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ECOLOGY, POLICY AND POLITICS Human and non-human well-being is central to environmental concern. In this book John O’Neill develops an Aristotelian account of welfare that reveals the relationship between the good of nonhumans and future generations and our own well-being. He shows that welfare and liberal justifications of market-based approaches to environmental policy fail, and examines the implications this has for debates about markets, civil society, and politics in modern society. Accessible in approach, this book is ideal for student use in courses on applied ethics, environmental economics, and environmental policy and politics. It will also appeal to the general reader. John O’Neill is Lecturer in Philosophy at Lancaster University. His publications include Worlds Without Content: Against Formalism (Routledge, 1991). ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHIES Philosophy, in its broadest sense, is an effort to clarify the problems which puzzle us. Our responsibility for and attitude to the environment is one such problem now subject of intense debate. Theorists and policy analysts often discuss environmental issues in the context of a more general understanding of what human beings are and how they are related to each other and to the rest of the world. So economists may argue that humans are basically consumers sending signals to each other by means of the market, while deep ecologists maintain that humans and other animals are knots in a larger web of biospheric relations. This series examines the theories that lie behind different accounts of our environmental problems and their solutions. It includes accounts of holism, feminism, green political themes, and the other structures of ideas in terms of which people have tried to make sense of our environmental predicaments. The emphasis is on clarity combined with a critical approach to the material under study. Most of the authors are professional philosophers, and each has written a jargon-free, non-technical account of their topic. The books will interest readers from a variety of backgrounds, including philosophers, geographers, policy-makers, and all who care for our planet. ECOLOGY, POLICY AND POLITICS Human well-being and the natural world John O’Neill London and New York First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1993 John O’Neill All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data O’Neill, John Francis Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human well-being and the natural world. (Environmental Philosophies Series) I. Title II. Series 333.7 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data O’Neill, John Ecology, Policy, and Politics: Human well-being and the natural world John O’Neill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Environmental policy. 2. Human ecology. 3. Animal welfare. 4. Conservation of natural resources. 5. Ecology. I. Title. HC79.E50513 1993 363.7–dc20 93-16367 ISBN 0-203-41657-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-72481-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-07299-9 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-415-07300-6 (pbk) To Bill and Mary O’Neill and Bridie and Rosa O’Neill CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix 1 Human well-being and the natural world 1 2 Nature, intrinsic value and human well-being 8 2.1 The varieties of intrinsic value 8 2.2 Sources and objects of value 10 2.3 Values and non-relational properties 13 2.4 Objective value and the natural world 15 2.5 Intrinsic value and human well-being 22 3 Future generations and the harms we do ourselves 25 3.1 Future generations, present harms 27 3.2 Hedonism and the temporally local perspective 35 3.3 The market and the temporally local perspective 37 4 The constituency of environmental policy 43 4.1 Cost-benefit analysis: an outline 43 4.2 The constituency of policy 45 4.3 Discounting the future 48 4.4 Cost-benefit analysis and the inarticulate 57 5 Justifying cost-benefit analysis: arguments from welfare 60 5.1 Justifying cost-benefit analysis 60 5.2 Welfare justifications 63 5.3 Cost-benefit analysis, science and argument 65 5.4 Reason, preference and environmental goods 74 5.5 Ideals, preferences and elitism 78 6 Pluralism, liberalism and the good life 80 6.1 Liberalism and the good life 80 6.2 Aristotle, the good life and self-sufficiency 82 6.3 Pluralism: goods and beliefs 87 6.4 Rational argument, pluralism and convergence 89 6.5 Mill and the classical conception of politics 91 6.6 Some qualifications: ecology, aesthetics and diversity 95 7 Pluralism, incommensurability, judgement 98 7.1 Values: incommensurability, incomparability, indeterminacy 98 7.2 Environmental values: description, appraisal and pluralism 102 7.3 Cost-benefit analysis and incommensurability 105 7.4 Incommensurability, transitivity and judgement 107 7.5 Two accounts of practical reason 110 7.6 Willingness to pay: commodities and commensurability 114 8 Authority, democracy and the environment 118 8.1 Authority: between ‘rationalism’ and irrationality 119 8.2 Two forms of authority 121 8.3 Two problems of authority 126 8.4 The limits of authority and the tools of scepticism 130 9 Science, policy and environmental value 139 9.1 Science: necessary, reliable, but insufficient 139 9.2 Against greens against science 142 9.3 Autonomy, value and science 149 9.4 Science, wonder and the lust of the eyes 153 10 Market, household and politics 161 10.1 Household and market 161 10.2 Household, politics and non-market associations 164 10.3 The market in its place? 