The Rearguard of Modernity Environmental Skepticism as a Struggle of Citizenship

8/6/2019 The Rearguard of Modernity Environmental Skepticism as a Struggle of Citizenship

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The Rearguard of ModernityPeter Jacques

The Rearguard of Modernity:

Environmental Skepticism as a Struggleof Citizenship

Peter Jacques*

Environmental skepticism doubts the importance and reality of environmentalproblems, but it is not about science. It is about politicsglobal politics to bespecic. In 2001, Cambridge University Press published Bjrn Lomborgs TheSkeptical Environmentalist,1 which argued that the worlds environmental condi-tions and human well-being were nearly universally improving, using Julian Si-mons work as an inspiration. 2

This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will con-tinue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time,indenitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity willbe at or above todays Western living standards. I also speculate, however,that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life aregetting worse.3

In its elemental form, 4 the skeptical program asserts that there are no envi-ronmental problems that threaten environmental sustainability, except perhapsthe environmental movement which they believe is obstructing human prog-ress.5 Importantly, environmental skepticism is distinct from, if sympathetic to,

what is often referred to as free market environmentalism, 6 which questionsthe legitimate role of government in environmental problems but does not ar-gue that environmental problems are imagined or politically fabricated. Skepti-

* I am especially grateful to Riley Dunlap for his comments on this paper. I am also grateful toZachary Smith, Dwight Kiel, and Sharon Ridgeway for their comments at the Western Social Sci-ence Association April 2005 where this paper was initially presented. Finally, I thank the four anonymous reviewers who provided substantive and important suggestions.

1. Lomborg 2001.2. See for example Simon 1981, 1995, 1999; Simon and Kahn 1984; Moore and Simon 2000; and

Myers and Simon 1994 (a debate).3. Julian Simon, quoted at the front matter of Lomborg 2001, emphasis in original.4. McCright and Dunlap 2000 and 2003 describe elements of a political movement detailed be-

low.5. For example, Arnold and Gottliebs 1994 title and premise is, Trashing the Economy: How Run-

away Environmentalism is Wrecking America.6. Anderson and Leal 1991.

Global Environmental Politics 6:1, February 2006 2006 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology


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cism is also distinct, if sympathetic with, the US counter-environmental WiseUse movement for local industrial access to public lands, though Wise Use lead-ers such as Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb are also environmental skeptics. 7

Thus, even though skepticism from the start has been and is part of thebroader stream of [a] right-wing political 8 movement, skepticism is a newkind of anti-environmental sub-movement.

Since most of the controversy surrounding environmental skepticism hasbeen on the order of why it is wrong, 9 academic discussions have been fo-cused on the fact that its assertions are scientic outliers. 10 However, the impor-tance of skepticism lies outside of its epistemic challenges.

There are two reasons why its political claims are more important than if and how skepticism is generally incorrect. First, science alone, if at all, does not

drive international environmental (or other) policy, and the fact that skepticismhas found an audience among important elites is more consequential than its(mis)representation of environmental conditions. 11 Second, if the Kyoto Proto-col controversy in the US is any indicator, simply creating signicant levels of conict within epistemic communities may be just as effective in stalling protec-tive environmental policy as settling a debate between claims. Therefore, thecontrarian knowledge claims made by skeptics are of secondary importanceto the political conict they generate and the meaning this has for globalsocieties. 12

Skepticisms doubt of environmental knowledge is thus supercial, tan-gential even, to its more important arguments for limiting who and what citi-zens are responsible to and for. More importantly, the struggle over the state of the planet is a struggle over societys dominant core social values that institu-tionalize obligation and power. This contest has been overshadowed if not

wholly unrealized because academics have been overly concerned with thecontrarian claims themselves, leaving the meaning of skepticism relatively underdetermined and under-analyzed. This paper begins addressing these moreprofound political issues.

From here, the paper is organized to describe the what, how, and

Peter Jacques 77

7. Arnold and Gottlieb 1994.8. Buell 2003, 6.9. See for example, some of the criticisms of Lomborg in Union for Concerned Scientists 2003

with responses from Peter Gleick, Jerry D. Mahlman, and E.O. Wilson; Brockington 2003;Pimm and Harvey 2001; Simberloff 2002; Moomaw 2002; Rennie, et al. 2002; Ege andChristiansen 2002; Simberloff 2002; Neumayer 2001; Grubb 2001; Grist online magazine 2001has responses from E.O. Wilson, Stephen Schnieder, Norman Myers, Lester Brown, Emily Matthews, Devra Davis, David Nemtzow, and Kathryn Schultz. Schultz does do a political anal-

ysis of Lomborg nding his hidden agenda intent on dividing the left, assigning environmen-talists power they never had, and for wrongly accusing them of forcing false choices betweenenvironmental issues and hospitals and kindergartens.

10. See Oreskes 2004 for an excellent discussion of the point of scientic outliers and the politics of scientic consensus.11. Jasanoff 1993; and Harrison and Bryner 2004.12. For this reason an analysis of skepticism using Schattschneiders (1960) model of conict

would provide explanatory fruit, but that is not the thrust of this paper.


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why of skepticism in that order by deconstructing the relevant literature. Thepaper introduces the concept of deep anthropocentrism as an ethical assump-tion that separates non-human nature from society. Doing so effectively dis-solves impending civic duty and obligation to ecological changes because they are no longer important. Most importantly, the environmental skeptical move-ment guards against paradigmatic changes to world dominant social values andinstitutions that guide the global accumulation and concentration of power.

A Review of Environmental Skepticism

A review of the skeptical literature provides over fty books, with theoverwhelming majority of them written since the 1990s with overt ties to con-

temporary conservatism.13

This does not mean that every single skeptic is a con-temporary conservative. Gregg Easterbrook 14 and Magnus Enzenberger 15 offer examples of liberal and Marxist views respectively. However, the vast majority of skeptics are contemporary conservative, and the latter exceptions do not offer any evidence of a concomitant social movement.

