Bacteriologist

Rockefeller University

Part I -- Ethics

Part II -- Ecology

Part III -- EnvironEthics

When Thomas Jefferson penned The Declaration of Independence in 1776, he mirrored the American Founders’ belief that some human rights are "inalienable." Among these rights are those to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." No one—either person or government—has the authority to take away certain rights. More than 150 years later, the United Nations promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, echoing their understanding that, independent of time and place, people retain value and dignity, and thus should be treated in a humane manner. Both Declarations are built on an ethical foundation that recognizes moral absolutes. Because all humans are equals as members of the same species, they have, irrespective of culture, unalienable and individual rights. These rights are also known as natural or human rights. Recognizing that people need the physical environment for oxygen, water, soil, sunshine and other resources, EnvironEthics expands the ethical structure of human rights by incorporating an ecological dimension.

While EnvironEthics demonstrates that people have a human right to a livable planet, this book discovers that right only after probing its main topic—the individual’s moral relationship with Nature. Alternatively stated, people have a natural right to a habitable Earth because they physically depend on it, and are thus, morally obligated to it. However, a right only has meaning when paired with its twin, responsibility. So rather than concentrating on rights, EnvironEthics centers on responsibility; and the science of responsibility is ethics.

We must resolve this conflict. To gain insight into our current predicament, let us search the past looking at how the relationship of humans-within-the-environment has changed.

In previous centuries, humans had little control over Nature. Certainly, people had some influence as to how much subsistence and comfort a particular environment could yield. When pitted against natural world, however, they were powerless. If a region sustained inhabitants and permitted an increased standard of living, that condition (though not random) had less to do with human effort than with chance events.

Aside from romantic yearnings for a bygone era when people lived in simple harmony with Nature, many civilizations abused the environment. They leveled forests, burned landscapes, eroded soils and exhausted natural resources. Yet, their destructive impact remained local. That is, whatever habitats that previous societies impaired or erased, the detrimental effects to the bioregion tended to be minimal, sometimes insignificant. On a global level, those inhabitants left Earth unharmed, if for no other reason that they lacked the population and the technology. In short, other than their immediate surroundings, pre-industrialized societies could not control Nature. Thus, if past generations dwelled in an environment conducive to life, health and happiness, that condition depended less on personal choice than on uncontrollable chance.

Times have changed.

Since the Industrial Revolution, environmental conflicts have escalated from local squabbles to global assaults. Indeed, society has secured unprecedented gains in a battle determining environmental power and control. And such incredible power has allowed people not only to create but also to destroy. More specifically, against the economic advantages of manipulating an environment, people must weigh the simultaneous annihilation of ecosystems and possible destruction of the biosphere. In fact, civilization can so impact the planet that humankind has catapulted itself into a period wherein naiveté is perilous and arrogance potentially catastrophic. According to The National Geographic Society’s President, Gilbert M. Grosvenor, "During one brief century mankind has passed the point of global opportunism and entered an era of global protection."2 More so than ever before, the ability to sustain life, to maintain health and to pursue happiness depends not on chance events, but on human choices.

To be sure, natural disasters will remain, i.e., volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. However, environmental tragedies like ozone depletion, rainforest destruction, acid rain and global warming testify that humans influence ecological systems in a qualitatively different manner. In other words, chance has met choice.

Further, once we admit human choice has a role in environmental destruction, we must accept the notion of responsibility. Not that people seek to destroy the environment (though some do it with pride), yet the tragedies result from human activities. At this point, moral responsibility forces us to turn to environmental ethics. Since we seek an ecological ethic, we need a moral theory that encompasses all of humanity. We travel to the ancient Greece of Aristotle. Why Aristotle? How can a 2,400-year-old theory address complex, contemporary issues? Aristotle drafted a moral blueprint which, after an essential alteration, supports the weighty claim that all people have universal rights and responsibilities. At the minimum, this modified version of Aristotle's ethical philosophy is compatible with the rights recognized in the United States Declaration of Independence and the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because EnvironEthics seeks to establish moral imperatives which assign ecological rights and responsibilities, it extends the human rights tradition known as democratic liberalism into the ecological sphere.

To build our ethical structure, we incorporate large sections of Aristotle's Ethics and its commentaries, most notably Mortimer J. Adler’s Aristotle for Everybody. While Aristotle never addressed the human duty to Nature, such an omission is not surprising. Because people possessed such little power compared to the forces of Nature in past centuries, the environment was considered uncontrollable. In turn, since humans could not destroy their bioregion, they could not harm themselves and thereby impede their own happiness. Although Aristotle never forgot the human organism’s dependence upon Nature, he was ignorant of homo sapiens interdependence with Earth. After 2400 years, an expanding human population and consuming resources with increasing abandon, the belief in an "uncontrollable-environment" has become antiquated.

This essay’s ultimate goal is to demonstrate that humans have a moral duty to Nature. My purpose is straightforward: an environmental ethic helps us enlighten ourselves. As Aristotle understood, ethics is a practical endeavor. Because ethics addresses values, it assists people in distinguishing between actions that are good and bad, between things that people should and should not do. Therefore, if we discover the environmental value of stewardship, the resulting moral knowledge will assist us in making practical judgments about how humans should behave in the ecosphere. That is, environmental enlightenment!

While environmental degradation has diverse forms, ecological impact emanates from three principle dynamics — population, affluence, and technology. These three factors—more technically referred to as 1) the human population, 2) the per capita rate of resource consumption (and pollution) and 3) the technology impact to produce each unit of consumption — are all vital to keeping Earth habitable and people healthy. So when isolated, no single dynamic gives the entire picture. But because we attempt to discover a moral principle between humans and our life-giving planet, we focus not on population (which we examine in Chapter 12) but on resource consumption, pollution and technology — on individuals and their activities.

On the road to discover an environmental ethic, we must amend a universal ethical theory of human rights by adding a dimension which recognizes ecologic interdependence. To reach this destination, our itinerary consisting of three parts follows. Part I introduces us to ethics. Chapter 1 provides an overview which places EvironEthics on a firm moral foundation -- the natural-rights philosophy of democratic liberalism. Then it discusses why we embark on our journey to an ecologic ethic, what we risk losing if we fail to reach our goal, and lastly, how a shift to environmental values not only removes many obstacles in our path but also enriches the human spirit. Chapter 2 reviews Aristotle’s moral philosophy, emphasizing that happiness includes complete virtue and good fortune.

Chapter 5 notes that humans are destabilizing the biosphere’s life-supporting equilibrium by overwhelming its self-correcting processes. Further, these artificial shocks or environmental conflicts not only impair human health but also threaten irrevocable planetary change. Chapter 6 asserts that environmental tragedies from human origins are controllable, or more precisely, semi-controllable impediments to health and happiness. Therefore, under certain circumstances the belief in an "uncontrollable-environment" is invalid.

In Part III, we return to ethics. Chapter 7 amends Aristotle’s moral philosophy by showing that an ethical principle exists regulating how people should treat Nature — the environmental virtue of stewardship. Chapter 8 demonstrates stewardship as a universal truth. This moral proof is achieved by combining a self-evident premise of ethical value with a descriptive statement of ecological fact. Briefly, this environmental truth holds that humans should perpetuate a hospitable biosphere by not destabilizing it — by maintaining and by restoring the ecosphere’s life-giving, but no longer purely natural balance. Chapter 9 looks at the other side of ethical responsibilities —human rights. Stewardship reflects the moral duty to keep Earth healthy because a livable habitat is a human need; and individuals have rights to their natural needs. As all people have rights to life and liberty, they also have the co-existing human right to a healthy Earth.

Chapter 10 expands the concept of wealth from economic possessions to include biological diversity in the form of genes, species, and ecosystems. This bio-wealth not only serves as a basis for economic prosperity but also provides Earth's life-support services. Chapter 11 argues that in order to treat Nature properly, people must view Earth with a different mind-set or worldview. Because worldviews influence attitudes which then affect actions, we develop a conceptual model which more closely corresponds to ecologic reality. Synthesizing economic development, cultural diversity and ecologic values, this paradigm is conservation. The conservation worldview changes attitudes, and ecologically principled attitudes (coupled with stewardship) lead to environmentally beneficial actions. When the individual becomes a positive force for Nature, economic, political and cultural institutions will adapt to reinforce ecologic values.

Exploring the rights and responsibilities among the world's peoples and nations, Chapter 12 demonstrates how environmental justice bridges the chasm that divides the industrialized North from the developing South in three ways. First, the resources of the global commons, especially fisheries, minerals and energy, must be distributed more equitably; and those components that cannot become private property must be perpetuated for the benefit of all. Second, through its negative mandate, justice sets the moral imperative to not damage others' environment. Third, drawn from justice's positive aspect, the ecological dimension of a community's common good -- whether at the local, national or the biospheric level -- is enhanced when people take positive steps to protect and to enrich the natural world.

Finally, as the Conclusion asserts, since humans participate in ecological as well as political collectives, people have a dual citizenship which carries concomitant duties -- to country and to Mother Earth. When humanity-within-the-biosphere is intimate, people become global citizens. Further, as patriotism is manifest in nationalist allegiances and services, so too an environmental loyalty and service, termed matriotism, helps explain the intrinsic worth of conserving resources and perpetuating the biospheric community. When science meets art and when fact encounters intuition, the human spirit becomes integrated and enlightened.

Humanity is interconnected to a living Earth. By breathing, by cutting trees, and by driving cars, people participate in and influence the global cycles of oxygen, carbon dioxide and other components that keep Earth hospitable. To explore this human-biosphere link, we embark on a journey to discover an environmental ethic -- namely, virtues and vices along with rights and responsibilities. Our first stop imparts some background on how absolute standards of human conduct receive validity; on what events have precipitated our inquiry; and, lastly, what are the prospects of reaching our goal. In so doing, we lie the foundation for the environmental enlightenment. Further, we are part of the environment, and we have an important role to play in keeping the biosphere habitable. As a consequence to which our venture testifies, our physical dependence on and moral obligation to other animals, plants and life-support processes warrants a confession. Humbled yet confident, we must declare our interdependence with our home planet.

Are universal standards of human conduct an illusion? Many contemporary trends maintain that moral absolutes do not and cannot exist. The thought that a certain act is universally wrong for every person in every society smacks of elitism and absolutism. Who are we in the United States or in other democracies to criticize a different culture? The belief that moral absolutes cannot exist can be considered "cultural relativism." The opposing viewpoint asserts that universal standards of conduct do exist. To paraphrase John K. Galbraith, because cultural relativists deny the moral universals that EnvironEthics affirms, they may want to return this book to the shelf unread.

If the cultural relativists were correct, that is, if moral absolutes do not exist, then it is impossible for "foreigners" to criticize Nazi Germany’s Third Reich or South Africa’s apartheid. To say these societies violated the human rights of their inhabitants is to admit that these cultures transgressed universal standards of ethical conduct. Rightly, people throughout the world criticized these societies as moral abominations. Many governments, international tribunals such as the United Nations and the World Court, and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) such as Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch testify that moral absolutes apply to everyone, everywhere.

Having seen that universal ethical standards exist, we must recognize that all moral absolutes do not merit equal consideration and that many are dangerous. For instance, Soviet Communism had held the false premise that the means of production embodied in private property was the source of class conflict and human suffering. This tenet led to the utopian dream that people could peacefully coexist without government. In the transition to the classless society, the Communist Party as the vanguard of the proletariat had expropriated the country’s wealth. In any event, invalid premises enabled human rights to be sacrificed (as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote) for the good of the cause. Importantly, the intentions of Communism’s intellectual architect Karl Marx and a significant political practitioner Vladimir Lenin were noble — how to alleviate human suffering and injustice caused by bourgeois capitalism. Nevertheless, the moral absolutes of Marxist-Leninism had horrific consequences. Understanding history, we avoid similar pitfalls by basing our moral absolutes on sound principles.

Whether beneficial or harmful universal ethical mandates are by no means restricted to economics and politics for the environmental movement encompasses many, diverse and often incompatible doctrines. For instance, under the vast tent of the animal rights camp, some tenets assert humans must not injure or kill animals for any reason. Thus, along with performing medical research that causes any animals pain, eating meat and fish is always immoral. As recent centuries have witnessed, the United States has widened its ethical vision to recognize the equal rights of African Americans, women, and Native Americans. The animal rights advocates insist that humanity must once again expand its moral horizon to liberate sentient animals.

As another example of the plurality of thought amidst the environmental movement, holistic rights argue that the greatest moral value is the integrity of the ecosystem, the perpetuation of its processes, and the survival of its biotic community. Accordingly, a single plant, animal, or microorganism of an endangered species may have more value than one or many organisms of more populated species including homo sapiens. To sacrifice a human life for the sake of a larger community, whether political or ecologic, is problematic to the natural-rights tradition, which is why philosopher Tom Regan calls it "environmental fascism".1 Though permissible, such harsh labels are too simplistic.

It is essential to mention that most people who believe in animal or holistic rights are loving, compassionate, and very moral. Still, their principles cannot be applied universally without denying human rights to life and health. Thus, even though proponents of animal and holistic rights often have noble intentions, the moral absolutes of both ideologies, for different reasons, are untenable. When we explore in Chapter 9 how EnvironEthics relates to human rights, we discuss these theories in greater detail. For now, we note that the environmental spectrum contains many differing and often contradictory ideologies about how people ought to treat Nature and the natural world; and EnvironEthics is just one body of thought. Yet, to see why EnvironEthics is superior to competing theories, we demonstrate that its moral absolutes are based on the firm foundation of universal human rights.

With respect to Nature, EnvironEthics seeks to obtain standards of human conduct which are objective and absolute, in short, universal. This goal—a sound moral philosophy — can be achieved by combining facts from ecology with values from ethics. With this moral knowledge, the individual (and humanity) can explore ethical life’s environmental dimension.

My thesis has three major components. First, through the interactions of species and ecosystems, Nature self-regulates Earth’s habitable conditions which are necessary for human life and health. Second, humans are destabilizing Nature’s self-regulating, life-support mechanisms by exceeding ecologic tolerance margins. Third, by impairing Earth’s life-support processes such as ozone depletion and global warming, people are harming themselves and future generations.

