evolving mostly as a field of intramural philosophical debate. To demonstrate
better how the dominant framework of environmental ethics is hindering our ability to help address
environmental problems, let us examine a more specific case where the narrow rejection of
anthropocentrism has hindered a more effective philosophical contribution to debates in
environmental policy.
Human-centered ethics necessitate protecting the environment—change is possible
without adopting a bio-centrism.
Hwang 03, Kyung-sig, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Seoul National University.
“Apology for Environmental Anthropocentrism,” Asian Bioethics in the 21st Century,
http://eubios.info/ABC4/abc4304.htm.
The third view, which will be defended here, is that there is no need for a specifically ecological ethic to
explain our obligations toward nature, that our moral rights and duties can satisfactorily be explained
in terms of traditional, human-centered ethical theory.[4] In terms of this view, ecology bears on
ethics and morality in that it brings out the far-reaching, extremely important effects of man's actions,
that much that seemed simply to happen-extinction of species, depletion of resources, pollution, over
rapid growth of population, undesirable, harmful, dangerous, and damaging uses of technology and
science - is due to human actions that are controllable, preventable, by men and hence such that men
can be held accountable for what occurs. Ecology brings out that, often acting from the best motives,
however, simply from short-sighted self-interest without regard for others living today and for those yet
to be born, brings about very damaging and often irreversible changes in the environment, changes such
as the extinction of plant and animal species, destruction of wilderness and valuable natural phenomena
such as forests, lakes, rivers, seas. Many reproduce at a rate with which their environment cannot cope,
so that damage is done, to and at the same time, those who are born are ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-sheltered, illeducated. Moralists concerned with the environment have pressed the need for a basic rethinking of
the nature of our moral obligations in the light of the knowledge provided by ecology on the basis of
personal, social, and species prudence, as well as on general moral grounds in terms of hitherto
unrecognized and neglected duties in respect of other people, people now living and persons yet to be
born, those of the third world, and those of future generation, and also in respect of preservation of
natural species, wilderness, and valuable natural phenomena. Hence we find ecological moralists who
adopt this third approach, writing to the effect that concern for our duties entail concern for our
environment and the ecosystems it contains. Environmental ethics is concerned with the moral
relation that holds between humans and the natural world, the ethical principles governing those
relations determine our duties, obligations, and responsibilities with regard to the earth's natural
environment and all the animals and plants inhabit it. A human-centered theory of environmental
ethics holds that our moral duties with respect to the natural world are all ultimately derived from the
duties we owe to one another as human beings. It is because we should respect the human rights, or
should protect and promote the well being of humans, that we must place certain constraints on our
treatment of the earth's environment and its non-human habitants.[5]
Anthro Good – Humans Rock!
Life in some form is inevitable but human life is uniquely good—radical ecology makes
extinction inevitable.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
A great deal of hyperbole has been deployed in articulating the claims of deep ecology. It is common,
for example, to encounter claims that destructive human activity—and in particular human
technology—is threatening life on the planet; that we are disrupting the delicate fabric of the
ecosphere, and driving it towards collapse. Such claims are exaggerated. There have been far more
traumatic disruptions to the planet than any we can initiate. From a long-term planetary perspective,
this is alarmist nonsense. However from an anthropocentric point of view such fears may be well
founded. If the concerns for humanity and nonhuman species raised by advocates of deep ecology are
expressed as concerns about the fate of the planet, then these concerns are misplaced. From a
planetary perspective, we may be entering a phase of mass extinction of the magnitude of the
Cretaceous. For planet earth that is just another incident in a four and a half billion year saga. Life
will go on—in some guise or other. The arthropods, algae and the ubiquitous bacteria, at least, will
almost certainly be around for a few billion years more. And with luck and good management, some
of the more complex and interesting creatures, such as ourselves, may continue for a while longer as
well. Of course our present disruptive and destructive activities are, or should be, of great concern to
us all. But that is a quite properly human concern, expressing anthropocentric values from an
anthropocentric perspec- <469> tive. Life will continue; but we should take steps to maintain and
preserve our sort of living planet; one that suits us and, with a few exceptions, our biotic co-existents.
Eco-Fascism DA
The alternative in practice it results in Eco-fascism- the Earth First! Organization
proves.