Consistent concerns range from the skepticism of the precautionary prin-ciple, global warming, ozone depletion, nite natural resource depletion, andbiodiversity loss, to a committed faith in genetically modied organisms, thepetroleum industry, and agricultural and industrial chemicals. The concentra-tion of skeptical claims from the 1990s onwards indicates an intense burst of in-terest in the environmental skeptical program and is consistent with a conserva-tive countermovement against global environmental concern (describedbelow). 16 Thus environmental skepticism is not, unlike its name might suggest,a disposition to withhold judgment until more compelling evidence is pro-

vided. Instead, environmental skepticism is a project that is skeptical of main-stream environmental claims and values but very faithful (i.e., not skeptical) tocontemporary conservative values and issues, such as its faith in industrial andagricultural chemical benets.

Skeptics often describe themselves as underdogs who are speaking truthto power, 17 while debunking junk science that has been constructed igno-

78 The Rearguard of Modernity

13. Jacques 2005, among the titles, almost all occur after 1992 and the Rio Summit. I useSchumaker, Kiel, and Heilkes 1997 distinction between conservatism and contemporary con-servatismwhich they dene as a combination of traditional conservatism and classical liber-alism. They note that the most important outlet for this view is the National Interest, and is seenthrough free market oriented think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

14. Easterbrook 1995.15. Enzenberger 1974.16. Jacques 2005. A sample of this list includes Baileys work 1993, 1995, 2000; Bast, Hill, and Rue

1994; Bate 1997; Beckerman 1996, 2003; Coffman 1992, 1994; Driessen 2003; Easterbrook 1995; Balling 1992; and Wildavsky 1995 among many others.

17. Indeed, in Speaking Truth to Power (1979), Wildavsky argues for policy succession where thesuccess of a policy or problem is not based on its absolute condition, but its relative conditioncompared to past problems. This logic is evident in many skeptics who argue Western moder-nity is a success based on the past horric living conditions of pestilence, famine, disease, heavy direct pollution and other criteria by which they judge modern society as something like theend of history. Note Wildavskys conservative contentment with the status quo in Speaking.


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rantly or maliciously by environmentalists. 18 I will note below, however, that while skeptics are positioned contrary to normal ecological understandings of the world, the idea of speaking truth to power is somewhat ironic since skepticsspeak squarely from the base of the dominant modes of power, not against them.

Much of environmental skepticisms history is well known by environ-mental scholars and is part of our standard textbook repertoire, starting with themaligning of Rachel Carson in the early 1960s by the chemical industry to thecornucopian work of Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute, andJulian Simon, afliated with the Cato Institute, in the 1980s and 1990s. 19 Thisearlier mode has aptly been referred to as cornucopian or promethean, 20 be-cause of its interest in refuting ideas about environmental scarcity. Cornucopian

thought has now expanded into environmental skepticism, through an inter-est in wider environmental problems of sustainability and global ecologicalchange, including scarcity.

One important difference between the cornucopian view and environ-mental skepticism is that some skeptics may not dismiss the reality of all envi-ronmental problems. Rather, some skeptics dismiss the importance of environ-mental problems through a lter of cost-benet analyses that cast doubt uponthe rationality of seeing environmental problems as signicant. Lomborg, for example, not only disputes the science behind many global environmentalproblems, but he disputes the rank ordering of environmental issues as priori-ties, which is discussed in more detail below. Nonetheless, this is a different challenge compared to the simpler cornucopian claim of quasi-innite ecologi-cal abundance. The comparative cost-benet lens articulates an additional levelof reasoning why, in their judgment, environmental problems are generally not

worth public concern and therefore action. Nonetheless, a dening element toboth cornucopian thought and environmental skepticism is the forceful rejec-tion that environmental problems threaten the sustainability of modern humansocieties. This rejection is usually accompanied by the allegation that environ -mental knowledge has been politicized and therefore has become unreliable.So, the new incorporates the old but casts a wider net, and the new name is not unproblematic but seems relatively apropos.

Specic Skeptical Propositions

Given the wide understanding of the cornucopian literature, I will limit this review to a handful of important skeptics. I give Lomborg specic attention later in the paper.

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18. See any number of skeptics: Arnold and Gottlieb 1994; Driessen 2003; Huber 1999; Dunn andKinney 1996; Bailey 1993, 1995, 2000, 2002; Bast, Hill, and Rue 1994; Bolch and Lyons 1993;and Easterbrook 1995 among others.

19. Nash 1990; Smith 2004; Switzer 1997, 2003; Simon 1981, 1995, 1999; and Simon and Kahn1984.

20. Dryzek 1997.


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science about tobacco and second hand smoke among other interests. The TASSC apparently had the same website as Milloys current junk science site. 30Finally, Milloy operates a watchdog website on behalf of corporate prot, whichhe believes is being eaten away by an expanding demand for corporate socialand civic responsibility. 31

Three skeptics who have not received a lot of attention but who help ex-plain its ideological ties are Dunn and Kinney 32 and Huber. 33 These authors spe-cically identify environmental skepticism as a conservative manifestation.Dunn and Kinney note that environmental skepticism, or what they refer to asthe Asset Culture due to its optimistic world view about human progress,comes from this conservative ideology. Free marketers, libertarians, and con-servatives, for the most part, are the philosophical component of the Asset Cul-

ture. They are the Asset Cultures conscience and articulate its rationale.34

They want environmental policies to meet very high cost-benet minimums in order to justify interference with the free market. Since they see environmentalchanges as mostly non-problematic, this benchmark is rarely met for them, andenvironmental policy is largely illegitimate.

Huber argues that humans have no moral obligation to non-human na-ture because humanity has the ability to dominate and control nature just as, inhis view, Judeo-Christian doctrine tells us to do. 35 Consequently, Hubers think-ing illustrates how skepticism is consistent with the claims of some green theo-rists who identify modernity as a framework for domination over nature andhuman others. 36 He believes the more effectively we dominate nature, thebetter off humanity will be. In contrast to the importance of human develop-ment, nature is unimportantsomething I refer to as deep anthropocentrism.Huber makes the case for preserving wilderness, his apparent sole environmen-tal concern, 37 on strict instrumental aesthetic grounds (it makes us feel good togo there) because any moral afliation to nature is seen as antithetical to hu-man purpose and ontology.