How does ecologic degradation relate to environmental ethics? A simple syllogism follows:

By stating the human-environment conflict and resolution in less formal terms, we discover a moral virtue for Nature. The biosphere has a tendency toward ecologic equilibrium or environmental balance which provides essential resources—the free goods and services like circulating carbon dioxide, oxygen and water, producing soil, and regulating the climate. These environmental resources are indispensable to human health and happiness. So global warming, ozone depletion and other instances of environmental degradation are extreme conditions when humans exceed ecologic limits and push ecosystems away from the intermediate, balanced state. Thus, with respect to how much humans should influence ecosystems, ecologic equilibrium corresponds to an ethical balance — the environmental virtue of stewardship.

As I hold, EnvironEthics contributes to the public debate about how people should affect Nature by developing a moral architecture to address human-environment issues. So then, like America’s Founders, a united people who understand the value of Earth and of all its constituents can author another invaluable manifesto—The Declaration of Interdependence.

In order to write such a document, a moral foundation must be laid; and EnvironEthics seeks to design such a structure. To help envision interdependence, let us imagine ourselves standing on the moon, gazing at planet Earth. We see not a map carved by national borders but rather a single planet of brownish rock, blue water and swirling clouds floating in the empty sea of outer-space. Our planetary oasis is powered by the sun’s radiation and kept comfortable by an imperfectly understood greenhouse mechanism. In the global thermostat and in the biosphere’s myriad other functions, what role does life play? From this lunar perch, life in the cosmos may seem improbable. But we know that Earth is the home of life! Millions of species are transforming their environment and are being shaped by their surroundings in complex, co-evolutionary relationships.

Although from the moon we cannot see life, one species—homo sapiens — comprised of more than five billion human organisms is impacting the land, the atmosphere and the oceans at unsustainable rates. Indeed, humankind is destabilizing the carbon dioxide and the water cycles, deforesting landscapes, creating deserts, and depleting the ozone layer. For better or worse, many of these changes are irrevocable.

Two points deserve comment. First, as a component of the biosphere, every human influences the environment at both the local and the global levels. Some environmental problems like hazardous waste or municipal garbage disposal are primarily regional and local in scope, while others like climate warming and ozone depletion have a global arena. Yet, every action—however insignificant—affects Earth’s ecosystem.

Second, a person is also a member of homo sapiens who, along with other organisms and species, share the planet forming a biospheric community. Further, as community members we have a moral relationship to our neighbors—other humans, birds, trees and wildlife.

In general, the environmental theorist extracts a universal characteristic embedded in particular phenomena. In specific, (s)he must isolate the common thread people have errantly woven through Earth’s intricate and invisible Tapestry of Life. With a conceptual understanding, the individual can discover and can extricate the renegade stitch which threatens the Tapestry’s beauty and fabric.

The complexity of ecologic relationships may numb people into silence. Although environmental problems are significant, the solutions rest with humankind—its cultures and the individual. According to Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s former Prime Minister, "The problems we face are planetary, but not insoluble. But the huge changes sweeping over us and our biosphere demand fundamental changes in our attitudes, our policies and the way we run our societies." Since we are focusing on individual attitudes and actions, EnvironEthics provides a solid foundation upon which private introspection and public debate can build. Within such a framework, people can address their environmental activities and understand these consequences to encourage beneficial action and to discourage detrimental conduct.

It has been said, "To originate is to combine." EnvironEthics: A Declaration of Interdependence contains nothing original; it combines principles of ecology and ethics, none of which are recent discoveries. While uncertainty surrounds many ecologic processes and problems, EnvironEthics incorporates fundamentals and insights verified by generations of ecologists. Also, even though this book’s ethical framework has undergone essential modifications throughout the centuries, it was designed by Aristotle some 2400 years ago.

Because the human species physically depends on Nature and is thus morally obligated to it, people have environmental rights and responsibilities; and many cultures and institutions are starting to acknowledge the ecologic dependence and duty. For example, the United Nations adopted a document entitled The World Charter for Nature. In the ecological sphere, this manifesto recognizes that "Mankind is part of nature and life depends on the uninterrupted function of natural systems which insure the supply of energy and nutrients." In the moral realm, it proclaims that "Nature shall be respected and its essential processes shall not be impaired." Importantly, people are beginning to realize not only that humans rely on the environment, but more significantly, that they have a moral imperative to perpetuate its life-giving attributes.

As the sole moral actor in this environmental drama, the individual has the role as Nature’s steward. In private and in public, each person must accept his/her responsibility in reweaving this fragile, interdependent Tapestry. Thus, individuals and nations should recognize the finite limits of the biosphere; and unless poverty dictates otherwise, they should keep their demands within these ecologic boundaries.

Neither utopian nor dogmatic, the practical science of EnvironEthics assists informed decision-making and conflict resolution regarding environmental issues from the local to the global. Thus, EnvironEthics works to counteract artificial environmental degradation; it attempts to restore planetary health; and it aims to prevent future tragedies. EnvironEthics targets these goals for the benefit of people and of future generations.

We, homo sapiens, must demonstrate wisdom by assuming environmental responsibility, by choosing moral virtue and by serving as stewards to pilot Spaceship Earth. In so doing, we fulfill the vision of President John F. Kennedy:

If we abdicate our environmental duty, we fulfill the prophecy of President Theodore Roosevelt:

Also since the biosphere cannot distinguish national borders, the industrialized world can harm the more vulnerable people in developing nations. In turn, concentrated in impoverished countries, human population growth—an ethical dilemma, to be sure—is also becoming a global force. To protect ourselves, the impoverished, and all species in the biospheric community—as well as future generations— let us first look inward to an often neglected aspect of human nature, its environmental dimension.

With unprecedented population and technology, homo sapiens faces a momentous challenge: this intelligent species must learn to satisfy human needs and wants while keeping Earth livable and comfortable. Because humans, unlike all other organisms, possess moral rights and responsibilities, they are solely responsible for our living planet. Therefore, we must choose how we can provide for improved living standards while conserving and enriching the natural environment. Our decisions will affect more than the opportunities of future generations but also will touch our own lives—our health and happiness.

Though tempting, we must resist thinking that the individual cannot make a difference. Along with maintaining ethical integrity, we just cannot afford the luxury of the status quo. To be sure, the trends in human population growth, resource consumption and technology are foreboding. But environmental degradation stems from individuals and their decisions. By applying ecologically sound values, people will restore Earth's health. As anthropologist Margaret Mead understood, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Though long dormant in most cultures, humanity’s environmental facet is awakening to embark on a journey leading to an intimate moral relationship with Nature. On this travel, we find that the-virtue of stewardship, which constrains human activity within ecologic tolerance margins, is not only essential to human health but is also indispensable to a happy life.

The time has come for each human member of the biospheric community to develop an intimate relationship with Nature. Each of us must learn to appreciate the biosphere and all of its other constituents. By recognizing Nature's beauty and its benefits, we implement an ethic of environmental use, respect and care. Though Earth's visible destruction warrants action, our ecologic adventure begins with our values and attitudes. Because values influence actions, each of us must affirm a personal, environmental code—A Declaration of Interdependence.

Happiness is the goal of every human life.

While most people agree that everybody aims for happiness, endless conflicts arise over how to define it. Is happiness the same for each of the more than five billion humans on Earth? Consider all the differences. Every person has particular dispositions, tastes and preferences. Also individuals differ in that their cultures have disparate foods, languages, norms, and customs. However, amidst all individual and cultural differences, people have a single, common trait — human nature. If each human does not possess this common element, the notion of equality evaporates and the flame of human rights becomes extinguished. From a common human nature arises universal human needs — the things that everyone must have to develop their human potential. Even though people and cultures satisfy these needs in various ways, the needs are common because they emanate from the same human nature.

In general, a person develops a habit by acting in a certain way, over and over again. For example, whether a potter or a golfer, the skills necessary to be a crafter or an athlete are acquired by repeating those actions corresponding to their respective arts. Similarly, good habits, in the sense of moral virtue, are formed when a person habitually chooses the appropriate means in achieving their just ends. Because humans possess free will, each individual has to decide how (s)he will acquire real goods; and moral excellence occurs when a person makes the correct decisions in achieving these ends, not every time but often. As a consequence, moral virtue has a necessary component—choice. By definition this choice represents a controllable variable.

Since people cannot control good fortune, Aristotle understood that happiness is not guaranteed to anybody, not even the most virtuous person. Indeed, misfortunes such as crippling disease or natural disaster sometimes fall upon the virtuous. As Aristotle noted,

In short, regardless of personal conduct, uncontrollable misfortune often prevents happiness.

In summary, although a mere vignette of our modified theory derived from Aristotle's ethics, happiness consists in possessing real goods, some under human control, and others non controllable. Nevertheless, all these real goods satisfy natural needs and are indispensable in fulfilling the human purpose—to be happy.

Concomitant with a human organism’s life and health, we must discuss a habitat within which that organism can obtain the resources necessary to live and to live well. By utilizing the available resources, life can not only survive but also flourish.

In a civil society, people should best create an atmosphere where they can obtain those goods like food, clothing, shelter, knowledge and friendship which will assist them in their pursuit of happiness. With these resources, an individual can develop his/her skills to their highest potential; and one should try to create surroundings conducive to this totum bonum—happiness.

In an analogous but an ecological sense, humans should develop and maintain their planetary environment so as to perpetuate a habitable ecosystem, wherein people can be healthy and happy. Yet in this household, the human species represents just one thread in Earth’s intricately woven Tapestry of Life. More to the point, all species ultimately depend on other living and non-living threads to subsist, let alone thrive. Consequently, we must explore the energy flows, the material cycles and the interdependent relationships of Earth, the threads of our terrestrial Tapestry.

While humans require an organic habitat, people also function as parts of many cycles within a whole ecological unit. That is, the human organism is a biotic component in an ecosystem. In this essay, we will call the interplay between people and Nature—between a biotic part and its ecological whole—the intra-environmental relationship.

The intra-environmental relationship refers to how the human organism and its environment interact within the planetary ecosystem. To be sure, at the human level, each person remains a separate and distinct entity—an autonomous individual. From an ecological reference, however, the human organism is not independent from the environment, but rather is interconnected to a habitat and is interdependent with the ecosystem’s other biotic and abiotic components. Thus, through the intra-environmental relationship, we can analyze how humans affect planet Earth, our global home.

When we conceptualize the planet as a whole ecologic system, three items surface. First, because the biosphere supplies water, oxygen and other components that all ecosystems need, it can be considered as the parent ecosystem. Second, "biotic diversity" represents the variety and the totality of organisms which in myriad ways share a mutual dependence on each other. These interdependent relationships testify that no organism can exist in isolation. Third, from a planetary reference all the biosphere’s ecosystems and subsystems function together to form a balanced and self-regulated whole. That is, the interdependent relationships between organisms, coupled with biogeochemical cycles (which we discuss in the next chapter) and energy flows create a condition of ecological equilibrium or environmental balance. Furthermore, the biosphere maintains this balance through natural controls or self-guided mechanisms. Thus through automatic controls, the parent ecosystem self-regulates a dynamic balance.

Because the latter two concepts are so important to our concern, we devote the rest of this chapter to the topic of interdependence while the next chapter considers the process of self-regulation.

Though illustrative, this basic example masks ecologic complexity. Interdependence occurs not only among producers, consumers and decomposers but also between specific species like the symbiotic relations such as: 1) termites and the cellulose-digesting bacteria that live in the insects’ stomachs; 2) humans and certain intestinal bacteria; and 3) hummingbirds who are the sole pollinators of certain plants.

In addition, interdependence extends beyond the relationships among organisms and species. So we briefly broaden our field of vision to incorporate additional levels of organization. An organism is comprised of smaller units—genes, cells and organs. Yet at the same time, an organism helps define even larger "levels"—populations, communities and ecosystems. Further, from an integrated perspective, all these units—from genes through organisms to ecosystems—cannot be considered as isolated, independent entities; but rather, we must conceive them as parts of an inter-related whole, Earth’s life-system. Often it helps to consider these differing levels of organization as a spectrum or a line. As ecologist Eugene Odum explains,

We cannot understate the importance of the interdependencies within and among genes, species and ecosystems. These biological resources are essential to life and the biosphere’s life-supporting processes. In aggregate biological resources and their interactions are commonly known as biological diversity, or simply biodiversity. More formally, biodiversity

Researchers often study biological resources at three levels of diversity—the gene, the species and the ecosystem. Genetic diversity is

Thus, biodiversity helps perpetuate Earth’s habitable conditions. In tandem, species and ecosystems perform functions such as stabilizing climate, manufacturing and circulating oxygen, creating and protecting watersheds, and producing soil. Since these life processes are essential to human existence and prosperity, let us collectively refer to all these resources and functions as environmental goods and services.

Now we integrate this chapter’s two main topics—the intra-environmental relationship and ecologic interdependence. People are members of an ecosystem. That is, humans participate in the material cycles and the interdependent relations among organisms which produce, consume, and decompose organic material. More specifically, biodiversity—the totality of Earth’s genes, species, ecosystems and their interactions—provides life-giving environmental goods and services. As we pursue happiness, we must remember the intra-environmental relationship, that we are a biotic part in the planetary whole. Recognizing this fact, we understand that an organism’s life and health depends on an external environment comfortable to its existence.

So, we thus far conclude: Humans are far from independent beings. On the contrary, people coexist with other life and non-living resources in an interconnected, invisible pattern—The Tapestry of Life.

We have just seen that a functioning ecosystem has diverse organisms and species involved in a complex, interdependent network which, in aggregate, serves a mutually beneficial purpose. We now turn and examine the topic of self-regulation. More precisely, we scrutinize how these various organisms interact with abiotic resources like soil, water and solar energy to self-regulate the habitable equilibrium experienced on Earth.

Having learned that biogeochemical cycles help maintain Earth’s life-giving, natural balance, we next discover how the ecosphere maintains the proper conditions so the planet remains habitable to a variety of organisms. That is, we find out how homeostatic processes automatically control a system’s internal steady-state, and thereby perpetuate the life process. The shortest answer is feedback mechanisms. However, because feedback processes play such a prominent role in ecologic activity, an analysis of this topic is necessary.

In essence, feedback mechanisms control internal conditions when output feeds back as input; and this input triggers a counter active response, tending to stabilize the system. A few examples will illustrate this point.

In The Wisdom of the Body, Walter B. Cannon described how the human organism controls certain internal functions via homeostasis. For instance, homeostatic mechanisms enable the human body to self-maintain myriad conditions; an obvious one is body temperature. When body temperature rises above normal (98.6°F), the brain senses the increase and sends impulses so that the sweat glands produce more perspiration. As more sweat evaporates from the skin (and as blood vessels dilate to more efficiently transfer the heat), body temperature is lowered. In other words, the increased body temperature becomes positive feedback; and the brain triggers a counter-active response, automatically attempting to bring the system back into equilibrium. (If the temperature drops below its equilibrium, a negative feedback occurs and biological processes operate in reverse, thereby keeping heat within the organism until the temperature reaches normal.) Thus, through homeostasis, the human organism automatically controls its temperature by seeking its natural balance.

