Environmental Conservation..A Luxury?

In a world that is ravaged by war, poverty and hunger, the UN has designated May 22 as the International Day of Biological Diversity. Is conservation of the environment a luxury in times as these? Or is it, as most experts will explain, vital to the sustenance of life as a whole?

Here is what you said in response to IslamOnline’s query:

ZR2:

For a country that is war torn, I think that environmental issues should be last on the list.  But when the country gets back on its feet, I think that environmental laws and regulations should be implied. Following environmental laws will make things harder and more expensive but in the long run to have a clean environment is beneficial to the people for a healthy life. Less illness and disease.

abw: 

All communities try to do their best. Their governments have agreed to sign the Kyoto Protocol to impulse a better environmental policy, which was immediately stopped by the USA/Bush refusal to ratify the treaty. So what can simple people do when the USA is trashing all progress in this matter?

Stephen:    

The Bush Administration opposes the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy. The Senate's vote, 95-0, shows that there is a clear consensus within the US (not just within the Bush Administration) that the Kyoto Protocol is an unfair and ineffective means of addressing global climate change concerns.

Also, bear in mind that of the 55 countries that must ratify the treaty, the US is the only country who has even put ratification to a vote in their country. When only one out of 55 nations required to put the treaty into effect has acted, it's a signal worldwide that others agree with the President's position on the treaty.

abw:   

Third world nations were logically exempted because the USA did pollution for 100 years for its development.  So it has more responsibility for the actual situation, as do European countries.  This is why the principle that the destroyer must be the payer was applied.  All pollution in the past 100 years, and not only today’s actual production of toxic substances is what it’s all about. The USA’s pollution account is full after all this time.

Stephen:   

I agree that the US is a major polluter, and that we must clean up our environmental mess. However, it does not make sense to create an agreement where a small group of nations must do their part to clean up the environment, while a large number of nations are exempted. This is ineffective. This is why the US position (left thru right wing) is to not ratify such an agreement. Our country is not against cleaning up the environment... it is against trying to do so ineffectively.

abw:   

The true reason is that the USA does not have sufficient power for production in the coming years. This can only be obtained by a thermal power center, because nuclear energy needs too much time and too much investments to be ready on time, and after Three Mile Island it’s not very popular. Classic ways have a lower cost in the short-term, but they create much more classic pollution. That’s why Bush refused to sign under the pressure of the US private lobbies.

Disco Superfly:

To be honest I am often times more reluctant to get into a discussion of environmentalism than I am to get into a discussion of politics and religion. At least with politics and religion the overall issues discussed are fairly well know to all participants in the conversation (i.e., The existence of a supreme being, good versus evil, cultural conceptualizations of the afterlife). But I have often found discussions of environmental politics to be a great deal more muddled.  When people agree on environmental policy it is often more in substance rather than principle. The problem is one of finding a shared value system. It is difficult to discuss environmentalism in principle without answering the question: What do we hope to accomplish? And this is far from a cut and dried answer.

Allow me to illustrate. Suppose a company seeks to open a mining operation in an area identified as a fragile ecosystem, let's say an old-growth forest. There will be many groups that will mobilize to protest this activity. 

Earth First! will oppose it because as "deep ecologists" they subscribe to an ethic that always puts more value on natural ecosystems than it does on human life.  Some deep ecologists go so far as to conclude that human beings are a virus on the earth and the earth will only be healthy once that virus is extirpated.  If the old growth forest is near a community there will doubtlessly be a citizens group that mobilizes in opposition. This, in contrast to the deep ecologists, will be to protect the human welfare of the community. They will oppose the mine because of the potential health hazards posed by such an industry. 

Recreational groups will oppose it because there is a shortage of open spaces to be enjoyed by those who spend time in such places. All groups may agree on the course of actions, but they all do so for different reasons. 

This is fine but it makes the task of identifying mutual environmental ethics impossible.

So, on to the topic of biodiversity. To determine whether preserving biodiversity should take a backburner in a war torn world it would be useful to know why we promote biodiversity in the first place. Does a diverse ecosystem provide for the health of human beings? Is that important?  (Now try finding two scientists that agree on the first question. I was a biology major in college. In my graduate level courses we determined that human beings could probable make a living in an environment composed of green algae, cockroaches, and sewer rats. Human beings are an extremely adaptable species, which is why we are the only species to occupy all seven continents, although our presence on Antarctica is somewhat subdued. If humans are so adaptable and could make a living in a less diverse ecosystem, then biodiversity must appeal to other values than self-preservation.) Obviously biodiversity would be important to deep ecologists who put natural systems above all else.  But this begs the question: What is natural biodiversity? The wolf really cares very little for the diversity of the community. It only cares that it gets fed. It will continue to hunt and kill all available prey until its hunger is satiated. An individual organism concerns itself only with its own well-being. Ecosystems do tend to reach an equilibrium wherein there is a set number of individuals of any given species, and when one organism dies it is replaced by one of its own kind.  But an ecologist studying a newly denuded patch of ground is going to find a highly universe set of species.

Diversity comes with later successional stages. But later successional are not necessarily more healthy as they have largely excluded necessary early successional species.

It is impossible to rank the importance of biodiversity without first deciding on the reason that it is valuable in the first place. Environmental ethics being such a fractured, incoherent place to begin with, this is next to impossible to do. So, I don't really know if environmentalism is a luxury in a war torn world. It depends on isolating a shared value system. Anyone know where I can find one of those in a postmodern, multicultural world?