In sum, skeptics believe that modernity has arisen from the domination of nature, and that modernity has provided humanity with the progress andafuence our pre-modern predecessors wished they could have had while they led miserable lives. They see modernity as a fantastic success story, including its

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30. Meier 1998; and Schiesel 1997.31. See http://csrwatch.com/about.htm, accessed 5/17/05. Paul Driessens 2003 book Eco-Imperial-

ism: Green Power Black Death through by Merril Press (run by Alan Gottleib and Wise-Usefounder Ron Arnold) argues a closely related claim that corporate social responsibility activistsare costing the poor in the Global South their lives.

32. Dunn and Kinney 1996.33. Huber 1999.34. Dunn and Kinney 201.

35. This indicates that Christians who see a stewardship role, like most Franciscans, will not beskeptics.36. Barry 1999; Merchant 1980; and Ridgeway 1996.37. Huber seems to be unique among the skeptics in his advocacy for wilderness as far as this au-

thor can tell.


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effects on the environment which they believe are getting better all the time. They nd modern environmental scholarship leftist, antithetical to the notionsof progress and economism, and determined by a manipulative environmentalelite who have the ear of the press and popular culture. As such, skeptics want torein in environmental policy and responsibility through cost-benet analysisthat limits the casting of risk in modern terms. These positions have elicitedmany responses.

Research in Response to Skepticism

A great deal of important work has been done in relation to environmentalskepticism, much of it related to global warming which is perhaps one of skepti-

cisms most important projects. Two of these studies conducted by McCright and Dunlap are essential to understanding skepticism as a part of the conserva-tive political movement. In their rst study, they describe how the conservativecountermovement (contra the environmental movement) has mobilized think tanks to use environmental skepticism to re-frame global warming as a non-problem. 38 In their second study, they explain how this successful reframing,led by conservative think tanks, took advantage of political opportunities, suchas the 1994 Republican take-over of the US Congress, to kill the US adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Importantly, the skeptics did not win the debate over cli-mate science, but they created enough conict about it to allow them to achievetheir goal.

Beseley and Shanahan 39 test Lomborgs suggestion that we hear so muchbad news because the media is providing lopsided media coverage of envi-ronmental issues. 40 On the contrary, they nd that the media has slowly anni-hilated important environmental content given its lackluster sex appeal. Im-portantly, the more contact people have with the media (especially television),the less environmentally concerned they typically are within a wide degree of statistical condence. Boykoff and Boykoff observe a similar tendency among journalists writing for elite US newspapers that lead them to equally present di-

vergent sides of a disagreement. They argue that this explains why top US news-papers have over-represented skeptical claims about global warming, and haveincorrectly indicated a divided scientic debate on the matter. 41

Herrick and Jamieson 42 studied the use of the term junk science in acontent analysis of online news media for the period 19952000. They point out that US President George W. Bush uses the antonym sound science to ref-er to junk science which indicates, at least in part, the depth of skepticalinuence. Herrick and Jamieson dene junk science as a lack of appropriatecredentials, lack of peer review, lack of publication of a nding, weak biblio-


38. McCright and Dunlap 2000.39. Besley and Shanahan 2004.40. Ibid, 862.41. Boykoff and Boykoff 2004.42. Herrick and Jamieson 2001.


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graphic lineage (ndings not based on adequate research), and outright fraud.In their content analysis of news media, they nd that the articles we reviewedprovided almost no evidence of substantive or procedural inadequacies in the scienceused to support environmental or public health policies. 43 Herrick and Jamie-son found that many of the news media sources suggested that junk science

was evident simply because the policy implicated would result in negative so-cioeconomic conditions. This in itself implies that junk science is science that simply contradicts a capitalistic goal of accumulation of wealth, and that skep-tics are defending the social paradigm from knowledge claims that present achallenge to the conservative-capitalistic worldview. Consequently, the termjunk science has very little to do with science or fraud, but more to do with

whom that science serves. Further,

The most striking nding of our content analysis is that an overwhelming majority (84%) of the articles contained an anti-regulatory message or ad-monition, asserting that a particular policy or regulatory perspective or pro-gram should be reversed or opposed because it is based on junk science.None of the articles reviewed used the term in conjunction with a pro-regulatory message. 44

And,

Almost none of the articles we reviewed documented scientic analysis con-ducted in a way that is inadequate or inappropriate. Despite the use of thephrase, junk science, most of the articles reviewed were critiques of environ-mental or public health policies based on politics or values rather than on sci-ence.45

They conclude that the term is political trope or a code word strategically usedto evoke ideological contrarian, anti-regulatory discourse. 46 In addition, Thejunk science trope tends to shatter rather than inform civicdialogue, and it doeslittle to enhance public understanding of environmental science and its socialapplications. 47

Herrick and Jamiesons conclusions about civic dialogue appear to contra-dict the proposition of reexive modernity and the democratizing effect coun-ter-claims should have on complex industrial society. Becks risk society ex-pects that the competing truth claims made by heterogeneous actors will openup civic dialogue with robust choices about high-stakes and uncertain environ-mental risks. 48 This reexivity is a welcome antidote to technocratic and mono-lithic decision-making.

Myanna Lahsen examines this contradiction. She deftly points out in her

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43. Herrick and Jamieson 2001, 13, emphasis in original.44. Herrick and Jamieson 2001, 14.45. Ibid, 15, emphasis in original.46. Ibid.47. Ibid, emphasis added.48. Beck 1992. See Buell 2003 where he advocates for the metaphor of dwelling in crisis to avoid

disinformation, alienation and disempowerment in the risk society.


