Marine Environmental Ethics - Science Direct

Ocean & Coastal Management 17 (1992) 237-251

Ni J Marine Environmental Ethics M a r c L. Miller School of Marine Affairs, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington 98195, USA

& Jerome Kirk Department of Sociology,School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine 92717, USA ABSTRACT A great many policy problems in the realm of ocean and shoreline management concern the impacts of human activites on marine life and ecosystems. Debate over the trade-offs among such objectives as economic development and environmental protection reveals fundamental differences of values. This paper distinguishes tribal, development, compassionate, and holothetic ethics according to the pattern by which advocates of each ethic ascribe potency to humankind and nature. The typology of environmental ethics presented in this paper should prove helpful in the identification of basic, though perhaps irreconcilable, philosophical differences among those who shape the future of marine affairs.

1 INTRODUCTION A major topic within the field of marine affairs broadly concerns the implications--for society and the environment---of human activities (e.g. science, commerce, recreation, politics) conducted in coastal and oceanic settings. One policy theme which has proved to be especially influential in structuring the way we relate to the world's oceans has been that of economic development. Since World War II, we have witnessed tremendous investment and expansion in such activities as commercial fishing, marine tourism, and, of course, offshore oil and gas exploration and production. 237 Ocean & Coastal Management 0964-5691/92/$05.00 © 1992 Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd, England. Printed in Northern Ireland

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Marc L. Miller, Jerome Kirk

Toward the end of the twentieth century, another policy theme--that of marine environmental protection---continues to gain momentum around the globe. Contemporary marine environmental controversies are frequently rooted in industrial and human population growth (and achievements in technological innovation). Among policy conflicts which have been hotly debated in the international arena concern: (1) the taking of marine mammals, both as a target species (Japan, Norway and Iceland have advocated the harvest of minke whales before the International Whaling Commission) and as incidental catch (public outcry recently led several major US tuna processing companies to announce they will refuse tuna from fisheries causing porpoise mortalities); (2) the degradation of marine communities and ecologies (e.g. tidepool and lagoon life; island, barrier reef, and fjord environments) due to tourism; and (3) the spoiling on 24 March 1989 of the pristine ecosystem encompassing Prince William Sound by the E x x o n V a l d e z oil spill. These vexing problems, in concert with many other crises, have fostered widespread public, government, and industry support for 'greener', more environmentally sensitive marine policies. Indeed, two decades after the first Earth Day was celebrated on 22 April 1970, it has become virtually impossible to engage in public dialogue concerning marine affairs without reference to a variety of environmental protection measures and concepts (e.g. endangered species legislation; marine biosphere reserves, sanctuary and marine park regimes; 'ecotourism' and 'sustainable tourism development'; 'double-hulled' tanker design). Critically, policy debates of the environmental, or ecological, kind often reduce not so much to clearly defined matters of science, but to messy matters of values, t.2 Marine policy discourse is most constructive when issues are not confounded by the belated discovery of nonnegotiable moral differences among the participants. In the spirit of better communication (rather than in the promotion of a particular ideology), and using examples, from the Pacific Ocean, this paper provides a framework for classifying alternative marine environmental ethics, or paradigms. 2 AT'I'RIBUTION OF H U M A N A N D E N V I R O N M E N T A L POTENCY

'Why is there no hope that my nephew will reappear?' And Coyote answered, saying 'Because there they don't fool around." (Chumash narrative in which a fisherman who has fallen overboard is seized by a super-natural swordfish being.3)

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People impose meaning on the world as a means to staying alive, obtaining food, and perpetuating social institutions. Every culture makes distinctions between what is human and what is not, and between volitional agents and passive recipients. These distinctions function to reduce the uncertainties of physical and social well-being. Arguably, technological change has freed people from the lifethreatening uncertainties of the roles of predator and prey. Our flexibility is evident in a set of alternative and competing environmental ethics. A society's choice among these conceptual and ethical positions reveals how it perceives potency, or power, to be distributed between humans and their environment. Potency is the capacity to control the ground rules of interaction betweeen humans and their environment. The opposite of potency is vulnerability. Importantly, measurements of potency are matters of shared interpretation. The attribution of potency to humankind and the attribution of potency to the environment arise independently in the collective experience that is the basis of culture. In making these two assignments, a society, in effect, selects its 'environmental ethic' from the menu of four logical possibilities which is displayed in Table 1. A great many environmental ethics are logically possible; quite a number have been elaborated into complex sets of moral imperatives. The universe of such ethics may be usefully partitioned into four classes according to presuppositions of each about the potency or vulnerability of humankind and the environment. Table 1 labels the four families of ethical positions so identified as tribal, development, compassionate and holothetic. This particular classification emphasizes the common features of all the ethics which agree on both potency issues, that is, which would appear together in the same cell of the typology. To illustrate, the

