the virtue of environmental creativity

Environmental Values 22 (2013): 00–00. © 2013 The White Horse Press. doi: 10.3197/096327113X13781997646494Submitted 30 November 2011, accepted 8 June 2012

The Virtue of Environmental Creativity

JASON MATTESON

Northern Arizona University800 Humphreys StreetPO Box 6011Babbitt Academic Annex, Building 23, Room 106Flagstaff AZ 86011-601, USA Email: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Many virtues have been proposed and defended as part of developing a mature environmental virtue ethics. Yet the crucial virtue of environmental creativity has so far not received the attention it deserves. This essay provides several arguments for the conclusion that the virtue of environmental creativity has important roles to play in environmental ethics, gives a characterisation of environmental creativity, and addresses several objections.

KEYWORDS

Virtue, environmental virtue ethics, creativity, environment

1. INTRODUCTION

Environmental virtue ethics (EVE) accounts for our ethical responsibilities re-garding the environment in terms of normative human character traits – that is, virtues.1 Environmental virtues are ‘the proper dispositions or character traits for human beings to have regarding their interactions and relationships with the environment’.2 For a variety of reasons we will not rehearse here, many find EVE theoretically exciting and practically promising.3

1. See Hull 2005.2. Sandler and Cafaro 2005, p. 3.3. For example, see Sandler and Cafaro 2005, pp. 2–3. Cafaro would prefer to frame environ-

mental concerns a level deeper than debates about outward personal actions or debates about what should or should not be legally permissible. He thinks environmental concerns should be discussed at the level of our deepest emotional commitments, beliefs and dispositions. See also Van Wensveen 2000, Frasz 1993, Nelson 1993, and Sandler and Cafaro 2005.

JASON MATTESON2

Environmental Values 22.6

Many tasks must be accomplished to develop EVE into a plausible and complete account of our environmental responsibilities. At the broadest level, there is the challenge of showing that virtue ethics is defensible quite general-ly.4 I have nothing new to add here about that.5 Here we assume that virtue ethics, as a broad category of theory, is at least as defensible as others taken seriously today, for instance deontological ethics or consequentialist ethics.6 A more circumscribed task is to show that virtue ethics is applicable to environ-mental ethics more narrowly.7 Here we will encounter several environmental virtues, and this should give some confidence that virtue ethics is a legitimate player in environmental ethics.8 However, this will not be our primary concern either. Finally, a mature EVE must identify, characterise and demonstrate the appeal of specific environmental virtues. My main concerns here are to show why one virtue in particular – environmental creativity – must be included in any mature EVE, and to offer and defend a characterisation of it.

2. THE VIRTUES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIES

Many virtues have been identified and developed for environmental ethics. Here is just a sampling: Thomas Hill discusses proper humility, self-acceptance, and gratitude.9 Geoffrey Frasz champions openness.10 Paul Taylor discusses

4. For example, virtue ethicists have been at pains to show that the virtues do not straight-forwardly reduce to other systems of ethics (e.g. perhaps deontology or consequentialism), that virtues can be agent-centred without being egoistic, that the virtues are properly action guiding.

5. See Hursthouse 1999.6. It may be true that other ethical systems may also be in a position to endorse environmental

creativity of some sort in their own way. This possibility is not dealt with here.7. See Nelson 1993 and Sandler 2007, especially chapter 5.8. Several writers have given persuasive arguments for the claim that many environmental is-

sues should be discussed in the language of deep human character traits. In many situations, addressing environmental issues merely in terms of deontological (say, what is required, or forbidden, or optional) or consequentialist terms (say, what is good overall) seems to distort issues or leave important considerations untouched. See especially Hill 1983.

9. See Hill 1983. Proper humility amounts to a rejection of the tendency to ‘measure the significance of everything by its relation to oneself and those with whom one identifies’. Self-acceptance involves embracing all aspects of ourselves, especially those we share with other animals and the natural world, for example that we have certain biological needs, limits and liabilities. A well developed capacity for gratitude is the tendency to appreciate a thing ‘not simply to be happy with it at the moment, but to care about it for its own sake’, and such that one desires that others also have the experience of appreciating it.

10. See Frasz 1993, p. 274. Openness is ‘an environmental virtue that establishes an awareness of oneself as part of the natural environment, as one natural thing among many others. A person who manifests this trait is neither someone who is closed off to the humbling effects of nature nor someone who has lost all sense of individuality when confronted with the vastness and sublimity of nature. It is a receptiveness to natural entities as they are in themselves.’

THE VIRTUE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CREATIVITY3


respect.11 Ron Erikson advocates planetary solidarity.12 Louke van Wensveen champions attunement.13 Berry discusses discipline.14 Many of these virtues have important and interesting roles to play in EVE. One of the attractive fea-tures of understanding environmental ethics in terms of virtues is that we need not identify some single ethical value or principle from which all of our moral duties flow, or to which all of our environmental responsibilities reduce.15 There are many reasons to think that environmental ethics is not amenable to reduction, perhaps most obviously because environmental choices and policy must accommodate so many different concerns – for instance: the welfare of non-human animals and humans, future generations, cultures and traditions, species, ecosystems, and economic interests. It is for the good that EVE is flexible enough that it can accommodate a plurality of basic ethical concerns. A plurality of virtues is a natural and welcome result.

Yet, so far, the virtue of environmental creativity has not been sufficiently appreciated.16 In discussions of environmental virtue there is a persistent ten-dency to suppose that a direct concern for the wild world deserves pride of place in discussions of environmental virtue. Historically, figures like Naess, Leopold, Carson, St. Francis, Whitman, and Thoreau have been examined as paradigmatic examples of environmental virtue since these figures concen-trated their energy at directly understanding, appreciating, and describing the wild world – the world of plants, non-human animals, species and ecosystems. The tendency to gravitate to such exemplars is one consequence of the linger-ing distinction between the wild world and the human world. Environmental virtue ethics, the presumption goes, must begin with those virtues that display

11. See Taylor 1981.12. See Erikson 1994. Planetary solidarity is ‘characterized as a readiness to sacrifice personal

want and interest for the sake of the planet, and such virtues, if widely shared and practiced, “supply the glue” that not only connects people together, but also connects them with other species and with the ecosystems of the planet’.

