Devall and Sessions provide a good introduction to the ideas of the "Deep Ecology" framework for environmentalism. Deep Ecology has come to stand for a strand of activism and analysis within environmentalism. It tends to be concerned with ethical issues and consequently, elements of the ethical position of Deep Ecology can be grafted onto different kinds of structural analysis of the causes of environmental problems - for example Plumwood shares some ethical ideas with Deep Ecologists, but her analysis of the causes of environmental problems tends to be based in feminism and marxism; McLaughlin shares some ethical ideas with Deep Ecologists but tends to have a marxist analysis of environmental problems. By contrast, other writers from a marxist or feminist background will emphasize ways in which they think Deep Ecology conflicts with their marxist or feminist beliefs - e.g. Seager, Bradford.

The most basic position of Deep Ecology and that which differentiates it from other ethical positions is that "all living things have intrinsic value" (Devall & Sessions). This is referred to Dobson as the "biocentric" ethical position, meaning that life (bio) has ethical value regardless of how we humans look at it. He constrasts this with a more common view in the present day which he calls "anthropocentric" or human centred. In this view only humans have ethical value and other things have ethical value if we humans give it to them. For example, gum trees might be regarded as beautiful if we think they are or as useful etc. but that is a human evaluation. He calls this more common view "anthropocentric" or human-centred.

The Deep Ecology position is that we regard ourselves as part of an organic whole. We arrive at this understanding through active deep questioning, meditation and our way of life. It is part of our spiritual growth to identify with other humans. This is commonly acknowledged. We can go beyond this to include the nonhuman world. The implication of this view is that if we harm nature we are harming ourselves, since we have come to see ourselves as part of this organic whole and to identify with the rest of it.

Deep Ecologists believe that there is a biocentric equality, in the sense that all tliving things have equal intrinsic worth. All things in the biosphere have an equal right to live and blossom within a larger self realization.

[ It is worth noting that this is a pretty extreme position from the standpoint of an anthropocentric value system. For example, it would mean that small pox and humans have an equal right to flourish. I will not discuss the above points here as what I have to say about the basic principles covers these areas as well.]

[These principles have become widely accepted as a key statement of the deep ecology position. I will summarize those that I take to be central]

1. All living things have intrinsic value - i.e. value in themselves, regardless of the use humans may make of them.

2. Biodiversity contributes to these values and is itself a value.

3. Humans have no right to reduce this diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

[4 to 7 specify various measures which need to be carried out to reach these goals - e.g. reduction of the human population.]

8. Those who subscribe to the principles listed above "have an obligation" to implement the necessary changes - i.e. to look after other living creatures.

I accept this in the following sense. Living things have directions, purposes or aims, even if these are not conscious. We regard them as animated by directional drives. The most basic is that they aim to live but we quite happily see them as having other aims, particular to their species. We have a sense of the biological nature of each species and with that goes an idea of what it is for a member of the species to flourish - by realizing the aims natural to its species. This is all totally common sense in that we talk about plants having "diseases" or a tree "doing well" and is even more obvious in connection with conscious life where we use terms like "pain", "avoid", "seek" etc. quite freely.

How does this kind of language relate to values? With regard to every species "the good" is that which realizes most the aims which are given to that species as part of its biological nature. This relates to a particular theory of ethics in regard to humans in which the good is that which best suits the nature of humans as a species (e.g. Aristotle, Hobbes, Marx etc.). Clearly a version of this is readily applied to non-human species. So we can say what is good for a member of a particular species or not good for it. We do this quite un-self-consciously - it is not good for cats to drink cows' milk; plants from Western Australia do not like too much humidity etc.

What is not clear about all this is the sense in which Devall and Sessions are using the term "value" [see my comments on (8)]. What I have done is to suggest a way in which this fundamental premise of Deep Ecology can make sense.

This can be argued to follow from the sense of intrinsic value I have specified. If each particular life form has intrinsic value, then the realization each of these different forms of intrinsic value depends on biodiversity - where the most diverse possible forms of intrinsic value are realized. For example we could have a native forest in Australia in which lantana (an introduced weed) has totally taken over from every other species in the understory - there are no shrubs, vines, grasses, small herbs - only lantana and trees. In such a situation we have a diminution of biodiversity. We could also say that the intrinsic values of the species which lantana has smothered are unable to be realised - the intrinsic values of hibbertia, sundew, wonga wonga etc. are missing.

However it's interesting to note what has happened here. The values of each individual lantana and each individual wonga wonga etc are not being added up to get an overall intrinsic value. If you did that you might find no difference in overall intrinsic value - i.e. there would be less wonga wonga intrinsic value but more lantana instrinsic value, less hibbertia value but more lantana value and so on. Instead there is a kind of god like point of view in which each individual of a species is taken to be representative of the species as a whole and it is the species which has intrinsic value. This is a bit bizzarre. From the human perspective it would be little consolation to know that you and all your friends were going to die but it would be OK because your species was going to go on and other members of the human species would flourish.

Why is biodiversity an "intrinsic value"? We could maybe see why it has instrumental value for most species - they are more likely to flourish in a diverse environment. However this is not an intrinsic value - the value of biodiversity is merely an adding up of the intrinsic values of the species concerned - it is what will suit all of them with no species being left out. In saying this you make the favouring of biodiversity an obvious and tautologous point. A biodiverse environment fosters the intrinsic values unique to each of the species which make up that biodiversity. By contrast a simplified environment only allows a few forms of intrinsic value to be realized.

