In Part 1, “Caring for Earth”, of Scott Sanders’ A Conservationist Manifesto, he calls for the development of a new rhetoric with which to approach the environment and our relationship to it. He emphasizes the need for a new ethic, criticizing our individualistic world-view, and declares a need to embrace a more holistic idea of community which includes and respects the environment’s vital role in it. The structures we use to understand the universe—science, religion, language—must be carefully examined. In his essays, Sanders suggests the need to adopt a new way of understanding and relating to the language we use in relation to the environment, as well as the need for a re-evaluation and development of more virtuous character.
In the section titled “Building Arks,” Sanders appeals to our character, claiming a need for “an ethic of restraint” (13). This ethic of restraint calls to mind environmental theorist Philip Cafaro’s idea of “virtue ethics,” or a resistance of environmental vice. Cafaro describes vice “throughout the evolution of the Western tradition,” and suggests that “four commonalities tend to hold. First, selfishness and self-centerdness are condemned, whereas legitimate self-concern and self-development are praised… Second…the tradition insists that vice is both bad for individuals and harmful to communities… Third, the tradition sees vice as contradicting and eventually undermining reason, hence destroying our ability to understand our proper place in the world and act morally… Fourth, and partly as a consequence of this diminished rationality, the tradition sees vice as cutting us off from reality or at least from what is most important in life… What holds these four aspects of vice together is that they all involve harm: to ourselves, to those around us, or to both” (Cafaro, Environmental Virtue Ethics, 137).
If we think of virtuous and vicious behavior in this way, it becomes clear why Sanders emphasizes the need to cultivate character to be more virtuous, and to include the environment as a part of the community that requires virtuous action to sustain.
This virtuous behavior he refers to as the building of arks, and these virtuous people he calls the ark builders. An ark can be “…any human structure, invention, or collaboration that preserves the wisdom necessary for meeting our needs without despoiling the planet.” (14) Among the examples he gives are co-ops, art centers, or a community garden. The ark builders, similarly, “…don’t identify themselves as consumers but as conservers. Their aim in life is not to devour as much as possible, but to savor the necessities of life” (p. 17). He argues that we must avoid participation in the global economy, and instead focus on supporting local economies. He seems to abide by James Lovelock’s assertion that we are past the tipping point, that the effects of climate change will be felt in a very real and uncomfortable way (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange). The world itself will not end, but the world as we know it will. There will be huge loss of biodiversity as flooding destroys coastal ecosystems. Population displacement will happen at a devastating scale. But, all the same, there will be certain groups that will benefit from the effects of climate change. Northern Canada, for example, will likely become more inhabitable as climates rise. Economies, like that of the United States, which rely on perpetual expansion will no longer be viable. This onslaught of devastation he refers to as “the flood,” building further upon his religious analogy of the flood God sent as punishment for the immorality of His people (the ark and ark builders being an obvious analogy to Noah and the ark God commanded him to construct to protect the earth’s biological diversity). Therefore, Sanders insists on the need to reshape our ideas of community.
He uses religion and science as examples of story telling structures that help people to better understand and remember their relationship to the natural environment, or a sort of universal community. He insists that “[s]cience no less than religion is an attempt to draw narrative lines between puzzling dots of data” (87). He later expands on the importance of storytelling in his essay “The Warehouse and the Wilderness,” claiming that “like a woven basket or a clay pot, a story is a container. It provides a shape for holding some character, some act or insight, some lesson we can’t afford to lose” (74). The Warehouse and the Wilderness stories are symbolic of “two guiding narratives—about the world as a Warehouse or as a Wilderness—[which] embody two contrary orientations toward life. Is nature our servant or our teacher?... Like any grand myths, they profoundly shape the actions and values of those who embrace them” (82). But as he advocates for the necessity of storytelling, he simultaneously warns against getting to caught up in language, for we are always at risk of getting too caught up in the language that describes the world rather than living in the world itself.
In “Common Wealth,” Sanders goes on to describe the history of people’s perception and distribution of the commons. Originally referring to the lands and waters all people shared and relied upon, the commons has since come to include “far more than the lands and waters originally belonging to the commons, although of course lands and waters are crucial. We [also] depend on countless shared goods, from a stable climate and prolific ocean to honest government and excellent schools” (28). He cites Jean-Jacques Rosseau in saying that it was the privatization of the commons that led to social injustice, and the “so-called free-market” (32) is an example of this exploitation of non-renewable resources.
He then distinguishes talk of the common wealth from talk of the commons. The common wealth, he states, originally referred to the general welfare. The common wealth “embraces much more than the body politic; it embraces all those natural and cultural goods that we share by virtue of our membership in the human family” (28). He goes on to cite examples of said goods, including “air, waters, soils…outer space;…the human gene pool and the diversity of species[, and] language in all its forms” (28-9). In other words, these goods are such that “[n]one of us, as individuals or even as nations, could create these goods from scratch, or replace them if they were lost” (29).
In the last section I will discuss, his essay titled “A Few Earthy Words,” he begins to set about the task of reconsidering and redefining the vocabulary we often use that shapes our ideas of our relationship to the environment. He explores the root meanings, as well as the popular associations people draw from words like “growth,” “resource,” “wealth,” and “economy,” among others. Growth, he argues, must not be thought of as something which can continue to expand forever. Rather, growth should be seen as a cycle which rises and falls in order to maintain the flow of life indefinitely.
Sanders makes a pretty strong case for the use of language and storytelling structures as a fundamental way of shaping a healthier, more sustainable attitude towards and relationship with the environment we are inevitably embedded within. I particularly like the way he makes a rather subtle case for the use of religion and science as modes of developing sustainable ideas and behaviors. I feel people too often see religion’s ability to shape people’s values as simply a way of oppressing the masses, rather than acknowledging the benefits such structure can provide. He also suggests the idea that religion and science do not have to be in conflict with one another in this pursuit, but instead can work in harmony with one another.
