J.P. Bruce
J.P. BRUCE is Assistant Deputy Minister in charge of Canada's Environmental Management Service. This article is taken from a paper originally presented at a meeting of the Soil Conservation Society of America in August 1980.
Because people are taught to be pragmatic, ethics is a subject of which many are likely to be wary, fearing that a discussion of ethics will expose them to a sermon, rather than practical talk. The author's view of the subject, however, is that ethics reflects the accumulated wisdom of experience. Ethical precepts may dictate doing some things that may prove unprofitable in the short run; but the important and sound ethical principles are those that give proper weight to long run concerns, such as surviving on this planet, providing for the succeeding generation, and making sure that the productive capacity of the world's most basic resources - air' soil, and water - is not impaired.
In terms of resource use, a set of conservation ethics - principles of resource management - should be applied which will permit using the productivity of the biosphere in a fashion that meets the needs of present and future generations. So the ethics on which the author believes considerations of resource use should be based can be thought of as rules that enable mankind to live in harmony with one another and with nature. What makes these ethical rules difficult to accept in this well-managed, logical age is that they are not provable. This is true of all ethical precepts. They tend to be stated as self-evident, like the Declaration of Independence of the United States. The author recalls the comment by a somewhat cynical observer that it was a good thing that those truths were self-evident because it would be hell trying to prove them.
The main area of concern here is resource use and environmental ethics. Some people claim that the market will sort out ethical problems and that no other ethic is needed except the one: "Let the market decide." What happens though, with pollution? If the world starts, as most nations have, with the right to pollute, then the market must be used to buy off polluters, which takes a lot of effort and money, as well as a sufficiently high degree of pollution to worry people into action. Generally, the market operates politically, but the costs are the same. If it is assumed that pollution rights have to be bought, or if there were some other way of charging the external costs to the polluter, then the market leads to a lower pollution level. Whether polluting is an industrial right or an imposition on society is a political question, the answer to which depends very much upon the ethical position.
The same analysis applies to resources. If the right of land-owners to deplete their resources is accepted, then the rate of exhaustion of these resources will be higher than if the resource user has to pay for depletion. In Canada and the United States, there is a bit of both: governments charge royalties, but they also offer tax rebates, depletion allowances, and a host of special subsidies for resource exploitation. On balance, it is likely that resource depletion is subsidized. The result is wastefulness of resources and a rate of consumption that from another ethical perspective, that of the gap between rich and poor nations, is verging on the criminal.
In general, the world's societies have started from an ethical position that favours rapid resource exploitation and use of the environment, what has been called the "cowboy economy".1 This position has generally been adhered to, even though from time to time alternative ethics have been proposed and supported. It is interesting to examine four major attempts to introduce an alternative ethic, which is somewhat similar to a conservation ethic.
The first attempt was presented in the mid-nineteenth century by Thomas Malthus. Malthus is best known for his pronouncements on population growth, but his basic message was that world population would, over time, tend to grow faster than production, especially food production. Since his time, a few green revolutions have been experienced. Agriculture has been mechanized and modernized. Food is produced now in quantities undreamed of by the Reverend Thomas. Yet, his ghost still walks, because in many countries his depressing arithmetic is clearly true, and because many people argue that this fantastic growth in productivity cannot be maintained. In general, however, technological progress has refuted Malthus. Almost 50 years later came the conservation movement in the United States, led by Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. They argued that the world would run out of resources and, accordingly, they formulated a series of rules or principles to avoid waste. These may be summarized as follows:
1. The regenerative capacity or potential of renewable resources, such as forest, grazing land, cropland, and water, should not be physically damaged or destroyed.2. Insofar as physically possible, renewable resources should be used in place of minerals.
3. Plentiful mineral resources should be used before less plentiful ones insofar as physically possible.2
To this list has been added a fourth, more modern rule:4. Non-renewable resources should be recycled as much as possible.
These views were influential at the turn of the century and led directly to the founding of the US national parks system and the US Forest Service, and to similar developments in Canada. However, the movement suffered from the "cry wolf" and "Chicken Little" syndromes. The movements claimed that the world was running out of resources, and that there were only 20 years of timber supply and 50 years of anthracite coal remaining. Like Malthus, they were confounded by the progress of technology and by the discovery of new resources. The sky did not fall.
