Dale Jamieson Goes Green | Big Think

Dale Jamieson Goes Green

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The philosopher frames environmentalism in terms of climate change and sustainable development.

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Dale Jamieson:

Dale Jamieson joined the NYU faculty in Spring, 2004, from Carleton rnCollege, where he was Henry R. Luce Professor in Human Dimensions of rnGlobal Change. Previously he was Professor of Philosophy at the rnUniversity of Colorado, Boulder, where he was the only faculty member torn have won both the Dean's award for research in the social sciences and rnthe Chancellor's award for research in the humanities. He has also heldrn visiting positions at Cornell, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford and Monash. rn

rnProfessor Jamieson's most recent book is Morality’s Progress: Essays rnon Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature (Oxford, 2002). Hern is also the editor or co-editor of seven books, most recently A rnCompanion to Environmental Philosophy (Blackwell, 2001), and Singerrn and his Critics (Blackwell, 1999), named by Choice as one ofrn the outstanding academic books of 1999. He has also published more thanrn eighty articles and book chapters. His research has been funded by thern Ethics and Values Studies Program of the National Science Foundation, rnthe US Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the rnHumanities, and the Office of Global Programs in the National rnAtmospheric and Aeronautics Administration. He is on the editorial boardrn of such journals as Environmental Ethics; Environmental rnValues; Science, Techology and Human Values; Science and rnEngineering Ethics; the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare; rnand The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. rnrn

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Why should human behavior be in tune with the environment?

Dale Jamieson: I think for me the argument really rests on a certain conception of what it is to be human. Now, other people have tried to argue that conceptions of rights and interests that I and others think apply to animals really extend further than that. There are people who argue, for example, that trees have rights or that we have moral duties that are directly owed to forest and to ecosystems and so on. I'm not persuaded of those arguments, I mean, I do think those arguments do apply to other non-human animals. I don't think we're special among animals in the kinds of interest and rights that we have. But then the next question that really arises about our relationship to nature is what is it for animals like us to have good lives and to flourish and to have meaningful lives in the environments in which we evolve and in relation to the nature to which we're so well-adapted. And there, I think, questions about what it means to respect nature become very important because just as in human society, for example, part of what it is for me to live a good life as a human being in a human society is to have respect for others around me. Now, that respect, to some extent, can be thought of as being grounded in the rights and interest of others but it also has to do with the stance that I take in the world and what it is that provides meaning and significance in my own life and I think there are similar ideas of respect for nature that apply as well. And that having a certain attitude towards nature is part of what it is for me to have a good life as a human being.

Question: Should environmentalism be economically justified?

Dale Jamieson: At some level, I'm not too concern with people's motivations in the sense that if we can figure out how to live together with nature without blowing ourselves up and destroying nature, even if we all have different reasons about why that's a bad thing, you know, I'll take them. At the same time, there has become a kind of pervasive economistization of the rhetoric in American life. If we go back to the 16th or 17th Century, if we wanted to argue about family obligations, who had rights to cut down trees and forests, whether we should help the poor, all of these arguments would be made in religious terms. The common currency of the arguments would be the Bible, it would be some conception of God and so on.

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