TABLE 1

A Typologyof Environmental Ethics Human potency

Environmental potency Environment powerful

Environment vulnerable

Humankind powerful

Development ethic

Compassionate ethic

Humankind vulnerable

Tribal ethic

Holothetic ethic

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philosophy of 'pulse' fishing in a multispecies fishery displays little concern for the long-run fate of the fishery. A philosophy advocating 'sustainable-yield' will condemn such an attitude on the grounds that it is unenlightened--that the time horizon to which it attends is to short. Yet, the two viewpoints have much in common. Neither is overly concerned that people will devastate the Earth, or that Earth will destroy the people. Advocates of those positions can engage in productive discussion and negotiation between the merits of rival practices. By contrast, a philosophy based on the premise that the planet is in a delicate equilibrium and is quite defenseless against the depredations of human exploitation necessarily is at odds with both pulse and sustainable thinking. According to the organization of Table 1, the first two philosophies are variants of the development ethic; the third represents the compassionate ethic. Of course, the dichotomy of Table 1 is to some degree arbitrary; potency is a matter of degree. 4 In important ways, the 'enlightened' advocate of sustainable yield finds agreement with the compassionate. Nevertheless, he or she will find it easier to bargain with the pulse fisherman for they can discuss the relative costs and benefits of proposed policy, and need not debate the rights of the fish. 2.1 Tribal ethic

Tribal societies conceive their relationship to the environment in systematically different ways from those with a higher level of technology. The idea that the tribal world view is founded on a profound respect for nature has figured in the policy arguments of American environmentalists distressed by the environmentally exploitative aspect of the Judeo-Christian tradition. 5 Yet, the distinctive features of the tribal perspective have proven difficult to pinpoint. Tribal values, customs and beliefs concerning the environment are entwined with those about the cosmos and the social order. And, as Driver 6 has noted, subsistence patterns help determine tribal attitudes towards nature: 'Food is hedged by religion in all cultures, probably more so among so-called primitives than among civilized peoples. Spirits and magical forces everywhere are thought to determine one's success in one's food-getting venture whether it is hunting, fishing, gathering, farming, or stock breeding. One must propitiate these spirits or forces in the proper way and at the proper time if one is to be a successful provider. Although primitive man's knowledge of ethnobotany and zoology is often impressive, it is invariably linked with a maze of religious notions which almost defy analysis.'


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By the tribal ethic, a term which denotes the family of philosophies concerning nature held by pre-literate societies, Table 1 shows the environment to be powerful and humankind to be vulnerable. The idea is that tribal societies, while not completely preoccupied with survival, are pragmatists in their dealings with nature. This conception is somewhat at odds with a popular and romantic notion which emphasizes that tribal people live in equilibrium and identification with their environment, literally 'loving' all things. While it is clear that tribal peoples stress the integration of humans and the elements, they are basically challenged by nature. This is exactly the point Hultkranz 7 makes when he reports that the several religiously inspiring aspects in the experience in nature--benevolence, harmony, and beauty--identified by Thouless, are supplemented by 'the experiences of uncanny agencies and of fright, of the destructive powers of nature'. Moreover, tribal societies are efficient in handling problems posed by the environment. As Vecsey8 and Hultkranz 7 have noted in studies of Native Americans, the high regard tribal people have for nature is hardly indiscriminate and unfocused; rather, the veneration is specific in application. 9 Tribal societies uniformly attend first to those places, natural processes, and flora and fauna which are most prominent in their defensive and subsistence activities. Culturally determined resource management strategies require and obtain compliance, not through ideological persuasion but through strict enforcement of explicit rules. These rules are functionally equivalent to any personal sense of love or respect for nature, and as BennetP ° has observed can achieve their purpose through oppressive and authoritarian social organizations. Tribal societies recognize a host of guardian spirits, gods, and the like who have souls; many of these occasionally take human form. As one Native American from Puget Sound (Washington) confirmed for Clark: H 'To the Indian in his native state, everything had life or spirit; the earth, the rocks, trees, ferns, as well as birds, and animals, even the hail which fell from the sky, had a spirit and a language and song of its own and might be an inspiration to a warrior. '12 Critically, tribal societies do not distinguish between gods and nature. Although spirits and their associated animals are commonly referred to as 'people' in tribal societies, they are extensions of nature, not of humankind. The salmon spirit is a fish, and the tree spirit a woody plant. Neither is to be confused with humanity. The salmon and tree