Likewise, the ecosphere self-regulates global temperature. However, unlike the human organism, the planet maintains a constant "climate" through the aide of biogeochemical cycles which maintain an oscillating steady-state of atmospheric gases. Because carbon and oxygen apparently influence climate, a closer look at their biogeochemical cycles will demonstrate how they may assist the planet in self-regulating global temperature.

In any event, the biosphere and large ecosystems have other auto-control devices like the rate to store and to release nutrients. (The next chapter discusses some of these mechanisms.) Important to our discussion, when an ecosystem has its homeostatic controls keeping an ecologic balance, it can be considered healthy.

To recapitulate, Earth’s material cycles, energy flows and biodiversity automatically control the hospitable conditions that we enjoy; and the ecosphere maintains such a preferred-state through myriad (and imperfectly understood) homeostatic mechanisms. In short, Earth perpetuates an hospitable world because the biosphere self-regulates a steady-state equilibrium. Therefore, with respect to human life, health and happiness, we need the biosphere to perpetuate habitats and to sustain life by maintaining its natural balance.

Global warming... Ozone depletion... Acid rain... Species extinction... Deforestation... Desertification... Water diversion... Fisheries depletion... Hazardous waste...

Through each of these environmental conflicts runs a common thread symbolizing the ultimate source which has so degraded the environment—PEOPLE. From two directions, humans have conflicted with the environment because first, the human population continues to expand, and second, many individuals consume resources with increasing abandon. Through these direct or indirect means, people have extinguished non-human species; they have also overwhelmed Nature’s ability to replenish matter and energy. Indeed, humans have placed stresses on ecosystems and the biosphere at a rate these systems can neither tolerate nor sustain. Briefly, these two human forces, population and consumption, are the fibers behind the universal thread which threatens Earth's Tapestry of Life. In fact, this human strand destabilizes the environment and in turn causes ecological tragedies. With these thoughts in mind, we must confront the intra-environmental conflict and propose its peaceful resolution.

In Chapter 3 we learned that humans function within an ecologic exchange system—the intra-environmental relationship. Also we found that homo sapiens participates with other species and non-living resources in a multi-dimensional, interdependent network. In Chapter 4 we discovered that the biosphere maintains an internal order equilibrium because homeostatic feedback mechanisms like biogeochemical cycles tend to automatically seek a preferred-state, the natural balance.

In this chapter we delve deeper into the intra-environmental relationship by exploring how dynamic systems function and how humans influence them. First, we observe that ecosystems operate within two boundaries or extremes. Then, we demonstrate how humans interact within and even surpass these limits. By distinguishing between human and non-human activities, we isolate artificial from natural phenomena. In so doing, we confront the intra-environmental conflict’s driving force—the artificial extremes.

Similar to an organism whose health depends on a balanced condition of nutrition, body temperature, exercise and the like, an ecosystem also needs certain materials in proper amounts. Like an organism, the ecosphere must keep internal conditions within limits. As self-balancing units, both humans and ecosystems must avoid their respective system-defined extremes. With respect to many traits, dynamic systems have two extremes: excess and deficiency. For example, the human body can be too hot (hyperthermia) or have too little nourishment (malnutrition); health corresponds to the balanced condition. Likewise, an ecosystem must keep certain conditions like temperature, acidity, salinity, humidity and others within certain boundaries.

The artificial-natural distinction does not manifest itself in a mutually exclusive fashion. Indeed, either source can cause the same effect. Let us illustrate this notion of different cause/same effect with the example of species extinction. Species continuously become extinct by an evolutionary process of gradual change or by infrequent but calamitous periods of mass extinction. Since human influence is absent, both types of extinction are natural. Yet, the contemporary concern about how many and at what rate humans are extinguishing species focuses on humankind’s ability to perform these acts. As a consequence these human-induced changes are termed artificial. Thus, artificial changes are not necessarily a new class of phenomena, but environmental effects which have a non-natural cause—people.

Some environmentalists argue that whenever humans alter ecosystems an evil or bad act has been committed. Au contraire! Because humans interact with the ecosystem, they must alter the environment. In fact, as participants in biogeochemical cycles, all organisms modify their surroundings. Modifications are a matter of degree. So environmental change, in itself, is good. More formally illustrating this point, the law distinguishes between two types of behavior—per se and per accidens. If an act is wrong per se, then it is improper in every instance. In contrast, if certain behavior is bad per accidens, then such activities can be appropriate in a different time or a different place. Thus, since people must alter the environment, human-caused environmental change is good, per se. However, specific ecologic modifications may or may not be good. From this latter level, we analyze human activity.

With the natural-artificial distinction in mind, let us now explore environmental extremes and the consequences of violating them. By doing so, we hope to discover a universal similarity manifest in each human-induced intra-environmental conflict.

In general, ecosystems need matter and energy within limits; and they have two boundary zones—excess and deficiency. In other words, ecological collectives can have too much of certain things or too little of essential resources; and the descriptive conditions of too much and too little, respectively, correspond to a dynamic system’s extremes of excess and deficiency.

In specific, the environmental extreme of excess occurs when an external or an internal force destabilizes an otherwise balanced system by putting in too much material or energy. Conversely, an ecological limit of deficiency happens when a force removes essential amounts of matter and energy so that too little remains for the ecosystem to function properly. In either case, when people press ecosystems beyond ecologic thresholds, they destabilize their habitat and maybe even their planetary life-support. For the rest of this chapter, we discuss how humans violate these tolerance margins by probing the intra-environmental conflict’s artificial extremes.

Thus, overwhelming Nature’s balance, carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases retain heat, destabilize the biosphere’s equilibrium and thereby contribute to global warming.

We illustrate how artificial excess weakens at least some of an ecosystem’s capacity to control internal conditions by reintroducing feedback loops. In the case of acid rain and of global warming, human activity increases positive and unchecked feedback, which further acidifies or heats the ecosystem. Ozone depletion occurs through a different mechanism (a negative feedback); yet, I place it under Excess because it is a by-product of too many chlorinated molecules. Other imbalances resulting from positive feedback include various types of water pollution. One noteworthy example is the "lake-death" syndrome, wherein agricultural run-off fertilizes lakes, which results in algae blooms, depleting the lake’s oxygen supply and killing many of its inhabitants.

To summarize Excess, Paracelsus captured its essence: The poison is the dosage. Humans push ecosystems and the biosphere to this environmental extreme by putting in too much or too many compounds. As we saw, at an admittedly simplified level, too much sulphorous matter contributes to acid rain; too many chlorinated molecules causes ozone depletion; and too many carbon compounds intensifies global warming. In these intra-environmental conflicts, people pollute Nature to Excess; and in turn they poison Earth.

As Excess pushes an ecosystem from a healthy balance to an extreme of too much, Deficiency destabilizes Nature at the opposing limit of too little. Like Excess, Deficiency wreaks havoc in an otherwise healthy ecosystem. However, unlike Excess (which puts too many unnecessary and harmful materials into the environment), Deficiency occurs when people take away from the ecosystem too many necessary and beneficial components. For instance, as human Excess is manifest in obesity and in leukemia, the human organism experiences Deficiency in malnutrition and in anemia (i.e., ingesting too few nutrients or possessing too few red blood corpuscles, respectively). Similarly, an ecosystem experiences Deficiency in deforestation and in desertification (i.e., having too few trees or possessing too little soil and moisture, respectively). Put simply, Deficiency is a lack or a privation or an insufficiency of necessary materials. So, when people take away from an ecosystem too much matter or energy so it has too few resources to remain stable, we term the resulting condition artificial deficiency.

In The Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway touched upon water diversion, soil erosion and deforestation, and in so doing characterizes artificial deficiency. Hemingway laments:

To summarize, Deficiency is simply a resource insufficiency. As we saw, too little water upsets the hydrological cycle; too little soil damages agricultural productivity; and too few trees results in deforestation. Seen in this light, other instances of Deficiency appear including desertification, fisheries depletion and species extinction. In each case of artificial deficiency, people extract, damage or kill too many of the ecosystem’s vital resources, leaving too few components to maintain ecologic integrity.

Let us integrate our discussion of the artificial extremes. When humans destabilize ecosystems and the self-balancing biosphere, they degrade Earth. In many forms and in varying degrees, people press ecological systems to their limits and beyond.

To help us gain a clearer picture of ecosystemic conditions, we employ the following schematic, Table 5.1.

Too Few Too Much

Too Little Too Many

Water Diversion Acid Rain

Soil Erosion Ozone Depletion*

Deforestation Global Warming

Desertification Water Pollution

Fisheries Depletion Air Pollution

Species Extinction Radioactive Waste

So, when Excess overwhelms the planetary ecosystem with harmful quantities of materials and when Deficiency deprives Earth of essential resources, they impair the ecosphere’s capacity to perpetuate the preferred state. Yet, however different Excess and Deficiency may be, they do share at least one common trait, ecologic instability. From either direction, such environmental injuries obliterate small-scale ecosystems, damage bio-regions, debilitate the ecosphere. In turn, they threaten biospheric homeostasis and human health. So, with respect to human-induced ecologic degradation, we have discovered a universal similarity—the artificial extremes.

As planetary "weavers," people are sewing many stitches whose common pattern endangers the Tapestry’s beauty and integrity—its essence and existence. Ecologist Odum articulates the intra-environmental conflict:

Now, we must cure our schizophrenia!

Of course, "curing our schizophrenia" between environmental manipulator and ecological inhabitant is hyperbole. Regarding the intra-environmental relationship, people do not have a mental defect. On the contrary, we can resolve the intra-environmental conflict by combining intellectual and moral endeavors.

Intellectually we need ecological knowledge describing how Nature works and how homo sapiens interacts with Earth’s other living beings and its non-living components. To this end, Chapter 3 portrayed humans as just one biotic component of the planetary whole. Then Chapter 4 described the ecosphere as a self-regulating collective which perpetuates a habitable environment because homeostatic controls help maintain a preferred state—the natural balance. Chapter 5 noted that humans are destabilizing these dynamic systems in myriad ways and in varying degrees. Nevertheless, amidst such destructive diversity a common pattern emerges. Through excessive pollution or resource extraction—Excess and Deficiency—people burden ecosystems and the biosphere at rates these systems cannot sustain. Indeed, acid rain and tropical deforestation illustrate that human activity exceeds ecological tolerance margins, and in so doing disrupts an ecosystem’s self-regulating mechanisms. In essence, these artificial extremes symbolize the intra-environmental conflict— people are destroying their planetary home.

In addition to such scientific knowledge, we need to address the intra-environmental relationship’s moral dimension, so we turn to ethics. More to the point, we must discover moral goods and environmental values. To attain this goal, we return to Aristotle’s Ethics in light of humankind’s new-found power to so profoundly harm and destroy ecosystems. In Chapter 2, our ethical inquiry discovered that all people naturally desire happiness. Also, possessing human nature, each person has natural needs, which are satisfied by real goods. However, while people choose whether or not to acquire some real goods, other needs may be unsatisfied because certain resources remain beyond human control. For this reason, we called the former goods controllable and the latter, non-controllable. Further, virtue helps people acquire controllable goods, whereas non-controllable resources must be supplied by good fortune.

In this chapter, we explore Aristotle’s good fortune focusing upon its environmental component. First, by analyzing Aristotle’s remarks about an environmental duty and about Nature in general, we attempt to learn why Aristotle placed or would have placed the environment under the rubric of good fortune. Second, after a few quotes and some comments, I argue that Aristotle made an assumption about how much (actually, how little) humans influenced the environment. Third, we discuss if the artificial extremes have rendered this "non-controllable environment" assumption invalid. That is, "Who’s in environmental control?" Finally, we ask if humans have at least some role in destabilizing ecosystems, then does this fact affect the intra-environmental relation’s ethical status. In short, "Do people have a duty to avoid such destructive acts?" As a potential consequence we entertain the prospect that an environmental ethic is not only possible, but is in fact a necessary component to a happy life.

Like most philosophers throughout the ages, Aristotle never addressed how people should treat nature. Irrespective of what Aristotle believed, we can still append our modified version of his ethical theory into the ecologic realm. Everybody has the same basic needs, and one of those is a livable habitat. Thus, a healthy physical environment is an aspect of a happy life. Nevertheless, Aristotle often made general comments about Nature. Let us analyze a few quotations in the possibility that such a discussion will enable us to formulate an environmental ethic consistent with universal rights, responsiblilites and happiness.

To be sure, the evidence is inconclusive; and from such cryptic comments, we must avoid grandiose or bazaar conclusions. However, these quotations paint a possible, unspectacular portrait of ancient environmental perceptions: humans depend on a habitable environment over which they have insignificant control. This analysis may explain why Aristotle and many others never addressed an environmental ethic. If Nature was non-controllable, then it was part of good fortune. Therefore, Aristotle would fail to address the environment in terms of ethical duty—because moral responsibility did not exist. Important to our discussion, if a livable habitat is beyond human control, then is rests alongside health, freedom and other non-controllable factors which reside under good fortune’s shade.

If we state this "ecologic" perception more formally, we can probe the issue with greater precision. So, I propose a "working" assumption: Because people in previous centuries possessed such little power compared to the forces of Nature, they considered the environment non-controllable.

As we remember, a healthy organism needs an internal balance of various traits (e.g. temperature and nutrition) as well as an external habitat appropriate for its existence. This condition has a corollary: an organism can suffer harm or death in two ways—internally or externally. Focusing on the ecological realm, we classify the external effects according to the environmental proximity of its source, resulting in two broad categories—local and global. For example, the contamination of streams, rivers and lakes with PCB’s and other toxic chemicals is a local problem. In contrast, (though not uniformly distributed) ozone depletion has a global reach. Let us analyze the artificial extremes to see if they threaten human health.

What about local urban phenomena? In cities the exhaust from cars and industry concentrates and then reacts with sunlight to form ozone. When inhaled, along with other contaminants and airborne particulates, ozone causes respiratory damage.

Turning from air to land, flooding provides another example wherein people frequently suffer property damage, personal injury or even death. Yet upon reflection, floods may not always be so natural. For instance, when artificial development drains wetlands and concretes natural flood plains, do we consider the cause of the resulting damage, injury and death natural or artificial?

