#environmental-ethics — Public Fediverse posts

#PhilSky #Ethics #EnvironmentalEthics #ClimateChange

A Pagan Case Against Lawns: Rethinking the Tyranny of Turf

https://pagangrove.wordpress.com/2026/04/09/a-pagan-case-against-lawns-rethinking-the-tyranny-of-turf/

Exploring Environmental Ethics by Kimberly K. Smith, 2018

This book is designed as a basic text for courses that are part of an interdisciplinary program in environmental studies. The intended reader is anyone who expects environmental stewardship to be an important part of his or her life, as a citizen, a policy maker, or an environmental management professional.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#EnvironmentalEthics

I'm studying environmental ethics atm so please excuse my somewhat spammy musings and sharing of interesting things I find. I think it is valuable and genuinely interesting and stimulating. I hope it helps someone to explore new ideas, learn words/ways to communicate existing ideas, and get new insights into history, philosophy, and the environment.

#philosophy #environmentalethics #ethics

Just like with #PFAS-laden #FirefightingFoam, less #Toxic alternatives are out there, but expense is often cited as a roadblock. TBH, things that benefit the environment and society shouldn't cost more than the toxic originals -- and toxic chemicals should be replaced! Period! Make #BigChemical pay! (Since they probably knew about the hazards but hid them from the public. As usual with Big anything these days...!)

A #PinkPowder is being used to fight #CaliforniaFires. It's getting everywhere

by Nadine Yousif, January 13, 2025

"Its use has been controversial in the past over its potential effects on the #environment.

"A lawsuit filed in 2022 by the #ForestServiceEmployees for #EnvironmentalEthics, an organisation made up of current and former employees of the #USForestService, accused the federal agency of violating the country's clean water laws by dumping #chemical #FireRetardant from planes onto forests.

"It argued that the chemical kills fish and is not effective.

"The following year, a US District judge agreed with the employees, but in her ruling allowed the Forest Service to continue using the retardant as it seeks a permit to do so from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"The case drew the attention of communities devastated by #wildfires in the past, including the town of #ParadiseCalifornia, which was destroyed by fire in 2018.

"Its then-mayor, Greg Bolin, hailed the judge's ruling, saying it ensures communities 'have a fighting chance' in the face of fires.

"The Forest Service told NPR that this year, it phased out the use of one type of #PhosChek formula - #PhosChekLC95 - in favour of another - #MVPFx - saying that the latter is less toxic to #wildlife.

"The Forest Service also has a mandatory ban in place on dropping fire retardant in sensitive environmental areas, like waterways and habitats of endangered species. There are exceptions to the ban, however, in cases 'when human life or public safety are threatened.'"

Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93lqng957jo?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
#FireRetardant #FishKills #Wildfires #Firefighting

A gold rush for ‘green finance’ risks changing our relationship to nature
#Environment #GreenFinance #NatureCommodification #ClimateChange #Biodiversity #Sustainability #Inequality #CarbonMarkets #NatureRecovery #EnvironmentalEthics #ProtectNature
https://the-14.com/a-gold-rush-for-green-finance-risks-changing-our-relationship-to-nature/

For my followers in the Davis, California area, mark your calendars for one month from today for a free author event for my book, _The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium_ at our local bookstore, the Avid Reader!

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

New Correspondence Entered into the Twin Metals v. US Docket, Reiterating the Risk of Serious and Irreparable Harm to the Boundary Waters

The attorney for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ just entered this correspondence into the Twin Metals v. US docket.

It attempts to clarify a point on which the federal government has insisted: since the Forest Service moved to withdraw more than 225,000 acres Superior National Forest lands from mineral exploration and development in September of 2021, the Bureau of Land Management acted lawfully — or with authority — when it denied Twin Metals’ Preference Rights Lease Applications, or PRLAs. Therefore, the government contends, Twin Metals has no claim, so Judge Cooper was right to dismiss Twin Metals’ complaint. (For a little more context, see this post.)