Huebert and Block 07, [J. H. Huebert, J.D., Chicago University, and Walter Block, College of Business
Administration, Loyola University, New Orleans, 2007. [Space Environmentalism, Property Rights, and
Law, The University of Memphis Law Review, pg. 281-309]
In the second half of the twentieth century, another type of environmentalism came to the fore:
ecocentric environmentalism. (Ecocentric environmentalism is also sometimes referred to as "deep
ecology," to contrast it with the "shallowness" of anthropocentric concern for the environment.)10
Originated by Aldo Leopold, who conceived the idea of the "land ethic," ecocentric environmentalism
holds that the environment itself is intrinsically valuable, and that human beings themselves have
value only to the extent that they play a role in, and support, this environmental whole.11 According
to radical ecocentrism, only "ecological wholes (such as species, ecosystems, the land or the biotic
community) . . . have a value in themselves .. . and . . . the value of the ecological parts ... is
determined by how far they contribute to the survival and well-being of the ecological whole."12 The
ecocentric view is not limited to concern for animals or even plants, but extends to the entire Earth,
dirt and rocks included.13 Everything on Earth, except for humans, is seen as possessing "intrinsic
value" (i.e., value somehow derived from itself, not from man) that is destroyed or threatened by any
human tampering at all.14 The real-world implications of this philosophy can be seen, for example, in
the activities of the Earth First! organization, which is known for, among other things, putting spikes in
trees so lumberjacks or mill workers who cut them may be injured or killed.15 Earth First! leader
Richard Foreman states the ends of ecocentric environmentalism bluntly: "We advocate bio-diversity
for biodiversity's sake. That says man is no more important than any other species . . . . It may well
take our extinction to set things straight."16
Eco-Pragmatism Good
Incremental changes add up—pragmatism in the context of ecology is better than
their alternative
Hirokawa 02, [Keith Hirokawa, J.D. from the University of Connecticut and LL.M. from the
Northwestern School of Law, 2002 (“Some Pragmatic Observations About Radical Critique In
Environmental Law,” Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Volume 21, June, Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)]
Changes in each instance create entirely new contexts in which more (or less) progressive arguments
find a hold. Every time a change occurs, even if it is incremental or ostensibly seems benign, the
change creates a new context within which an entirely new set of possibilities will arise. n230 The
pragmatist therefore evaluates progress by the distance a new idea causes practices to move away
from past practices and paradigms.
The difference between the pragmatic version of progress and the Kuhnian version is one only of
degree. In the end, the results of both versions of progress are the same - we look back at the change
and realize that earlier ideas do not make sense anymore. The effectiveness of the pragmatic approach
lies in the simple realization that, in adopting an innovative approach to a legal question, courts will
find comfort in adopting what appears to be an incremental change, rather than a radical
paradigmatic shift. In [*278] contrast to radical theorists that deny the existence of progress because
of a failure to immediately reach the radical goals of alternative paradigms, the pragmatist recognizes
that a series of incremental changes eventually add up. Environmental pragmatism enables
environmentalists to seek achievable gains by focusing on minor improvements in the law that
incrementally close the gap between the values that pre-existed current environmental law and the
alternative paradigms of environmental protection.
Extinction DA
Their alternative means we all die—it makes extinction inevitable.
Grey 93, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1993
(“Anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology,” Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 71, Number 4,
Available Online at http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/anthropocentrism.html, Accessed 07-272011)]
Suppose that astronomers detect a modest asteroid or comet, say five or ten kilometres diameter, on
collision course with planet Earth [8]. The impending collision would be perfectly natural all right, and
cataclysmic enough to do to us what another one rather like it probably did to the dinosaurs. Such
periodic disruptive events are natural all right, though they probably destroy most of the then extant
large life forms. These times of renewal provide opportunities for smaller, flexible organisms to
radiate opportunistically into vacated niches, and life goes on. From a biocentric or ecocentric
perspective there is little doubt that our demise would provide comparable opportunities for
development which we currently prevent. Should we, in <470> such circumstances, step aside so that
evolution can continue on its majestic course? I think not, and I think further that interference with
the natural course of events, if it could be effected, would be no bad thing—at least from our point of
view and in terms of our interests, which it is quite legitimate to promote and favour.
Suppose again that we are entering one of the periodic epochs of reduced solar energy flux. An ice
age is imminent, with massive disruptions to the agriculturally productive temperate zones. However
suppose further that by carefully controlled emissions of greenhouse gases it would be possible to
maintain a stable and productive agriculture. No doubt this would be to the detriment of various
arctic plant and animal species, but I do not think that such interference, though "unnatural" would
be therefore deplorable. Nature in and of itself is not, I suggest, something to be valued
independently of human interests. It could be argued moreover that in thus modifying our natural
environment, we would be following the precedent of three billion years of organic evolution, since
according to the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock (1979), the atmosphere and oceans are not just biological
products, but biological constructions.
Anthropocentrism key to survival—understanding the importance of ecosystems to
future generations solves environmental destruction but radical biocentrism causes
extinction.
Hwang 03, Kyung-sig, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Seoul National University.
“Apology for Environmental Anthropocentrism,” Asian Bioethics in the 21st Century,
http://eubios.info/ABC4/abc4304.htm.
