Beyond sax and welfare interests: A case for environmental rights

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 133-148

  Collins Chobanian, Shari ^a  

^a ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY WEST   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0041417982     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200022231     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. While I recognize that air, water, and soil can be further reduced to constituent elements (and are thus not the most basic or fundamental), because I am not a scientist I restrict my discussion to the environmental rights as stated. Also, I recognize that what constitutes "clean" air, water, and soil can be compromised by earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. However, I am interested in the ways that these may be compromised by human activity. While the tolerance for pollutants in air, water, and soil varies, I am interested in the level that children, the elderly, sick people, and certain indicator organisms in various ecosystems can tolerate, for these are the minimum standards and are informative in assessing the integrity and sustainability of the ecosystem, as well as sustainability of all that depends upon the ecosystem.
2. Joseph L. Sax, "The Search for Environmental Rights," Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law 6 (1990): 94.
3. Ibid., p. 95.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 96.
6. Joel Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 32.
7. Ibid., p. 31.
8. Ibid., p. 33.
9. Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Imposing Risks," in Rights, Restitution, & Risk, ed. William Parent (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 173-91.
10. Ibid., p. 174.
11. See Joel Feinberg, "Environmental Pollution and the Threshold of Harm," The Hastings Center Report, June 1984, pp. 27-31. Feinberg again defines harm as crossing a threshold, not the steps that weaken health, and does not address synergistic effects. See also Andrew Kernohan, "Rights against Polluters," in Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 245-57.
12. See Joel Feinberg, "Environmental Pollution and the Threshold of Harm," The Hastings Center Report, June 1984, pp. 27-31. Feinberg again defines harm as crossing a threshold, not the steps that weaken health, and does not address synergistic effects. See also Andrew Kernohan, "Rights against Polluters," in Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 245-57.
13. Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 19.
14. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
15. Shue also includes the right to physical security as a basic right. However, I leave aside this discussion as I am interested in what are the most basic rights, and as Shue points out, people who are healthy can fight back against attackers or flee. In addition, and here he quotes John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, the right to physical security is "most indispensable of all necessaries, after physical nutriment." Shue, Basic Rights, p. 182.
16. Shue also includes the right to physical security as a basic right. However, I leave aside this discussion as I am interested in what are the most basic rights, and as Shue points out, people who are healthy can fight back against attackers or flee. In addition, and here he quotes John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, the right to physical security is "most indispensable of all necessaries, after physical nutriment." Shue, Basic Rights, p. 182.
17. By clean soil, I mean uncontaminated soil necessary for sustained production of edible food.
18. Clean, fertile soil is soil that can sustain life without harmful effects. Such soil would be without radioactivity (that concentrates in the food chain); without pesticides (such as the Riverside, California pesticide absorption in watermelons that killed people in 1983); and without fungicides (as destroyed the soil in Florida citrus groves); and would not be too saline (as is left by crops grown in soil unsuited to agricultural practices).
19. See Daniel Hillel, Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981). Hillel traces the use of chemical fertilizers in agricultural production and the subsequent soil degradation.
20. Ibid., pp. 132, 253-54.
21. James W. Nickel, "The Human Right to a Safe Environment: Philosophical Perspectives on Its Scope and Justification," Yale Journal of International Law 18 (1993): 284.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 285.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., p. 293.
26. See also George Eads, "The Confusion of Goals and Instruments: The Explicit Consideration of Cost in Setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards," in To Breathe Freely, ed. Mary Gibson (Totowa: N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), pp. 222-32. Eads points out difficulties in determining air quality standards and how significantly costs can increase with small changes in air quality.
27. While I acknowledge that I am obviously firmly entrenched (there is little to no option to opt out) in such a market economy, and as a white, middle-class woman I benefit from this system, I nonetheless question my privileges, the privileges of others, and the costs of these privileges to those not similarly privileged, as well as the costs to and destruction of the ecosystem. In addition, I acknowledge the schizophrenic nature of participating in the market economy as a consumer, while simultaneously arguing for an end to its harms, or at least to minimize those harms. For a discussion of this schizophrenic nature, see Mark Sagoff, "At the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima or Why Political Questions Are Not All Economic," Arizona Law Review 23 (1981): 1283-98.
28. See Deane Curtin, "Making Peace with the Earth: Indigenous Agriculture and the Green Revolution," Environmental Ethics 17 (1985): 59-73; and Devon Peña, ed., Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998).