As we mentioned, uncertainty abounds; and some dynamic interactions may off-set a planetary warming by serving as a countervailing force or they may further destabilize the biosphere. Many researchers admit that climate warming is a "young science". A particular source of uncertainty is how higher temperatures will effect atmospheric clouds. Depending upon the type formed, clouds either can cool or can warm the planet.

Before we conclued this section, three points warrant our attention. First, in addition to being detrimental to a person’s physical welfare, environmental tragedies also inflict psychological damage. Under this heading, one can cite the emotional discontent due to the loss of aesthetic beauty or commercial property. Other relevant instances involve the psychological insecurity arising from living with a contaminated environment—e.g., to be afraid to drink water in Love Canal, New York, or to breath air in Mexico City. Although psychological discontent is difficult to quantify and is prone to exaggeration, the human psyche is affected by artificial extremes. So, psychological as well as physical damage can be debilitating.

Second, local and global threats are by no means mutually exclusive. On the contrary, many artificial extremes have effects that are both local and global. For instance while deforestation locally contributes to soil erosion, river siltation, increased flooding, it globally alters the hydrological and the carbon cycles, thereby exacerbating the artificial extremes of water diversion and global warming.

Life and health are fickle. As Aristotle knew, any of good fortune’s non-controllable factors could change to tragedy in an instant and become a handicap, thereby preventing happiness. In fact, he said,

To such predicaments, we must add ecological misfortunes. Natural disasters like earthquakes, tornados and hurricanes inflict injury and even death. So they frequently prevent happiness and must be viewed as uncontrollable, natural impediments. Yet, acid rain, ozone depletion, global climate change and other artificial extremes injure people physically and psychologically; humans are harming themselves. These latter environmental misfortunes must be seen as impeding happiness artificially. Because "misfortune" connotes beyond human control and "artificial" denotes human influence, this last sentence contains a contradiction. Since these irreconcilable concepts represent current issues of human and ecological health, Nature can no longer be considered uncontrollable.

What has happened to the intra-environmental relationship? Through population, affluence, and technology humans now so influence ecologic collectives that they harm themselves and the planet. We have enumerated many instances of such degradation. These and other ecological realities stand witness, in effect, to the environment’s being thrust from good fortune’s non-controllable realm and into the controllable sphere—more precisely, the semi-controllable sphere. Whether direct or indirect, local or global, these artificial, ecologic imbalances are detrimental to human health, and thereby impede happiness. Thus they invalidate the "non-controllable environment" assumption. Put simply, artificial extremes are semi-controllable impediments to human happiness.

Does humankind’s semi-controlled condition of Nature affect the ethical status of the intra-environmental relationship? Recognizing that people have the capacity to harm themselves through ecologic activity, we explore the possibility and the potential necessity of an environmental ethic.

Developing this point, two themes recur throughout the Ethics: l) a person’s duty is to acquire as many of the real goods that comprise happiness as possible; and 2) a happy life consists of good fortune and complete virtue. I hold that, in addition to other ethical relations, the "most complete virtue" must have an ecological component. Because the biosphere is necessary for life and because humankind can irreparably damage this planetary ecosystem, people have a duty to Nature. (In the next chapter, we discuss what the environmental duty entails.)

Earlier this century, American conservationist Aldo Leopold not only understood the intra-environmental conflict but also knew that the means for its peaceful resolution necessitated an ecologic ethic. In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold affirmed:

One reason that people do not give Nature its proper moral consideration is the asymmetry between the sciences of ecology and of ethics. Indeed, ecological knowledge has increased at an accelerating rate; but the moral understanding of the intra-environmental relationship has not kept pace because the modern world tends to consider ethical "truth" not as genuine knowledge but as mere opinion.

We know that people are interdependent beings in the biotic enterprise. We know that the biosphere self-regulates a dynamic steady-state equilibrium. We know that humans now exceed natural boundaries, thereby disrupting natural control mechanisms. Humans influence the ecosphere and its subsystems in unprecedented and spectacular dimensions. Indeed, Nature is semi-controlled by one of its biotic inhabitant—people. After 2400 years, after an exploding population and after escalating resource consumption, people have thrust good fortune’s environmental component into a semi-controllable state. With such influence and power comes moral responsibility.

So, what must be done? Within our modified version of Aristotle’s ethical framework, we must incorporate a moral component which recognizes ecological interdependence. We employ the same tools that Aristotle used (but with significantly less skill) to address moral rights and responsibilities, vices and virtues. In so doing we hope to discover an environmental ethic. To this task, we now turn...

I

To recomplete Aristotle’s Ethics, we must obtain a universal moral standard which regulates the intra-environmental relationship. To achieve this task, we analyze the human-biosphere link at both the qualitative and the quantitative level. Ultimately, however, the issue boils down to one of control. More precisely, should people control the environment? Thanks to the rules of logic, the answer must be one of the following three propositions: no-control, some-control or total-control.

Since people must use the environment to acquire life-necessities and some amenities, the next question of controlling Nature jumps from the extreme of slavery to its qualitative opposite—mastery. Surely, people possess a right to control Nature; but do they have this right to a limited or an unlimited extent? In other words, should the individual become the environment’s master or Nature’s member?

The former proposition of human mastery creates yet another problem. Because the "total-control" thesis holds that human kind should dominate Nature, it seeks a condition in which people possess the power to regulate Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and energy flows. What a fantasy! Though obviously gaining influence, homo sapiens remains just one minor component in ecological processes from which individuals sustain themselves. However powerful people become, they will never so dominate these material cycles and energy flows that humans will be free from environmental uncertainties and constraints. Thus, like its no-control opposite, the total-control proposition is also illusory.

In order to gain a clearer understanding on human control over the environment, we use the following schematic, Table 7.1.

Slave Member Master

Dependence on Interdependence with Independence from

Impossible Necessary Impossible

Because we need to make practical judgments about human behavior in the biosphere, the some-control response seems at best useless, and at worst, disingenuous. But our task is incomplete. That notwithstanding, we have made some definite progress in our quest to discover a universal standard of moral conduct. We have narrowed our search from a qualitative distinction, a difference in kind, to a quantitative distinction, a difference in degree. If nurtured, the some-control standard can develop into a healthy flower.

In order to ascertain the proper degree of control, we turn to ethics focusing on vice and virtue. Before discussing a particular environmental virtue, let us review at length Aristotle’s general thoughts on the topic.

Aristotle introduces virtue by making some observations from everyday, easily-identifiable examples like the traits of human strength, health, and courage. As noted in the Ethics, the essence of either an object or a condition is destroyed...

Aristotle understood that when people measure an object or a condition, they use the terms equal or intermediate in two distinct senses. He continues:

Aristotle then develops this "artist" metaphor to demonstrate the similarity between art and virtue:

Finally, Aristotle gives substance to his concept of virtue by characterizing it as laudable and by placing it in relation to its opposing poles, the vices:

Before reconvening our debate on environmental ethics, let us derive another schematic (Table 7.2) which encapsulates Aristotle’s thought on vice and virtue.

Too Little Intermediate Too Much

Too Few Equal Too Many

Illness Health Illness

Cowardice Courage Rashness

Boorishness Temperance Self-indulgence

Having just seen Aristotle’s general framework to guide proper behavior, we can now address ethical life’s environmental dimension. Specifically, we apply our ecological understanding and situation within this prescriptive architecture to ascertain the proper degree of human control over the environment. In so doing, we achieve our goal—an environmental virtue.

With respect to how much humans should influence the biosphere, we know the some-control standard is incomplete. So we ask, What is the appropriate degree? Like other virtues, the intra-environmental mean is the intermediate state between two extremes—defect and excess. Before scrutinizing the extremes, we focus on the mean.

Analogously, because people need an ecologically-balanced planet, human control over the environment within limits is good. In this way, humans may develop their skills and potentials while preserving Earth’s comfortable state. Conversely, human influence over Nature beyond boundaries is ethically wrong because excessive control and defective control destabilize ecologic equilibrium, thereby impairing planetary health.

Thus, while the appropriate control standard of stewardship is a trait of environmental virtue, excessive control and defective control are characteristic of ecologic vice.

As stewardship finds and chooses ecologic balance, we gain insight into the ecologic vices by understanding that they also have a physical manifestations—the artificial extremes. Indeed, the moral extremes of defective control and excessive control have ecologic realities witnessed in artificial deficiency and artificial excess. As we remember from Chapter 5, artificial deficiency like acid rain, ozone depletion and global warming overwhelms Nature by injecting into the ecosystem too many compounds; and artificial deficiency like water diversion, soil erosion and deforestation destabilizes ecosystems by leaving too few resources.

To better understand the intra-environmental ethic, let us use as examples human health and strength to illustrate the traits of bodily respect and care. Certainly, people can exercise too much or too little; and they can over-eat or under-eat. Nevertheless, people need exercise and nourishment to remain strong and healthy. When people "under-exercise", we sometimes say they are neglecting their bodies. Or when people "over-eat" we often say they are abusing their bodies. So "under," a trait of deficiency, corresponds to the vice of neglect; and "over," a characteristic of excess, corresponds to the vice of abuse.

Turning to how much humans should influence Nature, when people take away resources to the point of Deficiency like soil erosion, they under-control or defectively control Nature, and thereby commit the intra-environmental vice of neglect. At the other extreme, instances of Excess witnessed in global warming occur when humans over-control or excessively control the environment, committing the vice of abuse. In short, the virtue of stewardship is the intermediate state between the two vices of neglect and abuse.

By incorporating these topics into the qualitative diagram of Table 7.1, we derive Table 7.3 to gain a clearer picture of our quantitative discussion.

Table 7.3

None Some Total

Slave Member Master

Dependence on Interdependence with Independence from

Impossible Necessary Impossible

Extreme MEAN Extreme

Defect APPROPRIATE Excess

Too Little INTERMEDIATE Too Much

Too Few EQUAL Too Many

Under- BALANCE Over-

Vice VIRTUE Vice

To recapitulate, people must influence the environment to some degree; and the moral principle which governs how much people should interact with Earth is the intra-environmental mean of stewardship. Situated between the vices of neglect and abuse, the stewardship virtue avoids the artificial extremes by finding and choosing conditions of ecologic balance. So conceived, stewardship seeks not defective or excessive influence, but rather appropriate control. Stewardship embodies the standards which regulate how humans should interact with the biosphere. Representing the duty to which people owe Nature, stewardship means responsible environmental conduct.

In so far as we have the power to disrupt Earth’s material cycles and energy flows, we must accept the responsibility of directing the environment in the "right" direction. But what is the right direction? To what ecologic condition does stewardship correspond?

While the ethically appropriate goal remains the environmental mean of stewardship, humankind has complicated the proper ecologic target. To the extent that humans influence the ecosphere, a healthy planet is determined by ecological equilibrium or biospheric homeostasis; and this preferred state was the natural balance. But now that humans have altered the planet irreparably, the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. Indeed the artificial extremes verify that we can no longer return to a time when people had an insignificant effect on the planet. Moreover, with a rising population beyond 5.3 billion and with escalating resource consumption, homo sapiens is a definite and a permanent force. So we must examine the ramifications of this unprecedented event.

Regarding the intra-environmental relationship, we now have a moral principle to help us judge appropriate conduct on our ever-evolving planet—the ecologic virtue of stewardship. As our next task, we must prove that this standard of responsibility is universal in that it applies to all people. Let us proceed...

In order to demonstrate the truth of stewardship, we must define and refine some topics. Particularly, we must first define the terms objective and absolute. We must also differentiate between two types of truth—namely, descriptive and prescriptive. By noting that humans desire things in different ways, we distinguish needs from wants. Then we re-examine the real goods that all humans need, comparing and contrasting these resources from apparent goods. Lastly, we examine the essential aspects of self-evident truth. With these tasks accomplished, we will have the tools enabling us to prove that the ethical foundation upon which the stewardship-duty stands does embody a universal truth.

Before embarking on this leg of our environmental journey, we note that Dr. Mortimer Adler traverses this ethical terrain with uncommon acumen; so he will frequently be leading this and further parts of our tour.

Initially, we must define and distinguish between the terms subjective and objective, and between the terms relative and absolute. Adler makes the distinctions:

Important for our topic, something that is objective with reference to human cognition and absolute with reference to time and place is considered universal.

Next, we need to distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive truth. As ecology seeks to discover truths about how the environment and organisms interact, so too other natural and social sciences seek knowledge about how the world works and how people behave. Since these positive sciences attempt to describe reality, the resulting facts fall under the domain of descriptive truth. In contrast, normative sciences prescribe conduct they deal with issues of good and evil, right and wrong, what people ought to do or what they ought not to do. So, normative sciences seek a qualitatively different type of truth—the knowledge of prescriptive or practical judgments concerning moral values.

To expand on right desire, we distinguish between two types of desire—needs and wants, which Aristotle respectively referred to natural desire and to acquired desire. Adler explains:

Adler continues:

We now have the appropriate tools to construct a syllogism demonstrating stewardship as a universal truth. By combining the self-evident, prescriptive premise that "people ought to desire whatever is really good for them" with the descriptive premise that "a healthy, habitable biosphere is a real good," we obtain our goal of establishing stewardship as the following universal truth:

Do poverty and starvation negate environmental duties? Certain people argue that stewardship cannot be a universal truth because, if it were, people who are stricken by poverty are morally responsible for the ecological damage they inflict.

To explore this issue, we must address how the human population impacts the environment. To ascertain the influence of a population, ecologists use the "IPAT" formula. As Erhlich explains:

But what about the world’s impoverished, the majority of Earth’s population? Erhlich continues:

To summarize, while poverty is truly a moral dilemma, it is also a legitimate reason for ecologic degradation. Because a healthy environment is also a natural need, all humans ought to keep Earth balanced and habitable. But since the poverty-stricken must degrade the environment in order to survive, they are not obliged to provide stewardship. Since ethical responsibility is not at issue, this dilemma does not negate stewardship’s status as a universal, moral truth.

On our ethical journey, we have concentrated on responsibility; but we now pause from ecologic duty to examine its implications —environmental rights. Actually rights and responsibilities are related concepts; they are two sides of the same coin. Before we analyze where duties and rights originate, we must understand how universal human needs bridge this relationship enabling us to prove that all people have a human right to a healthy Earth. To facilitate our understand of the responsibility-right design, we first sketch how the duty to keep Earth habitable necessitates the right to a livable planet and then we scrutinize this relationship in depth.