While our ability to affect the future is immense, our ability to foresee the results of our
environmental interventions is not. I think that our moral responsibility grows with foresight. And yet,
paradoxically in some cases grave moral responsibility is entailed by the fact of one's ignorance. If the
planetary life-support system appears to be complex and mysterious, humble ignorance should
indicate respect and restraint. However, as many life scientists have complained, these virtues have not
been apparent in these generations. Instead they point out, we have boldly marched ahead, shredding
delicate ecosystems and obliterating countless species, and with them the unique genetic codes that
evolved through millions of years; we have altered the climate and even the chemistry of the
atmosphere, and as a result of all this-what?[18] A few results are immediately to our benefit; more
energy, more mineral resources, more cropland, convenient waste disposal. Indeed, these short-term
payoffs motivated us to alter our natural environment. But by far the larger and more significant results,
the permanent results, are unknown and perhaps unknowable. Nature, says poet, Nancy Newhall,
"holds answers to more questions than we know how to ask." And we have scarcely bothered to
ask.[19] Year and year, the natural habitants diminish and the species disappear, and thus our
planetary ecosystem (our household) is forever impoverished. It is awareness of ecological crisis that
has led to the now common claim that we need transvaluation of value, new values, a new ethic, and
an ethic that is essentially and not simply contingently new and ecological. Closer inspection usually
reveals that the writer who states this does not really mean to advance such a radical thesis, that all
he is arguing for is the application of old, recognized, ethical values of the kind noted under the
characterization of respect for persons, justice, honesty, promotion of good, where pleasure and
happiness are seen as goods. Thus, although W. T. Blackstone writes; "we do not need the kind of
transvaluation that Nietzsche wanted, but we do need that for which ecologists are calling, that is, basic
changes in man's attitude toward nature and man's place in nature, toward population growth, toward
the use of technology, and toward the production and distribution of goods and services." We need to
develop what I call the ecological attitude. The transvaluation of values, which is needed, will require
fundamental changes in the social, legal, political and economic institutions that embody our values. He
concludes his article by explicitly noting that he does not really demand a new ethic, or a
transvaluation of values. A human being is a hierarchical system and a component of superindividual, hierarchical system of sets. What is needed is not the denial of anthropocentrism, the
placing of the highest value on humans and their ends and the conceiving of the rest of the nature as
an instrument for those ends. Rather what is needed is the explicit recognition of these hierarchical
systems and an ecological approach to science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge in which
the myriad casual relationships between different hierarchical systems are recognized and put to the
use of humanity. The freedom to use the environment must be restricted to rational and human use.
If there is irrational use - pollution, overpopulation, crowding, a growth in poverty, and so on - people
may wipe out hierarchies of life related to their own survival and to the quality of their own lives. This
sort of anthropocentrism is essential even to human survival and a radical biotic egalitarianism would
undermine conditions for that survival.[20] Rational anthropocentrism, one that recognizes the value
of human life "transcends our individual life" and one in which we form a collective bond of identity
with the future generations is essential is the process of human evolution.
Humans Key to Value
There is no pristine nature with value outside of the human.
Frodeman 08, [Robert Frodeman, Asst Prof Phil and Religious Studies at UNT, 2008 with Erin Daly
“Separated at Birth, Signs of Rapprochement: Environmental Ethics and Space Exploration” Ethics & the
Environment 13.1]
Martyn Fogg, on the other hand, notes that efforts to protect a bar- ren environment are often
misanthropic critiques of human nature emphasizing our capacity for evil, or sentimental illusions
based on out- of-date ecology. He offers as an example the ecocentrist notion of ecological harmony—
“that there exists an ideal balance in nature that is perfect, unchanging, and which nurtures and
sustains”(Fogg 2000a, 209). Such a state is a cozy sentimentality, he claims.“Nature is...better regarded
as a continuous state of flux dominated by chaos and dishar- mony”(ibid.). Fogg counters Alan
Marshall’s argument that rocks exist in a state of ‘blissful satori’ by stating,“rocks don’t think, don’t act
and don’t care.They cannot have values of their own”(ibid.,210).
Rocks have no value absent relation to the human.
Frodeman 08, [Robert Frodeman, Asst Prof Phil and Religious Studies at UNT, 2008 with Erin Daly
“Separated at Birth, Signs of Rapprochement: Environmental Ethics and Space Exploration” Ethics & the
Environment 13.1]
The question, however, of whether e.g., rocks have intrinsic value is different from whether they have
values of their own. Abiotic nature can also have value through the relatednessof nature and natural
objects to human beings. This value resides in the daily presence of humans in nature,humans as part
of nature—something not (yet) true of the extra- terrestrial world. We may be confident that rocks do
not think, or have values of their own. But humans can nonetheless value rocks for their own sake—
they can be experienced as beautiful, sublime, or sacred. Metaphysical, aesthetic, and theological
questions such as these must be included as we address issues of terraforming.
Extinction is ethically bankrupt—values are relational and cannot exist without the
human valuer.
Fox 87, Michael Phil Prof @ Queens U, Canada “nuclear weapons and the ultimate environmental
crisis,” Environmental Ethics, p. 175-178
Finally, deep ecologists, like Bill Devall and George Sessions, Arne Naess, and Paul Taylor, argue for a
radical shift from homocentric or anthropocentric locus of valuation and ethical thinking to a biocentric
or ecocentric one. That is, they are firmly committed to the position that nonhuman life forms have
independent, intrinsic, or inherent value, that they possess value in and of themselves and without
reference to human experiences, interests, or needs. It is claimed further by them that a revolution in
value theory (axiology) is necessary to recognize this fact, and that humans must cultivate attitudes
similar to those of native peoples in order to live in harmony with nature and to enable themselves to
carry out their obligation to preserve and nurture other life forms for their own sake. If nonhuman life
forms, as species or as individuals, possess intrinsic value, it follows that annihilating or decimating
them is morally abhorrent. In short, the extinction or massive slaughter of Homo sapiens is not the
gravest tragedy that the Earth could suffer. By assigning intrinsic value to other species, deep ecologists
assert that other things have a right to continue existing even if we insist on obliterating ourselves in
whole or in part. IV. Anthropocentric conclusions It is thought by some that a nonanthropocentric
position, such as those just sketched, is needed in order to give purchase to concern over the wanton
destruction of the Earth. Nuclear war is, or course, only one way in which the biosphere may be
permanently damaged or destroyed by humans’ impact upon it. The greenhouse effect, pollution,
and global deforestation are others one might mention. Nuclear war, however, is or may be unique
depending on whether it is thought o have potentially omnicidal consequences. Some would maintain
that we put a theory of environmental ethics to the supreme test and find it promising only if we can
posit the view that in the absence of humans the biosphere would continue to possess value. As Norton
points out, this position is often couched in termss of hypothetical "last people arguments," i.e.