13. See Van Wensveen 2001. The virtue of attunement is in part meant to be an antidote towards the inclination to think of ourselves as the stewards, caretakers or saviours of the natural world. Those with proper environmental attunement are careful to ‘listen’ to the natural world, and are willing to adapt to it. Attunement means ‘fitting in’ to the natural world on its own terms.

14. See Berry 1970. Discipline requires paying attention to the details in practices like running a farm. It requires acting for the sake of conservation, adapting our methods appropriately, adopting the proper means to out ends, and exercising continuous self-monitoring and criticism.

15. Van Wensveen (2000, pp. 136–167) lists a whopping 189 virtues and vices that occur in the environmental literature after 1970. Van Wensveen’s 2000 list may be inflated, however, since it seems to contain duplicates, for example, appreciation and gratitude. It also includes items that are not strictly virtues or vices. For example, murder is an act, not a vice, although it is of course a vicious act. See Van Wensveen 2005 for her attempt to give a neurological basis for virtues.

16. See Thompson 2009 for some dramatic ways in which we may need ‘virtues of transition’ that enable us to cope with new global climate regimes, including creativity.

JASON MATTESON4


direct concern for the environment, where ‘the environment’ is explicitly or implicitly contrasted with human concerns. In modern conversations, the wild/human distinction reappears as the biocentric/anthropocentric distinction. The presumption remains that genuinely environmental virtue requires a biocentric focus, where this is set in opposition to an anthropocentric focus.

This tendency to frame environmental virtue in terms of a direct concern for the wild world oversimplifies environmental virtue. It encourages us to ignore crucial environmental virtues in less obvious places. It is a mistake to think that people thoroughly planted in the human world cannot display genu-inely environmental virtue. Here we might reflect on the connections between environmental concerns like endangered species or global warming and, for example, the activities of economists, grocers, construction workers, city man-agers, bus drivers, architects, coal miners, gardeners, and many others. When we think more carefully about seemingly human-centred professions like these we notice very quickly that they have at least as much potential to affect the wild world as more obvious environmental endeavours such as being a biolo-gist, social critic or poet.

At present we can find nearly endless examples of people aiming at being ‘environmentally conscious’ or ‘environmentally responsible’ or ‘environmen-tally virtuous’ by using skills which do not take as their exclusive purpose the betterment or restoration of a separate wild world.17 Environmental vir-tue can be expressed when people develop concepts like ‘ecosystem services’ which bridge environmental and economic concerns,18 when financiers de-velop environmentally conscious investment tools,19 when farmers carefully experiment with crop planting and rotation cycles, when civil engineers design fish-friendly water turbines, when architects favour materials with low embod-ied energy costs, when city managers experiment with high-density planning,20 when architects design green buildings,21 when airlines favour more fuel effi-cient jets, when entrepreneurs spark and sustain green innovations,22 and when parents have fewer children.

17. This is not to say that all activities advertised as environmentally conscious are in fact envi-ronmentally conscious. There can be benefits for merely appearing ‘green’ while not actually being so. Hence the modern trend of ‘green-washing’.

18. An ecosystem service is a freely provided service by nature. Such services include the provi-sion of clean water, waste decomposition, flood protections, and many others. See Erlich and Erlich 1981, Daily 2000, Farber, Constanza, et. al. 2002 and Corvalán 2005.

19. Admittedly this field is still in its infancy. But it holds promise. For an early player, see the Winslow Green Index.

20. Jenks and Dempsey 2005.21. McLennan 2004.22. The X Prize Foundation recently added a prize for fuel efficient car design. It will grant a

reward of over 10 million dollars for cars that achieve 100MPG and have minimal carbon imprints.



Whatever else environmental virtue may be, it should be consistent with the idea that it is possible to achieve genuinely environmental virtue by ef-forts that have a more complex relationship to the wild world than a direct and privileging concern. Analogously, one can posses the virtue of justice without being a circuit court judge. One possesses the virtue of justice to the extent that one has cultivated a reliable disposition to act justly and to respect it in all activities.

As we will see, a necessary condition on environmental virtue will be that our concerns are not excessively anthropocentric, or hostile or indifferent to the wild world. Environmental virtue does require a non-derivative concern for non-human life and natural environments. Nevertheless, environmental virtue should not be framed in opposition, or indifference, to activities that are over-simplified as merely human-centred. It should be possible for an architect who rarely leaves the city, but designs out of environmental concern, to count as environmentally virtuous. And it should be possible for that architect to count as environmentally virtuous even if his or her aims also include a substantial concern for human beings.

We can begin to see the relevance of the virtue of environmental creativity by drawing on these previous observations. In thinking about environmental virtue, instead of focusing only on those who seems to have the deepest feel-ings about the wild world, or on those who spend the most time there, we might ask about the characteristics of the person who is most likely to benefit the wild world. Here is another way to put the same point: Suppose you care deeply about the wild world. You believe that it should be restored, preserved, and appreciated. Now, what virtues would you most desire in yourself and those around you? Starting here opens up the very interesting possibility that those who focus most directly on the natural world are not necessarily the most important allies to the wild world. At a minimum, it reveals that those who care in the most obvious ways about the wild world do not have a monopoly on environmental virtue.

These observations prompt this question: What virtues do the best allies of natural environments display? There are clearly many, and they will include some virtues already mentioned, for example: proper humility, self-accept-ance, gratitude, openness, respect, attunement, discipline, and so on. I now argue that any mature account of EVE must also wholeheartedly embrace the virtue of environmental creativity.

