At first glance, a pretty hilarious discussion of the spiritual meaning of "March of the Penguins." The directors themselves apparently wanted simply to make a poignant and beautifully shot film about the plight of penguins in an era of global warming.
But the NY Times article basically does this...
Exhibit A:
"Some of the circumstances they experienced seemed to parallel those of Christians," he said of the penguins. "The penguin is falling behind, is like some Christians falling behind. The path changes every year, yet they find their way, is like the Holy Spirit."Exhibit B:
Mr. Hunt has provided a form on the Web site lionsofgod.com that can be downloaded and taken to the film. "Please use the notebook, flashlight and pen provided," it says, "to write down what God speaks to you as He speaks it to you.").
On the other hand, there's a quite serious issue here. Much of the environmental battle, some say, is a religious one at its very root. The typical debate -- one that has worn environmental ethicists into the ground (and which, personally, I think is a dead philosophical debate) -- is that between the intrinsic vs. instrumental value of the natural environment and its beings. It's easy to give an instrumental argument for protecting or using nature -- humans need the resources of nature in order to survive. It's much more difficult to give an intrinsic value argument for the preservation of nature, one that claims that nature and natural beings have value in themselves worthy of human moral obligations."We did not have discussions of what should be in from a social, cultural or political perspective at all," said Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films. "We just wanted to make sure that it was accurate."
Or as Laura Kim, a vice president of Warner Independent, put it: "You know what? They're just birds."
The philosophical disputes have become complex and multi-faceted with a variety of claims staked between these two basic poles. The classic, paradigmatic example is the debate that took place in the early 1900's between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot over Hetch-Hetchy Valley in Yosemite. Muir argued for the valley's preservation in his eloquent language of nature as a "temple" or "cathedral." His arguments were based on the aesthetic and ethical character of this natural environment. Pinchot took the utilitarian route (greatest good for the greatest number of people) -- the rapidly growing city of San Francisco needed a new water source and a reservoir created out of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley and its Tuolumne River was his answer. The debate dragged on, but eventually Pinchot won (today, there is discussion of draining the reservoir and restoring the valley). Muir had referred to HH as at least as beautiful as the Yosemite Valley we know and love in the US as part of our natural heritage and, indeed, national mythology. This is now a well-known story, but if you want to know more about it, read Roderick Nash's classic Wilderness and the American Mind. There's also a terrific chapter in that book on the debates over the Alaskan wilderness, which sheds light on the long historical lineage of our present ANWR battles.
The point here, however, is that most environmental debate in the US has taken the same polar positions or variations on them and have then gone political: i.e., utilitarian cases for resource use and the environment having value only in terms of use vs. preservationist arguments based on the value of nature in itself, often drawing on aesthetic, spiritual or cultural arguments. Corporate pigs vs. tree-huggers. Part of the philosophical trickiness is that humans are the ones who do the valuing of the natural environment, whichever kind of value they ascribe to it.
One of my colleagues, the esteemed environmental ethicist, Mark Sagoff, has long argued that environmental debates are fundamentally religious debates, especially since the twain has never or at least rarely ever met between the poles alluded to above. But most policy-making regarding the environment comes from the direction of economic analyses that assume economic growth as a fundamental good. Economics values objective things in certain kinds of ways -- usually monetarily -- so you can immediately see the problem in making a case for preservation based on the intrinsic (and non-monetary) values of nature. Nature in use is easier -- how much is that forest worth in terms of timber? What are the monetary benefits of that tourist hotel vs. that coral reef just off the hotel's shore? How much is this piece of prime developable land worth in comparison with the continuing livelihood of that endangered toad species? What opportunity costs are forsaken with development of that desert tract? Cost-benefit analysis has rightly come under attack for its severe limitations in explaining the panoply of environmental values. Most environmental organizations, NGOs, and environmental economists have now accepted the rhetorical and political difficulty of making a public case for preservation, and spend their time trying to create economic categories ("option value" or "existence value," etc.) or methods ("contingent valuation," etc.) that can coexist with CBA in a way, they believe, takes up the concerns of those who value nature intrinsically. But, fundamentally, these still don't get at the kind of value referred to under the rubric "intrinsic value." Indeed, these economic methods and concepts only work in CBA when the entities in question are once again priced or monetized, which is anathema to intrinsic value.
The fact is, people value the natural environment for all kinds of reasons -- economic, spiritual, aesthetic, ethical, recreational, etc., etc. But our modes of environmental policy-making tend to exclude several of those ways of valuing because economics itself is defined on a particular kind of value which philosophers, for example, see as one variety among many. That's where the problem lies. The exclusion of values when making environmental policy decisions. Many times environmental preservation advocates have already lost their cause at the very moment an environmental policy issue is raised as a policy issue, especially since American policy-making is dominated by economics and its mindset.
This is long-winded.... My point is the religious one. Read Sagoff's witty and scathing critique of environmental economics (from a philosopher educated in economics) first: Price, Principle, and the Environment. Then consider that religious question again. Do all of our environmental debates boil down to a kind of religious disagreement?
Then consider the article this post links to in the first place. Is there actually room for those on the religious right and environmentalists of all stripes (usually portrayed as lefties or just tattooed hippies or kooks) to find common ground on this? The NY Times article cited above (via Pharyngula) is actually a somewhat amusing account of intelligent design proponents trying to find proof of that belief in a movie about the struggle for life of penguins. But can we construct a strange alliance around the pragmatic move of saying that it doesn't matter what fundamental beliefs we're starting from, but that what matters is that we all want to allow penguins and other beings to flourish?
I don't know if this works. Maybe ID proponents then simply respond that penguins dying out is "God's will," part of God's incomprehensible intelligent design masterplan. We see that used all the time -- one of the most frustrating explanations -- that whatever happens, good or bad, stupid or intelligent, stinky or fine-smelling is "God's will." The dodo goes extinct -- God's will. Iraq War -- God's will. I stub my toe -- God's will. Found a penny on the ground -- God's will. All in the Master of the Universe Super Intelligent Design Plan. And there is, of course, that variety who thinks screw the earth, we're on our way to heaven. There's probably not much use trying to talk to this brand of cult.
But maybe, just maybe there's some common, pragmatic basis to be found for actual policy about penguins and lemurs and tigers and frogs?
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