arguments that pose the question whether the last people on Earth should care about its fate after they
are gone. The dangers and uncertainties of nuclear war do cast us in the uncomfortable role of
hypothetical last people on Earth, and so we may well want to raise this question. There are really two
questions. (1) Would nuclear devastation that falls short of biocide matter to those humans (if any) who
survived nuclear war? (2) Should the prospect of widespread environmental destruction (biocidal or
otherwise) matter to us now if omnicide also occurred and left behind no humans to experience the
consequences? The answer to question (1) is obvious, since the surviving humans would experience a
variety of negative effects on their lives even from limited environmental damage and long-term nuclear
pollution of the biosphere. This can be understood in purely instrumental terms. The second question
is not so easy to answer from the standpoint of the weak anthropocentrist who does not posit the
intrinsic value of natural objects and processes. Here it is tempting to say that once human being are
annihilated, nothing else matters. This is not because nothing else in nature can present occasion for
value judgment to take place, but rather because once the only class of being to which anything can
matter, or which alone can be said plausibly to have an axiological “point of view on the world” is
removed from the scene no value judgments can take place and all talk of them is rendered pointless. In
my view, value is neither subjective and ineffable nor objective and independent of consciousnesses
that are capable of forming value judgments in response to certain features of experience. Value,
rather, is a relational concept that has both subjective and objective elements. According to the
relational theory, interactions with things of the world presents occasions for value judgments and
values can be thought of as “existing” but only in the episodic state of reciprocity between objects and
valuing beings. Such a standpoint allows for the fact that certain features of the world tend to elicit
fairly uniform axiological responses from us. Yet it does not require that we attribute the values we posit
entirely to the things themselves or to any of the qualities they possess. The paradox at the heart of this
account, of course, is that if we ask, "Where do values reside?" the answer must be, "Nowhere.
Neither in the world nor in the mind, but somewhere in between and in the interaction connecting
them," for what else can it mean for a value to be a relational entity other than that it is something
that connects X and Y., yet is neither X nor Y? None of this entails that animals, plants, and
ecosystems do not matter or have no value, but it does entail that they have no value apart from
interaction with valuing beings who have ex hypothesi, subtracted themselves form the picture. One
can always assert the counterfactual claim that in the post-nuclear war period, nature would have
value if valuing beings encountered it and had the appropriate sorts of experiences and thoughts;
however. this assertion requires an act of imagination on the part of valuers who now exist and can
contemplate possible futures, and is therefore a purely fanciful thought experiment that is of no real
consequence. One could just as well speculate, in any event, that if beings capable of value judgments
ever visited our planet after a nuclear holocaust, they would find it valueless whimpering wasteland, in
whole and in part. What are the implications of all this value talk for the second question above? It
might appear that anthropocentrism in environmental ethics, if built upon a relational theory of value of
the kind I have outlined, is unable to sustain any concern for nature and the impact of human action
upon the biosphere other than that which affects human interests. Certainly there is a predisposition on
the part of a to argue that unless we ascribe intrinsic value to nature and to various nonhuman beings,
we cannot explain ' why it would be wrong to despoil the environment through nuclear war or other
means. But this approach is mistaken. Weak anthropocentrism can serve as a foundation for moral
concern over the fate of the biosphere in two ways. First, there is an objective side to the value
relation which deserves our respect and cultivation since it is inseparable from the valued experiences
that make life worthwhile. Second, as Norton indicates, the recognition of our evolutionary continuity
with other generate values (e.g., symbolic and cultural values) all foster a concern for the biosphere
that is anthropocentric, yet one that is neither narrowly exploitative nor dependent on the dubious
attribution of intrinsic value of the nonhuman world. If the environment can be seen in these ways as
generative, inspirational, and rejuvenating, then there should be no lingering difficulty over the answer
to the second question. It is, simply put, the intimacy we have with nature, as sensitive and dependent
organisms that supports and sustains our concern for the fate of the Earth. It follows that nuclear war
can be condemned in the strongest terms, and from an anthropocentric perspective, whether it
results in omnicide, biocide, the decimation of human and/or nonhuman species and environment, or
some combination of these. Furthermore, in addition to its consequences in human terms nuclear war
must be regarded as morally worse in terms of its consequences for the nonhuman environment.
Nazism DA
Calls for harmony with nature are dangerous—the underlying assumptions of their
alternative are rooted in the logic of Nazism.
Zimmerman 91, [Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1991 (“Deep
Ecology, Ecoactivism, and Human Evolution,” ReVision, Volume 13, Number 3, Reprinted in ReVision
(2002, Vol. 24, No. 4), Available Online via Information Access, p. 43 (in 2002 reprint))]
Fascism may be regarded, at least in part, as a phenomenon of recollectivization, a regressive
movement in which people willingly surrender the anxiety and guilt associated with responsibility and
freedom. The self-assertiveness involved in modern anthrocentrism (whether collectivistic or
individualistic) demands actions that cause great harm to natural systems, to the “Mother” from
which we spring. Implication in such actions may precipitate a sense of guilt and defilement, as well as
a corresponding need for reconciliation and purification. The fact that National Socialism remains
secretly fascinating to so many people is indicative of the widespread longing to relinquish the
alienation of modernity, to be purified of the defilement caused by the self-assertive transgressions
involved in individuation, and to regain lost communal and natural ties. The danger of Heidegger’s
view of history as a course of decline and degeneration, then, is that it invites psychological regression
and a destructive social recollectivization, a type that we have witnessed too often in this violent
century. Deep ecology, then, cannot call for a return to the guilt-free, undefiled days when humankind
and nature allegedly existed “in harmony.” Instead, deep ecology must urge that humankind continue
the evolutionary developments that led first from original unity toward increasing individuation and that
may ultimately lead to Self-realization.