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analysis of climate skepticism that reexive discourse requires decision makersand the general public to be better equipped to critically judge science. 49 She re-

veals that conservative nancial elites and fossil fuel interests have used decep-tive manipulation to make non-peer reviewed claims appear so, hidden vestedinterests in the packaging of anti-greenhouse claims, and have actively resistedtransparency in skeptical claim generation. In addition, the above elite have agreat deal more inuence and wealth, and powerful interests behind environ-mental skepticism have gained the audience and loyalty of elite decision makersin the US Congress who have not even read or seriously considered alternatives,such as the International Panel on Climate Change reports. As Lahsen states:

To be effective, reexive modernization institutions need to nd ways to dis-criminate between better and worse sources of scientic claims related to en-

vironmental reality [than PR campaigns designed to deceive] and to be espe-cially critical of authoritative black box opinions disseminated by vestednancial and political interests and by the politicians who serve these eliteinterests. 50

From the analysis of Lahsen and Herrick and Jamieson, environmental skepti-cism appears to be organized on several fronts to shatter informed and criticaldialogue.

Social research in response to environmental skepticism indicates that skeptical interpretation is dependent on a relatively narrow set of ideological

values from a conservative counter-environmental movement. These values in-clude a deep anthropocentric ethic.

Deep Anthropocentrism

In 2003, Peter Balint tested the theory that unexplored ethical differences and values determine or have a heavy hand in determining how someone interpretsdata and derives policy goals. He nds that this is the case for both environmen-tally concerned scientists and Lomborg, where an anthropocentric ethic ex-

plains Lomborgs judgments while the arguments of Lomborgs detractors canbe explained by their ecocentric positioning. 51 From this he says, Lomborg, andmany economists, might argue that because only humans have moral standing,managing the environment for the purpose of maximizing human well-being isthe moral course. 52 Balint explains that this moral position led Lomborg andhis detractors to their policy positions, where Lomborg saw the need to keepgovernment intervention in the market limited only to the cases where such in-trusion was reasonable to do so. 53 Of course, few would argue for unreason-


49. Lahsen 2005.50. Ibid, 161.51. Balint 2003.52. Balint 2003, 21.53. Lomborg 2001, 32.


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ations are irrelevant unless they directly involve human welfare. Nature canmatter in deep anthropocentrism, but only in very strict instrumental terms. For example, Lomborg argues that poor air quality, since it is directly linked to liveslost, may warrant more attention and even policy. However, even many instru-mental values of non-human nature are dismissed because they are too far off,indirect, or inconsequential compared to other matters. Indirect relationshipsbetween human welfare and non-human nature as well as notions of interde-pendence are dismissed as soft and therefore invalid. 59 Often this is describedas something like waiting for Godot where the benets of manysometimesall60environmental policies are viewed as invalid and utopian. Deep anthro-pocentricism does not see non-human nature as important in absolute terms,and only in thin instrumental terms is non-human nature considered relatively

important. For the deep anthropocentric, nature, unlike in anthropocentric environmentalism, is excised utterly from society. This ethic provides the basis for a great deal of anti-environmental hostil-

ity because from a deep anthropocentric view, environmentalism creates obsta-cles for human development in the name of nature but which deep anthropo-centrism sees as mere token mechanical objects in space. For example, Ron

Arnold has famously said that because environmentalists argue for nature, envi-ronmentalism is generally anti-humanist and that this leads to a holy war

where environmentalists worship trees and sacrice people. 61 Since trees haveno moral or even pragmatic standing, placing them within the moral sphere cre-ates economic trade-offs that harm people, and in this way, environmentalismis tantamount to a religious conict. Likewise, Easterbrook says, Those who donot believe in God should understand that, so far as we know, human life is themost important thing going on, but the importance of human life is not about knowledge, it is about values and even cosmology. 62

This segues to religious evangelism, which is a substantive part of skepticalethics that is used to justify deep anthropocentrism as a matter of divine ordina-tion. Importantly, the religious evangelical skeptics appear to be exclusively inthe US, which probably relates to the right-wing mobilization of evangelicalChristians in the US, and may be a yet unnoticed ssure in the skeptic front,

where European skeptics like Lomborg are not making nationalistic or overtly evangelical arguments. Peter Huber explains that hard greens (skeptical con-servative environmentalists) follow a Judeo-Christian creed, and have no reti-cence in seeing nature as a tool humans are supposed to master, and when thetool is less useful they believe we should discard it. Humans have neither moralnor pragmatic reasons to conserve, and this is another difference with anthropo-


59. Huber 1999.60. See for example OLeary 2003.61. Helvarg 1994, 12. Arnold, a stalwart of the Wise Use Movement in the American West, has in-

corporated skepticism into his political movement.62. Easterbrook quoted in Ambrose 2003, Lexus online.


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centric environmentalism which certainly sees pragmatic usefulness of non-human nature. Huber writes,

After the ood, God directs Noah to subdue creation, to take dominationover the sh of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Today we can think of nature as benignonly because we have obeyed that one command so very faithfully. We haveno more practical reason to conserve nature than we have to conserve cows.

We can subdue at will and replenish at will too, with transgenic mice andcloned sheep. 63

Further,

At this point in history, the second vision is a lot more likely than the rst.

We can go it alone. We need energy, nothing more, and we know how to get it from many more places than plants do. We dont need the forest for medi-cine; as often as not, we need medicine to protect us from what emerges by blind chance from the forest. We dont need other forms of life to maintain abreathable balance of gas in the atmosphere or a temperate climate. Wedont need redwoods and whales at all, not for the ordinary life at least, nomore than we need Plato, Beethoven or the stars in the rmament of heaven.Cut down the last redwood for chopsticks, harpoon the last blue whale for sushi, and the additional mouths fed will nourish additional human brains,

which will soon invent ways to replace blubber with olestra and pine with

plastic. Humanity can survive just ne in a planet-covering crypt of concreteand computers. 64

The whale or the redwood not only are unimportant in themselves, they have no value through their interdependent functions in the world. They do not even have enough value to be treated as renewable resources worthy of cultiva-tion and conservation for future use as anthropocentric environmentalists haveagreed to for some time. 65

Since nature has no important value, its loss is without meaning to hu-manity or to societies because humans can simply move on to the next resource

or technologically clone or create entirely new ones. Therefore, if nature is not im-portant, changes in nature are not an indication of decline nor do they imply any threats to sustainability whatsoever, and this assumption helps explain how theskeptical project creates such an optimistic state of the world.