3. KNOWLEDGE AND CIRCUMSTANCE

Hursthouse says that genuine environment virtue requires that we are ‘rightly oriented to nature’.23 She also points out that this orientation may not be quite

23. Hursthouse 2007.

JASON MATTESON6


possible yet. There are two important ways that environmental creativity ena-bles us to get rightly oriented to nature. One concerns knowledge, and the other concerns solving certain kinds of social dilemmas.

Part of the reason we are not yet rightly oriented to nature is lack of knowl-edge. Of course, some environmental issues are straightforward. If I pour used motor oil in my backyard then some surrounding plants and animals will die, and that may be the end of it. But many environmental issues are far more com-plex and surprising. If everyone pours their used oil in their back yards, then entire downstream ecosystems may be destroyed. If we have learned anything about dynamic environmental systems it is that we can be genuinely surprised by how they function, and surprised by the mechanisms through which we impact them. Climate change is perhaps the most profound example of this. Understanding how to mitigate harmful human impacts on the wild world is now one of the most formidable challenges for humankind. Of course, it is un-questionable that we have come a very long way. Advancements in fields such as chemistry, geology, ecology, biology and climatology have been some of the greatest achievements of human kind in the last several hundred years. But open any science magazine today and it will be filled with a stream of recent discoveries about the wild world. We still have a great deal to learn.

Perhaps more important, it is not clear that we currently have a sufficient understanding of the human side of environmental issues. Environmental con-cerns are not just about the perilous fortunes of polar bears and coral reefs. More and more the wild world is deeply intertwined with human psychology and human social organisation.24 Changes in even the wildest parts of the world now depend upon the structures of human economies, property schemes and political organisation. Political turmoil tends to wreck local environments.25 Comprehensive religious and cultural worldviews figure into how people frame and interpret environmental issues at the most basic levels.26 The ques-tions are more complex than before. The question for you and me now is not whether we should each dump motor oil in our back yards, but rather which of the many actions we might take deserve priority and how we should mobilise political support.

Filling in these basic gaps in our knowledge – on both the wild and human sides – is not something that will easily be achieved. Nor is it something that can be done without creativity of the highest calibre. In our present context, creativity is in high demand as a fundamental driver for gaining the basic knowl-edge necessary for a fully mature environmental ethic. Environmentalists are

24. See Diamond 2005, especially chapter 14, entitled ‘Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?’

25. See Diamond 2005 for the correlation between political turmoil and local environmental deg-radation. On the other hand, political stability may enable societies to wreck environments far away and in other ways.

26. See White 1967, Moncrief 1970 and Dobel 1977.



fond of saying that it is difficult to appreciate things we do not understand. It is also true that it is nearly impossible to act virtuously within situations – en-vironmental and social – we do not fully understand. Creativity is an essential disposition we must cultivate in ourselves in order to understand complex and intertwining human and natural webs of causation.

And yet, such knowledge – even if we had all of it – is sometimes in-sufficient by itself for virtuous action. This is because some environmental problems are not caused by lack of knowledge, but instead by practical circum-stance. To illustrate, suppose that we achieved all of the relevant knowledge about the inner workings of, and interactions between, the wild and human worlds. And suppose that this was enough so that every individual each knew how they might best benefit the wild world. Suppose even further that every human in the world enjoyed a reasonable economic, social and political situa-tion – at least good enough not to force them into environmental vice. Would environmental virtue naturally follow? Not necessarily. And in fact, probably not. Even if full knowledge and reasonable prosperity held universally, we should not suppose that all environmental issues would resolve themselves. At least two kinds of circumstances are not always resolved by knowledge and prosperity.

First, knowledge and prosperity cannot by themselves solve certain kinds of structural tragedies. Perhaps the most well known is the tragedy of the com-mons. Even a fully informed, fairly prosperous and well-meaning fisherman must take account of how many fish will be taken by other fishermen when he decides how many fish to take for himself. And if circumstances are such that each and every fisherman is better off taking more fish, then each and every well-meaning fisherman may have a hand in destroying an otherwise plentiful fishery.27

Second, sometimes people find themselves within political or economic regimes that disadvantage environmental virtue. If people find themselves in a tax system that heavily rewards gas guzzling vehicles while penalising more fuel efficient ones, they may very well lose out against their neighbours in eco-nomic competition if they buy the more efficient vehicles. Sometimes the sheer geography of a place makes environmental virtue difficult. Renting on the edge of town may be the only option for some. But life on the edge of town often requires a car. No particular political, property or social regime unequivocally supports environmental virtue regardless of further situational factors.28

27. See Schmidtz 1994.28. For an interesting case study about various property schemes, see Schmidtz and Willott 2003.

There have, of course, been proposals to address such structural problems. But there is still much work to be done. Here are just three particularly topical examples. (1) Some kinds of property regimes may help solve some of these structural problems. But some may make them worse. We need to know where and when various property regimes are appropriate. (2) A variety of pollution trading-schemes are in the works, each with more or less prom-ise. Again, we need an account of which forms of these schemes are appropriate in various

JASON MATTESON8


The general point is that we should acknowledge that even if we could bring it about that everyone was sufficiently educated about environmental is-sues, and even if everyone’s basic needs were sufficiently met, environmental problems are not automatically solved. It is easy to suppose that environmental problems occur primarily because people are ignorant, greedy, or both.29 But even if vice is sometimes a cause, or even often a cause, vice does not account for all environmental problems. Because of this a complete EVE must include virtues that enable people to solve the sorts of problems of circumstance just mentioned. Creativity is required to find new ways of organising ourselves and find new modes of living that are compatible with respecting the rest of the liv-ing world. Here again environmental creativity has a role to play. Helping the environment often means finding creative ways of enabling humans to treat it virtuously, even when we already know what we each ought to do.

4. OSTENSIVE EXAMPLES

At this point we have reasons for believing environmental creativity has crucial roles to play in any mature environmental virtue ethics. Environmental creativ-ity is required for the kinds of knowledge we need to appropriately respond to the wild world, and it is required to enable us to escape certain structural problems. But what exactly is environmental creativity?