No Impact
Morality checks anthropocentrism from causing extinction
Donahue 10, [Thomas J. Donahue, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Philosophical
Research, “Anthropocentrism and the Argument from Gaia Theory,” Ethics and the Environment vol. 15
number 3 Fall 2010, pgs. 59-61,]
If anthropocentrism did imply the Dominion Thesis, that would, in my opinion, decisively refute the
doctrine. But the implication does not hold good (even though a good many anthropocentrists have
embraced the Thesis). The trouble with the Routleys’ argument is the middle premise, according to
which humans are, on anthropocentric principles, entitled to treat as they wish anything which must
serve human interests. Let us call this the Entitlement View. This view is false. The anthropocentrist
need not hold that humans are so entitled. The reasons are as follows. Recall the claim made by
anthropocentrism—that the only things valuable in themselves are human beings; their desires,
needs, and purposes; and the satisfaction of those. The Entitlement View does not follow from this
claim. For suppose I accept anthropocentrism. I still run into the problem that any plausible
anthropocentric morality will forbid me from treating things in such a way that they needlessly harm
other human beings. For example, suppose we concede that a mountain must serve human interests.
Still, on any plausible anthropocentric morality, I may not strip mine the mountain such that the
resulting sludge contaminates a nearby town’s water supply. The same would hold true even if
(implausibly) all humanity agreed to use a certain thing in a way that needlessly harmed some human
beings. But then it follows that on any plausible anthropocentric morality, it is false that humans are
entitled to treat as they wish anything which must serve human interests. So the Entitlement View is
false. Defenders of the Dominion implication might reply that a weaker version of the Entitlement View
still holds good: namely, that on anthropocentrist principles, humans are entitled to treat as they wish
anything which must serve human interests, so long as they do not violate any of the tenets of any
plausible anthropocentric morality. But once this concession is made, the route to the Dominion Thesis
seems to be blocked. For it is hard to see how one could reach the thesis that “man is entitled to
manipulate the earth and all its non-human contents as he wants” by combining anthropocentrism with
this weakened Entitlement View. So it seems that anthropocentrism does not imply the Dominion
Thesis. Another ugly consequence attributed to anthropocentrism is the view that human beings
cannot have general obligations not to harm plants, non-human animals, or ecosystems. The idea here
is that, on anthropocentric principles, one cannot have obligations not to harm such beings unless incurs
the obligations by promises, contracts, or the fact that the beings are someone else’s property. Let us
call this “the No-obligation Thesis.” This Thesis fails, because it does not take into account all the ways
that we can incur obligations. If, by harming an ecosystem, I would be needlessly harming other
human beings, then clearly on anthropocentric principles I have an obligation not to harm the
ecosystem. More interestingly, even if in harming the ecosystem I would not be harming other human
beings, I might still have an anthropocentric obligation not to harm the ecosystem. For suppose that a
great number of people strongly desire that the ecosystem not be harmed, and have connected some
of their hopes and plans with its not being harmed (Yellowstone National Park might be such an
ecosystem). On anthropocentric principles, it is quite possible that I would then have an obligation not
to harm that ecosystem, even if the harm I might do would not (seriously) harm or endanger any
human beings. And since promises, contracts, and property do not figure here, it seems that the Noobligation Thesis is also false.
Nihilism DA
Their radical devotion to ecocentrism collapses into nihilism and paralysis.
Brown 95, [Charles S. Brown, Professor of Philosophy at Emporia State University, 1995
(“Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: the quest for a new worldview,” The Midwest Quarterly, Volume
36, Number 2, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Information Access)]
Deep ecologists regularly urge us to replace our anthropocentrism with an ecocentrism which
advocates egalitarian attitudes toward all entities and forms in nature. In this suggestion, too, there is
both promise and peril. Its promise lies in the hope that we will be able to see ourselves as enjoying a
solidarity with nature. This is an expression of the wholistic motif present in all forms of ecological
thinking. The radical egalitarianism of ecocentrism will, however, collapse into nihilism if no
distinctions of value are made. To claim that everything has an equal and intrinsic value to everything
else is to value nothing above anything else. Due to my place in the evolutionary-ecological system I
cannot value the life of a child in a ghetto tenement and the lives of a family of rats equally. To do so
would be to abdicate all value and leave me unable to act. It is a part of the predicament of every
species to act from its self interest and to choose to spare the life of any innocent person over the
lives of a family of rats in an expression of this evolutionary imperative.
Ecocentrism results in oppression and nihilism.