In response to the Bureau of Land Management’s request for clarification, the Forest Service reiterates its position:

The record for the 2016 lease consent determination and 2023 withdrawal application demonstrate that development of these mineral resources presented an unacceptable, inherent risk of serious and irreparable harm to the BWCAW natural resources. It has been thoroughly documented that the proposed mineral leasing is not a compatible use within the watershed in such proximity to the wilderness and that the Forest Service’s withholding of consent to the issuance of leases for MNES-057965 and MNES- 050264 would be consistent with the record. This is entirely consistent with previous consent decisions on mineral lease renewals in the same area of the Rainy River Watershed, as well as last year’s decision to withdraw approximately 225,378 acres of land within the watershed from mineral leasing. Extensive analysis and public input associated with prior consent decisions and the mineral withdrawal process informs and supports this response. [emphasis mine]

There is a to to unpack here, and can’t help but wonder why this correspondence comes at such a late hour. Is the federal government is just making sure to cover all bases, or are there alarm bells ringing? Be that as it may, here are the letters in question.

Subscribe

#ANTO #administrativeState #corruption #environmentalEthics #ethics #lawfulAuthority #pollution #Water

I have a new paper out in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘌𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘴 called "Nativeness as gradient: Towards a more complete value assessment of species in a rapidly changing world"
(1/3)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-024-09942-0

#ecology #ethics #environmentalethics #biogeography #conservation #anthropocene #climatechange

I am thrilled to read the first (that I am aware of) journal review of my @UChicagoPress book _The Land Is Our Community_. It is thoughtful and generous, and honestly, as much I could have hoped for (review by Samuel McKee for _Philosophy in Review_).

https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/pir/article/view/22095

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology
#PhilSci

Previously posted paper, now with an assigned issue & page numbers, #OpenAccess: https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.133

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology
#PhilSci
#Values

For anyone who couldn't watch the livestream of this event, well, live, here is a link to the recording:

https://www.youtube.com/live/AUUcPS7gu_M?si=nDHd7t80KudJwZJW&t=333

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

Looking forward to my session this Sunday at the Philosophy of Science Association meeting in NOLA! I'm taking a self-reflective look at the methodology I used to develop Leopoldian land ethic policy for my book _The Land Is Our Community_. (What Would Leopold Do? or WWLD).

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

Hey everyone—I know there's a lot going on right now, but fans of Aldo Leopold's _A Sand County Almanac_ should mark their calendars for this "Science Friday" event on Tuesday, Nov. 19. Curt Meine, Buddy Huffaker, and I will be discussing and taking questions about the book. It should be fun!

Register here: https://secure.everyaction.com/g4H0QW16dk2Cj971j3VWzg2

Please boost!! ⬆️

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

Aldo Leopold's _A Sand County Almanac_ turns 75 today! A fine time to relish his wisdom with a (re)read or to learn about how his ideas are still very much relevant today in _The Land Is Our Community_.

https://www.aldoleopold.org/products/75th-anniversary-edition-a-sand-county-almanac?variant=47620353327417

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo219284936.html

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

Here is a better link for my interview with Carrie Figdor, New Books in Philosophy, about my book _The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium_

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-land-is-our-community

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

I very much enjoyed chatting with the U of Iowa's Prof. Carrie Figdor about my book, _The Land Is Our Community_. You can tell when someone has read your work carefully and is prepared to challenge you on key points! Podcast here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/roberta-l-millstein-the-land-is-our-community/id426208821?i=1000672479468

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

I had fun doing the "Page 99 Test" on my book _The Land Is Our Community_ for Marshal Zeringue's blog, here:
https://page99test.blogspot.com/2024/09/roberta-l-millsteins-land-is-our.html . It gave me a chance to talk a bit more about one of the main themes of my book!

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

Today is the official publication date of my book—which means #OpenAccess versions are now available.

⬇️Download here: https://bibliopen.org/9780226834474

Thanks to @UChicagoPress for publishing & @ucdavis Library for funding the open access.

Please boost!! ⬆️

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

I donned my @AldoLeopoldFdn shirt in honor of the arrival of my physical copies of _The Land is Our Community_ from @UChicagoPress. I am grateful for the wonderful back-of-cover blurbs from Kim Stanley Robinson, Marion Hourdequin, and Curt Meine.