One issue we face, quite general to all of virtue ethics, is that there are com-peting theoretical conceptions of virtue. This appears to be a problem since the broad framework one chooses to understand virtue has implications for which particular traits might count as virtues.30 I want to hold this complica-tion at arm’s length for the moment to give the virtue of creativity a little time to breathe. We will return to it in section 6 when we consider objections to environmental creativity.

One common way to get a handle on specific virtues is to examine apparent instances of them. If we want to understand the virtue of justice, an obvious

circumstances. Prominent examples are the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, the Chicago Climate Exchange, and the Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto 1997. (3) There is a very real issue about whether the solution to some environmental issues requires international governing bodies that wield coercive force.

29. What I say here about structural problems is of course consistent with the claim that vice can cause environmental degradation. Cafaro 2005 discusses vices of gluttony, arrogance, greed and apathy.

30. See Sandler 2007, especially Chapter 1, ‘What Makes a Character Trait a Virtue?’ There Sandler describes various conceptions of identifying environmental virtues, including: by exemplars, by extending already accepted virtues (e.g. justice) to the environment, and the ‘natural goodness’ approach of Hursthouse and Foot. I agree with Sandler that what makes a character trait a virtue may include several different features (p. 27). Thus, later I will pose several necessary conditions for passing the bar as a virtue.



place to start is with people who appear to be just.31 Sometimes we must later revise our initial judgments upon closer inspection. Seemingly honourable people can turn out to be scoundrels. But there is nothing inherently problem-atic about trying to understand some virtue by studying its apparent exemplars.

What are some putative examples? Some have already been mentioned. To these we can add several more. With respect to education there are out-reach programmes like the TOPP Census (Tagging of Pacific Pelagics) on-line, which provides scientific data in an engaging format.32 To this are numerous environmental websites and blogs which are attempting to reach a wide audi-ence about issues that they can take action on. In the realm of training there are any number of innovations in green building design, and in the architec-tural and city planning programmes. In the realm of policy and law there are recently developed schemes of wildlife resource management in South Africa that take account of long-term ecosystem needs.33 There are also agricultural and urban planning initiatives, and small and grand schemes for ecosystem reclamation. In the realm of business the recent development of cap-and-trade markets for emissions like sulphur dioxide, and the newly developing mar-kets for carbon dioxide are attempts to limit emissions using flexible market principles.34 Some businesses are pushing for policies that improve product labelling.

Admittedly, any of these examples might be challenged. For a sceptic, these programmes may hide environmental vice under the cover of environ-mental virtue (and we will return to this in section 6). When motives matter to morality, as they do for virtue ethics, there may be reasons to second-guess the real intentions behind such initiatives. But the question now is what environ-mental creativity might look like. These examples, I submit, illustrate the sort of creativity that environmental problems call for, even if some people pursue them for reasons other than a genuine concern for the wild world.

5. MOTIVATION, ACTION, INTELLECT AND EMOTION

A further benefit of developing our understanding of environmental creativity through ostension is that creativity is often surprising by its very nature. It is impossible to list ahead of time all of the actions an environmentally creative person might take. So leaning on putative examples is a useful beginning to understanding a complex virtue. Nevertheless, understanding virtues through

31. See, for example, Seneca’s remarks in Inwood and Gerson 2008, pp. 187–188.32. TOPP stands for Tagging of Pacific Pelagics. See their fascinating website: http://www.top-

pcensus.org/.33. Schmidtz and Willott 2003.34. For a discussion of SO2 allowance trading in the US see Stavins 1998. Such markets are also

in development for CO2 emissions.

JASON MATTESON10


their ostensive examples has limitations. First, you may not see in the exam-ples offered so far what I intend to point out. Second, you may disagree that what is happening in these examples is virtuous, or creative or environmentally creative. Third, even armfuls of examples cannot explain the underlying nature of a virtue. We now turn to a systematic account of the nature of environmental creativity. Virtues are often described by their characteristic features. The vir-tue of justice, for example, can be described by its characteristic motivations, intellectual aspects, actions and emotions.35 Let us see what can be said along these lines for environmental creativity.36

Underlying motivations

Part of any virtue are the guiding values that psychologically motivate people with that virtue. A person does not possess the virtue of justice because he or she is accidentally fair to others. A just person is psychologically motivated by the value of justice. Likewise, actions that only accidentally benefit the environment do not count as environmentally virtuous. One has to have cer-tain motivations to count as environmentally creative. On the other hand, one of the important features of virtues quite generally is that the same virtue can be displayed in a wide variety of contexts. The virtue of justice is not the kind of thing that only appears in courts. This means we need an account of the values that motivate environmental creativity that is neither too thin, nor too demanding. An account that was too thin would make it too easy to count as environmentally creative, whereas an account that was too demanding would make it too difficult to count as environmentally creative.

Part of what makes environmental creativity environmental must be that people who have it are motivated to preserve or restore states of natural au-thenticity and integrity. I doubt there is any easy and sharp difference between what is genuinely natural as contrasted with the changes that humans may in-troduce, even if we had the space to dwell on this distinction. After all, humans are not supernatural beings. Nevertheless, there are clear and important differ-ences between situations in which non-human life is allowed to thrive in its own characteristic environments, and in its own characteristic ways, without human beings factoring as a dominant influence. Destroying this opportunity for plants and non-human animals is what is often disturbing about bulldozing large swaths of complex ecosystems for track housing. It is also part of what is disturbing about many circus acts and zoos. Environmental creativity, then,

35. See Annas 1993, especially chapter 2.36. Environmental creativity as described here will of course be something of an ideal. On the

one hand, to call it an ideal is to admit from the start that it is, in many cases, not entirely achievable. On the other hand, to say that it is an ideal is also to say that it is worth going for – that it is something that we can reasonably aspire to, and that it is something we can take satisfaction in, even if we cannot reasonably expect to achieve it entirely.



must have as an important aim a non-instrumental concern for natural authen-ticity and integrity.