The third wave of alternative ethics came in the 1960s. A remarkable book, Rachel Carson's Silent spring,3 signalled the beginning and marked the growing strength of the environmental conservation movement, which has spawned a wide range of actions from bans on toxic substances to automobile emission standards. Silent spring demonstrates that even if technology can solve the resource supply problem, the environmental side-effects will push too hard at the carrying capacity of the natural environment, resulting in local or even global catastrophe. These arguments have proved to be most powerful and, unlike those of previous revisionists, have not been swiftly disproved by events. Rachel Carson was concerned primarily with DDT. Since that time, a veritable multitude of world threats have emerged, from PCBs to radiation, from microwaves to ozone depletion, from carbon dioxide and melting ice caps to mercury poisoning. It is useful to note that technology is seen by some as more a part of the problem than a part of the solution, at least in the short run. This has led to a widespread distrust of technology, which in turn could have widespread implications for the rate and direction of future technological innovation. When pollution is obvious in the forms of soot, smoke, sewage, and shockingly unsanitary dumps, the imminence of the threat can be seen and action taken to stop it. However, by the time the problems become visible, they may be insoluble. By the time the canary stops singing, people's lungs may already be damaged beyond repair. By the time the fish die in the lakes, the soil may have lost its productivity.
The fourth thrust can be traced to the Club of Rome and the book The limits to growth. 4 This book is largely neo-Malthusian, but it has had a major impact, because it has coincided with a general slow-down of economic activity, with a resource shortage imposed on the world by OPEC and by spiralling consumption of non-renewable resources. The book also coincides with a heavy dose of guilt in western nations regarding the Third World and those nations' lack of access to resources. Many of the limits described in The limits to growth and related literature can, however, be overcome. The concept of limits is now firmly established and the concept of infinite growth is broadly viewed as inane. Given the evolution of this outlook, the concept of resource and environmental limits as truly existing can now be ratified and an appropriate set of ethics must be applied to our decision-making.
Is pollution an industrial right or an impositions on society? We need to conserve the productivity of our most basic resources: air, soil and water. Otherwise the usable supply will run out.
Accordingly, the following four conservation principles based on economic considerations are recommended here.
1. The economy and the natural environment should provide for a flow of goods and services sufficient to meet society's needs in perpetuity.2. The fundamental stability and productivity of the biosphere should not be jeopardized.
3. The value of goods and services lies in the use that is made of them in satisfying wants and needs, not in the goods themselves.
4. Environmental degradation reduces the value that people get from their lives and from the use of goods and services.
If these principles are applied in economic decision-making, they should lead to economic policies that substitute plentiful resources for scarce ones; substitute renewables for non" renewables; minimize waste; increase recycling and product durability; and minimize environmental impact by working in cooperation with, rather than against natural processes.
SULPHUR-LADEN SMOKE PROM A POWER PLANT manufacturing acid rain
We would, I hope, develop national economies that care for the future and care about the impact of economic activities on people and on the environment. These principles can be thought of as stewardship economies. In an article entitled "Human energy," Richard Barnet put his finger on an essential ethical question for anyone having responsibility for environmental management: "Stewardship implies a rational system of sharing not only across distance but also across time. When people were tied to particular plots of land, it was easier for them to feel that they were part of the rhythm of generations. The son, the grandson, and the great-grandson would till the same land in the same way. But with those ties broken, where are the roots of obligation to posterity? There is a weakening of the sense of tradition, of participation in a chain of being... The lack of connectedness to the future (and to the past as well) reveals itself in the special restlessness that permeates the industrial culture. If we do not see ourselves as trustees of the natural order for something beyond ourselves, there is no answer to the inescapable human question, Why are we here?" 5
We must now accept the concept of resource and environmental limits. Resource growth is not infinite. Waste must be minimized, products recycled and renewables substituted for non-renewables.
