Renewable Energy Project Overviews
The Cape Wind project is a proposal to place 130 wind turbines, each the size of the Statue of Liberty, off the coast of Massachusetts in the Nantucket Sound. While many residents, environmental groups, and unions have coalesced in support of the project for its environmental and economic benefits, there is also a coalition in strong opposition to the project[1]. The opposition camp was led by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, and is currently championed by the environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy, who wrote, «I wouldn't build a windmill farm in Yosemite National Park. Nor would I build one on Nantucket Sound»[2]. Concurrently, in the California desert developers are attempting to erect numerous solar power plants. The projects have been delayed by concerns for the preservation of desert land and endangered species like the desert tortoise[3]. Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert, making the land unavailable to renewable energy developers. Ironically, Robert Kennedy has remarked, «This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn't be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific review»[4]. Elsewhere in the desert, a $2B solar plant is moving at a tortoise pace – literally. Project developers are making large concessions for the endangered desert tortoise including shrinking the size of their operating plant and employing a small army of biologists to escort construction crews.
In pursuing such projects, renewable energy companies seem to encapsulate the business mindset called eco-advantage: making profits while doing good[5]. Yet critics question whether this approach will pass the grandchild test: will future generations applaud these projects as good decisions, or lambast our generation for allowing developers to make a buck off nature, yet again?[6]
The Wilderness Preservation Ethic
Environmental managers should be aware of the pressing ethical arguments in support of wilderness preservation. Although the literature offers much debate surrounding the definition of wilderness, a definition can be readily borrowed from the Wilderness Act of 1964: wilderness is an area relatively untrammeled by human civilization[7]. Under this definition, the Nantucket Sound and the Mojave Desert can be safely defined as wilderness areas. Arguments for the preservation of wilderness broadly fall into two categories: anthropocentric arguments focusing on the instrumental value of nature; and nonanthropocentric (also biocentric or ecocentric) arguments focusing on the intrinsic value of nature.
Anthropocentric arguments for the preservation of nature typically posit a human-nature dualism, according to which the human is critically separate from the natural. For example, David Manuel-Navarrete describes the normative discourse of ecosystems as dividing the earth into distinct "nature" and "human" zones[8]. Natural systems should be pristinely preserved, which would allow them to realize their natural destiny. This discourse upholds the idea that nature is most effectively preserved through environmental policies[9]. Agnes Kiss describes these policies as creating «protected areas… [whose] effectiveness for conserving biodiversity (and ecological integrity) is well demonstrated»[10]. Those who object to renewable energy projects are attempting to thwart development by creating protected wilderness areas, including, for example, the Nantucket Sound Wilderness Area and the Mojave Reserve.
The anthropocentric arguments supporting the preservation of wilderness are highly varied. Some focus on natural resources and ecosystem services provided by wilderness[11]. Other arguments emphasize the natural-pathic ability of wilderness to provide healing for the mind, body and soul[12]. Further arguments dwell upon the spiritual and aesthetic pleasures offered by wilderness, its spaces likened to sacrosanct cathedrals and beautiful art galleries that «evoke in us feelings of beauty, joy, spontaneity, and creativity»[13]. Robert Kennedy argues that
All of us need periodically to experience wilderness to renew our spirits and reconnect ourselves to the common history of our nation, humanity and to God. The worst trap that environmentalists can fall into is the conviction that the only wilderness worth preserving is in the Rocky Mountains or Alaska. To the contrary, our most important wildernesses are those that are closest to our densest population centers, like Nantucket Sound[14].
By contrast to the preceding arguments for wilderness preservation, nonanthropocentric arguments are independent of human utility, focusing instead on the inherent properties of nature. Kevin Deluca argues that the preservation of Yosemite in 1864 instilled the idea that non-human elements of the earth have an inherent right to existence[15]. This idea is reflected in the land ethic propounded by Aldo Leopold: «A land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it»[16].
The weight of such nonanthropocentric arguments is reflected in the tendency of renewable energy projects to include restoration measures for mitigating detrimental environmental impacts. European offshore wind projects have spurred the development of artificial reef communities and improved aquatic ecosystem health. Solar project developers in the United States have proposed buying adjacent lands to transport and resettle the tortoise population. Perhaps this is an example of «humans attract[ing] species to the new habitats we have built»[17]. Some environmentalist thinkers nonetheless caution against restoration projects: Robert Elliot, for example, argues that a "fake nature" project has no inherent value because it lacks authenticity[18].
Whether based on anthropocentric or ecocentric arguments, the wilderness ethic can result in the rejection of industrial-scale renewable energy projects in wilderness areas. Yet environmental ethics offer alternative standpoints, including particularly those of environmental justice and environmental pragmatism, which may be used to justify the development of such projects.
Environmental Justice
The environmental justice movement has repeatedly demonstrated that marginalized human communities disproportionately experience the negative impact of pollution resulting from toxic waste[19]. Swati Prakash describes how WE ACT, a northern Manhattan community organization, has reacted to the unfairly localized burden of diesel emissions. He suggests that hegemonic racism pervades an institutionalized socio-economic system, producing deleterious health impacts throughout the area's marginalized communities[20]. The environmental justice movement seeks to provide participatory frameworks for discourse and action aiming at remediation of environmental issues, including those involving human health.