It is very important to notice, though, that a non-instrumental concern for natural authenticity and integrity does not obviously call for a human retreat from all parts of the world. Human lives and societies also fall under the pro-tection of the value that creatures should be able to live and thrive in their own characteristic environments, and in their own characteristic ways.37 Of course, there are problems with specifying with any confidence what it is for humans to live in a ‘characteristically human’ way. But this difficulty is not insurmountable. We can say that human life characteristically involves activi-ties like rational planning, resource management, childrearing, social living, cultural engagement, complex communication, building shelters, and so on.38 A respect for natural authenticity and integrity must allow some room for crea-tures that get by as we humans get by.

For these reasons the values that motivate a person with environmental creativity must be expanding and embracing. They will include non-deriva-tive concerns for the value of non-human authenticity and integrity, and also a non-derivative concern for human forms of life. Part of the excitement in envi-ronmental creativity is the challenge of finding ways to accommodate greater numbers and kinds of life and kinds of environments, and accommodating them for their own sakes, and on their own terms. Environmental creativity rejects any oversimplified choice between biocentrism or anthropocentrism. Instead it calls us to find ways to respect both wild environments and human beings, and to bring them into harmony as much as possible.

Of course, mutual accommodation may not always be possible in the short term. As Holmes Rolston III points out, sometimes caring about the environ-ment will require that we are ‘short-term losers’ in the sense that we may have to give up some of our immediate wants.39 So discovering new ways to ac-commodate both the wild world and the human world will require reflection over long periods of time. It will require adaptive cultural change over time. In some dire environmental circumstances, as we are in today, creativity is likely to require fairly significant changes in thought and behaviour. But the creative view is the long view. The temporal range of environmental creativity also tends towards expansion. To sum up: Environmental creativity aims at sustaining naturally occurring individuals, species and ecosystems as long as they would otherwise occur without us.40

37. Of course, in some circumstances restraint or retreat from the wild world may turn out to be the right course all things considered.

38. Notice that it is not necessary to identify activities that only humans have.39. See Rolston III 2005. 40. It would be too strict to suppose that those concerned with the environment are committed to

the goal of preserving any an all natural systems indefinitely.

JASON MATTESON12


Intellectual aspects

Environmental creativity will also involve characteristic intellectual aspects. First, a person possessing environmental creativity will have the intellectual characteristics that accompany creativity in general. They will be curious, flex-ible and open-minded. They will be on the lookout to apply previous lessons in new ways and to apply the lessons of one field to another. They will be interested in gathering any and all relevant information, and building special-ised knowledge where necessary. They will make all possible use of different resources in solving environmental problems, whether those resources are so-cial, financial, material, political, educational or technological. And they will be interested in reframing old issues in new ways so that new solutions may present themselves. They will be aware of preconceptions that undermine re-spect for the wild world, and try to mitigate them.

Second, there will also be fields of particular interest for someone with environmental creativity. A person with environmental creativity will likely be particularly concerned with developments in technology, economic and pub-lic policy, environmental education, models of private action and activism, and global policies and realities. Such people will likely be curious about past environmental histories and future predictions. In other words, they will be interested in those fields that are potentially useful for promoting the values that motivate environmental creativity.

Finally, we must also acknowledge that given the complex nature of envi-ronmental processes there is always a significant chance of ultimately doing more harm than good, especially when novel proposals are first introduced. The record on well-meaning environmental action is quite mixed, and should stand as a warning to an excessive eagerness to just do something. The primary danger of good intentions comes from something already noticed, namely that environmental catastrophes typically occur at the flexing intersections of human and natural systems – systems that are each highly dynamic in their own right. Thus, the possessor of environmental creativity will be especially keen on identifying and mitigating unintended consequences.

Characteristics of action

Creativity of any sort involves originality, and because of this it is somewhat hard to say exactly what actions we should expect from someone who is envi-ronmentally creative. We can, however, say at least one very important thing: the actions of the environmentally creative person strongly tend to succeed in respecting both wild and human values. One basic constraint on possessing the virtue of prudence is that a person must reliably behave prudently. Someone is imprudent if they are rarely prudent, and this is true even if they always sincerely try to act prudently. So if a person’s actions consistently make en-vironmental issues worse, then they fail a necessary condition for possessing



environmental creativity. All virtues require more than well-meaning inten-tions. They all require some amount of genuine success in supporting the values that motivate them.41

The idea that creativity aims at something more than mere novelty, but is furthermore somehow genuinely productive – something genuinely helpful – accords with findings in psychology, where creativity is understood as some-thing that is both original and positively adaptive. Psychologically, originality alone is insufficient for creativity since originality may be produced by condi-tions like schizophrenia. In this way creativity, environmental or otherwise, must ‘make a positive contribution to that person’s life or the lives of others’.42 Creativity is not only a generative virtue, but also a thoughtful and critical one. Thus, creativity should not be confused with a fascination for mere novelty or with wishful thinking.

Characteristic emotions

Virtues are typically understood as stable traits of character involving charac-teristic emotions. What are some of the emotions typical of an environmentally creative person? Let me start with three negative observations. First, we can be fairly certain that some emotions are at odds with environmental creativity, for instance prolonged apathy or boredom. We are right to suspect that people who show no pulse about understanding or engaging with environmental is-sues (absent some further explanation) either do not understand the material, or are lacking in some way.43

Second, although creativity often involves something like excitement, genuine environmental creativity should not be confused with enthusiasm for mere novelty, for reasons already given. For example, the last several dec-ades have seen a great deal of public enthusiasm for hydrogen-powered cars. But there remain enormous hurdles to overcome, and these hurdles may well never be overcome for this application. So I suggest, as an illustration, that an environmentally creative person is unlikely to be enthusiastic about hydro-gen-powered cars, not because the technology is uninteresting, but because

41. Because some environmental issues outlast human lifetimes, it may not always be possible to determine immediately whether someone possesses environmental creativity. Of course, as we have said, actions that only accidentally help natural environments cannot count as envi-ronmental creativity. But a success constraint on action does imply further that whether one possesses the genuine virtue of environmental creativity may not always be entirely settled within a person’s own lifetime. This may seem like a strange result. However, it is merely a consequence of the fact that environmental issues are complex and there is more to virtue than well-meaning intentions.

