Category Archives: Biodiversity

Where are the Philosphers:Part 3: Naess’s “Ecosophy-T”: necessary ideal or utopian fantasy

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In my previous posts on philosophy, I opined that academic philosophers were missing in action from Canadian environmental issues, and offered a “Reader’s Digest” tour through some contemporary philosophical voices. 

In that last post, we met angry philosophers, libertarians, and finally rational philosophy, where beliefs and intuitions are supposed to be internally and logically consistent.  In this post, I will introduce you to the philosophy of the great Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1912 – 2009).

Naess’s philosophy – Ecosophy-T  – is also the environmental philosophy to which I subscribe.  Could Ecosophy-T could be adopted by humanity, or would it imposes unrealistic standards of behaviour and morality?  You decide! Continue reading →

Where are the Philosophers?

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Part 1. Philosophy and Ethics – the missing environmental policy ingredients.

Where are the philosophers?  I’m not asking “where are they located geographically?”. I know that; they are squirreled away in about 60 academic departments in major universities and colleges around the country.  What I am asking is where the hell are professional philosophers in the current political and environmental mess that is Canada? 

For try as I might, I could find no commentaries by bona fide philosophers on the infamous Omnibus Budget Bill (Bill C-38), the closure of the Experimental Lakes Area, characterizing environmentalists as proto-terrorists, changes to the Fisheries Act, the elimination of Canada’s Ocean Contaminants Program, or opposition of first nations to the Northern Gateway Pipeline. 

These issues have important ethical and moral implications for Canada and Canadians.  More than this, a serious consideration of any of them would raise important moral questions about the way policy decisions are now being made in this country.  Continue reading →

Rio +20 – Weak texts and Action Deficit Disorder

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A few days ago, I wrote about the low expectations that most people had for the Rio +20 Earth Summit.  I opined that the hopeful environmentalists and other civil society folks at the conference would be doomed to disappointment if they expected this conference to break through the logjam of entrenched interests that blocks our route to a truly sustainable society.

It’s sad to be right about this.  As might be expected from a talk fest featuring 190 nations, competing national interests produced a final “agreement” that was a watery gruel of caveats and vague terminology.  There was failure to move ahead on the implementation of several major issues, including climate change, biodiversity, and desertification. 

Part of the problem may be the nature of summits themselves, in which leadership is conspicuously absent.  Continue reading →

Rio Plus 20 – Realpolitik and low expectations

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What has really changed since the first Earth Summit?

The world has changed a good deal since the nations of the world convened the first Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. 

For one thing, the size of the global economy has increased by 89 percent (from US$28.1 trillion to $53.1 trillion by the end of 2011).  This vast increase in the monetary value of goods and services has been accompanied by shifting tides of power as China has risen, Japan fallen, and America, once the global superpower, has succumbed to ideological infighting driven by the warped theologies of the Christian right. 

The vast increase in global wealth has had little impact on overall poverty.  True, large numbers of people have been lifted out of absolute poverty (which is either $1 or $2 of income per day, depending on who you listen to).  But overall, while the rising tide has lifted all boats, it has lifted the yachts of the rich a hell of a lot more than the dugouts of the poor.  The bottom line, according to the world’s leading poverty researcher, Branco Milanovic, is that even though incomes increased globally, levels of inequality within countries increased. 

So that feeling you had about the rich getting richer and the poor getting (relatively) poorer – it was true!

But for environmentalists who think globally, the big thing that has changed appears to be that innocence and hope has been, if not lost, seriously eroded.  Continue reading →