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo219284936.html

Here's an interview from University of Chicago Press about my new book on Aldo Leopold's land ethic—they asked great questions, so I think it ends up giving a pretty good overview of things.

https://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2024/08/01/5-questions-with-roberta-l-millstein-author-of-the-land-is-our-community.html

#EnvironmentalEthics
#EnvironmentalHistory
#PhilBio
#HPB
#ConservationBiology
#Ecology

In honor of the 75th anniversary of Aldo Leopold's _A Sand County Almanac_, the Aldo Leopold Foundation is partnering with environmentalists to share Leopold's writing. Here is my two-minute contribution to this effort, with a passage from "Thinking Like a Mountain" and why it is significant.

https://fb.watch/tJ3GaSKo2f/

#EnvironmentalEthics #EnvironmentalHistory #PhilBio #HPB #ConservationBiology #Ecology

I'm really excited to be giving an overview of my new book for the Aldo Leopold Foundation, aimed at a general audience. All are welcome to logon, watch/listen, and ask questions. We go live on Aug 1, 7 PM CDT (5 PM for me out here on the west coast of the US).

#EnvironmentalEthics #EnvironmentalHistory #ConservationBiology #Ecology #PhilBio

https://www.crowdcast.io/c/land-community

Looking forward to my presentation at @NACCB2024 #NACCB2024 ! I give a brief overview of how my forthcoming book, The Land Is Our Community, can help resolve a longstanding debate in conservation biology over ecocentrism.

#ecology #ConservationBiology #EnvironmentalEthics #philbio

Info on my forthcoming book: for cloth/paperback, you can pre-order from U Chicago Press: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo219284936.html — use code UCPNEW for 30% off. The book will be sent when available, probably end of June. For an e-copy, you can wait for the open access version, probably available by the end of July.

#EnvironmentalEthics #PhilBio #HPB #EnvironmentalHistory #ConservationBiology #Ecology

Public Comment on the Rainy River Watershed Withdrawal

https://twitter.com/lvgaldieri/status/1478795253108912128?s=20

My written comments ran to five pages, so instead of posting them here, I put them online as a PDF, which you can read here. I also made a three-minute comment in the live session hosted by the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service this afternoon. My comments focus mainly on the story I’ve been pursuing for the past few years — a story of corruption. The first couple of paragraphs convey the general idea:

Federal lands in the Rainy River Watershed should be withdrawn from disposition under US mineral and geothermal leasing laws for the proposed initial twenty-year period, if not permanently. This is an overdue decision, grounded in science, economics, law, and environmental ethics.

Why, then, hasn’t it already happened? How did this withdrawal process, which started in 2017, go off track? Agency records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show clearly that a foreign mining company, Antofagasta plc, acted to prevent the withdrawal; and from 2017-2021, members of Congress and the executive branch ran political interference on its behalf. Decisions taken behind closed doors during that period served foreign private interests, not the American public interest. The agencies now have an opportunity to rectify the situation.

I end with three recommendations:

The announcement on October 20, 2021, that the Biden administration will complete the “science-based environmental analysis” was encouraging. Given all the political interference, the two-year study really ought to have been started all over again, from scratch, in the interest of scientific integrity. At the very least, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack should release – unredacted — the preliminary findings of the canceled two-year scientific study, so that they can be compared with the new and complete analysis.

As agencies work toward a science-based decision on the twenty-year withdrawal, they also need to take additional steps to restore public confidence and guard against undue influence. As a first step, the USDA Inspector General could review Secretary Perdue’s decision to cancel the 2017 withdrawal process and report on scientific independence, ethical conduct, and political interference at the agency.

Finally, the agencies can help raise standards. Industry repeatedly assures us that non-ferrous mining in the Rainy River Watershed and elsewhere can be done “responsibly,” and there are a growing number of calls, from Congress and from within the Biden administration, for “responsible mining” for the transition to renewables. How should government respond? Rigorous and practical guidance for agencies on the law and ethics as well as the technical and scientific aspects of “responsible mining” would be a good start.

Here is a recording of my three-minute live comment, which tracks all this pretty closely. Video is cued to the mark.

https://youtu.be/jThQgcFySC8?t=8859

#BoundaryWaters #corruption #environmentalEthics #ethics #ethicsOfMining #goodGovernment #governmentFailure #Water

The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 2

Second In A Series
Activists Afoot!

As I suggested in my first post in this series on MCRC v. EPA, the complaint filed by the Marquette County Road Commission would have us believe that “anti-mining” forces worked secretly with and even infiltrated the EPA, and the agency’s objections to CR 595 followed a “predetermined plan.” The EPA, it claims, had decided to oppose the haul road even before the MCRC application was reviewed.