42. See Peterson and Seligman 2004, 110.43. For instance, the person who is overwhelmed by simply keeping a job and food on the table

may understandably show no interest in environmental issues. But short of such an expla-nation, I take it that most people want to understand how the natural world works. Children, unless persuaded otherwise, crave understanding of the natural world. See Hill 1983.

JASON MATTESON14


environmental creativity must be more complex than childlike enthusiasm for anything and everything new or intriguing. Creativity, as we have seen, is con-cerned that novel proposals actually work, not merely that they are original.

Third, an environmentally creative person will also reject easy emotional comfort in bland solutions to environmental concerns. For instance, in the age of global warming it has become standard to trot out the suggestion that people should do more commuting by bicycle or public transportation. But in far too many places, these now standard calls to action can only really be disingenu-ous palliatives. Neither a bicycle nor a public bus is a real option for an elderly man in a small town in North Dakota in the winter. Our environmental situa-tion requires more than stale invectives, for instance, that we should turn off the faucet when we brush our teeth. The environmentally creative person will be as angry about blithe solutions as he or she is about complacency. The idea that virtue sometimes involves negative emotions is not a radical suggestion. Aristotle claims that someone who fails to become angry upon encountering injustice lacks the virtue of justice. Likewise, the environmentally creative per-son is likely to have negative emotional reactions to lazy suggestions.

On the positive side, environmental creativity surely involves something like the emotion of excitement. Looking for creative solutions to environmen-tal issues must feel something like exploration, and so must feel something like the emotions that naturally accompany that heady mixture of hope and risk. Moreover, thinking and acting creatively is itself always laden with the possibility of surprise. Finally, there will be the characteristic emotions that accompany solving complex problems. Humans can generate endless problems, for ourselves and all that surrounds us. Current environmental deg-radation is a testament to this. But just as we can cause problems, we can also solve problems. And when we find creative and elegant solutions to impor-tant and complex problems we can rightfully enjoy a deep emotional sense of accomplishment.

6. OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES

So far I have shown that environmental creativity should be included in any mature EVE, given many examples of it to dwell upon, and characterised it in these ways:

Motivation: Environmental creativity is motivated by a non-derivative con-cern for sustaining and restoring all naturally occurring forms of life, both human and non-human.

Intellect: Environmental creativity displays flexibility, open-mindedness and curiosity, especially about fields relevant to environmental concern. It involves reframing old issues in new ways, and vigilance about un-derlying preconceptions.



Action: Environmental creativity generates original solutions and behav-iours that strongly tend to benefit human lives and at the same time preserve and restore natural environments.

Emotion: Environmental creativity is at odds with apathy, easy sat-isfaction with lazy suggestions, and uncritical enthusiasm for novelty. Characteristic emotions include the excitement of working on complex and important problems, and deep satisfaction in genuine accomplishment.

I now consider several objections, some philosophical and some practical.One might press on whether environmental creativity counts as a real vir-

tue. This leads us to the broader question in virtue ethics: What does it take for some trait to count as a virtue? Virtue ethics quite generally does not supply an uncontested answer to this fundamental question. However, I argue now that because environmental creativity meets four commonly cited necessary condi-tions for some trait to be a virtue, we should accept environmental creativity as a legitimate virtue.

Let us start with these three conditions:Admiration: Virtues are character traits that deserve admiration.44

Benefit: Virtues are character traits that strongly tend to benefit their possessors.

Excellence: Virtues are character traits that make us excellent qua human beings.45

Much could be said about each of these conditions and their relations to one an-other. First, not all accounts of virtue agree that these are legitimate constraints on virtues.46 Second, in some circumstances meeting one condition may mean failing another. For example, the virtue of honour may be admirable. It may also sometimes get you put on the rack (and so seem to fail the benefit condi-tion). Again, however, we can bypass such complications if we can show that environmental creativity meets each of these conditions separately.

Consider the benefit condition – that virtues are traits that strongly tend to benefit their possessors. At the very least, it is hard to see how environmental creativity might substantially worsen a person’s life. Of course, environmental creativity requires taking actions that squarely address present and impending environmental realities, and it may be that these realities will soon take away many of the genuine comforts and benefits of the modern world whether we like it or not – benefits like reliable food, water, electricity and transportation.

44. See Slote 1992, especially chapter 5.45. For a discussion of the benefit condition see Hursthouse 1999, chapter 8, and for a discussion

of the excellence condition see chapter 9.46. Eudaimonistic conceptions will not place exactly the same kind and number of constraints on

virtue as consequentialist or Kantian conceptions of virtue.

JASON MATTESON16


But environmental creativity does not itself require austerity for its own sake. Remember that environmental creativity values human forms of life among other forms of life. Environmental creativity is exactly the sort of virtue that is required if we are to find ways that mitigate our past, present and future damage on the world while still living desirable human lives. Environmental creativity thus can benefit us in at least two ways – by helping us find ways to respect the value of non-human life and natural environments, and by helping us find ways to do this which do not require giving up all of the real benefits afforded by modern civilisation.

Now consider the excellence condition – that virtues are character traits that we must possess in order to be good qua human beings. It seems eminently plausible to me that environmental creativity is a trait that makes us good qua human beings. This is because humans, as the particular form of life that we are, survive primarily by complex social organisation and sustained manipula-tion of the wild environment. The virtue of environmental creativity described here calls for an ongoing re-evaluation of our social organisation and how we manipulate and alter the wild environment. In this way environmental creativ-ity is at the very core of what we are as a species. Understanding environmental creativity as a virtue means that we should do what we already do in a virtuous way – in a way that makes us both admirable and better qua human beings.