Advocates of environmental justice should support renewable energy projects because the cost-benefit distribution of these can be advantageous to marginalized communities. While in many environmental conflicts, a small group can be seen to capture benefits while society collectively bears the costs (of pollution or adverse health), renewable energy projects represent the reverse situation[21]. In the case of Cape Wind, the so-called cost would be borne by the (relatively few and mostly well-off) residents adjacent to Nantucket Sound, whose pristine views could be ruined by the lights and sounds of the turbines. The benefits, however, would accrue to all New England in the form of reduced combustion of fossil fuels and associated air pollution impacts. Similarly, the environmental cost of California solar energy projects would be borne by the project developers, the relatively few desert species, and their environmental advocates, while a widespread human population would benefit from healthier air. Such projects can be said to remediate environmental injustice: they serve to decrease the deleterious health impacts experienced by marginalized communities, a disproportionate number of which live adjacent to polluting fossil-fuel plants. When examined through the lens of environmental justice, the renewable projects are likely to be supported at the expense of wilderness.
Environmental Pragmatism
While the standpoint of wilderness preservation can imply the existence of an irresolvable dualism between humankind and nature, some environmentalists reject this dichotomy. Neither anthropocentric nor ecocentric, a "third-way" is propounded. Ben Minteer avoids a purely economic anthropocentrism in which the environment is seen primarily as a fount of resources to be harvested for material benefit. Simultaneously, he avoids a moralistic ecocentrism in which human values and interests are rejected a priori as destructive forces that inevitably undermine nature's intrinsic value[22]. Aligned with the pragmatism of the American philosopher John Dewey, the "third-way" is a more balanced, practical approach to decision making. Minteer indicates, for example, that the New Urbanism, which is a reformist approach to urban planning, considers environmental values (including the inherent values of nature) together with social values[23]. The human-nature dualism apparent in the wilderness ethic is eroded by such applications.
Some other environmental thinkers, though using different terminology, nonetheless subscribe to the third-way school of thought implicitly. Discussing his advisory work on the Nam Theun 2 Dam in Laos, Thayer Scudder recognizes that the dam offered major short- and medium-term development benefits but incurred long- and short-term costs, including human resettlement and environmental degradation. Though unsustainable, the dam seemed necessary to human well-being in the immediate future. This pragmatic approach weighs the benefits of industrial development in Laos against ecocentric arguments focused upon the health of river basins, including deltas and wetlands. Scudder participated in a review panel on the construction of the dam because he felt that good planning had potentiality for mitigating risks associated with the project, thereby increasing environmental, economic, institutional and cultural sustainability in Laos[24].
Another example of environmental pragmatism is evident in Holmes Rolston's discussion of the trade-off between feeding people and saving nature. He argues that eradicating poverty is a laudable goal of human society but may not always supersede the goal of conserving nature[25]. In Zimbabwe, for example, saving the endangered rhinoceros may be a more ethical goal than that of poachers seeking to feed themselves. Yet individuals pursuing a subsistence-level way of life in the Amazon may be ethical in cutting down areas of the forest to feed themselves. Environmental pragmatism, like John Dewey's political and philosophical pragmatism, emphasizes the importance of civil society and non-doctrinal or non-ideological thought. Mike Hansell, suggests that just as termites and spiders live in worlds shaped by termites and spiders, humans live in worlds shaped by humans. Perhaps wind turbines on the horizon and solar panels in the desert could be perceived as an evolutionary adaptation of human-nature interaction[26].
What does a third-way pragmatic approach to renewable energy projects in wilderness areas entail? Although it does not provide managers with a formulaic approach that will dictate to them, "approve" or "do not approve", it does provide a framework for decision making. The pragmatic approach recognizes the validity of the wilderness ethic but also validates the social, economic and even environmental benefits of renewable energy projects. Within the framework of environmental pragmatism, each renewable energy project is to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to assess competing arguments, to examine possibilities for mitigation of environmental risk, to evaluate scientific, technological and financial elements of the projects, and ultimately to render a decision.
The Lesser of Two Evils
Meriting particular consideration by environmental managers in the context of renewable energy development is a worst-case argument called the lesser-of-two-evils argument[27]. Here the choice is conceived as being of one or another of two harms, rather than of a benefit or harm. The lesser-of-two-evils argument sees as a harm the degradation or destruction of wilderness areas and wild species. Yet climate change poses an enormous risk to the world of both humans and non-humans. Consequently, present-day action, like renewable energy development, should be employed to mitigate future catastrophes, even at the expense of wilderness. The lesser-of-two-evils approach calls for suspension of normal rules and ethics due to extraordinary circumstances[28]. Managers should be cautious nonetheless, for this line of reasoning is susceptible to manipulation by individuals aiming to pursue egocentric ends, in this case project developers seeking to profit from renewable energy projects.