This sounds like legitimate cause for concern: permit applications should be reviewed on their merits, not pre-judged and not according to some other anti- or pro- agenda. We certainly wouldn’t want someone in the Environmental Protection Agency to be “pro-mining”; there are enough well-paid mining lobbyists already haunting the hallways in Lansing and Washington, DC. But in this case, the anti-mining label is being used as a term of opprobrium, and to distort and deliberately misrepresent what the Environmental Protection Agency is chartered and required by law to do: in short, to enforce the Clean Water Act and protect the environment.

When it comes to proving the insinuations it makes, the MCRC complaint offers slim evidence.

For example, the complaint makes a big fuss over a November 28, 2012 letter from Laura Farwell, who lives in the Marquette area and is described here as “a prominent environmental activist.”  The letter is addressed to Lynn Abramson, then a Senior Legislative Assistant for Senator Barbara Boxer, and Thomas Fox, Senior Counsel of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking them to “weigh-in” with the EPA on CR 595. (Exhibit 1).

EPA must determine whether to uphold its original objections to proposed County Road 595 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), pursuant to its supervisory authority over Michigan’s delegated wetlands permitting program. Tom may remember that during the August 30, 2011 meeting at EPA Denise Keehner of EPA’s office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds definitively reiterated EPA’s position and stated that the haul road would not happen.
Thus, this letter is to request, respectfully, that you weigh-in as soon as possible with the EPA on its decision.

The MCRC complains about Farwell’s use of the word “definitively” here and casts the 2011 meeting in a sinister light:

on August 30, 2011, a very different type of meeting regarding CR 595 took place at USEPA Headquarters in Washington, DC. MCRC was neither invited to nor informed of the meeting. In attendance (as far as is known at the present time) were top USEPA officials, Congressional staff, KBIC representatives, and a prominent environmental activist opposed to the construction of CR 595. It further appears that USEPA made no formal record of the meeting.

Without a formal record, it’s impossible to know what transpired at this meeting, and if the complaint is going to rely on Farwell’s memory of the conversation, then it should also take into account her intentions in paraphrasing and recounting it, one year after it took place. The language here — “a very different type of meeting,” “neither invited nor informed,” “as far as is known at the present time,” “no formal record” — doesn’t help in that regard, and it’s meant to suggest that conjurations were already afoot.

It’s clear the MCRC was not included in some discussions at EPA. There’s nothing extraordinary or illicit about that. All concerned parties had been meeting with and petitioning the EPA for several years at this point. The complaint is still a long way from proving that the EPA “surreptitiously met with a number of environmental activists vocally opposed to the road,” and an even longer way from proving that there was anything like an anti-mining coalition assembled in secret at the offices of the EPA.

In an ironic twist, these allegations of secrecy and whispering behind closed doors may come back to haunt the MCRC: at a Marquette County Board of Commissioners meeting this month, the Marquette County Road Commission itself faced accusations that it had violated the Open Meetings Act in planning to bring its suit against the EPA. Public officials who intentionally violate that act are ordinarily fined and incur other liabilities; in this case, there would be some eating of words as well.

By November 28, 2012, the EPA had, in fact, “decided against the proposed haul road,” as Farwell puts it in the email she sent along with the letter to Abramson and Fox. The EPA had entered objections to the Woodland Road Application (in March, 2010) and announced their objections to CR 595 (in March, 2012).  Even so, a Fall 2012 public meeting held by the EPA “in Marquette…for more input” had Farwell worried. She was not at all confident the EPA would uphold its original objections to the haul road.  The matter was still far from being “definitively” settled.

Whatever reassurances Farwell was given at that 2011 meeting — or thought she had been given, or recalled having been given, one year later — were clearly at risk of getting lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. The purpose of her letter is to prevent that.

There is nothing surprising in all this. Those watching new mining developments in the Upper Peninsula are constantly having to chase after the EPA and demand that the regulator step in and do its job.

Jeffery Loman, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and a former federal regulator, has repeatedly put the EPA on notice and complained of the agency’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act.

