Ecological Stewardship: Prologomena to Ethical Analysis of a Concept

Many of us can learn to write objectively, stating the argument for the 350 ppm and what ethical obligations are (as I did), but Wikipedia's editors didn't like that.

Some folks strongly state their own positions and weakly state the other, though to the best of their abilities.


Let me point out that, during my days growing up in Christian churches, the effective presentation of the opposite point of view was sometimes SO strong that we learned something about the credibility of other viewpoints that we hadn't yet encountered, which obliged us to study those perspectives further. We began to see the outlines of other viewpoints.

That intellectual stimulation bends us towards researching, analyzing, and critical thinking. I credit the vigorous debates with doing that for me.

The better side SHOULD win out when we serve reason in the process of engaging the hearts and minds of others. The better judgment SHOULD prevail; when it fails, that's a mark against shallow 'humanism',l which is far too often triumphalist, and we know that's not the way things are going bioethically or humanely or


Humanism reached beyond the world wars (the so-called 'death of humanism' with the holocausts and other genocides was prematurely announced) with (read Vannevar Bush's "Science - The Unending Frontier" - 1945) technologism. Every technology is likely short-sighted and introduced prematurely (as, I suggest, are universal healthcare in the USA or 'health reform' and healthcare IT), but 'we' (others more qualified than we) improve them with the 'trial and error' step-wise refinement.

Sheldon Krimsky asked me in a course at Tufts UEP years ago, "Can 'technological fixes' be found for environmental problems?" Good professors don't take sides indelibly, though we know where each person 'stands' intellectually. "Make your argument either way!" Yes, time is short, but Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, not a website nor a host for polemics and 'action items'. I wish you had taken a look at it while it was up and dispatched someone effective to make some key contributions (even links). That would have postponed the discussion on 'climate ethics' which is a distinct inquiry beyond but touching upon 'climate justice'. 'Climate ethics' is about ethics and why 'the surround' (a psychiatric term for all that surrounds and 'encompasses' - as Karl Jaspers would say - the human individual. Is there something about CLIMATE that makes CLIMATE morally significant, which fact is intellectually 'available' to philosophical inquirers? I say, yes, there is, but only upon solemn reflection, and because we are 'busied' inauthentically with tangential issues and 'full of our selves' (again, credit to religious philosophers for that one, particularly Evangelicals) in terms of our 'immediate perspectives', we steal needed energies of mind and analysis from pressing issues of truly moral import: the 'surround' IS changed by human effort; quantification is what is at issue. Can any one species, given technological 'enhancements' or 'extensions' (McLuhan) so impact the planet that on local planets, the entire climate is disrupted? We think that empirical inquiry feeds us information with which we can answer that question affirmatively. does that impact result in part from us? If it does and it is not salubrious, are we morally culpable for outcomes? In other words, can there be ANY areas in which climate is a stewardship issue, and/or any areas in which culpability can be correctly assigned to human persons, groups, or the species in toto? Debates come in here, but again, we think that, IF the data shows that any of these can be answered affirmatively (and we believe that they can in the latter two cases), there is reason to discuss 'climate responsibility' or, responsibility for climate stewardship.


Without climate stewardship, how can (terms like) 'climate justice' be useful or intelligible terms?

'Eden' Rhymes with 'Peden'

On my refrigerator is a refrigerator magnet from folk song artist Jay Mankita, for his melodic and memorable album, 'Dogs are watching us." He talks about their trust in us (unlike cats, some might add; others have inspired the trust and love of one or more cats, but that's a different day's posting).

Some of us may find this topic mildly to moderately offensive (some may find it greatly or even profoundly bothering or offensive). It's an obvious takeoff from the song 'God is watching us' which gave many folks pause in the face of an unsettled society in multifactorial upheaval.

Others might think, well, if God is not vegan or even vegetarian (think of all the omnivorous animals in the creation and the deadly 'food chain' observation, even if some of us are exempt, as perhaps the stewards - we humans - who can honor God in the respect of loving all creation (a la NT scholar and professor Richard Alan Young: Is God a Vegetarian?), then at least (omnivorous) dogs CAN be (and should be, for ethical reasons.