We ought to seek food, shelter, sleep, knowledge and friendships because these goods satisfy natural needs. Since natural needs arise out of human nature—which is the single trait that all humans have equally—everybody has a right to the resources which satisfy them. In short, people have a natural or a human right to their natural needs. As the last chapter demonstrated, a healthy environment—like food, knowledge and friendship—is a natural need; so while every individual has a duty to keep the planet habitable, everybody has a human right to a healthy Earth.

By scrutinizing the responsibility-right link, we gain greater insight into how these ideas complement each other and how they form a moral organism. This "ethical being" will help us understand how everybody simultaneously has both a responsibility and a right to healthy environment. Before viewing a moral organism as a whole, let us dissect it into its component systems—responsibilities and rights. Having explored duties in previous chapters, we probe the concept of rights .

In Right and Reason, Austin Fagothey, S.J. observes that the word "rights" has two basic meanings which the following sentence illustrates: It is right (morally good) for us to demand our rights (things owed to us). According to Fagothey, "The two meanings stem out of the same root idea, the ethical concept of oughtness: how I ought to act, and others ought to act towards me. Hence we have:

In the latter sense, right means what is just or what is owed. By focusing on the human-biosphere relationship, we know that all people have a responsibility to keep Earth livable, but why does everybody have a right to a healthy environment? Because, humans are morally obligated to live as good or as happy a life as possible. To discharge that responsibility everyone has the right to the real goods that lead to happiness. As Fagothey reasons,

The rights "system" is composed of four "organs." By continuing the dissection we learn how these components interact. With a surgeon's skill, Fagothey explains:

But much of the biosphere including the oceans and the atmosphere are not private property but common resources. Whereas private property excludes others from the use and enjoyment of something, common resources are the exclusive domain of nobody. (Chapter 10 explores this relationship between private and common property at length.) If we have a right to a livable planet and if we have a duty to respect that same right of others, then we all have a duty to perpetuate global assets and attributes. So the relationships people share are manifest at both the ecologic and the ethical levels. While all people must share the biosphere's common resources, everyone also interacts in an environmental, moral bond.

By reviewing a right's four components, we arrive at the origin of rights—human needs. As a subject, everybody has an ecologic right; and as a term everybody is duty-bound to respect the right of other subjects. The matter is that "something" which we have a right to, in this case, a livable planet. Lastly, everybody has title to a healthy Earth because humankind is part of Nature dependent on ecologic processes and biological resources. As such, a healthy Earth is a natural need.

How do natural needs bridge responsibilities and rights? Because, real goods are indispensable for an individual to discharge his/her moral responsibility in living as good a life as possible. As we remember, real goods are those resources which satisfy natural needs. Since food, health, freedom, knowledge and friendship fulfill human needs, they are all real goods. Since everyone needs Earth to supply water, circulate oxygen, radiate sunshine, regulate climate and provide other life support services, a livable planet and in turn a habitable environment are also real goods. As life, health and liberty are real goods in that they are indispensable to a complete, happy life—or as complete and happy a life as fortune allows—all people have a right to them. Similarly, because a healthy physical environment also satisfies natural need, everybody has a human right to a livable habitat. In this way, a hospitable biosphere is part of a happy life.

More formally, to discharge our moral obligation to live as good as possible, we have human rights to all the real goods—those resources which satisfy our natural needs—that comprise happiness. In the following syllogism we prove that all people have the right to a healthy Earth:

We know that right is constrained by responsibility and that the reverse is also true. After dissecting those systems, we find that they share a boundary. By envisioning this boundry as the intersection of interdependant ideas, we picture this relationship as a moral organism.

Fagothey draws the analogy:

We gain a deeper understanding of our environmental right by seeing how it extends the natural-rights tradition into the ecological sphere. With this historical perspective, we can view with greater insight how humanity and the natural world can coexist.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence affirmed that all humans as equals possess the natural rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." While enumerating these three rights, the document inferred additional rights because "pursuing happiness" encompasses all things that are indispensable to a good life. In 1948, the United Nations declared its Universal Declaration of Human Rights which further expanded rights including eduction, humane treatment, and decent living conditions. As life and liberty are essential components of happiness, so too a livable planet is necessary to a good life. So we append to the aforementioned Declarations the human right to a healthy Earth.

What does the right to a livable environment for all people imply for the world? On one side of the coin, everyone has a right to a healthy habitat because it satisfies a natural human need. On the coin’s other side, everyone has a duty to not infringe on the right that everyone else has to use Nature in order to survive and to attain improved living standards. On a planet which possess finite resources bound by ecologic constraints, how can 5.3 billion humans achieve good lives? A historic challenge awaits.

In order to resolve the seemingly insurmountable conflicts that we face in our duty to keep Earth livable, we must avoid a myopic value-system which perceives the world exclusively in the cost-benefit analysis of dollars, deutsche-marks and yen. Certainly money is useful to allocate scarce commodities -- to measure the economic value of natural resources, factory equipment, consumer goods, and other forms of wealth. However, wealth embodies more than money and economic resources, doesn't it?

As we remember, a happy life is one lived in accordance with complete virtue and accompanied by a modicum of external goods or possessions. Indeed, these two basic things — virtuous perfections and external possessions — encompass all the real goods of happiness. Having scrutinized virtue in previous chapters, let us examine external possessions at length.

In addition to personal and political relationships, everyone needs external possessions of another class — economic goods or wealth. Wealth comprises the economic resources that all people need to lead dignified, healthy lives. Many governments, institutions and people recognize that everybody has economic rights: the right to wealth, seen as a decent standard of living. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations states:

The subclass of economic goods we call commodities are those physical resources that firms and factories produce. Under this broad definition, these products include technologically advanced computers and labor-intensive artwork. Commodities span from basic necessities such as food, clothes, and housing to specific luxuries such as filet mignon, mink coats, and video cassette recorders.

Closely related to commodities, economic services occur when people pay somebody to assist or to perform something that individual cannot or chooses not to do. Therapists help heal us, bus drivers transport us, janitors clean our buildings, and chefs cook our food. Workers render these and innumerable other services, all of which are forms of economic wealth.

In addition to commodities and services, economic wealth also contains the sub-group we term capital. Capital encompasses all the resources, with the exception of human labor, that produce commodities and assist services. In short, capital is any non-human resource that helps make economic products. The topic warrants a closer look.

Capital has two basic forms — raw materials on the one hand, and factories and machines on the other hand. Raw materials are the basic inputs of economic production, which, after the manufacturing process, eventually become commodities or consumer goods and services. Important for our discussion, many raw materials such as land, lumber, minerals, oil and natural gas, fall under the heading of natural resources. The other type of capital involves the factories, machines, equipment and other instruments of technology that, when combined with varying degrees of human labor, transform basic raw material into useful economic commodities. Because raw materials, factories and machines are crucial to the economic process, they are often referred to as the means of production. It is the means of production that represents the class of economic wealth called capital.

As economic possessions, commodities and capital are collectively referred to as private property. Yet property confers upon its owner the rights to use the resource and to exclude others. That is, the owners of the means of production and of the economic products largely choose how best to implement and enjoy the resources without the consent of others. Certainly, property rights are limited. They are tempered by the personal and property rights of others along with society’s fundamental right to regulate resource use for the common good. These limits notwithstanding, the right to property is fundamental and irrefutably sound. As Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights testifies, "Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others."

We label the totality of economic goods as wealth. Having four basic components — commodities, services, capital, and benefits, wealth is indispensable to people attaining an adequate standard of living which everybody needs and to which every human has an economic right.

Let us summarize our discussion of external possessions thus far by realizing that they differ according to the degree that people control them. Whether social or physical, external possessions are real goods that are not totally within an individual’s capacity to acquire. Yet the external goods of human association, politics and economics do vary as to how accessible they are to people. Some goods are less dependent on external forces than others.

For example, because uncontrollable factors have such little impact on whether people experience friendships and other private relations, the goods of human association are least dependent on external factors. That is, they are most under an individual’s ability to acquire. Next, humans have less influence over the political goods they enjoy. Finally, people have the least control as to whether they amass the commodities, services and other economic possessions that translate into decent living standards. Prosperity depends on the confluence of myriad variables like employment, labor laws, contracts, property rights and inflation that are beyond an individual's control.

By placing the three classes of external possessions on a line which measures how dependent these resources are on external conditions, we view them on a continuum of dependence. (Table 10.1)

Table 10.1

Goods of Goods of Goods of Human Association Politics Economics

Friendships Civil peace Commodities Family Political liberty Services Honor & respect Equality & inequality Capital (i.e., of others justice requires the means of production) Benefits

What about Nature which provides environmental goods and services? Is biodiversity necessary for human life and health?

It is precisely these environmental goods and services that warrant our attention. The ozone layer shields organisms from excessive ultra-violet radiation; the greenhouse effect stablizes climate; some mechanisms produce soils, other processes protect breeding grounds and watersheds; still others manufacture and circulate carbon dioxide, methane, water and oxygen. These and myriad other ecologic goods and services keep the biosphere habitable and comfortable which humans need for health and prosperity.

How are environmental goods and services free? People receive their benefits without having to pay any costs. Precisely because these resources cannot be traded, nobody can buy or sell them. Thus, they have no market price. They are simply Nature’s free gifts. Contradicting the most sacred tenet of conventional economics, environmental goods and services demonstrate that There really is such thing as a free lunch.

By further probing biodiversity in general along with free goods and services in particular, we distinguish between economic wealth seen as private property and biologic wealth seen as Nature’s commons. Some components of biodiversity such as the ozone blanket and the greenhouse mechanism are global resources which cannot be "commodified". People cannot acquire these external goods in the same way they amass consumer goods such as clothes, food, refrigerators, cars and houses. Nor are they services in the economic sense that people can provide them.

By understanding how people acquire the rights to private property and thus economic wealth, we gain insights about how society can better protect the environmental goods and services that cannot be appropriated, Nature’s commons. So we turn back the clock three hundred years to the England of a most enlightened philosopher, John Locke. In The Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke asserted that people create property by combining human labor with the common resources they removed from Nature. Locke wrote:

Three comments are necessary. First, without human labor, Nature and its resources have no value. What good is a forest full of trees? Only when people cut, remove and process the trees does society acquire the lumber to build homes, the paper to print news, the wood to warm shelter or to cook meals and many other derivative activities. Earlier in this chapter, we noted that many raw materials were natural resources. With respect to wealth, these commodifiable resources are valuable to the extent that they have an economic function irrespective of their ecologic benefits. As we know, private property bestows upon its owner the right to use and enjoy the resources, while excluding others. Let us call the common resources that people have not yet appropriated but may be acquired in the future, potential private property.

Our second comment answers the following question: What is the value of all the environmental goods and services that cannot become property? Because nobody has a proprietary interest in protecting these resources, they are prone to abuse. In other words, since the ozone layer, greenhouse mechanism and other "non-commodifiable" processes of Nature cannot become exclusive possessions, they do not enjoy the legal protection of property rights, so they are often neglected. Not providing an economic commodity or service, these common resources have no market price and have no economic value. In previous centuries including Locke’s, humankind’s population, consumption and technology had such little impact on Nature that this concept of property was, for the most part, helpful to people and innocuous to Earth. Surrounded by poverty and ignorant of ecology, Locke was truly brilliant. We, however, cannot permit the ancient doctrine of property — which has evolved to promote justice by remedying the conflicts of rights — to progress further if property rights transgress ecologic limits and imperil human health. (Our present topic is not legal but moral. Although the ethical foundation we are laying has applications in law, our immediate concern is to examine how people should use Nature, natural resources and environmental goods and services.)

Our third comment sheds light on how biodiversity represents Nature’s capital, as the ecologic means of production. Since the biosphere produces environmental goods and services, it is a type of factory, similar to a corporate manufacturer. We first examine a small-scale "forest factory", and then address Earth’s grandest ecosystem, the biosphere.

A forest is more than the summation of its components — trees, lumber, plants, wildlife, fruits, nuts and other harvestable commodities. Also it has more value than total market price of these products. The reality is that the natural resources of our forest, along with environmental goods and services they contribute to, are the product of biodiversity — produced when genes, species and ecosystems interact. Through photosynthesis biodiversity produces organic material, starting the first and largest link in the food chain. In addition, biodiversity manufactures trees; it produces soils; it regulates the climate; it shelters wildlife. As such, since our forest factory produces these economic as well as ecologic goods and services, it can be viewed as the ecologic means of production or Nature’s capital. In brief, the forest not only inventories products but also is a factory.

However, forests and other ecosystems are not isolated collectives, they are subsystems of the biosphere. By continuing the "Earth Incorporated" metaphor, we distinguish between property and commons. The forest and its products which include many natural resources are commodifiable goods. As economic possessions, they are property in the sense that humans own the right to their use while excluding others. On the global scale, the biosphere embodies a similar structure, except that many of its attributes like much of the atmosphere and the oceans cannot become property. Neither individual nor nation rightfully excludes others from the atmosphere, the oceans and the benefits that the environmental goods and services produce. While people have different obligations to the property ecosystems of land and the common ecosystems of atmosphere and ocean, everybody has an interest in preserving biodiversity, in perpetuating the ecologic means of production, and in enriching Nature’s capital.

Is biodiversity genuine wealth?

Since wealth is comprised of the physical goods external to the human organism — resources that people must acquire to remain healthy and vigorous — then a habitable environment and biosphere must also be part of wealth. Since everyone to some extent depends on sunshine, photosynthesis, oxygen and water — all of which are resources made available by ecologic systems and the interaction of living organisms — we can refer to their function as ecologic or biologic wealth. Importantly, Earth performs vital functions that supports life and we must value biologic resources and ecologic services. Briefly, we must recognize biodiversity as bio-wealth.

Traditionally, wealth has been associated with economic goods — commodities, services, capital (understood as the means of production) and benefits. These resources are necessary for a decent life. Further, economic wealth is typically measured in terms of the market price that buyers and sellers value the products. To view wealth as a compilation of economic possessions and private property is useful, but that picture is incomplete and myopic.

In reality, wealth consists of all the resources — economic and ecologic — that everybody needs to attain not only a decent standard of living but also an adequate quality of life. Even though environmental goods and services have limited, if any, economic value, they sustain and enrich a respectable quality of life. All biological resources have intrinsic value regardless of whether or not they have economic value and a market price.

