Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Twelve dollars
Animals and the Environment
Animals and the Environment
In October nineteen ninety-three, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia performed some unusual experiments. As part of their fourteen-day scientific mission they cut off the heads of six live rats and then performed various procedures on them. They used a tiny guillotine to decapitate the rats and did not administer any anesthetic to them beforehand. After the rats were dead the scientists were able to observe the various organs, bones, and muscles of the rats as they appeared in space. They also performed some dissections. When the shuttle returned to Earth, they planned to distribute tiny pieces of bone, muscle, brain tissue, and other body parts to scientists from around the world. The purpose of the experiments was "to investigate countermeasures for the debilitating effects of weightlessness" according to a NASA official. "Scientists hoped to discover how the rats changed with prolonged exposure to a lack of gravity." Among the problems that astronauts have faced in space have been "severe cases of motion sickness and more subtle transformations that include anemia and a bone softening similar to osteoporosis." According to one scientist, the results of these studies might also benefit the elderly and persons who were bedridden.
In addition to examples such as this, the news presents us daily with some new or not so new environmental issue. One day there is a report from a conference where timber industry representatives and environmentalists argued about how to reconcile their diverse interests and set governmental policy. Should private lumber companies be allowed to cut trees in old growth national forests, for example? On another day we hear more alarming news about global warming or ozone holes. Dozens of environmentalist groups, including Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, The Environmental Defense Fund, The World Wildlife Federation, and the more radical Earth First! work in various ways to preserve the environment and promote the humane treatment of animals.
Most of us do care about proper treatment of both animals and the environment. However, we are less sure about what this requires of us and why. We are uncertain because we are often unclear about our ultimate reasons for protecting animals or the environment. Moreover, even when we are able to point out certain values that we think are involved, we do not know what to say in face of conflicts of values. Should we preserve the wetland or fill in the land and lease it for projects that will bring jobs to low income areas? Should we dam the river for hydroelectric power and lessen the need for nuclear power, or shall we leave it wild? In order to resolve these conflicts of values we need to arrange them in some overall hierarchy or recognize the kind of comparative evaluation that is involved in such resolutions. More basic yet is the question of the very source of value. What is it, for example, that makes a particular animal or plant or species valuable? We will address these and other ethical issues in this chapter.