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spirits are the environment. 13 The essence, then, of the tribal ethic is a healthy respect for the environment. Pre-industrial societies around the world commonly acknowledge the advantage in potency held by nature (and its supernatural manifestations) over humans in their myths. This tribal recognition is apparent in the Chumash (Santa Barbara region of California) (excerpt at the beginning of this section), in the Hawaiian reverence for Pele and her siblings--the deities most responsible for volcanic action14--and in the following myth Green ~5 has collected and translated from the island of Hawaii:

The Story of Aiakolea 'Ku-mu-ha-na liked nothing better than to go out at night to catch the kolea and akekeke [plover and turnstone]. ~6 With his nets stained [a dark color[ with candle-nut, he would creep upon the sleeping birds and capture them. Very often he took more than he needed and greed kept him from sharing them with others. Instead, he gathered the birds into heaps and what he did not eat he left to decompose. So fond was he of the flesh that he could not wait for them to be thoroughly broiled, but ate them as fast as the outside was slightly browned. His nearest neighbor was a man who worshipped the great spirit who watched over the kolea, Ku-mu-ka-hi by name, and this man had often suffered from illness through inhaling the odor of the broiling birds. One evening when returning from fishing he met Ku-ma-ha-na on his way to snare birds for the morrow's breakfast. As they were discussing the events of the day, they heard a long-drawn, plaintive 'Pi-i-i-i-o!' coming from the clouds. 'If I were you, Ku-mu-ha-na,' said the neighbor, 'I would go home. 1 think the spirit of the bird-god goes forth this night to see that all is well with his feathered and human children.' 'That is for you to heed,' answered Ku-mu-ha-na, 'for no kolea was ever born into my family, therefore I care not for them save for eating!' Then, throwing his net over his shoulder, he fared forward on his errand of destruction. Birds by the hundred nestled on the rocks that night. Ku-mu-ha-na caught enough to last a long time, and laid them in heaps as he passed from rock to another. As dawn broke he returned. His birds disappeared during the night! Suspicious of his good neighbor, he marched straightway to that person's house and accused him of the theft. 'Alas! I know nothing of your birds,' was the answer. 'If I were sure you were the thief, I


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would kill you!' said Ku-mu-ha-na. 'Hark! your birds are calling from your own house,' exclaimed his neighbor. Sure enough! from Ku-mu-ha-na's own house came the whistling and calling of innumerable birds. Ku-mu-ha-na said no more and hurried home. Upon opening the door, he saw his house filled with black pebbles but not a bird was to be seen. Enraged, back to his neighbor he went. 'How dare you fill my house with rocks?' he shouted. 'I know nothing of rocks,' was the answer. 'If I were you I would ask pardon of Ku-mu-ka-hi; it may be that he is the one who put the pebbles there. Hark! there are the birds at your house now!' Sounds as of birds issued from the door. Hurrying home, Ku-muha-na looked inside. Hundreds of birds were within. Quickly he prepared his earth oven and made the stones red-hot. Then he entered the house and reached for the bird nearest him; it passed through his fingers like vapor. Each time he clutched it, each time it went through his hands. Then Ku-mu-ha-na heard outside the cry 'P-i-i-i-o!' With one accord the birds arose and pecked and scratched at the poor man. He ran out of doors; more birds awaited him there. Pained and blinded, he stumbled into the pit of the oven he had himself prepared and there perished. The spot where his house stood is called Ai-a-kolea, that is 'Impiety-to-the-plover,' unto this day. It lies between Wai-ka-puna and Akihi-nui in Ka-u district. The Hawaiians say that when plover call 'pi-o!' over any dwelling it is an omen of death.'