For instance, even if water is free in the sense that we may consume it without having to pay for it, we do not waste water because it has ecologic value. Water is part of Earth’s hydrological cycle thereby a component of rainfall patterns and weather systems. Also, water is an essential resource for life and for the biosphere which nurtures the global habitat. Indeed, water has ecologic value.* Similar arguments help us appreciate the importance of species and ecosystems along with the ozone layer, the greenhouse dynamic and the oxygen cycle. As such, they are essential, external possessions of Nature’s inheritance, biowealth.

Concerning the physical resources people need to lead healthy, fulfilling lives, both economic goods and biodiversity are indispensable. Because economic resources have historically been associated with private property, wealth has been considered as economic possessions. Yet by sub-dividing the concept of wealth into economic goods and biological resources, we realize that, though not always an exclusive possession, biodiversity is a real, external good necessary for a decent and healthy life. Earlier in this chapter we noted that external possessions differ as to what degree humans control them. Although people have even less control over Nature than the other resource groups, biodiversity is also an external good; and it deserves recognition as such. So in addition to the three traditional classes of external goods — goods of human association, of politics, and of economics — we must append another resource class of environmental production, goods and services — the goods of ecology also known as bio-wealth.

Goods of Goods of Goods of Goods of Human Association Politics Economics Ecology

Environmental goods & services Nature’s capital* (ie, the means of ecologic production)

We must note that some resourses reside under both economic and ecologic classifications. Specifically, a portion of biodiversity overlaps into the realm of economic goods. Resources such as game meat and firewood are often directly consumed, without monetary exchange. In such cases, economic possessions and biologic resources are indistinguishable. Slightly different from these goods, the biological resources that are exchanged in a formal marketplace are commodities or the raw materials of economic products. These natural resources — which are commodifiable — are the basic inputs of economic capital and wealth. In this latter category of biodiversity, an extract of the Madagascar periwinkle helps treat cancer, a derivative of a tropical treebark fights malaria; while teak and mahogany woodlands are the raw materials for furniture, floors and many other uses. Also, biodiversity’s conponents like exotic species of birds and other wildlife are tradeable goods and thus have direct economic value. Thus, some gene species and ecosystems coincide with economic goods.

We have redefined wealth. We have supplemented the idea of wealth by subdividing it into economic and biological sectors. Economic wealth refers to consumer goods and services, along with capital and benefits. Biological wealth consists of the totality of genes, species, ecosystems and the ecologic processes which continue to produce and to circulate environmental goods and services. Further, these processes are the means of ecologic production, that is, Nature’s capital. Indeed, wealth embodies both economic possessions and ecologic resources.

We little understand our ecologic inheritance. The pursuit of increased standards of living as measured by economic growth has consequences for ecologic health and for the quality of life. To disavow economic wealth and private property is to miss the point. We must blend economics with ecology. Though researchers are making noble efforts, economics cannot measure biological value. For people who do not see the need to conserve biodiversity, conservationist Leopold cautions:

We have complemented the contemporary understanding of wealth as economic resources with biodiversity to more accurately portray the Tapestry of Life.

What we need to do is simple yet difficult. Simply, we must change how we think about Earth. More difficult, we need to alter our behavior and our habits of how we produce, consume and dispose of material goods.

First, the difficult part: we must change our lifestyle, our culture and our economy. We must redefine affluence, and the throw-away mentality of our disposable society must mature to recognize ecologic limits. Also we must modify the economic pipeline of production-consumption-disposal to better conserve resources.

Market mechanisms, when understood and acted upon, furthers social progress. As consumers desire eco-products corporations will supply the resources—the technologies and the goods they help produce—to satisfy these demands. Of course, these shifts are neither uniform nor instantaneous. Rather, they comprise an economic process reflecting a cultural transformation.

Surely, saving money can motivate people to alter habits and norms; yet the more important incentive is not economic benefit but ethical duty. As producers and as consumers, all of us must become leaders by changing our habits to impart ecologic values into our economic system. While a few optimistic trends are building strength, most of these difficult transitions—in the patterns of production, consumption and disposal—wait for the first domino to fall.

The first domino symbolizes our simple task: to change how we view Nature. So while the difficult task is shaping a cultural and economic evolution, the simple task looks inward into the mind—to develop a conceptual model which more closely corresponds to reality, and will thereby change human attitudes from exploitation to environmental respect and care.

Similarly, because people misperceive Earth, they treat the biosphere inappropriately. Rather than a rock which possesses vast resources free from pollution limits, Earth embodies a system of interacting biotic and abiotic components forming a unified whole upon which people depend for life, health and prosperity. By altering our mind-set and our attitude, we desire different things because different things now have value. So an ecologically benign and even productive culture and economy will happen only after we change our worldview of Earth toward a perception of stewardship.

Although the Tapestry of Life qualifies as a stewardship-perception, it is only a metaphor. What does this new perception involve? Actually, to conceive of the planet as a whole entity is neither new nor uniform. From different peoples and cultures arise various interpretations from a common thread of wholeness. Yet, each percept in some ways embodies the environmental ethic of stewardship.

Our second illustration of a stewardship vision is a worldview of Native America. At the 1988 Global Survival Conference held at Oxford Chief Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Ondaga Council, and Thomas Banyacya, elder to the Hopi nation, read a fictitious letter which portrays their culture's worldview. The setting is 1855. The U.S. wants to purchace Indian territory; and Chief Seattle writes to President Franklin Pierce to explain his culture’s land ethic:

Whether intuitively understood or explicitly stated, a stewardship vision entails an ecological balance. People—some researchers and some activists—are making significant progress on how to overcome "attitudinal inertia" by transforming culture and economy. Derived from an applied human ecology, a discipline which understands the value of the ecosphere and its biodiversity is conservation.

Linked to conservation is the notion of sustainability. That is, humanity has the right to consume resources to the extent that people maintain the environmental goods and services for others around the world and for future generations. To safeguard environmental rights and responsibilities within ecologic constraints calls for a stewardship worldview. In the 1980's, the United Nations understood this challenge and formed the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by Norway's former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Commission's vision to balance human entitlements and obligations is rooted in the idea of sustainable development .

According to the Brundtland Commission sustainable development involves social, political, and economic progress that meets "...the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generatons to meet their own needs."15

Granted, this definition is skeletal; but many contributors are adding to the structure's shape. William Ruckelshaus, former chief administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, asserts, "Sustainability is the nascent doctrine that economic growth and development must take place, and be maintained over time, within the limits set by ecology, in the broadest sense -- by the interrelations of human beings and their works, the biosphere and the physical and chemical laws that govern it." 16 Because industrialized nations and developing countries influence global ecology, everybody must have some amount of basic wealth and prosperity in order to protect the environment. According to James MacNeill, a principle architect of the Brundtland Report, "Sustainable development thus reflects a choice of balanced use for managing planet earth in which equity matters -- equity among people around the world today, equity between parents and their grandchildren." 17

It is essential to note what sustainable development and conservation are not. They are not permanent, impenetrable constraints to check human growth. They are dynamic concepts that change with technological innovation, scientific understanding, and human skills coupled with political and social institutions that better implement strategies to simultaneously improve health and to foster environmental balance. So conceived, sustainable development's maxim is, in MacNeill's words, not "limits to growth"; it is "the growth of limits." 18

Prior to changing our habits and behaviors, we must alter our worldviews and attitudes. Thus, conservation—the peaceful resolution of intra-environmental conflicts—begins with how people interpret the natural world. As Odum conceives:

Conservation expands our value system to include more of Nature and its inhabitants than strict utilitarianism. In so doing it sometimes even turns altruism into self-interest. Just beneath the surface of conservation lies justice: how we ought to treat others and Nature. Next chapter we explore how the biospheric community promotes biodiversity, stewardship, and conservation when self-interest and justice converge!

I

Granted, "We, the People of Earth" sounds utopian, if not laughable. To understand why I argue the contrary, an overview and an itinerary follow. We have seen that biodiversity is genuine wealth and that conservation combines stewardship with sustainable economic development. Now we examine how justice, when coupled with biowealth and conervation justice, bind together the global society we call the biospheric community. First, for reasons explained below, we augment the idea of a people to encompass every human on Earth. Second, we envision environmental injustices when everybody is an ecologic have without any have-nots . Third, we observe how justice prevents or remedies violations of human rights when local actions damage nearby and distant individuals and habitats. Forth, we demonstrate how environmental justice is compatible with national sovereignty. Finally, we witness a further aspect of justice which promotes biodiversity, seen as the ecologic facet of the biospheric community’s common good.

What is meant by a people? Often, a people refers to the body politic of sovereign nation-states. Individuals organize a government with a unified purpose and with shared ideals of justice. In ancient Rome, Cicero defined the concept:

We enlarge this idea of a people from a national polity to include all human members of the biospheric community, homo sapiens. At least two reasons mandate such a planetary perspective. Of primary import, ecologic systems provide global assets. The benefits of environmental goods and services, Nature’s capital and biodiversity—many of which are unpossessable and commonly owned—demonstrate that all of humanity participates in a universal common good which transcends national boundaries. While more complex, the other reason forcing a world perspective is a corollary of the first. Whether regional or global, the benefits of biodiversity can be diminished by others around the planet. In other words, since the economic activity of individuals and nations often has even a global reach, people can suffer an ecologic threat far removed from its source.

While we elaborate on such injustices later in this chapter, we just note that prosperous nations can harm poor countries and, due to rising populations, the reverse holds true. The irony is that while rich and poor countries can injure each other, all nations share a mutual interest in keeping the planet habitable. Thus, the two principles of self-interest and justice demand a planetary ethic which forges the biosphere community.

Such a body politic in no ways displaces nationalism but reinforces the nascent idea that all humans have a collective self-interest in perpetuating the biosphere’s benefits. Such a planet-wide outlook balances the scales of justice to better secure the ecologic rights for 5.3 billion humans to personal health and to a livable habitat. We must act alone and in concert with others — rich and poor, first-world and third-world — for everybody inhabits the same world, Earth. To peacefully resolve the intra-environmental conflicts that impair the health and the habitats of humanity and future generations, we must follow where self-interest and justice lead, that is, we must act as a united people — the people of Earth!

In order to delve into the pan-humanist ethic of ecologic justice, we simplify our task by conceptually dividing the human race into two categories — the North and the South. For illustrative purposes, the North represents the industrialized nations such as the United States, Canada, the European Community, and Japan; and the South constitutes the developing nations around the globe including Brazil, China, India, and Zaire. In short, the North is the few rich, and the South is the many poor. This North-South divide has limitations in that the resulting generalizations inevitably have exceptions; yet, the remarks apply to the Northern and the Southern majorities. Separating the developed and the developing worlds enables us to demonstrate that each group faces fundamentally different ecologic problems and priorities. After we explicate this nexus, we reintegrate North and South to show how everyone has a universal self-interest in keeping Earth healthy and how humankind maintains a stable biosphere by respecting ecologic justice.

By contrasting North and South, we demonstrate how ecologic problems and priorities change depending upon where an individual lives. These differences largely arise from the disparate levels of economic development that each group experiences. Having converted ecosystems into economically productive assets, the North enjoys a lifestyle marked by relative affluence. The South is mired in poverty, and it wants to develop as the North did. Consider forests. The North has leveled most of its temperate forests which supplied timber to a busy population and cleared the land for agriculture. The industries of timber and agriculture fueled economic growth which improved living conditions by building things and feeding people that used them. The South wants to harvest the trees for use and for export; and it seeks to provide for its land-hungry masses. Undoubtedly, the North has more than ecologic assets to explain its relatively high living standards; and the sources of Southern poverty far exceed the existence of unexploited natural resources. These differences notwithstanding, forests mean different things depending on whether a person is rich or poor.

The South wants to play by the same rules the North did, especially the sovereign right to choose its own economic future. However, the developing world notices a double standard: the South is supposed to preserve its forests amidst poverty to preserve biodiversity and maintain global climate; and the wealthy North continues to clear cut its remaining stands. As the "spotted owl" furor in the United States shows, preserving species and habitats impacts culture and economy. Granted, developing and developed countries contribute to deforestation by subsidizing logging and clear-cutting. Yet, unlike the North, most Southerners face malnutrition; they often lack drinking water as lakes, rivers and streams become dumping grounds for municipal waste and untreated sewage. These differing environmental realities lead to disparate ecologic priorities. Consequently, the South is less concerned about biodiversity loss and climate change than about food for today and tomorrow.

To bridge the gaps among the varied problems and priorities that the rich and the poor face, we introduce the concept of economic security. Having basic needs satisfied is economic security. It includes an abundant, stable supply of breathable air, potable water, food, sanitation, education, work and other life-necessities. Economic security is the psychological disposition in which people are freed from survival concerns and are free to plan their futures. Paralleling the idea of economic wealth (discussed in Chapter 10), it is the ability to exercise the human right to some economic wealth in the form of decent human living conditions. Economic security is what the affluent North has and what the poverty-riddled South lacks. If people are hungry, they will use available resources — animals, plants, trees and other "luxuries". Thus, economic security is a prerequisite for ecologic stability which is essentially a type of environmental security. Only after satisfying our basic needs do we focus on conservation’s larger landscape.

Since economic security and wealth are universal needs, we digress to examine the process of economic development. To support growing populations, economies must to some extent industrialize. While the appropriate degree varies considerably, industrialization largely improves living conditions. As many agrarian civilizations testify, if resource consumption and human population are small (relative to the carrying capacity of the environment), industrialization is optional. However, since many of Earth’s five billion people want better living conditions, the days of non-industrial large-scale development are past.

Certainly, to industrialize does not translate of necessity into the North’s capital-intensive consumerism. It does means that people to some degree specialize in producing goods and services. This division-of-labor leads to gains in economic productivity; and it causes, as Adam Smith understood, nations to grow rich. The specific form that industrial development takes is quite malleable depending on economics, politics, culture, and ecology; and it will become manifest in myriad ways ranging from capital-intensive advanced technology to labor-intensive appropriate technology.

On a related point, industrialization should not be isolated to overcrowded cities. In order to halt mass migration which exacerbates urban blight, rural communities can accommodate a variety of organizations from intermediate size businesses to small scale micro-enterprises. At the latter end of this spectrum are communities characterized by self-reliance -- toward the vision of India’s Mahatma Gandhi: not mass production but production by the masses. This is not to say that we have nothing to learn from ancient agrarian societies and current indigenous peoples for they have much to teach us about stewarding resources and the environment. Yet, those cultures cannot be transplanted into areas of high population density.

