Nature's Nature

Alexander Volokh from the July 1995 issue

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And Easterbrook is only selectively pro-moderation. With acid rain, Easterbrook defends the EPA for seeking only moderate air emissions reductions. But he whistles a different tune on the pesticide Alar. He concedes that the case against Alar was based on shoddy science. But "society is better off without Alar" because "Alar was used mainly to make apples extra red instead of only sorta red, and who really cares about that?"

Well, apple buyers seem to care about that, and so do apple growers. I'm more likely to buy a bright red apple than a dull red apple. Alar also inhibited the growth of some bad apple fungi, which are worse for your health. So eliminating Alar may have actually harmed the public health
by giving us fewer and more dangerous apples. But you wouldn't know it from this book. Easterbrook also likes that the Alar flap made the EPA more responsive to the public. Not a word on whether it's a good thing for agencies to be more responsive to public hysteria over nonexistent threats.

Easterbrook grants that scientists don't know what causes cancer or whether a 1-in-10,000 risk is better than a 1-in-1,000,000 risk. But since toxics are obviously bad, the question is merely: "How much protection can we afford?" In other words, it's always good to eliminate even the most hypothetical threat, as long as it doesn't plunge us into a depression. No talk of what's a negligible risk; no talk of balancing costs and benefits; no talk of whether growers have a right to use pesticides and let those who don't like it buy organic. Moderate? Reasonable? Hardly.

There's a deeper flaw here. Easterbrook can't answer a basic environmental question: "How do you know when something is bad for the environment?" According to Easterbrook, there are "a wide range of human actions careless, selfish, or destructive to the environment." That's a statement that few would argue with. But what is that wide range of actions? To Easterbrook, things are bad for the environment when they harm "the integrity of nature."

Of course, just saying that is of no help. A radical environmentalist like Bill McKibben might say that any rational human act harms the integrity of nature, because a) we're not part of nature, b) nature is random and spontaneous, and c) nature is fragile. Easterbrook can't say that, since he's rejected all three points of that philosophy. We're part of nature, rationality is our natural gift, and nature is robust. Phrases like "the integrity of nature" should be especially problematic for Easterbrook, with his tirades against the myth of Environmental Correctness. If nature has no proper state, how can you tell when it's doing badly?

Easterbrook's answer is subtler than the radical environmental notion, and, in a way, less satisfying. To say that an action toward nature is "wrong" requires a set of values by which to judge which actions are "right" and which ones are "wrong." Easterbrook's approach is to derive values from nature by "thinking like nature." He reveals his grand scheme of the universe in such statements as: "All impertinent actions by genus Homo combined have yet to produce anything approaching the environmental damage nature inflicts on itself on a recurrent basis." Even nature can do bad things. "Natural" values may be derived from nature, but even nature doesn't always follow them.

This exercise reveals more about himself than about nature, because what he's doing is reading his favorite values into nature. Whatever Easterbrook likes, nature is "striving for"--life, cooperation between species, self-awareness. For instance, "acquiring consciousness is what nature has been up to these 3.8 billion years." Whatever he doesn't like is a "structural flaw"--death by natural catastrophe, death by predation, death by disease, competition between species, the eating of meat (especially veal).

Of course, by choosing the right structural flaws, one can prove anything. For instance, he says, "To nature the circumstances of this solar system must seem fundamentally wrong. Nature wants life: On our world nature has shown unmistakably that it wants the maximum amount of the ecology to live." But suppose I said the opposite: "To nature the circumstances of Earth must seem fundamentally wrong. Nature abhors life: In the rest of the universe nature has shown unmistakably that it wants nothing but inanimate objects." Which statement is more correctly derived from nature?

In short, you can't derive values from nature without contaminating them with your own values. Easterbrook makes his personal values clear from the beginning: "The first round of environmental investments did not fail; they worked, which is a great reason to have more. I consider this glorious if only because as a political liberal I long for examples of government action that serve the common good. The extraordinary success of modern environmental protection is such an example: perhaps the best instance of government-led social progress in our age."

Easterbrook's vision of social progress generally is a government-led one. Cooperation is better than competition; let's alter animal genes to make them live in harmony! Eating vegetables is better than eating meat; let's produce synthetic meat! Killing is bad; let's change human genes to eliminate killing! (Of course, he qualifies himself: "[I]nstitutions of government must be reformed to the point of being consistently benevolent...before anyone in his or her right mind would endorse tinkering with the human gene line.") We shouldn't expose our children to pesticides that only make apples really red; let's remove Alar from society! Despite its declared goal, A Moment on the Earth isn't a study in how to think like nature; it's a study in how to think like Gregg Easterbrook.

It's possible to construct a system without such contradictions. For instance, a viable environmental philosophy could be based on the following notion: "Man is part of nature. Nature has no thoughts, feelings, or values. Therefore, we should do what we think is best, without regard for whether nature wants it. Our actions should be based on a certain theory of rights and a vision of the good life." Such a vision needn't be anti-nature. For instance, if you believe in preserving species diversity or ancient forests, you can protect them and try to build a society that will do the same.

But if you want to protect species and discourage industrial civilization--or whatever your vision is--you should advocate it because you think it's a good idea. Bringing in the fiction of "thinking like nature" is merely an excuse for reading your values into nature and cloaking them with the veil of objectivity. Easterbrook is unwilling to drop the fiction, and his book, while at times factually interesting, is ultimately unconvincing.