Brown 95, [Charles S. Brown, Professor of Philosophy at Emporia State University, 1995
(“Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: the quest for a new worldview,” The Midwest Quarterly, Volume
36, Number 2, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Information Access)]
There is a concern among ecologically minded thinkers that ecocentrism may itself be used as an
ideology of domination. It is widely believed that the current level of human interference with the
ecosphere cannot be justified and needs to be reduced. It has been argued that some forms of
ecocentrism lead to the rejection of individual rights and interests for the good of the whole
ecosphere. It is not an unreasonable concern to suspect that such a worldview could possibly sanction
efforts to quickly reduce human population to ecologically manageable levels. In spite of these
totalitarian dangers the ecocentric model is useful as a foil in the critique of the anthropocentric model.
I can only suggest without argument that the development of truly benign forms of anthropocentrism
will be consistent with benign forms of ecocentrism. Ecological thinking will remain with us and like all
other forms of thinking it is human thinking. If such thinking is to be guided by the sense of justice it
can only be the human sense of justice which serves as its beacon.
All three forms of ecological thinking previously mentioned share the vision of a wholistic worldview
which is explicitly contrary to the atomism of the mechanistic and organic worldviews. The ecocentric
worldview, like the organic, however, sees value in non-human entities. The task that a viable form of
ecocentrism faces is to conceive of the value inherent in non-human entities without falling into the
nihilism of radical egalitarianism. This is a task yet to be completed.
Policy Making Key
Environmental security challenges state legitimacy and lead to a paradigm shift away
from militarism
Barnett 01, [Jon, Research Council Fellow In The School Of Social And Environmental Enquiry At The
University Of Melbourne, The Meaning Of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics And Policy In The
New Security Era, Chapter 9, 137-41]
The question of whether it is valid to understand environmental problems as security problems recurs
throughout any thoughtful discussion of environmental security. The dilemma should by now be
apparent; securitising environmental issues runs the risk that the strategic/realist approach will coopt
and colonise the, environmental agenda rather than respond positively to environmental problems (as
discussed in Chapter 6). For this reason critics of environmental security, such as Deudney (1991) andBrock (1991), Suggest that it is dangerous to understand environmental problems as security issues: This
book's position on the matter has been emerging in previous chapters. It contends that the problem
turns not on the presentation of environmental problems as security issues, but on-the meaning and
practice of security in present times. Environmental security, wittingly or not, contests the legitimacy
of the realist conception of security by pointing to the contradictions of security as the defence of
territory and resistance to change. It seeks to work from within the prevailing conception of security,
but to be successful it must do so with a strong sense of purpose and a solid theoretical base.
Understanding environmental problems as security problems is thus a form of conceptual speculation.
It is one manifestation of the pressure the Green movement has exerted on states since the late
1960s. This pressure has pushed state legitimacy nearer to collapse, for if the state cannot control a
problem as elemental as environmental degradation, then what is its purpose? This legitimacy
problem suggests that environmental degradation cannot further intensify without fundamental
change or the collapse of the state. This in turn implies that state-sanctioned environmentally
degrading practices such as those undertaken in the name of national security cannot extend their
power further if it means further exacerbation of environmental insecurity. While the system may
resist environmental security's challenge for change, it must also resist changes for the worse. In
terms of the conceptual venture, therefore, appropriation by the security apparatus of the concept of
environmental security is unlikely to result in an increase in environmental insecurity (although the
concept itself may continue to be corrupted). On the other hand, succeeding in the conceptual venture
may mean a positive modification of the theory and practice of national security. It may also mean
that national governments will take environmental problems more seriously, reduce defence budgets,
and generally implement policies for a more peaceful and environmentally secure world. This dual
goal of demilitarisation and upgrading policy may well be a case of wanting to have one's cake and eat
it — but either the having or the eating is sufficient justification for the concept (Brock 1996). The
worst outcome would be if the state ceased to use the concept of environmental security, heralding
the end of the contest and requiring that the interests of peace and the environment be advocated
through alternative discourses. This is perhaps the only real failure that is likely to ensue from the
project of environmental security.
Solving environmental issues must be done through managerially - only humans have
the ability to catalyze solutions
Parker 96, [(Kelly, Professor of Philosophy, Grand Valley State University, Environmental Pragmatism
Ed. Light and Katz, p.32-33)]
The debate over anthropocentrism is especially tendentious. The question concerns the primary locus
of value. Anthropocentrism maintains that value is of or for human beings. Biocentrism maintains that
all forms of life, as such, are valuable. Ecocentrism emphasizes the value of ecological systems as a
whole, including natural processes, relationships and non-living parts of the environment. An aspect of
this debate concerns whether value attaches to individual entities or whether value must be seen
holistically. The pragmatist would ask why we should be expected to pledge allegiance to any of these
flags a priori, and exclude the others. Genuine value emerges at all of these focal levels. Indeed there
will be conflicts because of this, but the occurrence of such moral conflict is not peculiar to this
approach. Antigone found that "family values can tragically conflict with the values of the state; today's
CEO likewise finds that business values conflict with the value of an endangered owl's habitat. Denying
that one or the other sphere is worthy of consideration may appear to prevent potential moral conflict
from arising, but only at the risk of serious moral blindness. Blind anthropocentrism has deplorable
consequences for the non-human world, but a blindly misanthropic ecocentrism is no less deplorable.
Again, pluralism is a fact encountered in experience. Value arises in a variety of relationships among
differing parts of the experienced world. Each situation must be appraised on its own distinct terms. As
before, the twin values of sustainability and diversity provide reference points. Sometimes we rightly
focus on the sustainability of the whole system; sometimes on 'the unique value of an individual.