2.2 Development ethic By the development ethic, both the environment and humankind are seen to be powerful, to have high potency. This orientation has perhaps been most visible in Judeo-Christian tradition and the doctrine of utilitarianism, the anthropocentric attitude that the environment exists for human purposes. If the desire to protect ourselves from the environment is the driver of social evolution, and technology the vehicle, then the development ethic is likely to be enormously appealing to the tribal practitioner as innovative technologies become available. The development ethic can be long- or short-sighted. In the American context, the sense of inexhaustible natural resources and a commitment to laissez-faire economic policies encouraged an aggressive exploitation of the environment from the time of the Pilgrims until the end of the nineteenth century. With the unfolding of the Progressive

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Era came two competing solutions to the newly-recognized problem of nonrenewable resources----extractive conservation and aesthetic conservation.17 Represented by Gifford Pinchot and the birth of the US Forest Service in 1905, the philosophy of extractive conservation sought to avoid killing the goose with the golden eggs. Pinchot's 'wise use' would today be incorporated into considerations of 'sustainable yield'. Aesthetic conservation--associated with John Muir (a policy opponent of Pinchot) and the creation of the National Park Service in 1916-stresses instead the value of resource preservation and fits with the environmental ethic discussed in the next section.18 Whether the objective is the recovery of oil and gas resources on the outer continental shelf or the enhancement of commercial fish stocks, and whether the time horizon is short or long, the essence of the development ethic lies in the notion that nature exists to be utilized by humans. When in conflict, humans and the environment are taken to be formidable opponents in a fair contest. Insofaras ocean and marine resources are at issue, the development ethic is reflected today in the USA in the behavior of a broad spectrum of industries and executive branch agencies which emphasize resource extraction or harvest including the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Department of Commerce, the Minerals Management Service in the Department of Interior, among others.

2.3 Compassionate ethic At a sufficiently high level of technology, the potential vulnerability of the environment is unmistakable. Oceans become polluted, soils depleted, species vanish from view, and coastlines change. A recognition of the vulnerability of the environment inspires the compassionate ethic, according to which the environment needs protection from the depredations of humankind. This ethic has roots in organicist and animist philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth century and in such nineteenth-century transcendentalists as Thoreau. Its first institutionalization in America was as the aesthetic conservation alternative to the extractive conservation signature of the Progressive era. In the late twentieth century, the compassionate ethic has resurfaced with the Deep Ecologists 19-21 and the work of those that Callicott 22 calls the 'extensionists'. Once, compassionates reason, humans have the luxury of modern civilization, they should realize it is not people, but the external world which needs protection. With a deep respect for the power of humankind, and a pronounced concern for the vulnerability of elements


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of the environment, compassionates skirt the margins of paternalistic hubris. Intrinsic to the position is the paradox whereby one species (ours) is assigned the responsibility for the altruistic preservation of others without any corresponding special privileges. And any advocate of aesthetic conservation risks the so-called 'ecofascist' posture that because he or she likes, say, a natural feature or a species, then everyone else must be compelled to respect it. The most elaborate version of the compassionate ethic is to be seen in the work of animal-fights advocates such as Singer 23 and Regan. 24 Callicott 25-27 has criticized this position on the grounds of its 'atomistic' (as opposed to 'holistic') theory of moral values and its arbitrariness. Despite the risks of sentimentality and absurdity in these positions, some compassionates such as Naess 19 and Taylor 2s are prepared to extend rights to all elements of the biome. 29 And of course, it need not stop there. If a 'biocentric' view has virtues over an 'anthropocentric' one, then why should not a 'geocentric' perspective be more attractive? 3° Clearly, 'heliocentric' and 'galactocentric' views are also logically possible, though also ultimately parochial. Urging compassion, White 31 claims that 'we can sense our comradeship with a glacier, a subatomic particle, or a spiral nebula', while Stone 32 has imagined the implications of granting rights not only to tangible entities but to 'qualities'. 2.4 Holothetic ethic