This also explains what has frustrated many environmental scientistsabout environmental skepticisms epistemological orientation. Deep anthropo-centrism functions as a foundation for judging legitimate knowledge. Withinthe skeptical frame, knowledge that asserts human interdependence with non-

Peter Jacques 87

63. Huber 1999, 80.

64. Ibid, 81, emphasis added. The visions he refers to in the beginning of the quote seem to refer tothe visions of environmental hell proposed by environmentalists through either Malthusian de-mise or Faustian hubris.

65. See Gifford Pinchots selection in Nash 1990 as one well known example of anthropocentric environmental concern.


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human nature and sees the human species as an ecological being is not valid. The central organizing principle of ecology itself is quietly assumed to be falsefrom the outset.

Further, if humanity is not interdependent with nature, and humanity hasno obligation to nature itself, then human society is released from any expecta-tion or obligation to consequences that may result from changing nature. Con-sequently, there is no rational ecological citizenship under deep anthropocent-rism or environmental skepticism. More importantly, these discarded globalenvironmental problems can not threaten modernity or its institutions if they are conceptually alienated from human society.

Cost-Benet Policy Analysis and Deep Anthropocentrism

Several skeptics argue for the use of a more rational assessment of environ-mental policies via cost-benet analysis. Cost-benet analysis is not inherently skeptical to environmental concerns. Even though cost-benet analysis clearly isan artifact of modernity which assumes all environmental values can be madecommensurable, 66 it is not intrinsically skeptical. This allows for cost-benet analysis to be used by skeptics as something they see as a value-neutral op-tion, though, as Douglas Kysar points out, this approach has a religious fervor all its own. 67

Lomborg urges policymakers to prioritize public funds and commitmentsaccording to his skeptical ethics. 68 While Lomborg is not explicitly making thesame stark moral claim Huber is, deep anthropocentrism is embodied in his callfor using the measure of lives lost or saved from a particular policy interven-tion. Without intervention the free enterprise is implied: 69

Counting lives lost from different problems also emphasizes a central as-sumption in my argument: that the needs and desires of humankind repre-sent the crux of our assessment of the state of the world. This does not meanthat the plants and animals do not also have rights but that the focus will al-

ways be on the human evaluation. 70

Lomborg states that this is a guiding principle in determining how importanta specic environmental problem might be. He describes some important com-ponents of his position:

This describes both my ethical conception of the worldand on that ac-count the reader can naturally disagree with mebut also a realistic concep-tion of the world: people debate and participate in decision-making pro-


66. Espeland 1998.

67. Kysar 2003.68. Lomborg 2001, 2004.69. Interestingly, the sentiment here is not the market that is intervening in ecology, but rather gov-

ernment that must identify a rational reason to intervene in an otherwise benign market.70. Lomborg, 2001, 11.


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cesses, whereas penguins and pine trees do not. So the extent to whichpenguins and pine trees are considered depends in the nal instance onsome (in democracies more than half of all) individuals being prepared to

act on their behalf. When we are to evaluate a project, therefore, it dependson the assessment by people. And while some of these people will denitely choose to value animals and plants very highly, these plants and animalscannot to any great extent be given particular rights. 71

Lomborg does not seem to give serious consideration to the notion of non-human rights or the complexity inherent to the decades old discussion of rights.

The statement also overlooks an internal contradiction. Despite his commentsin the rst quote on rights, Lomborg notes that penguins and pine trees are con -sidered dependent on the individuals prepared to act on their behalf, and from

here animals cannot to any great extent be given particular rights. Thus, peo-ple are given the ability to consider animal rights so long as they do not consid-er them to be real. Admittedly, this is a supercial critique of Lomborg though,because the substance of his rejection of non-human rights to limits on the ex-tension of rights is really based on agency in society.

That said, Lomborgs framework would have a profound affect on rights ingeneral if Lomborgs position is accepted, because it suggests human childrenand some developmentally disabled individuals would fall under the same coupde grace as non-human nature due to their limited agency. People who are im-prisoned are also vulnerable to a profound loss of claims upon the state. Casesof abuses in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq indicate just howdelicately positioned the observation of these rights are. Yet, the lack of advo-cacy in Abu Ghraib on behalf of abused prisoners does not make them any lessabused. An abused child is still abused, whether or not someone takes up their protection. Indeed, if rights are dependent upon the criteria of a majority of citizenswho have mysteriously had rights bestowed upon themwilling toact on ones behalf, this means that all rights are in the same precarious positionas Lomborg suggests for animals. Everyone is dependent on other people con-sidering and acting on our rights, but this dependency does not thankfully keepus from actually extending rights to children or disabled individuals or realizing these rights for ourselves, nor should it for animals.

Further, and more importantly, our civic membership and duty to naturecannot be dismissed by waving away rights for the community of life. Dob-son, for example, notes that a quasi-contractual arrangement between rationaladults is not necessary to imbue duty. 72 Lomborg continues, The conclusion isthat we have no option but to use humans as a point of reference. How can weotherwise avoid an ethical dilemma? 73 Of course, this does not avoid an ethicaldilemma at all. Lomborg is choosing what parts of life on earth count and

Peter Jacques 89

71. Lomborg, 2001, 12, emphasis in original.72. Dobson 2003.73. Ibid.


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which ones do not, and apparently his consideration for the rest of life (non-humans) on the planet is so thin, such a choice is not even considered an ethi-cal dilemma. 74 These problems indicate to me a rush to judgment and I suspect this rush represents a more important objection that underlies Lomborgs eth-ics. In other words, I suspect his objection to rights for non-human nature is not about the difculty of assigning them, but the profound civic and ethical impli-cations for acknowledging human membership to the larger community of lifeon earth.