Sometimes the individual or the system is human and sometimes it is not. From this perspective,
environmental ethics can be seen as continuous with other areas of ethics, a distinct but integral part
of value inquiry in general. I have spoken of the experience of organisms-in-environments as centrally
important. Pragmatism is "anthropocentric" (or better, "anthropometric")24 in one respect: the human
organism is inevitably the one that discusses value. This is so because human experience, the human
perspective on value, is the only thing we know as humans. Many other entities indeed have
experience and do value things. Again, this is not to say that human whim is the measure of all things,
only that humans are in fact the measurers. This must be a factor in all our deliberations about
environmental issues. We can and should speak on the others' behalf when appropriate, but we
cannot speak from their experience. We can in some sense hear their voices, but we cannot speak in
their voices. I see no way out of our own distinctively human bodies. In this sense, the human yardstick
of experience becomes, by default, the measure of all things. Although the debate over environmental
issues is thus limited to human participants, this is not inappropriate — after all, the debate centers
almost exclusively on human threats to the world. Wolves, spotted owls, and old-growth forests are
unable to enter the ethics debate except through their human spokespersons, and that is perhaps
regrettable. Far better that they should speak for themselves! Lacking this, they do at least have
spokespersons — and these spokespersons, their advocates, need to communicate their concerns only
to other humans. To do this in anthropic value categories is not shameful. It is, after all, the only way
to go.
Science Good
Science is key to resolve the negative impacts of anthropocentrism—vote aff to use
the master’s tools to break down the master’s house.
Grey 86, [William Grey, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, 1986 (“A Critique of
Deep Ecology,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, Volume 3, Number 2, Available Online at
http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/ cde.html, Accessed 10-10-2003)]
I said above that there is an internal tension within some common articulations of the deep ecology
paradigm. What I have in mind is a tendency to denigrate the systematic, piecemeal, empirical
approach to a study of the natural world. Far from being shallow, such a science-based, analytical
approach is not (or need not be) an objectionable and manipulative way of interacting with the
natural world; it is quite indispensable for the provision of a satisfactory conception of its nature.
Indeed an adequate understanding of the destructive predations of technological society, and the
development of satisfactory softer alternatives based on the use of renewable resources, can only be
based upon systematic scientific conceptions. It is all very well to say that we must tread lightly upon
the earth, but this cannot be based upon turning away from the methods of science and controlled
experiments, for it is precisely to these we must turn to determine what is and is not treading lightly.
This analytical approach, 'counting commas' in the book of nature, as Needleman [8] has expressed it,
is indispensable for the systematic understanding of complex systems. It does not preclude the
equally indispensable treatment of complex systems as unitary wholes, which is necessary for
experiencing and valuing nature, as well as for its proper understanding [9].The second point which I
want to make is that not all primitive resource use is wise, and not all technology is destructive: what
is and is not environmentally acceptable can be determined only by developing insights into the
effects of our actions (for act we must); it is hardly credible that these insights could be gained by the
use of, say, intuitive empathy alone. The maintenance of equilibrium of dynamic living systems
requires, inter alia , continuous inputs of energy and the recycling of essential nutrients. To
understand how human interference with natural systems perverts both energy flow and the recycling
of nutrients, we should not abandon our science-based conceptions but embrace them. Nature may
indeed know best, but how, except through systematic empirical inquiry, can we determine what it is
that nature tells us? In practice much of the deep ecology critique of human predations is based
precisely on the sorts of empirical studies which, in other passages and other moods, those same
critics are prone to denigrate. This seems to me to be an unresolved tension which occurs in a number
of articulations of deep ecology. Scientific understanding is not of course a sufficient condition for
wisdom, but the insights of science are certainly necessary for acting wisely.
Science link turns their K—it is explicitly anti-anthropocentrism.
Brown 95, [Charles S. Brown, Professor of Philosophy at Emporia State University, 1995
(“Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism: the quest for a new worldview,” The Midwest Quarterly, Volume
36, Number 2, Winter, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Information Access)]
Insofar as scientific thinking is atomistic, reductionistic, and value free, it is at odds with all forms of
ecological thinking which is wholistic and value laden. Scientific thinking is, however, strangely allied
with deep ecological thinking in that it is implicitly anti-anthropocentric. Human beings hold no
central place in a world which is conceived of as only matter and energy in motion. It was, of course,
Descartes who provided a way of holding on to anthropocentrism and the scientific worldview at the
same time. The dichotomy of body and soul as ontological primitives saved anthropocentrism from the
hegemony of the scientific worldview only by radically separating humanity and nature. In so far as
human beings were thinking, conscious, and rational they were outside of nature. The kind of scientific
thinking developed since the time of Descartes has never been content with such a dualism. Naturalistic
metaphysics has, in many places, won the day and declared scientific methodology to be the essence of
rationality. The ultimate validation of this kind of thinking is the derived technological ability to
manipulate and control nature. On the assumption that scientific thinking is the only valid form of
thinking it is a short step to the view that technology is the essential form of human activity. We then
have the basis for an articulation of anthropocentrism biased not by class interests but by the form of
an entire historical epoch, viz. modernism. With the idea that technology is the essential form of
human activity comes the inevitable notion that technological societies form the basis for most
perfectly realizing and developing human nature. This, in turn, serves as a legitimating ideology for
western imperialism in both its Capitalistic and Marxist forms.