What about smallpox? To preserve biodiversity we should let small pox back into the human community. According to Deep Ecology every species has equal intrinsic value and humans can only reduce biodiversity to satisfy vital needs. Sure, some humans might die off if small pox was reintroduced but the species is quite safe at the moment, the human species that is. However the smallpox species is languishing in a couple of test tubes in the US and Russia and could easily become extinct very soon!

This could be argued to follow from 1. and 2. Humans are just one species among others. Each species has a set of intrinsic values or aims unique to it as a species. If there is a conflict of interests between humans and other species, why should the set of values associated with human interests have some kind of automatic moral priority. Looked at from the outside this would just mean that the moral interests of the human species were given priority over the moral interests of other species. For example, there is a conflict between the interests of (some) humans and those of albatrosses at the moment. There is no reason to believe that some kind of god/goddess looks down on all this and says that humans should get their interests met at the expense of albatrosses. More broadly, humans at the present time could be argued to be like lantana in a native forest. They are just one species but their proliferation is causing harm to the values of many other species.

I am going to argue that this does not actually follow from (1), (2) and (3) in the sense I have been explaining them so far.

(a) I can recognize that other species have their own instrinsic values, that may be different from my own as a member of the human species. However what this can also mean is that what is good for me as a human is not necessarily good for another species. It is quite consistent to decide, for example, to destroy a patch of forest for a garden or to hunt an animal for food and at the same time to recognize that what I am doing in this is to harm another species; while the result might be good for me as a member of the humans species. In the case of small pox it can easily be argued that what is good for humans is to destroy the whole species of small pox, while recognising that this is a really bad thing for the small pox virus and its remaining living examples.

My claim is quite simply that it is not always good for me, or any particular human to maximize the intrinsic value of another species. Val Plumwood, a philosopher and ecofeminist was attacked by a crocodile in Kakadu and managed to avoid being eaten. Her conclusion was that it taught her that other species are different from humans; we are not all part of some indivisible organic web in which harm to another species is necessarily harm to ourselves. At the same time it was important to recognise that her escape harmed the crocodile - its interests would have been better served if she had stayed around to become food. She concludes that true respect for the intrinsic values of other species must include the recognition that our interests and theirs do not necessarily coincide. She uses the term "earth others" to get this sense across, of fellow travellers on earth who are like us in some ways but different in other ways.

(b) We can put this argument against (8) another way and point out that we can believe quite easily that all species have their own intrinsic value and still ask why it is an intrinsic value for the human species to look after other species.

(c) What actually makes this argument (8) appear plausible is that our Christian tradition makes us imagine some kind of Greenie God/Goddess - an extraterrestrial human in the sky who is the nurturing creator of all species and wants them all to do well. Because this God/Goddess wants the other species to do well, we humans should follow His/Her lead.

There are a lot of hoary philosophical issues around this. For example:

All that this suggests is that it might be better to see what we could say about reality as we perceive it that proves that a Deep Ecology respect for other species is worthwhile. Then if we want to believe that there is a God/Goddess that has a moral position on this, we would have good reasons for saying that the God/Goddess, being a reasonable person, would have to have come to the same conclusions that we have ourselves on the matter!

I am going to suggest that we could replace (8) to get a statement that might provide humans with a reason to look after other species in a context where we recognise (1), (2) and (3) as pointing to the fact that other species have ethical interests that are instrinsic to them and may differ from the interests of humans, viz:

It is a capacity of humans as part of their nature to feel empathy and love for other species on the planet and to desire their well being,

or in other words:

Humans can serve their own interests by expressing their love for other creatures and for life in general.

In doing this we humans recognize the intrinsic values of other species and act to enhance the lives of other species out of our own self interested benevolence. If you like, what this idea claims is that it is a kind of "spiritual growth" for humans to recognize their kinship with other species and to act to look after them. There are real emotional rewards and a sense of fulfilment for humans in doing this.

As Plumwood points out, this kind of ethical position is akin to that which is socially constructed as appropriate for women in their relationships with family members. In other words it is considered to be emotionally rewarding to work to help other family members, especially one's children, even in situations where you do not get any immediate narrowly selfish reward out of this action. These actions are not inspired by some kind of abstract moral principle that says that women are obliged to behave in this way because children and family members have "intrinsic value". Instead, these actions are thought to arise from love and empathy for particular individuals.

Similarly, it is suggested that humans can come to act in a caring way for the natural world by developing particularistic feelings of sympathy for other animals or liking and understanding of plants. In this ethical position it is not inappropriate that wild life documentaries concentrate on the cute and cuddly animals in ways that stress their similarities, as well as some of their differences, from humans. Or similarly it is not inappropriate that gardening shows and wildlife calendars emphasize the beauty and life pursuits of plants. Senses of awe, wonder, love, reverence etc are the foundation of a deep ecology perspective in action.

Roszak puts forward a similar analysis on these issues and claims moreover that humans have actually evolved so as to see other species as being like ourselves, as having intentions, needs, desires and so on. This has helped us to survive on the planet because it accords with the reality of life on the planet. We have evolved, he maintains, to have a deep rooted though sometimes unconscious knowledge that we depend on the flourishing of other species and their well being. It is this that gets expressed in many of the religious beliefs of indigenous people. He argues that empathy for other species is part of our deep nature, our inbuilt unconscious that is actually repressed in a society like this where nature is treated as a mere resource to be used by humans.