On pragmatic grounds, this kind of policy basis ignores environmentalproblems that do not directly cause loss of human life but still endangerssustainability such as crescive events that can be more damaging than the im-mediately obvious tanker on the rocks. 75 Since these and other problems do

not count in Lomborgs view, there is no reasonable obligation to attend tothem.Lomborg might reply that obligation is not the point of his work. After all,

he does warn that I am saying . . . that by far the majority of indicators showthat mankinds lot has vastly improved.This does not, however, mean that every-thing is good enough76 and that this means that we still need to work on our problems. However, he systematically goes through many of our global environ-mental problems (oceans are almost totally neglected), noting that none of them are worthy of concern because they are improving, and they will continueto improve so long as economies grow, not because policies have accompaniedthem. This leads to the conclusion that public action is not justied under these

very strict criteria. I take this to mean that things really are good enough whenmeasured against his criteria, otherwise enough has lost its meaning as I un-derstand it.

In addition, these issues are subject to the second kind of relative compari-son that denes a legitimate problem within deep anthropocentrism. As long asecological policies cannot show direct impact of lives saved relative to other mortal threats (such as eating poorly), ecological criteria fall outside of Lom -borgs consideration and therefore of what is reasonable action for public en-deavor and expense. Thus, even though things may admittedly not be good, thepolitical sphere is not responsible for all but a small number of ecologicalchanges under deep anthropocentric assumptions.

These values explain how skeptics can denounce critics of the modern cap-


74. See Ridgeway 1996 for an excellent dissertation on the role of value in environmental policy and problems with cost-benet analysis; also see Espeland 1998; and Kysar 2003.

75. Beamish 2002.76. Lomborg 2001, 4, emphasis in original. The controversy of his interpretation and use of data

that led Lomborg to say things have improved also led to Lomborg being found in violation of

Danish standards for academic honesty by the Danish Committee on Scientic Dishonesty.Since then, and while Lomborg was a director of an independent agency on environmental is-sues, appointed by neoliberal Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the committee itself has come under in-

vestigation for this allegation, and the charge was dropped. See Jamieson 2004; and www.lomborg.com.


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italist arrangement which they feel has a fantastic story of success, and for environmentalists (e.g., Al Gore) . . . to call such a civilization dysfunctional isquite simply immoral. 77 This thorough alienation of society from nature indeep anthropocentricism is critical in constructing skeptical cost-benet analy-sis. However, it is secondary to why the argument is made in the rst place

which is to defend the status quo system of accumulation and power for con-sumptive elite in the Global North.

Reasons for the Rearguard

In the case of the global environmental problems, we see a new thrust of environmental oppositionthe full scale involvement of the conservative

movement.78

Knowing that skepticism is part of a political movement, and in order to better understand what this movement means, we are forced to ask the question for

what purpose? Why dismiss biodiversity loss or global warming? At rst it may appear to be a case of simple short term proteering, or the desire for piecemeallegislation. However, much more is at stake because threats to sustainability threaten the plausibility, as Pirages puts it, of the dominant constellation of common values, beliefs, and shared wisdom about the physical and social envi-ronments, or the dominant social paradigm (DSP). 79

What is at stake is the legitimacy of the status quo of world politics nestledin our dominant core civic paradigm of Enlightenment liberalism that keeps thestructure of obligations national and market based. Consequently, this struggleautomatically includes the modern institutions of the state system and worldcapitalism that accompany the DSP. An alternative paradigm that sees humanity as a civic member with rights and obligations to the community of life on earth

writ large (nature in an international/global sense) is pressuring the modernframe of the world that is embodied in the DSP, and skepticism has been mar-shaled from contemporary conservatism to defend it.

Environmental scholars have long warned that, At the root of the ecologi-cal crisis . . . are the basic values which have built our society, and that our cur-rent dominant social value system is ecologically maladaptive and in need of paradigmatic change. 80 These core values are important because, even thoughthey do not ensure total adherence, they do guide and institutionalize individ-ual and social action. At the world politics level, they guide our most embeddedinstitutions in the state system and world capitalism through economism. 81

More importantly, since, as Dunlap and Van Liere assert, core cultural val-ues and beliefs are important determinants of individuals beliefs, values, and

Peter Jacques 91

77. Lomborg 2001, 328.78. McCright and Dunlap 2000, 504, emphasis added.79. Pirages quoted in Dunlap and Van Liere 1984, 1013.80. Swan quoted in Dunlap and Van Liere 198481. Paehlke 2004.


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attitudes, 82 these core values may serve to discipline citizens to accept and re-produce what Bill Hipwell aptly has named industriathe modern compre-hensive and predatory world system of knowledge and power that includes the

world state system, world military apparati, and world capitalism (among other nodes). 83 In other words, the DSP serves as a universal cultural policing mecha-nism to ensure compliance with the most powerful world political forces that remain relatively invisible in our daily lives, so long as we acquiesce. InGramscian terms, the DSP provides a hegemonic discourse that mediates hu-man-nature relations in mechanical and managerial terms for economistic exploitation. 84 Increasing attention to the contradictions between industriaand sustainability may be operating as a (resilient), if fragmented, counter-hegemonic discourse, and environmental skepticism appears to be organized to

disintegrate and outcast ecological resistance and resistors.85

If this is the case,skepticism is more than a defense of proteering; indeed, it is a defense against an impending cognitive and cultural revolution that would change the way ma-terial power is concentrated and accumulated.

