This past Friday we looked at how values affected the Foie Gras debate, a debate where the sole reasoning behind being against it is based upon valuing how animals are treated. I find this interesting because no one sane is actively supports poor treatment of animals, but rather those for Foie Gras have other issues that they value more. For example, many people value exercising the right of freedom to be more important, or they believe that they are other, more pressing issues worthy of our collective time and effort. I tend to agree with the latter, not because I don’t support animal rights activism, but because there are other environmental and human rights issues I find more value in. But if values are subjective, how does our society choose what to place our time and effort into?
The issues of GMOs and Keystone XL can also be seen through a value-based lens. For instance, those in favor of Keystone XL value stimulating the economy and providing easy to access oil over possible detrimental environmental affects while those against its construction feel the opposite. With no way to determine what values are more important, there is no clear answer to this issue. One way to look at this is that building the pipeline would be more valuable in the short term, and refraining from building it would be more valuable in the long term. This is of course assuming that Keystone XL would in fact have long term detrimental affects to the environment, which many people seem unconvinced on. There have been scientific studies suggesting this would be the case, but people can view scientific results in vastly different ways.
Science’s subjectivism is especially evident in the issue of GMOs. In the debate we read, both Vandana Shiva and the New Yorker held a lot of value in finding sustainable ways in which to feed the ever increasing world population. They also both looked at similar, seemingly objective, scientific studies, but they came to different conclusions on the role that GMOs should play in feeding the world. I find it almost disturbing that two people with shared values could look at scientific results and come to different conclusions. It shows to me that nothing is black-and-white certain. While Shiva and the New Yorker shared some similar values, they had vastly different backgrounds and experiences that led to some different values concerning genetic modification and the lives of Indian farmers. There are so many variables that go into shaping our values that even shared, universal values do not mean that any sort of solution is easy to come by. To conclude, values are inescapable in environmental issues. Throughout this course we must be aware of how our values affect our beliefs and how others values differ.