Ecological Ethics Blackstone's Error in Essay

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His task becomes more difficult, however, when he attempts to prove that the right to an unpolluted environment is equal to other rights such as the right to property and life. His basic political philosophy reflects nothing new since Locke; it is in his application that his argument disintegrates.

Blackstone assumes that human responsibility for environmental changes is a foregone conclusion. Though his assumption here could be debated, for the sake of argument we will assume that he is correct. It does not, however, automatically follow that it is an ethical imperative for mankind to care for and protect the environment in the same manner that society is designed to protect and ensure freedom. In traditional liberal political thinking, an individual's freedom is thought to end where it impinges on someone else's. Blackstone argues that environmental degradation falls into this category, and that one individual's right to a pristine environment supercedes that of other individual's to use that environment in detrimental ways.

The general moral theory of liberal political thought is applied fairly consistently by Blackstone until this point. Even this last assertion seems to logically follow the rest of the arguments he has made leading up to it, but a more careful consideration shows this ultimate conclusion -- the point of Blackstone's argument -- to be false. He is basically saying that future environmental use takes precedent over modern use; that the importance of environmental protection for future generations is greater than the current economic and practical needs, and the future happiness counts for more than current happiness.

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Blackstone sees environmental degradation as impinging on the natural right to a healthy environment, but the converse could also be seen to be true: future environmental health comes at the cost of current rights to property, and freedom is much more harshly and extensively limited by proposed methods of environmental protection than it would be by continued individual liberty and economic growth. Taken to the next degree, Blackstone's argument is basically saying that the rights of future occupants outweigh the rights of present ones, and this is ethically invalid.

Furthermore, Blackstone argues that a same-state economy -- i.e. one in stasis, without continued expansion and growth -- is somehow sustainable. Not only would many economic theorists disagree with him, but the same logic defeats this argument. The right to property and its expansion has been considered a natural and inalienable human right for centuries. Attempts to limit this right in ways that would not even have a proven effect, positive or negative, on the environment are simply presumptuous, foolhardy, and philosophically incorrect do their basis on faulty assumptions......

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