Given the carrying capacity of the land, large populations must develop some form of an industrial economy to attain basic security. To gain a modicum of economic security is to gain a degree of control over the physical environment. After individuals and nations surpass a threshold of economic security, they focus on longer-term interests that involve biowealth and conservation. Simply, the economy supports a population; and affluence in the form of economic wealth enables people to protect their physical environment.

Due to the particular level of economic development, affluence enables the North to focus on non-immediate problems such as climate warming and species extinction, while poverty forces the South to concentrate on threats to survival such as adequate food and clean water. These differing environmental priorities arise because the North and the South faces different threats.

On the one hand, because the North over-exploits resources and uses harmful technologies, it is most seriously threatened by consumption patterns. For example, the world’s richest five per cent uses most of the CFCs produced (leading to ozone depletion) and more than 50 per cent of consumed energy (influencing global warming). On the other hand, population growth — which is exacerbated by political injustices and economic inequalities — endangers the South. For instance, some 90 per cent of the next few billion will live in the developing world which already has difficulty supplying its present populations with adequate food, water, and health services.

Of course, resource consumption and population growth are not mutually exclusive. Northerners face an ethical issue in family size, and Southerners sometimes need to adapt culture and consumption to impact ecosystems differently. In addition wealthy Southerners, a minority, have more similarities with their Northern counterparts; and some destitute Northerners have more in common with most Southerners. Nevertheless, the predominant task facing each group is the ecologic dynamic which bears a greater threat to a healthy environment and biosphere. Thus, to neutralize the differing threats entails different, complementary, strategies: the North must deal with consumption patterns; and the South, with population growth.

About 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens consisted of some five million organisms. When Julius Caesar ruled the Roman Empire, Earth housed 130 million people. Somewhere near 1850, less than 150 years ago, humankind reached one billion. The two billion mark was passed around 1930; and five billion in 1987. Projecting the present 1.7 growth rate, the year 2027 witnesses a population of ten billion. According to the United Nations Population Fund, the Earth of 2050 may accommodate 14 billion people. Extrapolating statistical data always warrants caution if not skepticism; and yet while predictions about growth rates vary as to exact figures they foretell trends that cannot be wished away.

Having learned from history, the South is wary that developed nations may impose an environmental agenda on them; such "eco-colonialism" would set the terms of international trade tilted Northward at the poor’s expense. As The Economist views the issue,

The North must be sensitive to this criticism. Fortunately, the South has greater leverage in that it houses 50% of all species, the majority of Earth’s biodiversity. With particular reference to population growth, each country and its people must voluntarily decide how many children to have. In this vain the North has little and should have little to say. Otherwise, national sovereignty would be in question. Nevertheless, the South must recognize that their expanding populations threaten national prosperity and global ecology. Northern governments and organizations have much to do if the South seeks to implement population programs which promote sustainable development and human rights. It is essential to promote family planning, to lower infant mortality rates and, especially for women, to provide access to education and jobs. Again, The Economist makes the case:

How are Northern affluence and resource consumption related to Southern poverty and population growth? Together, they help determine sustainable development and a healthy biosphere. Remembering the IPAT formula in Chapter 8, we know that ecologic impact (I) is largely influenced by the two dynamics of human population (P) and per capita resource consumption with technology (AT). So while each dynamic represents the major environmental problem confronting the North or the South, global ecology demands that humanity not segregate itself by rich and poor. Through different means of resource consumption or population growth, the rich and the poor, acting alone and together, have the power to make Earth less friendly for human pursuits. Each is responsible for environmental degradation with the North more liable for past misdeeds and with the South gaining in its destructive force. Yet, assigning blame does little, for global interdependencies mandate international cooperation.

To keep local habitats and the planet healthy, the developed and the developing worlds must align local interests with a dynamic, stable biosphere. Wisdom dictates that the best way for individuals to reach a common goal is to let everyone who has a stake in the outcome participate by becoming partners. Avoiding altruistic romanticism, we note two points. First, if each side and every country fails to consider the regional and global consequences of local actions, the situation will prove unmanageable. Second, everybody has an interest in keeping the home planet comfortable. To understand that all people benefit from a livable biosphere is to recognize that everybody has an environmental self-interest in promoting stewardship. In so doing, North and South become reintegrated into the bioshperic community as partners to bridge the chasm.

To improve living conditions and to safeguard ecosystems, we appeal to more than self-interest by focussing on ecologic justice. To do so, we first examine how economic justice is promoted by economic wealth and security. After we draw out the similarities ad differences between economic and biologic wealth, we observe how ecologic justice promotes sustainable economic development, perpetuates a livable planet, and binds all of humanity.

Before discussing environmental justice, we review the economic resources that constitute wealth’s minimum threshold. Then we consider if a similar standard can be applied to bio-wealth and ecologic justice. Elaborated upon in Chapter 10, economic goods consist of commodities, services, capital, and benefits. Under the heading of benefits we find safe, clean living conditions. These settings include fresh water and clean air. Being part of the hydrological and oxygen cycles respectively, these resources are also ecologic goods, components of bio-wealth. Thus, as we may remember, the line separating economic and biologic wealth is not distinct.

More precisely, water can be considered a commodity when it is at an accessible site, such as lakes, rivers, wells and aquifers. Still, it is part of the hydrological cycle which showers benefits in regulating climate, humidity, and weather patterns. We cannot view water as having value only when it has a market price. When water is in a river or in a lake, it may be the property of a person or a country but in the form of humidity, clouds, or rain, it is part of the global commons.

Bio-wealth’s environmental goods and services differ markedly from economic goods in that they cannot be acquired and avoid a market economy because they are non-commodifiable, indivisible and inseparable. For example, although not uniformly distributed, the greenhouse dynamic regulates Earth’s climate and the ozone layer screens excessive UV radiation from the biome. However, neither greenhouse gases nor CFCs stagnate above a locale; they roam globally. Thus, people cannot exclude others from their benefits.

So how does biowealth relate to justice? Paralleling Adler’s understanding of the virtue, ecologic justice asserts that all humans throughout Earth be environmental haves without any have-nots. Although justice affirms that some individuals and nations have-more and others have-less, all people will have the indispensable minimum of biologic wealth. Granted, biowealth’s minimum threshold is a less useful standard than its economic counterpart because many environmental goods and services cannot be amassed; so it is ludicrous to speak of "more" global services. Nevertheless ecologic justice is essential to guarantee that every human enjoys some of Nature’s bounty.

In reality, bio-wealth embodies less private property and more common resources. The commons store much potential private property; Antacrtica has land, minerals, and other natural resources; and the oceans hold other commodities including oil and fisheries. Financial mechanisms must be instituted to distribute throughout the biospheric community the commonly-owned resources which are converted into economic goods of private property.

A complementary strategy has the North compensating the South to establish forest reserves and parks which will preserve trees and habitats, thereby acting as a carbon sink to reduce the impact of global warming. Other possibilities of cooperation exist which respect national sovereignty and improve Southern living conditions while protecting habitats and the biosphere.

To recognize that no country has realized the ideal of economic justice is irrelevant to the need to concomitantly pursue its ecologic counterpart. When North and South cooperate, both aspects of justice tend to become mutually reinforcing. Harvard’s Wilson reflects:

To say, as Cicero did, that members of a people have "an agreement with respect to justice" is to say that that society has rules of how each person should treat others and what treatment every individual has a right to expect from others. To discuss this attribute of justice, we take a closer look at moral virtue.

Under this broad meaning of injury, we classify the way in which people harm others and interfere with their freedoms into two basic groups — direct and indirect. Direct injury can be characterized by personal contact, be it physical or psychological. We must not physically threaten or strike others (save self-defense); we cannot drive recklessly, endangering others health; we cannot walk uninvited into another’s home; we cannot steal their possessions; we cannot speak falsely by slandering and libeling others. Adhering to justice’s negative mandate, many laws are simply prohibitions that enjoin people not to injure others and interfere with their freedoms in their direct contact.

Externalities arise because property rights are not well enforced or defined. Referring to the above examples, the polluted river and the contaminated air are public property, (or what Chapter 10 termed commons). Most legal systems have not developed exact rules regulating who has access to such property and under what conditions. Consequently, public property, whether local or global, tends to be abused. Ecologist Garret Hardin called this situation The Tragedy of the Commons. When neighborhood effects remain within sovereign borders, the law of property rights must resolve them using justice as a guide. Justice demands that the perpetrator must refrain from the unjust activity or must gain the consent of the injured parties, or must compensate them.

How does justice address externalities that transcend national borders? A problem remains for international neighborhood effects to which national law does not extend. To discuss externalities in the biospheric community, we review how morality binds justice and law.

Often, people say "Society cannot legislate morality." According to this view, law is morally neutral. Although law cannot demand that citizens be "good", it often says "Don’t be bad". (Bad is defined as injuring others or society.) So while a morally neutral law sounds politically appealing, it is philosophically indefensible. Civil law is a moral judgement. The conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the cornerstone of law is ethics. Certainly, many areas of morals are beyond the scope of law; and public policy must avoid these matters. Nevertheless, the issue is not law with or without morality, but, law with which morality?

We can judge how good a country is by how well it secures the human rights of its citizens. In order to peacefully resolve disagreements between imperfect individuals, government institutes laws. The goodness of a civil law ultimately depends on how well it corresponds to its moral foundation laid in justice. A corrolary principle illustrates the reasoning. An unjust law cries for civil disobedience because the term "unjust law" is self-contradicting. Briefly, law gains legitimacy through the morality of justice.

Even though this realm of law may not extend between nations, the the moral force of justice is not bound by sovereign borders. Like human rights, justice is universal. As a global people, the biospheric community experiences externalities, with both perpetrating and injured parties; and these disagreements connect individuals across continents and oceans. Indeed, while international tribunals may lack legal authority to redress grievances by granting injuctive relief or compensatory damages, moral responsibility is determined through appeals to justice.

To be sure, international law exists. Through treaties, alliances and resolutions, countries have peaceful means to resolve international conflicts. However, the legal mechanisms to address externalities within national borders and outside sovereign scope differ qualitatively. In other words, as legal jurisdictions move from national to supra-national forums, moral concerns remain unchanged. Thus, having discussed how civil justice and law address local externalities, we now turn our attention to two instances when neighborhood effects transcend national boundaries.

Second, ozone depletion demonstrates that neighborhood effects are global. Who is responsible for CFCs? Twelve European nations and the United States produce 75 % of the world supply. Although some consumers who benefit from less expensive, more convenient commodities live outside of the the CFC-producing countries, the economic benefits are still concentrated in Northern industrial nations. In any case, with production and consumption comes the burden of responsibility. While most everyone suffers increased health risks, people, non-human organisms and habitats near the South Pole — such as Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Chile along with Antarctica and surrounding oceans — suffer disproportionately.

Due to thinning ozone protection, the higher dosages of UV radiation will harm ecosystems, economies and humans. Ecologically, while the organisms on Antarctica and in nearby oceans will eventually adapt, species will suffer, (with the more vulnerable edging toward extinction), having repercussions throughout the ecosystem. In specific, small, photosynthesizing organisms called plankton form the primary link in the marine food chain whose other links include krill, fish, penguins, seas, and whales. Even though these organisms are adapting to increased UV exposure, the extra radiation is already diminishing plankton reproduction.

The ecologic changes may also have some detrimental consequences to economies. It is difficult to imagine how tampering with the marine food chain helps the fishing industry. As plant cycles are altered, agricultural yields may fall, causing losses to mount. The impact on trees may not only diminish all forest resources but also harm outdoor recreation including eco-tourism.

What about the human costs? Even in pre-CFC days, too much UV radiation was harmful. Now the increased knowledge and heightened attention may improve health by influencing more prudent outdoor working and leisure practices than prevailing habits. Nevertheless, the costs in human terms are psychological as well as physiological. Psychological distress seems twofold. On the one hand, people may experience a non-maudlin queasiness because the health concern has diminished how much they enjoy outdoor recreation, wildlife and Nature’s beauty. On the other (and the more significant) hand, people may experience a legitimate degree of angst over the known and potential health risks. Toward despair, what about people who are aware of the unhealthy effects, who still must live or work outside, but who are so poor that they lack adequate purchasing power to buy items which reduce the unhealthy consequences. Regarding the physiological damage, the human costs include, as we noted in Chapter 5*, increased incidents of sunburn, eye cataracts and skin cancer along with premature deaths.

Separated by oceans and by continents, human are hurting each other. Why should the people and ecosystems which are injured by acid rain accept such imports? What right do high CFC-consuming countries have to burden all the individuals and habitats in the non- and low-CFC countries with the costs of their convenience. As usual, the poor must shoulder the greatest burden. The wealthy will somehow purchase a cleaner, safer environment; the poor will live elsewhere; and the world continues to shrink.

The neighborhood has grown to the outskirts of Earth; we must expand our ethical horizon. At the most fundamental level of justice’s negative aspect, our moral duty towards others is prohibitive: not to injure them. Whether across the street or across the globe, people must not harm each other through direct actions or externalities. Because justice is blind to sovereign boundaries, it matters little if the wrong harms an individual a mile downstream or 4,000 miles downwind.

Do the ecologic imperatives that flow from the partnerships of a global people conflict with a nations’ right to self-determination? Not really. As mentioned earlier, population growth, forest management and other development issues must be decided by each country and its citizens. However, as the philosophy supporting human rights testifies, some activity that was formerly considered a strictly sovereign matter has moved beyond national borders into the international arena. Now population, consumption, and technology create harmful externalities, ethics and international relations must further evolve to adapt to the changes in regional and in global ecology. This growth is all the more important because, while technology leaps geometrically, ethics as a socio-cultural phenomenon tends to progress more slowly.

Human rights are universal in that every individual possesses them whether or not the government allows the rights to be exercised. The natural-rights tradition regulates national conduct, domestic as well as foreign. Domestically, indiscriminate, government-sanctioned killing such as China’s Tiananmen Square violates human rights; yet although within sovereign borders, such activity is not exempt from moral judgement. Less clearly evolved, sovereign actions which have harmful effects to a neighboring country impede the human rights of foreigners to health and habitat. In short, the conduct of a nation is limited by justice; and unconstrained autonomy is a fiction.

At Montreal in 1987, 47 nations agreed to control the use of particular CFCs by freezing consumption at 1986 levels and by setting a timetable for substantial reductions. Originally 24 countries actually signed the Protocol which took effect in 1989; as of 1992, 75 nations are signatories.