Thus far, it has mainly been the philosophical level of conservation ethics that has been examined here. Perhaps it would be helpful to review a few of the current problems seen from this sort of ethical perspective.
An almost classic example of the issues discussed above is the problem of acid rain or, more generically, the long-range transport of airborne pollutants. The two dimensions of Barnet's view of stewardship - the effects on the future and the effects on distant neighbours - are dominant features.
First, it is as well to summarize the known facts of the case. Sulphur dioxide emissions, mainly from thermal power plants and non-ferrous smelting operations, and nitrogen oxides, mainly from cars and trucks, are transported and transformed in the atmosphere. The residence times of sulphur compounds in the atmosphere are typically one to five days in North America. During the first 24 hours, the sulphur is gradually changed to a dilute sulphuric acid. Because particles and gases are typically transported some 1000 kilometer (621 miles) per day at mid levels of the atmosphere, the dilute sulphuric acid tends to fall on land and lakes far from its original sources.
The long-term effects of emissions from the Ohio valley and Ontario on the northeastern parts of North America can be seen already. Nearly the entire eastern half of the continent is now subject to rain with a pH of less than 4.6, 10 times the acidity of "clean" rain. In some areas, the average is as low as 4.0. Falling over several decades, acid rain has eliminated the buffering capacity and turned acidic all the approximately 100 Adirondack lakes at an altitude of more than 610 metes (2000 feet) and 140 or more lakes in Ontario, wiping out previously flourishing sports fishery populations and the complete aquatic ecosystems on which they depended.
Thousands of other lakes and rivers in eastern North America are heading in the same direction. They have only a decade or two left as healthy aquatic systems if present deposition rates continue. 6 When lakes become more acidic, and head-water lakes generally go first, toxic trace metals, such as mercury and cadmium, are leached more rapidly from the rocks and sediments, and may affect drinking-water supplies as well as the remaining biota. Rusting of water pipes, corrosion of buildings, and impacts on soils, forests, and agriculture are also of concern.
While effects on vegetation are not easily demonstrated because of the many other variables at work, long term effects on soils necessarily give rise to extreme concern about the continued productivity of land. The extensive soil-sampling programme in Sweden, where the pH of the precipitation is about the same as in much, of eastern North America, shows losses of up to 30 percent of calcium and some other nutrients, like magnesium and potassium, in the lower soil horizons. At the same time in the same area, ground water has become more acidic and aluminium concentrations have increased. The complex chemistry of the soils and the fact that the rain is not only acidic but contains other chemical contaminants make this work difficult to interpret. It requires a huge number of samples to obtain statistical reliability and the kind of soil monitoring programme needed in North America has yet to be initiated.
Now who is doing what to whom in North America? The wind respects no provincial, state, or international borders. Some of the acid rain in the Adirondacks and in Quebec is caused by sulphur emissions in Ontario, and some of the problems in Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces result from emissions from the midwestern United States. The best estimates are that, in a typical summer month, sulphur depositions in Canada from the United States are more than three times the Canadian depositions in the United States. But in a winter month, US contributions to Canada exceed those going the other way by only 30 percent. 6 If depositions continue at present rates, thousands of other lakes will die in the next decade, and changes in soil chemistry and ground water will continue.
This situation has two features characteristic of the ethical perspectives discussed earlier: the adverse effects of the actions in one location are felt most severely hundreds or thousands of kilometres away; and the effects take a long time to manifest themselves. At present rates of deposition, it will take several decades of acid rain to use up the alkalinity or buffering capacity in natural lakes and rivers. The present pollution control legislation in both countries is neither designed nor suited to cope with pollution problems with impacts so distant in time and space.
A way of incorporating ethical concerns into the selection of policy options must be found. Alternative fuels for electric power generation must be studied, but in a way that builds in the cost of pollution controls so that full costs and benefits can be weighed.
The acid rain example illustrates the complexity of resource and economic choices required for stewardship of the environment when it involves states, another country, or future generations. These concerns have spurred Canada and the United States to try to deal more effectively with trans-boundary transport of airborne pollutants. However, these current issues do not have anything like the history of what might be called "water diplomacy".