167 10.4 The market, civil society and totalitarianism 170 10.5 Non-market associations and environmental goods 171 Notes 175 Bibliography 208 Index 222 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to many people for helping me in a variety of different ways to produce this book. I would like to thank Andrew Brennan for inviting me to write it and for his assistance in producing the final text. I am also especially grateful to Andrew Collier, Roger Crisp, Russell Keat, and Yvette Solomon to whom my thinking on the matters discussed in this book owes a great deal and who read and commented extensively upon an entire draft of the book. They pointed out many weaknesses of argument and made many suggested improvements. The flaws that still exist are there despite their best efforts. The arguments in the book owe much to discussions with colleagues at Sussex University. Rob Eastwood, Mary Farmer, and Mark Peacock read earlier drafts of the chapters that deal with economic matters and saved me from a number of errors. Peter Dickens, Richard Gaskin, Ben Gibb, Luke Martell, Trevor Pateman, and Neil Stammers all read and commented upon earlier versions of the book and made many helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to the friends and colleagues I have had in Bangor, Lancaster, and Bolton: I would especially like to thank John Benson, Alan Holland, Geoffrey Hunter, Jeremy Roxbee-Cox, Frank Sibley, and Suzanne Stern-Gillet for their conversations on issues discussed here. Earlier drafts of some of the chapters of this book were read to university seminars at Bangor, Brighton, Bristol, Kent, Lancaster, Liverpool, Southampton, and Sussex: my thanks to those who made numerous helpful comments on those occasions. There are many others whose thoughts, advice, and critical comment have been important in writing this book: Robin Attfield, J.Baird Callicott, Alan Carter, Stephen Clark, Harro Hopfl, Paul Lancaster, Keekok Lee, David Miller, Carrie Rimes, Sean Sayers, and Richard Sylvan all deserve special mention. Finally I would like to thank all those students with whom I have discussed issues in social philosophy and ethics: their acute comments on earlier versions of arguments developed here have taught me that research and teaching are not distinct activities. Versions of chapter 2 and 3 appeared as ‘The varieties of intrinsic value’, The Monist 75 (1992), and ‘Future generations: present harms’, Philosophy (1993). Parts of chapter 9 are based on ‘Marcuse, Husserl and the crisis of the sciences’, Philosophy of Social Science 18 (1988) and ‘Science, wonder and the lust of the eyes’, Journal of Applied Philosophy. I would like to thank the editors and publishers for permission to use that material here. 1 Human well-being and the natural world What is it for us to live well? How should ‘human well-being’ be understood and characterized? Which social institutions best enable human beings to live a good life? How should we formulate policies to foster human well-being? What role do the sciences and arts have in its development? These are some of the central questions addressed in this book. Why? Should a book on environmental philosophy begin with questions about human well-being? The place that considerations about human well-being should have in environmental concerns has been at the centre of recent debates. The literature on the environment is dominated by two broad approaches, each of which might be expected to respond very differently to my opening questions. This book argues that both are mistaken. The first position is that which holds that environmental problems can be accommodated within existing procedures of public decision-making and by the standard economic positions that found them. Thinkers who defend this view are likely to be quite happy to start from my initial set of questions about human well-being. Thus, for environmental economists who approach ecological problems from within the standard neoclassical framework, it is natural to ask what policies will best promote human welfare and then to use economic tools to determine which policies would do so. The second position is that which holds that existing procedures are inadequate and must be replaced by new ones. Thinkers who defend this view might well reject my initial set of questions about human well-being, arguing instead that the concept of ‘human well-being’ itself is problematic in environmental contexts. Thus, for deep ecologists, it is not clear what role human beings should play in their conception of a good life and how to reconcile human interests with those of non-human nature. This book argues that both positions are flawed. It develops an Aristotelian account of welfare that reveals the relationship between the good of nonhumans and future generations and our own well-being, showing that welfare and liberal justifications of market-based approaches to environmental policy fail. The implications for debates about markets, civil society, and politics in modern society are examined. The book is accessible in approach and ideal for student use in courses on applied ethics, environmental economics, and environmental policy and politics. It will also appeal to the general reader. 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