The three chapters of Environment and Society we covered this week dealt with institutions, the commons, environmental ethics, and environmental risks. The textbook introduced the commons by looking at global climate change, an important and contemporarily relevant example of a commons, and one which was not featured in Hardin’s original argument, due to the time his classic article was published. The textbook frames the issue of the commons as one characterized by vexing problems regarding the feasibility of cooperation to overcome the individual incentives driving collective ruin. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is described to illustrate how rational, individual choices can lead to a dysfunctional collective outcome in the absence of communication or cooperation. Hardin’s argument is then outlined, before moving onto a consideration of the institutional assumptions underlying these views of communal properties, with specific reference to Ostrom and other neo-institutionalists. Overall, in the view of the neo-institutionalists, commons can be managed well if the right institutions are in place—namely, those establishing boundaries, autonomy, and clear collective management and responsibility. While this may be seen as idealistic, I think that this type of communal sensibility is just as ingrained in human nature as the material greed and selfishness Hardin assumes will forever guide our use of the commons.
The fifth chapter, on environmental ethics, draws an divide, based in moral principles, between conservation and preservation, situating the former within an anthropocentric, utilitarian framework, and the latter within the realm of deep ecology and ecocentrism. Though both views decry senseless environmental degradation, and thus may be aligned on many individual environmental battles, they are based in vastly different values. While the utilitarian ethic strikes me as soulless and empty (by leaving what is considered “useful” undefined, utilitarianism often merely obscures the true motivations of an act behind a pretense of sensibility), and I have personally felt the revere for nature behind preservationism, I also recognize the essentialism behind it. In the end, leaving aside problematic arguments based on a static view of nature that excludes humans, is Hetch Hetchy Valley truly less beautiful or ecologically sound post-damming? Answering this would require a consideration of the full environmental impacts of the dam, rather than a simple appeal to preservation of wilderness.
The chapter on risks began by defining hazards, risks, and uncertainties, with hazards being that which threaten individuals and society, risks being the probability of a negative outcome from a hazard-related decision, and uncertainties being the degree to which risks are unknown. Hazards, risks, and uncertainties are all inherent to societal decisions, though how they are perceived and weighed is, according to the section on cultural theory, dependent on culture as well as individual outlook. The lecture focused on further dimensions of risk, fitting the perception and characterization of risk into the grid-group theory, with fatalists, hierarchists, egalitarians, and individualists all having different views of feedback loops, which informs vastly divergent considerations of the risks and further effects of environmental degradation. Additionally, the concept of a Risk Society, as advanced by Ulrich Beck, was introduced. This grand theory of late modernity finds that risks are an inherent part of post-industrial society, with modernity and technology creating new risks and exacerbating old, natural ones, thereby undermining the notion that, through progress, humanity could minimize or eliminate hazards. While I’m skeptical of the historical claims of this theory (plenty of early-modern social critics denounced the horrors of industrialization as fundamental to this development), a consideration of risks as an inescapable aspect of the post-industrial age is important to keep in mind when discussing contemporary society and its need for growth.