In May of this year, the grassroots environmental group Save the Wild UP filed a petition with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, arguing that Eagle Mine was issued the wrong regulatory permit. The appeal requested that the EPA require Eagle Mine to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in order to protect the Salmon Trout River and other surface waters from the discharge of mining effluent. The Appeals Board did not contest the facts put forward in the petition, but dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. They hardly proved themselves to be staunch allies.

So watchdogs and environmental groups, too, have reason to gripe about the EPA and often feel powerless in the face of bureaucratic inertia and ineptitude. Laura Farwell herself seems to have felt that way, and that’s why we find her asking Abramson and Fox for help. The MCRC complaint exaggerates her influence at the EPA when it describes her as “a prominent environmental activist.” The epithet is used here to create the misleading impression that within the offices of EPA Region 5 and the confines of Marquette County there are political opponents with resources to match the power of multi-billion dollar, multinational mining companies.

Laura Farwell and her husband Frank moved to the area in 2006 from Madison, Wisconsin. They are members of the St. Paul Episcopal Church and participate, along with their son Cody, in the church’s Earth Day tree plantings. The couple donated some money to the UP Land Conservancy. Farwell has also organized events for the Cedar Tree Institute, which works to bridge “faith communities and environmental groups.” (She is described on the Institute’s site  as “a concerned mother and local citizen.”) She is thanked for “working quietly behind the scenes” in a 2011 Earth Keeper TV video on the environmental risks posed by the Eagle Mine; and she’s copied along with many other local citizens in a Google Group post dated April 9, 2012, urging people to comment on CR 595 before the public comment period is closed.

Farwell’s commitments to land conservation are pretty clear, and while the complaint asks us to recoil in horror at the phrase “prominent environmental activist,” cooler heads are just as likely to be impressed by Farwell’s dedication to the people around her and the place where she lives. Maybe that dedication is all it takes to be a prominent environmental activist in the view of the Marquette County Road Commission.

Some locals, on the other hand, are legitimately concerned that nationally and internationally prominent environmentalists — like Bill McKibben, George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and their ilk — ignore the current situation around Lake Superior, or fail to give it the serious attention it deserves. National media have barely taken notice. Farwell herself admits that to the great and powerful in Washington DC “the proposed haul road may seem like some little back trail in the middle of nowhere,” but she urges that it will cut through “critical wetlands resources” and “enable the industrializing of this rural Great Lakes watershed by international mining interests.”

Farwell’s letter tries to create some urgency around the CR 595 issue by putting the road in context and specifying whose interests would be served by the industrializing of the region. A serious assessment of CR 595 would significantly widen the lens, taking into account the cumulative effects of all the new mining activities around Lake Superior: all leasing, exploration, development and active mining throughout northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario. Otherwise, we miss the big picture, and without that perspective, it’s just too easy to parcel out the land, the water, and the future of the region to the highest bidders.

The MCRC complaint, too, places CR 595 in the context of “mining and economic development in the Great Lakes region” in a few places, but only to make the specious argument that those who oppose or question the road are opposed to mining and therefore opposed to the region’s prosperity. These are the ideological leaps the complaint makes. Those who don’t make these leaps are called activists or anti-mining obstructionists. That is a political, not a legal argument.

It’s never too late to have a serious discussion of what sustainable economic development and true prosperity for the Great Lakes region might look like. How might we best organize our lives together in this place? is a fundamental political question. But at this juncture, it appears, the MCRC can’t afford to let that conversation happen. This lawsuit is an attempt to shut it down and stifle dissent. Where business leads, society must obediently follow. To question this order of things, as Laura Farwell seems to have repeatedly done, quietly, behind the scenes, is to commit some kind of nefarious act.

This is where the attitude on display in this complaint gets worrisome. With this lawsuit, the MCRC pretends to have the political authority to direct economic development in the region (not just to build and repair roads). But that is only pretense, and things in Marquette County are not as they appear. The public still does not know who is funding the Road Commission lawsuit, what they stand for and what they expect in return for their support. The real powers lurk behind the scenes.

