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68 | remele / animal protection and environmentalism Preservation and Killing Animal protection and environmentalism It is widely assumed that protecting animals and protecting the environment are one and the same thing. And indeed, both concerns have a lot in common. Both the animal liberation movement and the environmental movement became popular in the 1970s; both are opposed to a blunt anthropocentrism or humanocentrism that deprives the nonhuman natural world of any intrinsic value or dignity. Moreover, in public controversies and campaigns, both animal liberationists and environmentalists frequently act together. On closer examination, though, there are some significant differences between the ethics of animal protection and environmental ethics, differences that have been the subject of both fierce controversies and academic attempts at mediation and reconciliation. (The subsequent description of their respective views depicts “ideal types,” to use Max Weber’s term, which most of the time are not as clear-cut in reality.) First, animal protection is based on a sentiocentric or pathocentric ethics that holds that all sentient creatures —those who are capable of feeling pleasure and pain—have interests or rights and are therefore to be treated accordingly. Nature devoid of sentience does not deserve the same consideration and respect. A mouse, as Peter Singer argues, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road, because he will suffer if he is treated this way. A stone, on the other hand, does not have interests, because it cannot suffer. By contrast, environmentalism is generally based on a biocentric ethics that accords dignity to all living beings, including trees and other plants, or an ecocentric (physiocentric, holistic ) ethics, according to which not only individual living beings (e.g., a particular human or nonhuman animal or a particular plant) but also minerals, soils, waters, species , entire ecosystems, and the biotic community as a whole are intrinsically valuable. Second, animal welfare and animal rights focus on the well-being of individual animals. By contrast, the primary ethical goal or principle of a holistic environmentalism such as Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is the preservation of the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. Third, whereas animal protection focuses on reducing animal pain and on minimizing animals’ premature deaths as moral evils, pain and death are frequently regarded by environmentalists as part and parcel of the process of life or the order of nature with no ethical relevance. The philosophical differences between animal protection and environmentalism entail practical conflicts in several areas. Environmentalists frequently have no moral qualms about eating meat, hunting, and fishing as long as ecosystems are not jeopardized in the process. Whereas animal advocates are in favor of letting free-living animals be, environmentalists are more interested in controlling and managing nature with the objective of enhancing the common ecological good. In the interest of the so-called whole, they appear to be prepared to inflict considerable suffering on individual animals and to kill (or “cull”) them at will. The notion of sacrificing an individual nonhuman (or even human?) animal for the greater biotic good has prompted Tom Regan to accuse holistic environmentalists of advocating “environmental fascism.” Yet like several other ethicists (Gary E. Varner, Mary Anne Warren, Paul Taylor, Mary Midgley, Ted Benton, and ethologist Marc Bekoff), Regan also tried to find a common ground between the two divergent approaches, for in the final analysis, the good of the whole and the good of each individual being are closely interconnected: Because habitat is so important to animals, sound ecosystems are a condition for their thriving. Because the good of the whole is dependent on the good of all and of each individual, individual (sentient) beings must not be used merely as means to an end and rather should be treated with respect. The good of individual free-living animals cannot be divorced from the existence of adequate ecosystems, and the good of a so-called whole cannot be ensured at the expense of individual animals. This is the normative guideline and the practical challenge. bekoff / conservation philosophy | 69 Related articles: Animal pain; Conservation philosophy; Ethical vegetarianism; The ethics of killing free-living animals; The ethics of reintroduction; Moral anthropocentrism; The moral claims of animals; The universal charter of the rights of other species Bekoff, Marc, “Minding Animals, Minding Earth: Old Brains, New Bottlenecks,” Zygon 38.4 (2003): 911–941. Light, Andrew, and Rolston, Holmes, III (eds.), Environmental Ethics: An Anthology, Blackwell, 2003. Linzey, Andrew, Creatures of the Same God: Explorations in Animal Theology, Winchester University Press, 2007...

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