The lesser-of-two-evils argument also has the potential of constraining managers to work within a false dichotomy: thou shall build the wind turbines or face the wrath of global warming. James Speth challenges us to consider alternative options: shifting lifestyle and decreasing energy consumption could be viable solutions to both climate and wilderness issues[29]. Alternatively, the Cape Wind developers could halt their current project and investigate the possibility of building windmills further off-shore using deepwater technology. The aesthetic and wildlife impacts would be substantially diminished in this way, as the Nantucket Alliance and Kennedy have indicated[30]. Before resorting to the lesser-of-two-evils argument, which seems to simplify reality, managers should seek remedies that are not themselves "evils".
If managers are to employ the lesser-of-two-evils argument, several ethical obstacles must be overcome[31]. First is the problem of opacity, which can be remedied with specificity concerning the proposed project. In the case of Cape Wind, developers have rendered high-resolution photos of what the landscape would look like from the shore at three different locations near the Nantucket Sound. Second is the problem of denial, which may be remedied by persuasion or education. Some may refuse to accept that the lesser evil should be chosen, for the greater evil, in this case climate change, is denied either to exist or to be subject to human intervention. Third is the problem of moral tarnish: choosing the lesser of two evils has a marring effect. In justifiably choosing the lesser, an agent's actions and life can nevertheless become "tarnished"[32]. Even though a solar farm may be an evil lesser than that of climate change, authorizing and developing it may nevertheless tarnish the integrity of the manager.
The lesser-of-two-evils argument provides no easy answer to whether a project should be allowed, but it offers some guidance for choosing among ethically problematic alternatives. The argument is not intended to be used like a trump card for shutting down the interplay of opinions in controversial environmental circumstances. However, the argument does not preclude a manager from ultimately deciding to implement a renewable energy project despite its deleterious effects on wilderness and wildlife.
Recently, Environment America, in collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation and the Audubon Society, reaffirmed their support for the Cape Wind project. These organizations argued that climate change presents much larger risks for aquatic and avian species than the turbine project does[33]. They joined Greenpeace, the National Resource Defense Council, and the World Wildlife Fund in supporting it. The several organizations can be assumed to have acted with ethical (and scientific) due diligence in deciding that in the case of the turbines the lesser-of-two-evils argument can be applied reasonably.
Comparing the Wilderness Ethic with the Alternative Arguments
The wilderness ethic, insofar as strictly defined, can be very prescriptive in its approach to renewable energy projects: either a project does not degrade wilderness and is ethically right; or it does degrade wilderness and is ethically wrong. The criteria for determining whether a project degrades wilderness are generally well defined. Any direct, irreparable impact on the natural environment is sufficient to stop a project. Scientists can be called upon to define the words "direct", "irreparable" and "impact", and any project can be definitively categorized accordingly.
The three alternative arguments discussed above (environmental justice, environmental pragmatism, and the lesser-of-two-evils) do not characteristically support such categorizations. Each requires the development of criteria allowing managers to assess the merits of any proposed project anticipated to have an effect on wilderness areas. Any such effect must be defined as direct or indirect; reparable or irreparable; to land, water and/or wildlife; visual, acoustic, olfactory, and/or sensatory, and so on. For example, a renewable energy project having a negative impact on wildlife might be acceptable, unless the species concerned is (or are) endangered. Similarly, there is a difference between an off-shore windmill project that is temporary (in the sense that its turbines could be removed and the wilderness aspect of the area restored), and a biofuel project that permanently changes a forest ecosystem with the planting of non-native species (so that even if the project were terminated, its effects would be perpetuated). The three alternative approaches may nonetheless contain thresholds at which violations of wilderness cannot be tolerated. If the number of species negatively affected reaches excessive levels, for example, a mitigation plan may need to be implemented.
Within these alternative frameworks, clearly the benefits of the project must be considered. What environmental benefits does the project offer? What economic benefits does it offer, and to whom? Does the local community widely favor the project, or does divisiveness and disparity prevail? While wilderness arguments may cast renewable energy projects in strictly positive or negative terms, the alternative arguments allow more flexible assessment. Such projects may be deemed unethical from the wilderness preservationist standpoint but ethical from the alternative standpoints.
Conclusion
The competition between wilderness preservation and resource development is not unique to the 21st century. In the 19th century, John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club, fought vigilantly in defense of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite, while Gifford Pinchot, who was the first head of the US Forest Service, argued for a dam project there. Muir employed arguments on the spiritual and aesthetic qualities of landscape, while Pinchot's case was rooted in a utilitarian philosophy detached from the value of nonmaterial uses of the landscape[34]. Local and global groups will take positions for or against renewable energy projects; scientists and engineers will submit technical reports; economists will create models; and politicians will deliver opinions. Nevertheless, environmental managers will be tasked with amalgamating this information and rendering a decision to approve or deny a given project. This will undoubtedly threaten the integrity of nature, and in doing so violate the wilderness ethic. Yet environmental ethics may still be found to support it.
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