Volume 7, Number 3
By Kristen Hessler, Bioethics Outreach Coorindator
Earlier this summer, the ISU Extension offices in five northwest counties jointly hosted a bus tour of their area. The point of the tour was to expand awareness of the environmental impacts of a variety of human activities, including but not limited to, agriculture. The group visited areas where cropland had been turned into conservation buffers, viewed a hog farm from the side of the road, toured a wastewater treatment plant and finished up with discussions of ethics and Iowa’s environment at ISU’s Lakeside Laboratories on the shore of West Okoboji Lake.
One focus of the tour was developing the skill of perceiving connections between apparently unrelated items. For instance, what do hog farms and human towns have in common? The short answer is: waste, and the need to do something about it.
Once we notice similar environmental consequences of hog farms and human towns, we are more likely to notice the environmental impacts of our other activities, even ones we don’t often stop to question. For all our talk of environmental issues on our tour, for example, we didn’t focus much on the environmental impact of the driving we all did separately to get to the Kossuth County Extension Office where the tour started, nor of our choice to spend that day driving around northwest Iowa in a bus, nor of the air conditioning in the lecture hall at Lakeside Labs on that hot day.
It is tempting, once questions of value are raised, to give over the discussion to considerations of efficiency and productivity. However, environmental writers at least since Aldo Leopold have recommended against conducting discussions of value in economic terms. As Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac:
“It of course goes without saying that economic feasibility limits the tether of what can or cannot be done for land. It always has and it always will. The fallacy the economic determinists have tied around our collective neck, and which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land use. This is simply not true. An innumerable host of actions and attitudes, comprising perhaps the bulk of all land relations, is determined by the land-users tastes and predilections, rather than by his purse.”
As Leopold was aware, tastes and predilections have consequences, which can themselves be evaluated in terms of their impacts on what we value. Tastes in food and lifestyles, when shared by millions or billions of people, ultimately impact the environment and people’s ways of life. One example is the recent news item that more and more Chinese are abandoning their bicycles and public transportation for private automobiles. National Geographic reported that “most Chinese car buyers today shop for the same reasons as other global consumers: They seek the comfort, convenience, and status of car ownership.” As Americans already know, such tastes and predilections, shared by enough people, can transform an entire society into a car culture, with all its associated conveniences, headaches and air quality issues.
How are our tastes and our actions affecting Iowa’s environment? This is not an easy question, since our social and natural environments are complex and interdependent systems. Through them, we impact near and distant others, including people, animals, rivers, prairies and oceans. All these impacts can be difficult to track precisely and without controversy. But we can start by making small connections and seeing where they lead.
January 6, 2006 - Bioethics Retreat.
Developing information soon available online.
Bioethics in Brief
September 2005
Volume 7, Issue 3
Published four times per year
by the ISU Office of Biotechnology
and the Bioethics Program.
To subscribe, call 515-294-7356.
Editor: Camie J. Stockhausen
Bioethics Outreach Coordinator: Kristen Hessler
Bioethics Program Coordinator: Clark Wolf
Bioethics Program Assistant: Katy Reeder
Iowa State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran. Inquiries can be directed to the Director of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, 3680 Beardshear Hall, (515) 294-7612.
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Last Update 08/30/05