Many virtue ethicists assert a fourth necessary condition:Control: Virtues must be traits that we have some significant control over.

Part of the reason being six foot tall is not typically understood as a virtue is because being six foot tall is not something we have significant control over.47 It is either in our genes or it is not. The issue raised by this further condition is whether environmental creativity is the kind of trait that we either simply have or simply lack.48 Put in the form of an objection, someone might assert that whether we are capable of environmental creativity or not is out of our control.

Aristotle treats the question of whether we are in control of our own virtue with important subtlety. He notes that some people are more disposed to cer-tain virtues, and that the cultivation of virtue to some extent requires fortunate circumstance – for instance, having good parents and friends, and having a good education and upbringing. So for Aristotle there are certain aspects of developing virtue that are under our control, and some that are not. We do not have the space to discuss all of the ways that character traits may be under our control or not.49 What I would like to suggest, nevertheless, is that there is nothing about environmental creativity that makes it uniquely difficult to

47. Hume’s account of virtues may be an exception to this. See Hume 1975, p. 268.48. For instance, Plato thought creativity was ‘divinely inspired’.49. Some have recently pressed against virtue ethics on the grounds that it requires a level of

control that we simply lack. See Doris 1998. If the condition is an appropriate condition for virtue, and it is true that we have little or no control over our own traits, then much of virtue ethics is in trouble, not just this or that virtue.



cultivate. There is nothing about it that makes it more difficult to cultivate than other standardly recognised virtues like practical wisdom, justice, temperance and courage. It is under our control to intentionally cultivate a non-instrumen-tal concern for non-human life and wild environments. With respect to the demand that environmental creativity requires creativity, there is a growing literature on how creativity can be purposefully cultivated.50 It turns out that there are ways to reliably increase our creativity.

Here is a second possible philosophical objection: Environmental crea-tivity does not really stand apart as its own virtue. This objection might be pressed in two ways. Here is one:

Fundamental virtues like prudence and justice (and others) sometime require creativity. In those cases creativity is an aspect of these more fundamental vir-tues. Likewise, environmental creativity must be an aspect of some more basic environmental virtue or virtues.51

Here is a different way to challenge the independence of environmental creativity:

Creativity is distinct from virtues like prudence or justice. Therefore, environ-mental creativity is an aspect of the broader virtue of creativity.

Note that challenging the distinctiveness of environmental creativity may be pressed even if one accepts environmental creativity as an important element of EVE. The challenge underlying both objections is that environmental crea-tivity is not really a distinct virtue, but instead merely an aspect of some more fundamental virtue.

The main claim of this essay is that there are sound reasons to recognise and promote environmental creativity. These reasons (described in sections 2 and 3) remain even in the presence of competing theoretical accounts of what makes traits eligible for virtue-hood, and remain even if some accounts of the reciprocity or unity of the virtues render environmental creativity an aspect of some more fundamental virtue. What matters is whether we have put our finger on an important set of interrelated traits, and whether we have characterised this set of traits in a plausible way. We should ask whether we have enough of a handle on some useful exemplars and whether we can outline the central aspects of environmental creativity. I submit that we have this already in hand.

Are there practical dangers with promoting environmental creativity? Is giving environmental creativity more prominence likely to help with envi-ronmental concerns? Let us now consider three practical issues of raising the profile of environmental creativity, moving from the least troublesome to the most.

50. Peterson and Seligman 2005, pp. 109–123.51. Christine Swanton says, ‘I prefer to think of [creativity] as a mode of moral acknowledge-

ment which informs a wide range of virtues, just as does love and respect.’ She says creativity is an ‘aspect of the profiles of the virtues’. See Swanton 2003, p. 162.

JASON MATTESON18


One practical concern is that environmental creativity may be misunder-stood and perhaps even intentionally abused. There are many bad practical proposals with respect to our environmental situation that are sold as being creative. Does this mean that we should not promote environmental creativity?

Giving up on environmental creativity because it can be abused is too hasty. The right practical response to bogus appeals to virtue is to highlight and emphasise the very real gaps between bogus virtue and genuine virtue. Tyrants will forever undertake terrible actions under the guise of justice. Similarly, bad environmental ideas and policies may be sold as environmentally creative. There is no theoretical prevention for this. Even the most careful presenta-tion of a virtue cannot prevent people from intentionally (or unintentionally) abusing it. The only solution is to call out bogus virtue when one sees it. That becomes easier if we have some clearer idea of the virtue at stake. Hopefully, this essay helps with that.

A more troublesome practical objection is that focusing on environmen-tal creativity distracts us from what is actually needed to address our current environmental situation. Daydream solutions may not directly harm our environment so long as we do not invest much in them. Still, focusing on environmental creativity may have two bad indirect consequences. One is that critical reflection on our environmental future requires intellectual and cul-tural resources, and useless speculation wastes these. Another is that touting environmental creativity may continue to reinforce the wishful belief that we are only one or two insights away from some economic, technical or political solution that will painlessly fix our relations to the wild world. In this way, the ungrounded hope in some soon-to-be-discovered creative silver bullet may (further) enable disastrous collective inertia.

Again, practical problems require practical solutions. And again, if the ob-jection is that people will misunderstand or abuse the notion of environmental creativity, then the practical solution is to oppose that misuse by calling it out. If the objection is that the promotion of a distorted view of environmental creativity leads to wasteful inaction or wishful thinking then the solution is to promote a clearer and more stringent conception of environmental creativity. Again, hopefully this essay helps to do that.

