My conversation was not with a climate-change skeptic. I don’t know too many of those. Rather, I had a lively debate with my best friend, deciding on which of the pressing issues the world faced it should deal with first. He is an avid supporter of human rights, and I an equally strong proponent of environmentalism. The issues he posed were these: third-world exploitation, cultural imperialism, indigenous peoples’ rights, racism, sexism, paternalism...the list goes on and on. I, on the other hand, defined our most important issues in environmental terms: exploitation of natural resources, cultural consumerism, the defense of indigenous plants against invaders, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and pollution.
We came to some conclusions and agreements right away. A lot of his issues were intertwined with mine—the exploitation of natural resources is, at the same time in many places the exploitation of impoverished nations. Pollution from the haves is increasingly and negatively affecting the have-nots. And it is a false dichotomy to say that this issue or that should be addressed first. There are all kinds of people and organizations working to remedy every wrong that has been committed, against man or nature, and it is not as though everyone must turn their full attention to one issue at the expense of another.
However, on the individual level the problems are big enough that we cannot dabble in civil rights and deep ecology at the same time. If one has the aim to change the world for the better, one must first decide what needs his or her attention the most desperately. I have decided to focus on the environment not because I don’t believe in human rights but because I am convinced that if drastic changes aren’t brought to our food, transportation, and energy systems then we will see more human suffering than ever before (this is not the entire story—I must admit that what scares me just as much is the destruction of Nature that has so far resulted and will only worsen if we do not change our ways—but I had to focus on the human cost because, as Alex pointed out, it is best to promote your arguments by the logic of the person you’re attempting to persuade). My friend, however, found it hard to try to widen the scope of ethics to include ecology when humanity has a hard enough time treating its members fairly.
We debated. It was heated but friendly (we’ve had enough practice disagreeing), but in the end nothing had changed. Of course, in this scenario I don’t consider it a loss at all. We need people working to protect people from other people as well as people working to protect the environment from people and people from polluted environments.