Collectively, Enlightenment liberalism frames the core values that guideand dene what is expected and owed to society and what society owes us, and

who that society includesin short, our core values frame citizenship. 86 These values are:

(1) commitment to limited government, (2) support for free enterprise, (3)

devotion to private property rights, (4) emphasis upon individualism, (5)fear of planning and support for the status quo, (6) faith in the efcacy of science and technology, (7) support for economic growth, and (8) faith infuture abundance. 87

Conservative authors sometimes say the world is in the midst of a culture war. This may have many meanings, but Wildavsky believes it refers to a funda-mental conict in what we fear the most. Hierarchists fear social deviance, in-dividualists fear regulation, and egalitarians fear technology. 88 Currently, theDSP favors the individualists, who fear regulation and favor free enterprise and

economism. In fact, the DSP has been so successful in spreading globally that Robert Paehlke warns us that Economic considerations overwhelm all else. What might be called economism is triumphant. 89 He goes on to say, how-ever, that the legitimacy of economism is eroding due to, among other things,


82. Dunlap and Van Liere 1984, 1014.83. Hipwell 2004.84. See for example, Rupert 1993; and Luke 1999 for a discussion of governmentality and

managerialism.85. Buell 2003.86. Paterson 2000 and Conca 1993 discuss this pressure on the state system and world capitalism;

see Kilbourne, Beckmann, and Lewis 2001 for a discussion of how the DSP is founded on ideo-logical modernity through Enlightenment liberalism that guides virtually all intellectual en-deavors within the paradigm, 211.

87. Dunlap and Van Liere 1984, 1015.88. Ibid.89. Paehlke 2004, viii.


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its failure to address democratic, social and ecological vulnerabilities. JohnCobb sees economism as a religious world view that includes skepticism, whichhe also believes is being fundamentally challenged by ecologism:

Economistic thinkers typically believe that there is no problem about theindenite expansion of the economy. Indeed, this indenite expansion istheir goal. They met the warnings of physical scientists with skepticism. His-tory has shown to their satisfaction that the technology that is such an im-portant part of capital can solve the many problems that natural limits aresupposed to put in the way of continuing economic growth. They point tomany past instances that illustrate this. 90

The contemporary conservative movement is interested in protecting theDSP because, as McCright and Dunlap put it, the Dominant Social Paradigmincludes core elements of conservative ideology . . . 91 This is also why conser-

vatism is negatively related to environmental concern, because the . . . pursuit of environmental protection often involves government action that is seen asthreatening core elements of conservatism, such as the primacy of individualfreedom, private property rights, laissez-faire government, and the promotionof free enterprise. 92 Conservative economism is not just defending business,but the structural world order in which industria can survive.

Civic Elements of Sustainability

The DSP keeps civic expectations bounded by Enlightenment liberalism. But theinability of economism and the current global order to address or establishglobal accountability for environmental issues has inspired Andrew Dobson, 93John Barry 94 and others 95 to call for an ecological citizenship. 96 This stemsfrom the realization that changes in ecological understandings are forcing achange in our notions of citizenship. Scholars disagree in how this should betreated, but most acknowledge that ecological changes challenge the way in

which obligation is encumbered and accountable. In discussing this growing lit-

erature, Dobson writes that:. . . ecological concerns have given rise to talk of responsibilities as well asrights. The social objective to which these responsibilities relate is the sus-tainable society, and the questions posed by environmental politics are:

Peter Jacques 93

90. Cobb 1999, 39.91. McCright and Dunlap 2000, 504505.92. McCright and Dunlap 2000, 504; see also Dunlap, Xiao, and McCright 2001 for elite ideologi-

cal cleavages in the US.93. Dobson 2003.94. Barry 1999.

95. E.g., Smith 1998; Christoff 1996; see also the special issue of the journal Environmental Politicson environmental citizenship edited by Dobson and Valencia Siz 2005 and includes Bell 2005;Carter and Huby 2005; Drevenek 2005; Hailwood 2005; Luque 2005; Smith 2005; ValenciaSiz 2005; Seyfeng 2005; and Valdivielso 2005. See also Eckersley 2004 for a related argument grounded in the state.

96. Dobson 2003.


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what kind of responsibilities relate to this objective, and to whom or what are they owed? These are citizenship-type questions, and the answers tothem in the ecological context take us beyond the liberal and civic republi-

can citizenship and past cosmopolitan citizenship.97

In other words, we cannot contain global ecological accountability within thestate system because ecological changes themselves are beyond the state systemand they are aggravated or caused through world capitalism and economic glob -alization. Material ecological conditions in one nation can be altered by remotenon-citizens of other nations, but as of now the ecological impacts caused by re-mote non-citizens are hidden/distanced through elements of a global economy that buffers consumers and dis-empowers those directly dependent on ecologi-cal goods and services. 98 Dobson believes these changes then create a relativeand differentiated responsibility determined by our own respective ecologicalimpacts through consumption. However, my point is not to endorse one variety of ecological citizenship over another. Rather, what is important is that ecologi-cal changesand threats to sustainability in particularhave called the DSPand classical notions of civic responsibility into question. This specic possibil-ity probably explains why some skeptics have turned to extreme nationalism ingroups like Sovereignty International run by evangelical skeptic, MichaelCoffman, that are specically focused on potential US-international obliga-tions. 99 In short, environmental skepticisms function is to take up the rearguard

of an increasingly maladaptive system that is being called into question as athreat to human sustainability.Indeed, twenty years ago, Dunlap and Van Liere conclude, if we are in fact

entering an era of ecological limits in which the societal impacts of environ-mental pollution, resource scarcity, etc., become more pronounced, the resul-tant experiences will provide increasing pressure for revision of our DSP towarda more ecologically sustainable world-view. 100 This is what I believe is happen-ing and why we have a conservative movement pushing environmental skepti-cism in defense of the DSP.

Conclusion

Environmental skepticism presents itself as speaking truth to power throughcontrarian claims they say objectively debunk the myths of the environmentalmovement and environmental science. Yet, the analysis of this literature indi-cates that environmental skepticism is specically issued from a conservativeideology supported by a coherent conservative countermovement opposed toenvironmentalism. This positions the bias of skeptic knowledge claims, and

while environmentalists claims clearly have their own bias, the claim that the


97. Dobson 2003, 8485.98. Conca, Princen, and Maniates 2001; Conca 2001; and Ktting 2004.99. See www.soveriegntyinternational.com; Coffman 1992, 1994. See Luke 2000 for a solid expla-

nation.100. Dunlap and Van Liere 1984, 1026.