#501c4 #antiMining #BillMcKibben #CedarTreeInstitute #CleanWaterAct #corporatePoliticalActivity #corruption #CountyRoad595 #CR595 #EagleMine #EarthDay #environmentalEthics #environmentalPolitics #environmentalism #EPA #GeorgeMonbiot #JefferyLoman #LauraFarwell #LundinMining #LynnAbramson #MarquetteCounty #MarquetteCountyRoadCommission #MarquetteCountyRoadCommissionVEPA #MCRCVEPA #mining #NaomiKlein #OpenMeetingsAct #politicalAuthority #politics #power #SaveTheWildUP #secrecy #StandUP_ #ThomasFox #TomCasperson #Water

Race You To The Water

The other day I expressed some misgivings over the word that Earthworks chose to apply to water in the first sentence of its report, Polluting the Future: their characterization of water as an “asset,” I said, made me uneasy. The water flowing from springs and brooks, the water of rivers, lakes and streams, the raindrops that fall from the sky and the dew on the morning grass, the water in our bodies, in plants and trees, the water in dogs, flowers, bugs, fish, elephants, walruses and caterpillars, the water in everything that is alive on earth — water is and will always be something greater, more wondrous and something other than a mere entry in the accounting ledgers of some grand business enterprise, which is all that the word “asset” conjures for me.

I came across the word again today as I was reading an editorial in The Detroit Free Press. I am in complete sympathy with the position it takes against plans to build a huge network of oil pipelines carrying diluted bitumen (or dilbit) across the Great Lakes region, and to transport crude oil by barge across Lake Superior. These are reckless, irresponsible ideas. The threat they pose to the integrity of the Lakes and the life the Lakes sustain is only made worse when you consider a couple of salient facts. First (and it is curious that the editorial does not mention this), the new mining around Lake Superior — as I’ve noted repeatedly — is already going to put pressure on Lake Superior and the Lake Superior watershed; the shipping of oil by barge would bring even more industrialization and greatly heighten the risk of environmental catastrophe. Second, the company building and running the pipeline (the Canadian company Enbridge) has already been responsible for an environmental disaster in Kalamazoo, Michigan — the worst inland oil spill in US history, in fact.

The editorial takes the position that these plans betray a “deep misunderstanding of the true value of the lakes,” but when the editors try to say what that value is, they run into trouble:

It’s easy to wax poetic about the value of the Great Lakes to Michigan and the other states they border. The beauty of the lakes, the wildlife and fish that dwell in and around the lakes, the environmental benefits the lakes present — they’re incalculable.

But let’s get practical: Clean freshwater is one of the scarcest commodities there is. And it’s only going to get worse. Clean water will be an asset that’s worth far more than oil. Jeopardizing the Great Lakes isn’t just morally and ethically wrong. It’s financially foolish, as well.

It’s interesting how the argument here moves, in just a couple of short paragraphs, from the “incalculable” to the crudest of calculations — the “worth” of clean water. This is tantamount to arguing that what is “morally and ethically” right should take second place to what is financially sound — as if finance should have more claim on the imagination and intellect (and the heart) than morality, and monetary value should be privileged over moral and ethical considerations.

I suppose that’s the way it goes nowadays, and I just need to get real. Still, there’s a great swirl of confusion in these two paragraphs, and I have a number of questions about the concept of morality being invoked here, how we’re to distinguish it from ethics, and why those things don’t seem to figure into what are called “practical” considerations. Practice and finance here are unmoored from and unrestricted by moral and ethical concerns; it’s precisely that kind of thinking that got us into the precarious situation we’re now in.

One remedy for all this confusion may lie in the perspective that holds water to be a basic human right — a perspective I also found missing from the Earthworks report. But even then we need to go beyond talking about assets and recognize the limitations of the argument that “clean freshwater is one of the scarcest commodities.” Why? Follow the link from The Detroit Free Press editorial to the National Geographic site on the “Freshwater Crisis.” There you enter a Malthusian world:

While the amount of freshwater on the planet has remained fairly constant over time—continually recycled through the atmosphere and back into our cups—the population has exploded. This means that every year competition for a clean, copious supply of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and sustaining life intensifies.

Here, all of humanity is engaged in a contest or race. More and more people enter every year to compete for the same, limited resources. This is one reason why it’s imperative to recognize freshwater as a human right. Otherwise, history becomes a death match, or a big, global reality TV show: intensifying “competition” over this scarce “commodity” means that there will be winners and losers in the water game. The winners are fully vested with their rights; the losers struggle to survive in arid, toxic regions, or simply die of thirst.

Type your email…

Subscribe