November 9, 2006
A conversation with Andrew Light, UW environmental ethicist
In late October, a British government report strongly warned that lack of response to global warming could push the world economy into a serious downturn.
UW environmental ethicist Andrew Light, a professor of philosophy, is concerned about this and as well as neighborhood environmental issues. He’s part of the UW Program on Values & Society, a recently hired group of ethicists who work on environmental, medical and various political issues (Learn more online at http://depts.washington.edu/ponvins).
University Week talked with Light about his work:
Q: What are the most important arguments environmental ethicists make about human responsibilities for the environment?
A: Most environmental ethicists argue that we have direct moral obligations to other species and ecosystems. I think arguments for environmental protection based more on obligations to future human generations, and even aesthetic claims, are more persuasive.
Q: What got you interested in becoming an environmental ethicist?
A: From the time I was a kid, I’ve always had an interest in the environment. I spent a lot of time by myself after school playing in woods, streams, and old farmland in Georgia. Maybe my early environmental awareness was partly a result of seeing the expansion of Atlanta’s suburbs destroy landscapes I cherished.
Q: What are the key issues in your work?
A: In the last few years, I have focused on how to create opportunities for people to embrace ecological citizenship. It’s a new model of environmentalism which moves away from environmental attachment as a kind of identity politics. Ecological citizens see our obligation to improve the local environment as an extension of their obligations to other people.
This got me looking at public participation in things like restoration ecology, the practice of recreating or restoring damaged ecosystems. Such projects create opportunities for direct, hands-on participation in local environmental management. Research shows that, even if volunteers didn’t originally think of themselves as environmentalists, the experience gives them strong attachments to their local environment and encourages concern for global issues. The environment becomes not just a background to their everyday lives, but the glue holding their community together. We should make such community involvement a goal from the start.
Q: What else in environmental ethics interests you?
A: How to build communities so that people live more sustainably without having to think about it. What forms of transportation, architecture and urban planning would make people consume less because it’s the smartest way to live.
Q: But how can cities be retrofitted?
A: It is not unimaginable that a city such as Seattle would invest strongly in regional plans better tying together city and suburbs. Also, more incentives are needed to encourage retrofitting houses with solar panels, more energy efficient appliances, and the like. The biggest issue though, in a region like this, where population is increasing, is growth and how we encourage people to live closer to the urban center. In that respect, losing the monorail here was a major setback.
Q: What bad environmental practices are you worrying about?
A: The Bush administration’s attitude toward global warming is completely irresponsible. We’re the only industrialized country without national leadership on this critical issue. The only leadership is coming at the state and municipal level, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in California and Greg Nickels in Seattle.
Fortunately, my colleague Stephen Gardiner is working on these issues. The more time I spend with him and the exceptional climatologists at UW, the more I appreciate the need for more immediate coordinated action. In light of Katrina and its probable connection to global warming, the lack of a national plan is morally repugnant.
Q: What is the environmental community not doing well?
A: We’ve allowed environmentalism to become a special interest in American politics while it should interest all of us. Another reason we don’t have traction on global warming is that the environmental community hasn’t gotten the broader public sufficiently concerned. We should be making appeals about job creation and the health and welfare of children — concerns people will more immediately embrace. Two friends of mine point out that too many environmentalists say, “I have a nightmare,” whereas they should say, “I have a dream.” History is pretty clear on which of those messages works better.