It is this reductio ad a b s u r d u m of extensionism which for some calls the entire compassionate ethic into question. While it may be possible to achieve empathy with sentient organisms, or even to feel responsible for galaxies, the attribution of natural rights to colors, say, or to sizes of populations, boggles many otherwise sympathetic minds. Yet, it may well be that in certain instances population size does have immense implications for the biome in which that population resides. In what may be viewed as an effort to tap the compassionate community, ecologists have promoted the analogy between an organism, even a sentient organism, and the forest, 33 the ocean, 34 and even the whole planet. 35 The ecological36 and cybernetic 37 paradigms focus on the interrelationships and systemic features of living and nonliving communities; they explicitly counsel a certain modesty regarding undesired and unanticipated 'side effects' entailed in environmental manipulation. This patently ecological approach is defined in Table 1 as the holothetic ethic. The holothetic ethic shares with the tribal ethic an acute sense of

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mystery and potential danger in the environment. It shares with the tribal and development ethics a fundamentally humanistic, even utilitarian, ultimate value. 38 Humankind is not held responsible for the welfare of other species, or indeed of the nonliving environment, except insofar as the long-term welfare of people might be affected. The holothetic ethic and the compassionate ethic express a profound concern for the environment which cannot be calculated whatever the extension of a cost-benefit equation's time horizon. However, the holothetic ethic, after Leopold, 39 differs radically from the compassionate ethic in that it is the interdependence among biotic and inanimate components of the environment which is to be respected. From the holothetic point of view, the compassionate tendency towards preoccupation with individual organisms, or even species, seems myopic. Holothetic thinking wishes to preserve the seabirds and dolphins not because they are 'cute', but because long-run ecological disaster might conceivably follow their eradication.

3 DISCUSSION For the ethical typology developed in this paper to provide a practical handle on marine environmental problems, it should be realized that value questions are generically exceptionally difficult to phrase, much less resolve. The identification of an ethical conflict is often complicated by exaggerated expectations that policy issues have scientific solutions, as well as by the fact that ethics, by character, are hard to describe and eloquently defend. The resolution of marine ethical conflicts is problematic at best. The reason for this less than optimistic assessment lies in a qualitative difference between conflicts among multiple uses and those among multiple values. When a problem can be defined by participants as one of multiple uses, ground rules support consensus and compromise in conflict resolution. In the marine context, this is illustrated by the complex and successful zoning of an array of activities which take place in vast areas under the jurisdiction of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. However, when a problem is perceived by participants as one of competing multiple values, or ethics, negotiated settlement is foreclosed because consensus is philosophically intolerable. This is illustrated by the stand-off in the USA between environmentalists and energy interests over the prospect of oil and gas exploration and


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development in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge located on the Beaufort Sea. 4° To provide another example, consider the plight of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the federal agency in the USA charged with implementing the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 and the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.41 NMFS faces the very difficult prospect of reconciling the somewhat incompatible objectives of these two acts while sustaining commercial fishing. But no solution to that problem will satisfy an environmental community eager to dispense with the development ethic entirely in favor of the compassionate framework. As Aron 42 and Manning43 have noted, there is sentiment in the USA that the taking of marine mammals for any purpose is immoral.44 This paper has presented a conceptual and idealized framework of marine environmental ethics which contrasts the different ways societies create a relationship between humankind and nature. Differences in four families of environmental ethics follow from how humankind and nature are variously treated as either powerful or vulnerable. Of course, societies have been linked with different philosophies at different points in time. In the USA, the general evolutionary pattern has shown the tribal ethic to have been displaced by the development ethic. Today, the compassionate and holothetic ethics compete to replace their development counterpart. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article is revised from an invited paper presented at Values and the American Ocean: Philosophical, Historical, Legal and Public Policy Perspectives, a conference sponsored by the Ocean and Coastal Policy Centre, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, 26-29 June 1989, Santa Barbara, California. The authors extend their gratitude to J. Baird Callicott, Biliana Cicin-Sain, Marilyn L. Mitchell, Roger ReveUe and In~s Talamantez for many helpful conceptual and editorial suggestions. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Rappaport, R. A., Ecology, Meaning, and Religion. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 1979, 259 pp. 2. Douglas, M. & Wildavsky, A., Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1982, 221 pp.