29. See Deane Curtin, "Making Peace with the Earth: Indigenous Agriculture and the Green Revolution," Environmental Ethics 17 (1985): 59-73; and Devon Peña, ed., Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998).
30. Ibid., p. 294.
31. Ibid.
32. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), pp. 68-69.
33. Ibid., p. 71.
34. Regarding ecological scarcity, see William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977).
35. Carl Wellman, Welfare Rights (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), p. 174.
36. See also Rem Edwards, "The Principle of Utility and Minimizing Utilitarianism," Journal of Value Inquiry 20 (1986): 125-36. Edwards argues that to prevent harm or provide for minimum essentials, it is not only justified to restrict others' liberty, but is "worth the price of negative social enforcement" (p. 132). See also Andrew Kernohan, "Accumulative Harms and the Interpretation of the Harm Principle," Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 51-72. Kernohan argues that even on the strictest conception of harm, the Harm Principle should be understood to require interference to prevent harm. Also see Dudley R. Knowles, "A Reformulation of the Harm Principle," Political Theory 6 (May 1978): 233-46 . Knowles argues that our physical security interest is a higher-order interest and the Harm Principle justifies the prohibition of others from jeopardizing this.
37. See also Rem Edwards, "The Principle of Utility and Minimizing Utilitarianism," Journal of Value Inquiry 20 (1986): 125-36. Edwards argues that to prevent harm or provide for minimum essentials, it is not only justified to restrict others' liberty, but is "worth the price of negative social enforcement" (p. 132). See also Andrew Kernohan, "Accumulative Harms and the Interpretation of the Harm Principle," Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 51-72. Kernohan argues that even on the strictest conception of harm, the Harm Principle should be understood to require interference to prevent harm. Also see Dudley R. Knowles, "A Reformulation of the Harm Principle," Political Theory 6 (May 1978): 233-46 . Knowles argues that our physical security interest is a higher-order interest and the Harm Principle justifies the prohibition of others from jeopardizing this.
38. See also Rem Edwards, "The Principle of Utility and Minimizing Utilitarianism," Journal of Value Inquiry 20 (1986): 125-36. Edwards argues that to prevent harm or provide for minimum essentials, it is not only justified to restrict others' liberty, but is "worth the price of negative social enforcement" (p. 132). See also Andrew Kernohan, "Accumulative Harms and the Interpretation of the Harm Principle," Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 51-72. Kernohan argues that even on the strictest conception of harm, the Harm Principle should be understood to require interference to prevent harm. Also see Dudley R. Knowles, "A Reformulation of the Harm Principle," Political Theory 6 (May 1978): 233-46 . Knowles argues that our physical security interest is a higher-order interest and the Harm Principle justifies the prohibition of others from jeopardizing this.
39. Peter S. Wenz, Environmental Justice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 105.
40. Ibid., pp. 105-06.
41. I do not exclude the possibility that there are also nonanthropocentric animal and ecosystem rights. I am very sympathetic with this extension; however, I neither include nor defend this extension here.
42. See William T. Blackstone, "Ethics and Ecology," in Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, ed. William T. Blackstone (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). Blackstone argues that no rights are realizable without the right to a livable or decent environment. Much of the rights literature is engaged in defining, defending, and discussing rights that are relevant after environmental rights have been secured. Thus, I am not disputing the rights theorists, but am stepping back to that which I argue is prior, and focusing there.
43. See Blackstone, "Ethics and Ecology," and Sax, "The Search for Environmental Rights."
44. See Blackstone, "Ethics and Ecology," and Sax, "The Search for Environmental Rights."
45. I am assuming that there is a right to life.
46. See H. M. Malm, "Directions of Justification in the Negative-Positive Duty Debate," American Philosophical Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1990): 125-36. Malm provides a clear distinction between negative and positive duties regarding harm, however he concludes that our positive duties to prevent harm are not as strict as our negative duties not to cause harm.
47. As is widely known, bleaching with chlorine compounds necessarily involves pollution from organochlorines, such as dioxin associated with reproductive disorders, cancer, birth defects, and immune system disorders.
48. Pesticides do not merely harm target species, they harm and impose risk of harm in a wide and persistent manner. Pesticides disrupt reproductive behavior; cause cancer; cause cell mutations; result in abnormal eggs and young; harm the nervous system and gastrointestinal tract; result in hair loss, kidney and liver problems, neurological problems; and can result in sterility, and hormone imbalances. Pesticides pollute air, water, and soil and it is estimated that 20,000 cases of cancer a year in the United States are caused from pesticide residues. See "Toxic Effects of Pesticides: Experimental and Clinical Data," and "Short- and Long-Term Health Effects of Pesticides: Epidemiological Data," in Public Health Impact of Pesticides (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1990).
49. I am grateful to Peter Wenz for this point.
50. I am assuming that the government has a duty to protect its citizens from harm, especially harm imposed on citizens.
51. Sax. "The Search for Environmental Rights," p. 95.