North Americans can proudly claim that water negotiations have played a prime role in developing a written pattern of international ethics and principles of law to govern conduct between Canada and the United States. One of the most important achievements of this diplomacy has been the Great Lakes Water-Quality Agreement of 1972 and its updated 1978 version. These agreements flow from the simple principle of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty that says that each country shall not pollute the other's waters "to the injury of health or property". The concept of "injury of health or property" is made specific by defining numerical water-quality objectives for bacteria, dissolved oxygen, phenols, iron, toxic metals, etc., beyond which uses of the waters would be impaired, including uses to support healthy aquatic ecosystems. The two nations then committed themselves to control programmes achieve those objectives.
How has it worked out? In spite of early problems and continuing difficulties in completing major municipal waste treatment plants in Detroit and Cleveland, the cooperative effort has worked well. The two countries have committed $6-7 thousand million for wastewater treatment, and the evidence of improvement in lake waters is accumulating.
In 1978, herring-gull eggs from islands in Lake Ontario showed a reduction of 48 percent in DDT and PCBs and of 75 percent in Mirex from 1974. These reductions have been associated with the increased breeding success of the gulls. Spring phosphorus concentrations in near shore areas and in the main body of Lake Ontario have shown substantial declines since the mid-1970s, accompanied by reductions in excess algal growths in the lake. There are similar indications in the other lakes. In short, there is reason to believe that this is one of the most remarkable environmental success stories ever. 7
What are some of the ethical ingredients of this effort to reverse the trend toward serious environmental degradation of the Great Lakes? First, the establishment of the specific water quality objectives was based on the precept that the "highest" use of the Great Lakes waters must be jointly protected, and the protection of aquatic ecosystems recognized as a legitimate use. "Highest" use in this case meant the use, whether for drinking, swimming, or protection of aquatic life, that required the most stringent water quality conditions. Second, when the two countries came to consider largely unspoiled Lakes Superior and Huron, they decided that water-quality objectives less stringent than present water quality would not be acceptable and agreed that no further degradation of the quality of these lakes should be permitted.
The third and most important ethical aspect has been the willingness of citizens, their governments, and the industries in both countries to pay for the clean-up. On a straightforward economic analysis, it would be difficult or impossible to justify the magnitude of these clean-up expenditures. However, it is clear that these costs are being willingly paid for two main reasons: so that pollution of neighbouring waters does not continue and so that this generation may not go down in history as the one that hopelessly fouled the Great Lakes for all future generations; in short, for ethical reasons.
Collective experience concerning the Great Lakes gives great hope for the future and, in particular, for solving the problems associated with acid precipitation. The sums of money required are not much different, and the impact of acid rain is even more widespread than are the effects of Great Lakes' pollution. These hopes are based on the clear demonstration that the peoples and the countries of North America can be and are motivated by ethical concerns. Stewardship of vital natural resources does give purpose to the lives of many conservationists. It is also just possible that the concerns for future generations, for protection of endangered species, and for ensuring the sustained productivity of natural resources may just provide the kind of shared ethical concept needed to sustain North American society in the 1980s.
Acid rain is a silent killer, and by the time pollution problems become visible, the damage is beyond repair.
1. BOULDING, K. 1966, The economics of the coming spaceship earth. In Environmental quality in a growing economy, edited by H. Jarret. Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins.
2. BARNETT, H. & MORSE, C. 1963, Scarcity and growth. Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins.
3. CARSON, R. 1962, Silent spring. Greenwich, Connecticut, Houghton Mifflin.
4. MEADOWS, D. 1974, et al. The limits to growth. 2nd edition. New York, Universe Books.
5. BARNETT, R. 1980, Human energy. The New Yorker, 7 April 1980.
6. US CANADA RESEARCH CONSULTATION GROUP ON LONG-RANGE TRANSPORT OF AIR POLLUTANTS. 1979, The LRTAP problem in North America: a preliminary overview. 31 p.
7. Bruce, J.P. 1980, Water quality issues in boundary and transboundary waters, Address to Inland Waters 1980 Conference of American Society of Civil Engineers Green Bay, Wisconsin, 30 July 1980.