The strongest practical argument against environmental creativity is that seemingly creative solutions often ultimately do more harm to the wild world and ourselves than they help. On this objection creativity does not promise our environmental salvation but instead our environmental ruin. The estimation of this danger comes in weaker and stronger forms. The weakest line is that human creativity sometimes undermines environmental and human welfare, though not always, and whether our actions are ultimately sustainable is deter-mined by a host of contingent facts about us and the particular environments we find ourselves in.52 A more moderate view is that there are strong pressures

52. This position is well represented by Diamond 2005.



encouraging human societies to take more from the environment than can be sustained.53 The strongest view is that creative human use of the wild world inevitably leads to its degradation and our own welfare.54

There is no easy theoretical or practical answer to the concern that humans as a biological species – as the kinds of creatures that get by as we do – are capable of radically undermining the wild world and ultimately ourselves. And there is good historical and current evidence that as a species we are strongly inclined to do so. Our present question, though, is whether pursuing environ-mental creativity (as described here) really is likely to make matters worse. If creativity is going to be the sword that Homo sapiens lives or dies by, we will do best if we recognise this and are then very careful about understanding the nature of genuinely virtuous environmental creativity.

7. CONCLUSION

I want to end with the reminder that there are many people who already pos-sess the characteristics of environmental creativity to a substantial degree. There are people motivated by a direct concern for harmonising the values of the human and the wild world, and they are wrestling with the intersections between the two in creative ways. Part of this essay is to name this important kind of creativity. Hopefully, what I have said begins to fill out the characteris-tic features of environmental creativity, indicate its real-world practicality, and address some concerns about its propagation in ourselves and in our environ-mental discussions. Understanding, cultivating and propagating environmental creativity will be essential in facing up to our current environmental situation and all those to come.

REFERENCES

Annas, J. 1993. The Morality of Happiness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Berry, W. 1970. A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural. San Diego,

CA: Harcourt Brace Javanovich.Cafaro, P. 2005. ‘Gluttony, arrogance, greed, and apathy: An exploration of environ-

mental vice’. In R. Sandler and P. Cafaro (eds.), Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 135–158. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Catton, W. R. 1982. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Corvalán, C. F. E. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Health Synthesis. Albany, NY York: World Health Organization.

53. See Catton 1982 and Tainter 1988.54. See Dilworth 2010.

JASON MATTESON20


Daily, G. C. 2000. ‘Management objectives for the protection of ecosystem services’. Environmental Science and Policy 3: 333–339. CrossRef

Diamond, J. M. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, New York: Viking Press.

Dilworth, C. 2010. Too Smart for our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Dobel, P. 1977. ‘The Judeo-Christian stewardship attitude to nature’. The Christian Century, October 12.

Doris, J. 1998. ‘Persons, situations, and virtue ethics’. Nous 32(4): 504–530. CrossRefErikson, R. 1994. ‘On environmental virtue ethics’. Environmental Ethics 16: 334–336.

CrossRefErlich, P. R. and A. Erlich. 1981. Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the

Disappearance of Species. New York, NY: Random House.Farber, S. C., R. Costanza, et al. 2002. ‘Economic and ecological concepts for valuing

ecosystem services’. Ecological Economics 41: 375–392. CrossRefFrasz, G. B. 1993. ‘Environmental Virtue Ethics: A new direction for environmental

ethics’. Environmental Ethics 15: 259–274. CrossRefHill, T. E. 1983. ‘Ideals of human excellence and preserving natural environments’.

Environmental Ethics 5: 221–24. CrossRefHull, R. 2005. ‘All About EVE: A report on environmental virtue ethics today’. Ethics

and the Environment 10: 89–110.Hume, D. 1975. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the

Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Hursthouse, R. 1999. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hursthouse, R. 2007. ‘Environmental virtue ethics’. In R. Walker and P. Ivanhoe (eds.),

Working Virtue, pp. 155–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Inwood, B., and L. Gerson. 2008. The Stoics Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia.

Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.Jenks, M. and N. Dempsey. 2005. Future Forms and Design for Sustainable Cities.

Burlington, MA: Architectural Press.McLennan, J. F. 2004. The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. Ecotone Publishing

Company LLC.Moncrief, L. W. 1970. ‘The cultural basis of our environmental crisis’. Science 170(30):

508–512. CrossRefNelson, M. P. 1993. ‘A defense of environmental ethics’. Environmental Ethics 15:

245–257. CrossRefPeterson, C. and M. Seligman 2004. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and

Classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rolston III, Holmes 2005. ‘Environmental Virtue Ethics: Half of the truth but danger-

ous as a whole’. In R. Sandler and P. Cafaro (eds.), Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 61–78. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Sandler, R. 2007. Character and Environment: A Virtue Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1462-9011(00)00102-7

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0029-4624.00136

http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics199416324

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8009(02)00088-5



http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.170.3957.508




Sandler, R. and P. Cafaro 2005. Environmental Virtue Ethics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.

Schmidtz, D. 1994. ‘The institution of property’. Social Philosophy and Policy 11: 42–62.

Schmidtz, D. and E. Willott. 2003. ‘Reinventing the Commons: An African case study’. Environs 27(Fall): 203–232.

Slote, M. A. 1992. From Morality to Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.Stavins, R. N. 1998. ‘What can we learn from the Grand Policy Experiment? Positive and

normative lessons from S02 allowance trading’. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(3): 69–88. CrossRef

Swanton, C. 2003. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. CrossRef

Taylor, P. W. 1981. ‘The ethics of respect for nature’. Environmental Ethics 3: 197–218. CrossRef

Tainter, J. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, A. 2009. ‘A radical hope for living well in a warmer world’. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23: 43–59. CrossRef

Van Wensveen, L. 2000. Dirty Virtues: The Emergence of Ecological Virtue Ethics. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Van Wensveen, L. 2001. ‘Attunement: An ecological spin on the virtue of temperance’. Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8(2)(Fall-Winter): 67–78. CrossRef

Van Wensveen. L. 2005. ‘Cardinal environmental virtues’. In R. Sandler and P. Cafaro (eds.), Environmental Virtue Ethics, pp. 173–194.

White, L. 1967. ‘The historical roots of our ecologic crisis’. Science 155: 1203–1207. CrossRef

http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jep.12.3.69

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0199253889.001.0001


http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9185-2

http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/pcw20018222

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203

the virtue of environmental creativity

Documents