The Nature Of Design - Oxford University Press - Part 3

§ 3 THE POLITICS OF DESIGN 9 None So Blind: The Problem of Ecological Denial None so blind as those that will not see. —Mathew Henry Willful blindness has reached epidemic proportions in our time. Nowhere is this more evident than in recent actions by the U.S.Con-gress to deny outright the massive and growing body of scientific data about the deterioration of the earth’s vital signs, while attempting to dismantle environmental laws and regulations. But the problem of ecological denial is bigger than recent events in Congress. It is flour-ishing in the “wise use”movement and extremist groups in the United States, among executives of global corporations, media tycoons, and David Ehrenfeld coauthored this chapter. 86 T H E P O L I T I C S O F D E S I G N on main street. Denial is in the air. Those who believe that humans are, or ought to be, something better than ecological vandals need to understand how and why some people choose to shun reality. Denial, however, must be distinguished from honest disagree-ment about matters of fact, logic, data, and evidence that is a normal part of the ongoing struggle to establish scientific truth.Denial is the willful dismissal or distortion of fact, logic, and data in the service of ideology and self-interest.The churchmen of the seventeenth century who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, for example, en-gaged in denial. In that instance, their blind obedience to worn-out dogma was expedient to protect ecclesiastical authority.And denial is apparent in every historical epoch as a willing blindness to the events, trends,and evidence that threaten one established interest or another. In our time,great effort is being made to deny that there are any physical limits to our use of the earth or to the legitimacy of human wants.On the face of it,the case is absurd.Most physical laws define the limits of what it is possible to do. And all of the authentic moral teachings of 3,000 years have been consistent about the dangers and futility of unfettered desire. Rather than confront these things di- rectly,however,denial is manifested indirectly. A particularly powerful form of denial in U.S.culture begins with the insistence on the supremacy over all other considerations of human economic freedom manifest in the market economy. If one chooses to believe that economies so dominated by lavishly subsi-dized corporations are,in fact,free,then the next assumption is easier: the religious belief that the market will solve all problems.The power of competition and the ingenuity of technology to find substitutes for scarce materials, it is believed, will surmount physical limits. Markets are powerful institutions that, properly harnessed, can accomplish a great deal. But they cannot substitute for healthy communities, good government,and farsighted public policies.Nor can they displace the laws,both physical and moral,that bound human actions. A second indirect manifestation of ecological denial occurs when unreasonable standards of proof are required to establish the exis-tence of environmental threats.Is the loss of species a problem? Well, if you think so, just name one species that went extinct today! The strategy is clear: focus on nits, avoid large issues, and always demand an unattainable level of proof for the existence of any possible prob-lem before agreeing to any action to forestall potential catastrophe. T H E P R O B L E M O F E C O L O G I C A L D E N I A L 87 True, no such standards of proof of likely Soviet aggression were re-quired to commit the United States to a $300 billion defense budget. But denial always works by establishing double standards for proof. Third,denial is manifest when unwarranted inferences are drawn from disconnected pieces of information. For example, prices of raw materials have declined over the past century. From this, some have drawn the conclusion that there can be no such thing as resource scarcity.But the prices of resources are the result of complex interac-tions between resource stocks/reserves, government subsidies, un-priced ecological and social costs of extraction, processing, trans-portation,the discount rate,and the level of industrial growth (which turned down in the 1980s).This is why prices alone do not give us ac-curate information about depletion,nor do they tell us that the plan-etary sinks, including the atmosphere and oceans, are filling up with wastes they cannot assimilate. Moreover,the argument from prices and other economic indica-tors does not take into account the sudden discontinuities that often occur when limits are reached. A typical example from physics is stated in Hooke’s Law:Stress is proportional to strain,within the elas-tic limit.The length of an elastic band is proportional to the stretching force exerted on it—until the band snaps. In biology, the population crashes that sometimes occur when carrying capacity is reached pro-vide another example.There are many more. Fourth, denial is manifest in ridicule and ad hominem attacks. People inclined to think that present trends are not entirely positive are labeled doomsayers, romantics, apocalyptics, Malthusians, dread-mongers, and wackos. In a book that dominated environmental dis-cussion on Earth Day 1995,Newsweek writer Gregg Easterbrook,for example, says that such people (whom he calls “enviros”) “pine for bad news.” They suffer from a “primal urge to decree a crisis” (1995, 440) and “subconscious motives to be alone with nature”(ibid.,481). Pessimism,for them,is “stylish.”They are ridiculous people with non-sensical views, who do not deserve a serious response; this relieves those doing the name calling and denying from having to think through complex and long-term issues. Fifth, denial is manifest in confusion over time scales. Again, Easterbrook spends the first 157 pages of his 698-page opus explain-ing why in the long view things such as climatic change and soil ero-sion are minor events. Shifting continents, glaciation, and collision ... - tailieumienphi.vn