Relationship between animal ethics and environmental ethics

Overview

Animal ethicists generally place the well-being and interests of sentient individuals at the centre of their concern, while environmental ethicists often focus on the preservation of biodiversity, populations, ecosystems, species, and nature itself. Animal ethicists may also value these entities, but usually on the grounds that they are instrumentally valuable to sentient individuals.

Environmental ethicists may regard it as justified to remove or kill individual animals belonging to introduced species when they are considered a threat to ecological entities such as endangered or native species. In such views, members of rare or native species may be treated as more valuable than members of more common or introduced species. These actions are frequently opposed by animal ethicists, who may assign different degrees of value to individual animals according to their level of sentience and reject whether an animal belongs naturally to a place as morally decisive. On this view, the individual's capacity to suffer is central.

Environmental ethicists may support hunting when it is considered ecologically beneficial, even though it harms individual animals. Some animal ethicists argue that humans have a moral obligation to take steps to reduce wild animal suffering, a position normally rejected by environmental ethicists.

These disagreements have led some ethicists to argue that animal ethics and environmental ethics are incompatible, while others argue that the two positions can be reconciled, or that the disagreement is narrower than it first appears.

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Perspectives

Animal ethicists

Animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, in a 1981 paper, described an environmental ethic in which "nonconscious natural objects can have value in their own right, independently of human interests". In The Case for Animal Rights (1982), Regan argued that it is difficult to reconcile Aldo Leopold's holistic land ethic, in which the "individual may be sacrificed for the greater biotic good", with animal rights. He concluded that Leopold's view could be labelled "environmental fascism".

The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, in Practical Ethics, argues for an environmental ethic that "fosters consideration for the interests of all sentient creatures, including subsequent generations stretching into the far future".

Eze Paez and Catia Faria argue that animal ethics and environmental ethics have "incompatible criteria of moral considerability" and "incompatible normative implications regarding the interests of sentient individuals". They also argue that environmental ethics does not provide an adequate account of wild animal suffering. Oscar Horta has argued that, contrary to initial appearances, "biocentric views should strongly support intervention" to reduce the suffering of wild animals.

Brian Tomasik

Within the effective altruism movement's focus on wild animal suffering, Brian Tomasik has argued from a suffering-focused consequentialist perspective that because nature contains vast amounts of suffering, human activities like habitat destruction could inadvertently reduce overall suffering by preventing the births of animals whose lives would be net-negative. This position has been criticized by philosophers Tyler M. John and Jeff Sebo, who label it the "Logic of the Logger". Critics argue that this reasoning is flawed both ethically and practically. Ethically, they contend that even if wild animal lives are net-negative, it is morally preferable to directly reduce the suffering rather than eliminate the bearers of suffering. Practically, they point out that destroying habitats could disrupt ecological balances potentially increasing the total amount of suffering. Furthermore, critics argue that promoting the "Logic of the Logger" carries the instrumental risk of normalizing harm to animals and undermining public support for animal advocacy. Critics, including Browning and Veit (2023), argue that the empirical assumption of net-negative welfare in nature is unproven and that even if true, destroying habitats carries severe risks, such as disrupting ecosystems in ways that could inadvertently increase suffering or normalize harmful attitudes toward animals.

Environmental ethicists

J. Baird Callicott, in his 1980 paper "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair", argued for "intractable practical differences" between Leopold's land ethic, taken as a model of environmental ethics, and the ethical foundations of the animal liberation movement. Mark Sagoff made a similar argument in his 1984 paper "Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce", stating that "[e]nvironmentalists cannot be animal liberationists. Animal liberationists cannot be environmentalists". In a 1988 follow-up paper, Callicott expressed regret over the conflict that his earlier paper had prompted, stating that "it would be far wiser to make common cause against a common enemy — the destructive forces at work ravaging the nonhuman world — than to continue squabbling among ourselves".

Michael Hutchins and Christin Wemmer, in their 1986 paper "Wildlife Conservation and Animal Rights: Are They Compatible?", described the animal-liberation position as "biologically illiterate and thus ill-equipped to provide an intelligent basis for wildlife conservation"; they also stated that "ethical philosophy faces a severe test when it comes to the conservation problem".

In a 1992 paper, Ned Hettinger raised the predation problem in response to animal rights criticism of Holmes Rolston's environmental ethics and his support for hunting. Hettinger stated that "[b]y arguing that humans should not join other predators and must not kill animals for basic needs, animal activists risk being committed to the view that all carnivorous predation is intrinsically evil".

Dale Jamieson has argued that animal liberation is not separate from environmental ethics, but is itself an environmental ethic, and should be welcomed by environmental ethicists.

Ricardo Rozzi has criticised animal ethicists for "taxonomic chauvinism" and has urged them to "reevaluate the participation of invertebrates in the moral community".