It is essential to note three sections that are more important than the general phase-downs. First, the Montreal Protocol includes a special provision which differentiates between North and South, allowing the developing nations to increase how many CFCs they use for ten years. By recognizing the disparate economic conditions, the treaty serves multiple interests: the North lowers CFC usage; Southern consumption grows; and, on balance, the ozone layer is much better protected.

Second, since 1987, scientific evidence has continued to accumulate that ozone depletion is more serious than previously thought. Member nations amended the Protocol by agreeing in 1990 to the London Accord which accelerates a phase-out of ozone depleting chemicals and expands the number of substances effected. The Protocol shows flexibility in that, if science determines a more significant threat, signatories can implement more stringent regulations.

Third, many developing nations, most notably China and India which did not sign the 1987 agreement, argued that the North must transfer technology and money to help the South "leap-frog" harmful CFC technologies. The London Accord created an international fund to dispense these resources which will offset the higher costs of less destructive and benign substitutes. China has since signed on.

To be certain, CFCs and other ozone eliminating chemicals will continue their destruction for more than a centary to come; and we all must adapt. Yet, the Montreal Protocol demonstrates that the North and the South can develop mechanisms which forego myopic self-interest, uniting to reduce physical harm to ourselves, future generations, other living creatures, and our planetary home!

Before elation begins, we address two sobering caveats. First, compared to combating global warming, protecting the ozone layer is simple. CFCs are human-made; their production is highly consentrated; and substitutes are available. Of equal importancein forging a consensus, the threat is certain and immediate. Other problems and treaties to resolve them will involve more sacrifice. For instance, climate change offers good news in that an international fund called Global Environment Facility to transfer technology and to dispense money has already been created. But the bad news is that global warming lacks every one of the above traits.

The second caveat recognizes that significant destruction had to occur before consensus was reached. Proactive and preventative agreements is even more difficult.

In environmental matters, international cooperation brings us once again to eco-colonialism. The North must respect the rights of Southern nations and must help initiate programs which stimulate the evolving ethical dialogue. The Economist points out one direction:

There are obviously other directions having complementary strategies to steer us toward stewardship and conservation. As just noted, there is a weakness in addressing problems after they occur. Destruction is necessary to make people aware of the problem. It takes longer still for enough scientific evidence to accumulate to understand the ecologic process and to measure the damage with a reasonable level of confidence. Then, a consensus may finally emerge; all the while, the impact continues. So while economic self interest is indespensible in resolving international disputes, it is a poor guide in helping us prevent biodiversity destruction which violates justice’s negative mandate not to harm. However, there is a moral principle which obliges us to act for the environmental benefit of all in the biospheric community; and it is... our next desination.

V

Finally, we explore how the positive aspect of justice supports a society’s common good by demonstrating how it encourages a unified people to secure biodiversity by promoting conservation. To substantiate the often nebulous common good, we look at the common good of an individual nation and then apply the idea to the biospheric community.

But, what exactly is a common good?

The term "common good" has two distinct meanings. In one sense, a good is common in that all people should possess the same object, such as the real goods of health, knowledge and friendship. In another sense, a good is common in that every person in a community participates in it. Under this meaning, it is the public good and general welfare of the entire civil community in which everybody shares and has an interest. Because we are exploring the relationship of biodiversity and society, we address the common good in the latter sense of community and collective interests. Thus, the common good refers to all the conditions which a society provides for its citizens that they cannot entirely secure for themselves alone but that assists each and all of those individuals to pursue happiness.

We illustrate this point by enlisting the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble which states the document’s broad purposes.

How does biodiversity affect the common good? Since ecology was non-existent during the formation of the U.S. and many other countries, it is understandable that the founders-of-nations failed to recognize how biodiversity represents the environmental dimension of their country’s common good. As the 21st Century approaches, nations must correct this oversight (unless poverty preempts it). As ecology continues to demonstrate, biodiverisity with its myriad functions and its interdependent relationships of genes, species and ecosystems is indispensable to human life, health and happiness. In its essence, biodiverisity is a real good in that biowealth perpetuates living and, it is a common good in that everyone shares in its benefits. Therefore because biodiversity is essential to individuals and the body politic, it encompasses a society’s ecologic common good. Moreover, justice bestows on everybody a moral obligation to act positively for the common good and, in specific, to promote conservation in order to secure biodiversity.

Do biodiversity, the common good and environmental justice have relevance in the biospheric community? More than nationally important, biodiversity is global. So, we expand the idea of biodiversity seen as the ecologic component of a nation’s common good to incorporate the entire biospheric community. While nations have a duty to maintain biodiversity, the ecosphere’s planetary essence mandates a concommitant duty. In order to sustain the global attributes that all life shares, individuals and countries must unite as a single people. As a united people, we are morally obligated to perpetuate the biologic resources and the environmental goods and services which embody the ecologic component of the biospheric community’s common good.

Therefore, "We, the People of Earth," — while not a sovereign body politic — must adapt to the global ecology that humankind is so rapidly modifying by envisioning worldwide cooperative endeavors. International environmental problems cannot be addressed nationally but only in alliances with other cultures and countries. To achieve such consensus, it is necessary to develop a pan-humanist ethic which shows how biodiversity benefits all life and, in turn, is in the self-interest of every individual and nation. Representing appropriate conduct in the biospheric community, environmental justice based on stewardship is such an ethic. Dealing with how we ought to treat others and how others ought to treat us, environmental justice demands not only in the negative sense of not doing harm to others and their habitats but also in a positive sense of participating in the common good of maintaining and enriching Earth’s biodiversity.

Because we participate in both political and ecologic communities, we possess a dual-citizenship. By scrutinizing the spirit of the political animal, we gain insight into our globalist allegiances.

Turning from politics to ecosystems, we note that a similar loyalty and devotion helps explain acts of environmental protection. For example, in 1990* Will Steger, an American environmentalist, led a five-person, international expedition across Antarctica to research the continent’s evolutionary processes and to draw public attention to preserve it so future generations may experience their natural heritage. Just as a patriot may risk life and limb for the love of country, so too, a Mother Earth loyalist, whom we may call a matriot, may also endanger self for a perceived greater good.

On a related point, patriotism is typically symbolized by daring adventures and rescues. However, it most often asks for less heroic, more mundane sacrifices. Likewise, matriotism urges not for a life but for a change in lifestyle.

Admittedly, the environmental devotion of matriotism when coupled with ignorance and uncertainty seed fertile grounds for zealotry and lunacy. Patriotism is certainly not immune from radical elements. Yet the environmental extremes are accentuated because the understanding of ecology and environmental ethics is primitive when compared to the sophistication of the political sciences. Thus a greater difficulty arises in deciphering between acts that are good or bad.

The goodness or badness of environmental protection will depend on how the act affects competing interests. Having already cited the trans-Antarctic journey, we note two other actions, each of which takes a step deeper into moral controversy. First, Greenpeace activists enter harm’s way by placing themselves between Japanese research vessels and whales. Do the Japanese have a cultural right to harvest whales? Second, members of the environmental group Earth First* pound spikes into trees (they do not own) which threaten the limbs and the lives of lumberjacks. Do lumberjacks have the right to safe working conditions? The ethical spectrum is wide; an the legitimate grey area of moral judgement is vast, but bounded by constraints. At one end will be instances of ecologic bravery and heroism; at the other end, environmental cowardice and terrorism.

Of course, some issues are more settled than others. The line between ethical and unethical behavior seems to depend on how the act satisfies human needs and how it impacts the environment. Although this guide is rudimentary, it will gain further substance as the physical and the moral sciences advance. From atmospheric chemistry to zoology, the natural sciences will discover more relevant facts to help us make informed decisions. Regerding ethics, the human rights philosophy of enlightened anthropocentrism (in Rene Dubos' words) will shed additional light on the path to stewardship and conservation. For now reflection and patience but not inactivity must guide our behavior. Yet for certain, a little sacrifice is a beautiful thing.

Since the left brain analyzes information and since the right brain intuits it, the human mind obtains knowledge in through two different modes. The Russian scientist Leonid Ponomarev illustrates the dualistic essence of knowledge, that is, the parallel ways of knowing:

In conclusion, while analysis and intuition enlighten both the political and the ecologic consciences, a citizen’s proper role — as patriot and as matriot — is fully illuminated only after the nationalist and the globalist aspects are synthesized.

If, as our journey ends, we remember why we left and where we visited, we can better achieve our environmental mission of how to treat Nature. We embarked because humankind is destroying species and ecosystems at rates which threaten the natural world and human health. More and more often people are imperiled by human-induced calamities of air and water pollution. So an analysis of human conduct might result in a moral principal which could guide appropriate behavior.

In attaining our goal we gained insight into intra-environmental conflicts and how to resolve them. Amidst the diverse forms of environmental destruction, a common trait is that people are causing ecologic imbalances—the artificial extremes. In varying degrees these conditions of ecologic Excess and Deficiency injure people directly, by affecting the organism itself or indirectly, by damaging their local and global habitat.

We incorporated an ecologic component into a modified version Aristotle’s ethical theory that all humans have the same needs because they share the same human nature. In turn, we found that the environmental virtue of stewardship satisfies a natural human need for a habitable planet. Two consequences follow: First, like food, health, friendship and knowledge, a healthy biosphere is a real good, and therefore, indispensable to a happy life. Second, stewardship helps restore environmental balance by avoiding the ecologic extremes.

Understanding that humans must modify the environment, stewardship finds and chooses the condition of ecologic balance. In so doing, stewardship conserves the biodiversity—genes, species, ecosystems and their interactions—that sustains and perpetuates Earth’s steady-state equilibrium. Thus, stewardship balances the human need to modify the environment with the concomitant need to maintain a habitable planet. In so doing, stewardship provides a standard to judge how much people should control Nature.

By addressing ethical life’s environmental dimension, stewardship serves to complete a happy life. Therefore, stewardship is a universal truth which recognizes that all people have a relationship with the environment and a responsibility for protecting Earth’s biotic and abiotic resources. This duty arises because everyone has a human right to a livable habitat and a healthy Earth. Seen this way, biodiversity, along with its environmental goods and services, deserves recognition as genuine wealth because it is collectively a material resource which has value in making for better living conditions. Thus biological resources as bio-wealth occupy a valued position alongside economic goods on the wealth spectrum. When we combine environmental rights and responsibilities on the one hand with economic and biologic wealth on the other hand, we discovered the importance and the scope of conservation -- of keeping human activity within ecologic constraints.

Finally, we found that the most practical way for the five billion members of the human family to live decent lives within ecologic constraints, homo sapiens must unite as a single collective, "the people of Earth." As a global people in the biospheric community, we explored environmental justice — when everybody is an ecologic have and nobody is a have-not. Justice’s negative aspect urges us not to damage others’ environment and health. Justice’s positive facet morally binds us to take positive steps which contribute to the ecologic welfare of the biospheric community’s common good.

Understanding stewardship, biowealth, conservation, and environmental justice, we may be tempted to immediately expend much energy promoting these virutes and values only to be later frustrated with not seeing the fruits of our labors. For a number of reasons, we must caution against overzealousness. We consider six points—environmental radicalism, misguided romanticism, realistic expectations, dynamic systems, imperfect information, and uncontrollable forces.

First, while stewardship is a universal absolute, when people try to apply the standard in practice, they are often wrong. In other words, while universals have absolutes, particulars do not. So, there is no single "right" way to resolve any environmental conflict. Practical absolutists and environmental extremists who are certain that they have the only answer delude themselves.

Third, we need realistic expectations. People change attitudes quickly. However, a political economy’s infrastructure cannot change with such rapidity. Indeed, the institutions of economy, of politics, and of law must not be as capricious as people. So, recognizing institutional inertia, we must judge our environmental progress and performance accordingly.

Fifth, the scientific understanding of ecologic processes and of the artificial extremes varies considerably. As people decide amidst uncertainty, they must be willing to modify their conduct as stewards, if science discovers compelling information that urge a more appropriate course of action. The key is flexibility.

These reasons should in no way impede people from undertaking their environmental responsibility as stewards; they, in fact, should assist people in gaining a firm understanding of the challenges that await. With this foundation individuals can better translate good intentions into effective change—positive action for environmental conservation.

Earlier we defined virtue as good habit—continuously repeating acts until, to do otherwise, seems odd or inappropriate. It is precisely this state of virtuous good habits from humans that Earth and all its inhabitants need. As we pilot Spaceship Earth, we will be happy when providing stewardship.

Since the biosphere envelops all nations and peoples, individuals must complement the idea of human nature with an ecological dimension. Supplementing our caring attitudes about Nature, we must recognize ourselves less in the old paradigm of competition between sovereign states and more in a new world view of cooperation between global citizens. Global warming and ozone depletion care little about economics and even less about politics.
At levels spanning from the grassroots to the international, humanity must peacefully resolve intra-environmental conflicts by banning together. Individuals participating in grassroots movements are the most powerful engines of social change. When this groundswell combines political strength with economic action, then law and culture will begin to reinforce the values of its environmentally-conscious citizens.

While changing our attitudes about Nature awakens us, stewardship explores our environmental dimension and shows how each one of us, in any of infinite ways, can become a happy globalist.

WHEN, IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world:

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with this measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people of large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the danger of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms for officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in time of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them by a mock trial, from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens,m taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the united States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And, for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed at the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, no rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential, to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the people of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greater importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

The General Assembly

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal prosecution against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement on such discrimination.

Article 8

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, not to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17

Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

Article 18

Everyone had the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remunerations ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 26

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups. and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. (2) Everyone has a the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

General Assembly of the United Nations

Reaffirming the fundamental purposes of the United Nations, in particular the maintenance of international peace and security, the development of friendly relations among nations and the achievement of international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, technical, intellectual or humanitarian character.

Reaffirming that man must acquire the knowledge to maintain and enhance his ability to use natural resources in a manner which ensures the preservation of the species and ecosystems for the benefit of present and future generations.

Firmly convinced of the need for appropriate measures, at the national and international, individual and collective, and private and public levels, to protect nature and promote international cooperation in this field.

Adopts, to these ends, the present World Charter for Nature, which proclaims the following principles of conservation by which all human conduct affecting nature is to be guided and judged.

Having met at Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992,

Reaffirming the Declaration of the United Nation Conference on the Human Environment, adopted at Stockholm on 16 June 1972, and seeking to build upon it,

With the goal of establishing a new and equitable global partnership through the creation of new levels of cooperation among States, key sectors of societies and people,

Working towards international agreements which respect the interests of all and protect the integrity of the global environmental and developmental system,

Recognizing the integral and interdependent nature of the Earth, our home,