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skeptical project is generated from a sense of objectivity and value neutrality isatly rejected as part of an attempt to subvert reexive interrogation and the im-plied counter-hegemonic resistance this entails.

In particular, environmental skepticism is opposed to the establishment of global environmental concerns and those related to human sustainability.

The substantive arguments of environmental skeptics are guided by a deepanthropocentrism which dissolves society from non-human nature. Impor-tantly, a severed nature-human relationship effectively challenges the institu-tionalization of obligation to environmental changes and the people who areaffected by these changes. Skepticism therefore preserves a conservative hope for limited government in the global market while it protects a consumptive eliteagainst responsibilities for these systemic changes. In the process, environmen-

tal skepticism defends the structure of dominant social values in world politicssuch as the state system, expansive resource exploitation under world capital-ism, and a hegemonic and consumptive North (and US in particular from

where most skeptics hail) to ourish unmolested by the gadies of the environ -mental movement.

Therefore, being overly concerned with the contrarian knowledge claimsof environmental skeptics misses skepticisms more important political messageabout duty and the legitimacy of public environmental concern. Environmentalskeptics, even if they are conclusively proven wrong on all counts, will succeedinat least temporarilyguarding a falling hegemonic order if academia, thepress, and government become overly interested in Darth Vader and Obi Wandueling at the bay doors. 101 I suspect that skeptics will be happy to continue tocreate this kind of conict because it ultimately provides an indenite defenseof the dominant social norms and institutions. They do not need to win the de-bate about the state of the world to maintain this power and dominance. They only need to establish enough doubt about the environmental epistemic com-munity having the debate to throw public action into doubt as well.

Kysar, in Ecology Law Quarterly,notes that both environmentalists, such as Worldwatch Institute, and skeptics like Lomborg are guilty of hyperbole whichthey use to focus attention on their own policy agenda through competing Lit-anies. 102 These Litanies are, among other things, struggles over the ability toframe risk, and therefore regulation:

As a result, science becomes a contested space in which competitors viefor the legal authority to impose costs on other parties, whether in the formof regulatory compliance, or externalized physical and environmentalharms. 103

However, Wildavsky, correctly I think, argues that risk is politically assessed by morality, and this makes the framing of public risk a civic exercise. 104 From here,

Peter Jacques 95

101. I suppose this metaphor makes environmentalists the Empire, but I like it anyway.102. Kysar 2003.103. Kysar 2003, 254.104. Wildavsky 1995, 440. Kysar also makes this point about morality guiding risk perception.


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he argues that environmental policies need to be made with a preponderance of evidence, not evidence from probabilities. But skeptical ethics severely limit

what counts and is available to create such a preponderance of evidence. Thus,contrary to what Lomborg argues, understanding what is to be done andprioritizing action is not just a simple matter of adding up the costs andbenets. The real struggle is over what can count as a cost or benet or even

whether such a conceptual tool is fair, appropriate, or relevant. 105Environmental skepticism is therefore a struggle over the core values and

beliefs that frame who and what risks should count as important. But these areno ordinary historical risks. The state of the world debate centers on what corecivic values should organize risk in society regarding human development andprogress. Wildavskys culture model is based on core fears and different cul-

tural sets have different core fears of risks, and that environmentalists have aspecic culture guided by radical egalitarianism. I do not disagree that someenvironmentalism is deeply concerned about the fair distribution of ecologicalspace and change. 106 Turning this around though, it is just as plausible to frameskeptics as struggling for a radical in-egalitarianism within the core values that already organize world politics.

In conclusion, skepticisms inuence in politics and culture presents a dra-matic threat to human ability and political will to protect the critical life sup-port systems found in ecological goods and services because they dismiss thesesystems as important. Many civilizations have actively decided, for one reasonor another, to ignore the erosion of this essential relationship between society and non-human nature, only to collapse or nd themselves at the mercy of aDark Age that is dened by misery and suffering. 107 Jared Diamond writes,

Our world is interconnected and interdependent, like Easter Islands 11clans. Today, we face the same problemsloss of forests, sheries, biodi-

versity, fresh water, and topsoilthat dragged down past societies. But for the rst time in world history, we are producing or transporting toxic materi-als, greenhouse gases, and alien species. All these environmental problemsare time bombs. The world is now on an unsustainable course, and theseproblems will be resolved one way or another, pleasantly or unpleasantly,

within the next 50 years. 108

Yet, Lomborg shrugs off the matter of accountability to exactly these kindsof changes as blame and says our true priorities should be more along thelines of a low-fat diet instead of focusing on pesticides, oxygen depletion,global warming, forests, wind power, biodiversity, etc.issues which are moreclearly someone elses fault. 109


105. Lomborg 2001, 2004. Again, Kysar provides important criticism.106. Dobson 2003 is a good example.107. Diamond 2004 and 2005; and Chew 2001108. Diamond 2004, 8.109. Lomborg 2001, 330.


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To some, the song of skepticism sounds like a sweet song, laden with thesecurity and power of modernity. Diamond points out with optimism I share,

when Easter Island collapsed, it did not have the benet of knowing that other societies had collapsed by undermining ecological life support systems. How-ever, taking responsibility for global environmental integrity would be a posi-tive step towards paradigmatic and r/evolutionary changes, one of which wouldbe an incorporation of obligations to human societies commensurate withmembership and impact within a larger international and ecological commu-nity. 110 This directly challenges the way power and wealth are concentrated inthe current world system, and environmental skeptics have organized as therearguard for this system and its globalizingbut beleagueredparadigm. Tobe sure, the fact that conservatives have felt the need to rally around the DSP in-

dicates that the ecological position is gaining strength.Skeptics however wish to postpone this change. Their placations soundgood to the elite who are part of the dominant world order. From Diamondslessons, this skeptical song is like lulling the boiling frog to sleep, ignoring that someone put the frog in the pot to begin with, and then telling the frog that things are, in fact, getting better all the time.

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