8 August 2019

To what extent are we able to challenge our own points of view and make more ethical decisions in relation to the environment?

This week in Turkey, thousands of ecological activists joined a vigorous protest in a campaign against the construction of a gold mine near Mount Ida (aka Kaz) in the country’s north-west.

The wooded area around Mount Ida produces exceptional amounts of oxygen and is one of Turkey’s most significant biodiversity hotspots, as well as being an area of outstanding natural beauty. Mining operations have already destroyed nearly 200,000 trees, and protesters say that the gold-extraction process will use large quantities of cyanide, which would contaminate the soil and the water in a nearby dam (the only potable water source in the city of Çanakkale).

Let’s see what all this has got to do with philosophy.

Where gold mining company executives see the prospect of financial profit, environmentalists see the prospect of ecological devastation.

And where Turkish government officials see an opportunity for economic recovery after last year’s recession, the deputy mayor of Çanakkale predicts that mining will cease after a few years once the area becomes desertified.

So within the same environment, the same circumstances and the same events, different stakeholders perceive radically different threats and opportunities.

Philosophers sometimes speak of ‘affordances’ in the environment. The idea is that things in the environment have particular meanings that we perceive and that allow us to perform a specific kind of action. For instance: air affords breathing, water affords drinking, a chair affords sitting and a hammer affords hammering.

What does the area around Mount Ida afford? Does it afford natural resource depletion, or natural resource conservation?

Well, both. And among the affordances of nature more broadly is, in the worst-case scenario, a total annihilation of life on earth. But of course other possibilities abound.

While the ecological crisis confronts us with an absolute limit of the carrying capacity of planet Earth, acting to protect the environment is a choice, not an inevitability. And through practice, we can ‘educate our attention’ to become more attuned to information that’s relevant to particular kinds of behaviour.

There’s no doubt: the area near Mount Ida does afford deforestation and pollution along with corporate profit-making. But those who support the gold mine could learn to become more sensitive to other affordances. By perceiving more adaptive possibilities, they could begin to make more informed decisions and avoid irreversible ecological damage. They could choose to act only on the affordances that promote environmental goods, and they could take responsibility for the kinds of new affordances they create.

Philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein says: “it’s always a good thing … to be able to think critically. To challenge your own point of view. Also, you need to be a citizen in this world. You need to know your responsibilities. You’re going to have many moral choices every day of your life.”

Coming to see ourselves as responsible for the environment means, first, recognising our contribution to what it has become and, second, managing it with an awareness that even if we can’t restore nature to some pristine state, we can make life better for ourselves and for other living beings.

For environmental advocates, this means challenging other points of view. It also means urging empowered authorities to recognise their moral responsibilities. And of all possible ways of achieving this, peaceful disruptive protests are among the most effective.