The Proverbial Glass
September 1, 2019
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Wild Lands Advocate article by: Ian Urquhart, AWA Conservation Staff and Editor of Wild Lands Advocate
Click here for a pdf version of the article.
Is it half-empty or half-full? Conservationists who think it is half-empty have plenty of evidence to support their view. Look, for example, at a just-published study in Science. It documents stunning losses in North American bird populations over less than 50 years. North America has lost nearly three billion, that’s right…billion, birds. Since 1970 the population has fallen by 29 percent. Continent-wide, those losses are greatest in Alberta’s two largest natural regions – the boreal forest and the grasslands. Remember 1970? Surely some of you do. That was the year the first Earth Day was held. I could go on.
But, despite plenty of evidence showing the glass is (at least) half-empty, a healthy portion of this issue of Wild Lands Advocate aims to show the glass is half-full. It does this, not by congratulating governments for actions we know are woefully insufficient, but instead by looking at what individuals are doing. It’s individuals… their recognition of the need to speak out and act if governments won’t… that gives me cause to think the glass may be half-full after all. The same goes for the groundswell of demands from publics all around the world that governments must deliver much more than the platitudes and half-measures they’ve concocted so far. An estimated four million people, many of them young people, marched through streets around the world demanding climate change action. As they chanted in New York: “You had a future, so should we.” So true.
Here, it’s the individuals you’ll read about, people like Peter Sherrington, Jill Seaton, the Viponds, Owen Duke, Patsy Cotterill, and attendees at the Keepers of the Water gathering, who help make the glass half full. It’s their individual actions, and the collective actions they contribute to, that cast some brightness on these times.
If you’re unconvinced that individual actions matter I invite you to read Justin Rowlatt’s story, “Climate change action: We can’t all be Greta, but your choices have a ripple effect,” on the BBC website (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49756280). It might change your mind.
There I found Peter Singer’s views particularly compelling. A political philosopher, some of you may recognize Singer for his support for animal rights. In the BBC story, however, he discusses climate change and invokes the idea of harm to others. As individuals, we have a moral obligation not to behave in ways that harm others. For example, my individual freedom doesn’t give me the right to travel to the Arctic and wantonly slaughter animals vital to the subsistence lifestyle of some Inuit. In this case, my moral obligation to the Inuit is enforced by the law. Singer regards my failure to cut my emissions as analogous to slaughtering animals in the Arctic. My failure to act, or to demand that governments enforce this moral obligation in the context of climate change measures, further endangers the future of Arctic peoples. I’m harming Arctic peoples whether I slaughter animals or don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So why not try to think that, when it comes to climate change or other conservation issues, we have a moral obligation to other individuals regardless of whether they live next door or a continent away. Let’s give it a try. What do we have to lose?