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3. Blackburn, T.C., December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975, pp. 175-6. 4. For a discussion of the range of philosophies to be found within the four families, and the status of marginal cases, see Kirk, J. & Miller, M. L. Sea otter or green mountain: Reflections on environmental ethics. New Scholar, 11(1/2) (1990). 5. Nash, R. F., The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1989, p. 92. 6. Driver, H. E., Indians of North America. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961, p. 91. 7. Hultkranz, A., Belief and Worship in Native North America. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1981, pp. 118, 122. 8. Vecsey, C., American Indian environmental religions. In American Indian Environments: Ecological Issues in Native American History, ed. C. Vecsey & R. W. Venables. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 1980, pp. 1-37. 9. For a broader interpretation of Native American love of nature, see Hughes, J. D., American Indian Ecology. Texas Western Press, El Paso, 1983, 174 pp. 10. Bennett, J. W., The interpretation of Pueblo culture: A question of values. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 2(4) (1946) 361-74. 11. Clark, E. E., Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1953, p. 11. 12. For an introduction to the mythology and ritual of Native Americans of the British Columbia and Alaska coastline, see Boas, F., Kwakiutl Ethnography, ed. H. Codere. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1966, 439 pp.; Haeberlin, H. & Gunther, E., The Indians of Puget Sound. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1930, 83 pp.; McFeat, T. (ed.), Indians of the North Pacific Coast. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1966, 268 pp. 13. The dilemma of modern Native Americans (for example, those in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes regions) who are fighting for fishing rights is that they can only protect their subsistence and ceremonial traditions by learning to participate in the legal arena of the dominant culture, hence sacrificing their tribal-ness. For discussion of judicial settling of disputes over salmon resources, see Broches, C. F. & Miller, M. L., Public law litigation and marine affairs: The Boldt decision. Coastal Zone Management Journal, 13(2) (1985) 99-130. For a discussion of native claims on ocean resources, see Valencia, M. J. & VanderZwagg, D., Maritime claims and management rights of indigenous peoples: Rising tides in the Pacific and northern waters. Ocean and Shoreline Management, 12(2) (1989) 125-67. 14. For an introduction to the Pele family, see Kalakaua, D., The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The Fables and Folk-Lore of a Strange People. Charles E. Tuttle Co., Rutland, VT, 197211888], 530 pp.; Beckwith, M., Hawaiian Mythology. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 197011940], 571 pp.; Nimmo, H. A. Pele, Ancient goddess of contemporary Hawaii. Pacific Studies, 9(2) (March) (1986), 121-79.


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15. Green, L. S., Folk-tales From Hawaii (second series; Vassar College Fieldwork in Folklore Number 7). Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York 1926, pp. 55-126. 16. Most likely, the kolea is the Pacific Golden-Plover (Pluvialis fulva), a shorebird which winters on all the Hawaiian Islands, leaving to nest in the Artic in the spring; the kolea could also be the rarer Black-bellied Plover (P. squatorola ). 17. Miller, M. L., Gale, R. P. & Brown, P. J., Natural resource management systems. In Social Science in Natural Resource Management Systems, ed. M. L. Miller, R. P. Gale & P. J. Brown. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1987, pp. 3-33. 18. In a legendary clash of philosophies and personalities at the start of the twentieth century, a proposal to transform the spectacular, high-walled Hetch Hetchy Valley in the Sierra Nevada's into a reservoir pitted the city of San Francisco and extractive conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot against aesthetic conservationists including John Muir, Robert Underwood Johnson, J. Horace McFarland, and Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. While proponents of the development ethic prevailed when president Woodrow Wilson granted the valley to San Francisco in 1916, aesthetic conservationists could celebrate the galvanizing of a social movement and the Hetch Hetchy decision has since symbolized the costs of simple obedience to a development ethic. (Ref. 17, pp. 10-11). 19. Naess, A., The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movement: A summary. Inquiry, 16 (1973) 95-100. 20. Sessions, G., Shallow and deep ecology: A review of the philosophical literature. In Ecological Consciousness: Essays from the Earthday X Colloquium, ed. R. C. Schultz & J. D. Hughes. University Press of America, Washington DC, 1981, pp. 291-362. 21. Devall, B. & Sessions, G., Deep Ecology. Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1985, 267 pp. 22. Callicott, J. B., In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989, 325 pp. 23. Singer, P., Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. Avon, New York, 1975, 297 pp. 24. Regan, T., The Case for Animal Rights. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983, 425 pp. 25. Callicott, J. B., Animal liberation: A triangular affair. Environmental Ethics, 2 (1980) 311-28. 26. Callicott, J. B., Review of Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights. Environmental Ethics, 7 (1985) 365-72. 27. Callicott, J. B., Just the facts, ma'am. The Environmental Professional, 9 (1987) 279-88. 28. Taylor, P. W., Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1986, 329 pp. 29. 'Biocentric' authors rarely present themselves as advocates of 'plant rights' or 'plant lib', but--with a possible schism on the issue of such endangered species as the smallpox virus Variola--the analogy with animal liberation is complete.