Others object, but though cats need taurine (which CAN now be synthesized in a lab (it's good to be gifted with the neurological complexity that enables rational behaviors AND rational analysis, which can lead to the social construction of scientific method and scientific results which reshape society according to socially desirable HUMANE values), (omnivorous) dogs clearly CAN be not merely vegetarian, but also vegan.

The watershed book in the Vegetarian Dogs (and possibly! cats) movement was Dogs and Cats Go Vegetarian by the co-authors whose surname rhymes with EDEN: Barbara Lynn Peden (who did most of the journal research, I'm told; she is now a folksinger, I'm told) and her former husband, James Peden, who in the divorce got full rights to their shared book production AND VegDog & VegCat and empire (he had a paying job on the side and could sustain the D&GV 'empire' (enterprise) ("Harbingers of a New Age"), and she, claiming no extra-corporate skills of her own (though she had done most of the journal research and networking), left with little in the way terminated employees often do, with no IP rights to the work they have done along the way. Jim has since written new literature and a new chapter in the re-released book. In this light, one ought to read the book about Little Tyke, the vegetarian (not vegan) lioness, sold by the American Vegan Society (she died from being overstressed and overexposed on television as a celebrity - read 'oddity' or 'curiosity')

Blaming PETA in the recent media blitzes about vegan - read that again - not vegetarian but VEGAN dogs AND CATS - are those who (IMHO rightly) are concerned that some animals are, when not technically assisted with periodic lab-derived supplementary doses, suffer - read that again - SUFFER. However, the question persists, particularly in a Christian (read Genesis: God gave the animals the world; there was no DEATH (thus no killing for food) in Eden (rhymes with Peden).

More broadly, in monotheistic, Abrahamic 'traditions' of receiving the common literature of Genesis, the problem remains. Mohammed reported taught that 'it is better to drink milk than to eat meat', and while not PROSCRIBING the eating of meat (forbidding or teaching that it is wrong), there is remarkable tolerance in some branches of Christendom and Jewish practice, and even calendared encouragements of it (for its spiritual and 'meditative' or devotional benefits - as in Lent or in PRAYER AND fasting, etc.). Some monastics are largely or always vegetarian in some branches of Christendom. Dissident NON-MONASTIC groups have been suppressed, but often for doctrinary (not doctrinaire, but doctrinary - related to teaching or 'doctrine') or 'non-subscribing' (to doctrine) reasons.

What concerns me, though, is the philosophical problem of thinking inductively in the present world (as we all must) and committing oneself to a loving, rational (and both all-wise and all-knowing AND all-powerful) Deity, known among the uninitiated as God, though sometimes and by some through more personal names, quite reverently thought.

God has an interest in our intentionality - our behaviors - deliberate and unintentional
Some ways of being ourselves behaviorally and mentally are better (or at least less objectionable) than other behaviors. Some secular folks agree to this much; not all do.
In Genesis we are given stewardship in the sense of caring for all life; from this our (a) ecological and (b) humane AND (c) sociological stewardship obligations are derived.

In terms of our spiritually-derived public policy contributions, how can we endorse (let alone mandate) that we OR others care for animals - and humans, too - and the ecosystem in ways that trade off the well-being of some for that of others, even if mathematically one is numerically or quantitatively better.

Further, we’re helped along in this reflection by the prophecy of Isaiah, where the predatory rests with the herbivore, and there is no more exploitation of one (type) of the other (type), nor of one (type) by the other (type).

So, is keeping carnivorous animals, even pre-existing animals BEFORE any possible PHASING OUT of carnivorous animals by massive spay-neuter programs, ethically tolerable, particularly for those who derive at least part of their moral reasoning and rationale from Biblical sources and indirectly from others who also derive their thinking from those Biblical sources/texts?

Searching for vegan-friendly pet food is laudable in general, but specifically in light of this contextual reflection, that somehow, in the process BEFORE God becomes 'All in All', we ought to live in light of the eschaton, the hope of which (perhaps the Indwelling spirit, would be a foretaste or earnest (like earnest money) of one's spiritual inheritance, a life in a world of no more violence, for which righteousness we are to hunger and thirst (and surely our food would be characterized by having no violence).