Sentience Focus Good
Their argument is ethically naïve—ethics should be grounded in direct experience—
pain and consciousness should be our moral guidelines.
Phelps 09, [Norm, animal rights activist and author of The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from
Pythagoras to PETA, “The Quest for a Boundless Ethic: A Reassessment of Albert Schweitzer” Journal for
Critical Animal Studies, VII.1 ]
Here, Schweitzer makes no distinction between the way we should treat sentient and insentient
beings. It is life defined as the ability to grow and reproduce that grants ethical standing, not the ability
to experience suffering and joy. For reasons that I will discuss in a moment, this constitutes an ethical
naïveté that would surprise us in a thinker of Schweitzer‘s depth and originality if we had not
encountered the same naïveté in his one-man crusade to re-make European civilization and reverse the
flow of history. Schweitzer‘s errors are often the errors of noble overreaching. In the Preface to Fear and
Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard identified the cardinal sin of 19th century philosophy (and Schweitzer is
nothing if not a 19th century philosopher) as the urge to “go beyond” established and accepted
principles that have stood the test of time. And Kierkegaard‘s critique of “going beyond”—that it
becomes a denial of the original principle and, therefore, instead of going beyond it, falls short of it—
applies to “reverence for life” as well. By trying to go beyond love and compassion, Schweitzer‘s ethic—
as defined in The Philosophy of Civilization—fails even to equal it. To Will or to Want, That is the
Question Like its English cognate, the German noun Wille—at least in everyday usage—implies intention
and desire, and therefore, consciousness. Likewise, the related verb wollen (first and third person
singular, present active indicative: will), which can be translated into English as either “to will” or “to
want,” is the common, everyday verb meaning “to want.” When a German speaker wants a stein of
beer, she says “Ich will ein Stein.” “I want to go home” is “Ich will nach Haus gehen.” In the jargon of
19th century German philosophy, however, especially the bastardized Buddhism of Arthur
Schopenhauer, the noun Wille acquired the meaning of a vital, but impersonal, force that is the ultimate
reality underlying the world of appearances that we experience day-to-day. With this in mind, let‘s
revisit a statement of Schweitzer‘s that I quoted above in the standard English translation. In
Schweitzer‘s original German, “I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live,” is “Ich
bin Leben, dass leben will, inmitten von Leben, dass leben will” (Association Internationale), which can
just as easily, and a lot more naturally, be translated, “I am life that wants to live surrounded by life that
wants to live.” But the translator could not use the more straightforward, natural translation because
“wants” implies conscious desire, and Schweitzer makes it clear in the passage about not picking a leaf
or plucking a flower that he is including in Leben, “life,” everything that grows and reproduces, not
simply beings who are sentient and conscious. In the course of identifying his own will-to-live with all
other wills-to-live, Schweitzer systematically confuses the technical, Schopenhaurian meaning of Wille
with the commonsense, everyday meaning, a confusion that is facilitated by the happenstance that
wollen can mean both “want” and “will.” We can empathize with other wills to live, he tells us,
because we can experience our own. But if another will-to-live cannot experience itself (or anything
else), what is there to empathize with? Consciousness can empathize with consciousness, but to say
that consciousness can empathize with an unconscious force is to commit a pathetic fallacy. In short,
Schweitzer anchors his ethical thinking to consciousness, which he initially identifies with the “will-tolive.” But he then uses the dual meaning of “will” to extend his ethic to unconscious beings, apparently
failing to realize that he has cut it loose from its original moorings. This equivocation is the undoing of
reverence for life as Schweitzer describes it in The Philosophy of Civilization. An ethic based on love and
compassion is grounded directly in experience. I know from immediate, undeniable experience that
my pain is evil. Therefore, I can empathize with your pain and know apodictically that it is also evil. The
empathy of an ethic based on love and compassion is a valid empathy. An ethic based on will-to-live
understood (at least sometimes) as distinct from and prior to consciousness is grounded in an
intellectual abstraction, not direct experience. In this regard, Schweitzer‘s “will-to-live” differs little
from Descartes‘ “thought”. Its empathy is an illusion of abstract thinking. To use Schweitzer‘s
examples that I quoted above, if I crush an insect I have destroyed a will-to-live that is conscious of itself
and wants to continue living, wants to experience pleasure and avoid pain. I know that this is evil
because I know directly, immediately, unarguably, that it would be evil if done to me. But neither the
leaf nor the tree, the flower nor the plant on which it grows, is conscious. And so when I tear a leaf
from a tree or pluck a flower, I do nothing wrong unless I indirectly harm a sentient being, such as a
caterpillar for whom the leaf was food or shelter or a honeybee who needs the nectar from the flower. I
have caused no pain. I have deprived of life nothing that wanted to live, nothing, in fact, that
experienced life in any way. In terms of the suffering I have caused, I might as well have broken a rock
with a hammer. All sentient beings are valid objects of love and compassion, and only sentient beings
are valid objects of love and compassion. Comparing the crushing of an insect to pulling a leaf from a
tree or picking a flower trivializes the crushing of the insect by negating the insect‘s consciousness,
and it is in that regard that reverence for life, as Schweitzer originally conceived it, falls short of an
ethic based on love and compassion by trying to reach beyond it