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30. Of course, a geocentric viewpoint, maintained with consistency, might reach conclusions diametrically opposed to those of a biocentric view. 'Biodegradability' for example, would be of virtually no importance, since nearly everything is 'geodegradable' in geological time. The Earth assimilates discarded beer cans fully as thoroughly, if not as quickly, as worms digest compost. Loss of the ozone layer, while possibly more than inconvenient to our species and a few others, would probably have no more than a transient, i.e. a fraction of an eon, effect on the planet. 31. White, L. Jr., The future of compassion. Ecumenical Review, 30 (April) (1978) 99-109. 32. Stone, C. D., Should trees have standing? Revisited: How far will law and morals reach? A pluralist perspective. Southern California Law Review, 59 (1) (1985) 1-156. 33. Hecht, S. & Cockburn, A., The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon. Verso, New York, 1989, 266 pp. 34. Carson, R., The Sea Around Us. New American Library, New York, 1961 [1951], 230 pp. 35. Lovelock, J. E., Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (with new preface). Oxford University Press, New York, 1987[1979], 157 pp. 36. Ehrlich, P. R., Ehrlich, A. H. & Holdren, J. P., Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1977, 1051 pp. 37. For the seminal paper, see Rosenblueth, A., Weiner, N. & Bigelow, J., Behavior, purpose and teleology. Philosophy of Science, 10(1) (1943) 18-24. The standard reference is Padulo, L. & Arbib, M. A., System Theory, A Unified State-Space Approach to Continuous and Discrete Systems. Hemisphere, Washington, DC, 1974, 779 pp. 38. A compassionate might use the derogatory term 'anthropocentric' instead of 'humanistic'. The holothetic could well respond that the compassionate is advocating treating people like animals. Or plants! 39. Leopold, A., A Sand County Almanac. Ballantine Books, New York, 1970[1949], 295 pp. N a s h1-5 - w h o would see Aldo Leopold as a compassionate--has labeled the legendary ecologist as 'the most important source of modern biocentric or holistic ethics', recognizing that Leopold was all the while politically astute enough to allow those with a development ethic to find a blueprint in this thought. But Leopold (p. 262) is better identified as the original germ of the holothetic ethic: A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. 40. Miller, M. L. & Broches, C. F., Congress, issue networks, and marine affairs. Coastal Management, 17(4) (1989) 263-93. 41. Child, T. & Haley, J. T., The Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Fishery Conservation and Management Act: The need for balance. Washington Law Review, 56 (1981) 397-436. 42. Aron, W., The commons revisited: Thoughts on marine mammal management. Coastal Management, 16(2) (1988) 99-110. 43. Manning, L. L., Marine mammals and fisheries conflicts: A philosophical debate. Ocean and Shoreline Management, 12(2) (1989) 217-32.


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44. The marine mammal issue also reveals differences in the perspectives of the compassionate and tribal ethics. Compassionates who insist on the inclusion of whales in the moral community have strongly objected to the place of whale meat in Japanese cuisine. Yet, whales have been a traditional food for native American societies from Southern California to the Arctic Circle.