Perspective on Environmental Ethics

In our brief, week-long introduction to the arena of environmental ethics debates, we have come across several wholly independent schools of ethical thought.  The ethical perspective that I found most interesting, not necessarily the one I agreed with most, but the one I found most interesting was the individualist consequentialist perspective.  The was first put forth by Peter Singer and Donald VanDerVeer, and is essentially hedonistic, meaning that the only things that are ethically consequential are those things that can feel pleasure and pain, or things with interests.  Singer's original definition was pretty straightforward.  Anything that felt pleasure and pain was important, and anything that didn't was not.  Basically, sentient mammals were the only morally considerable life-forms.  Further adaptations of this approach, both by Singer and other environmental ethicists created a sort of hierarchy, with sentient, self conscious beings (people, whales, apes) on the top, then sentient, non-self conscious beings (pretty much every other animal) , then non-sentient things (plants, bugs, rocks).

The reason I find this approach to be the most interesting is the debate of replaceability that follows.  Someone following Singer's original hypothesis would be able to find it morally sound to kill a human being (provided the killing was entirely painless) as long as he replaced it with another, because it was only "the total experience and not the organism" ( P&P p. 15) that mattered.  Singer himself saw this as an issue and later revised his perspective with the above mentioned hierarchy, but replaceability is still morally sound for any tier of that hierarchy that is the self-conscious one.  

If I cut down a tree for firewood, I plant another in its place.  Personally, I just like the idea of there being more trees on this planet, so I plant trees even if I haven't cut one down, but regardless, I replace my trees.  Following the individualist consequentialist approach, that is a morally sound thing to do.  I am also the son of a farmer, and my step-dad raises beef cattle for a living.  A lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of raising an animal solely for the purpose of butchering it, but I personally don't mind.  Our farm raises the male calves from some local dairy farms (animals the dairy farms have no use for) as well as some other cattle we buy on auction.  As long as our farm replenishes the animals we sell to be butchered, we are following a individual consequential ethic, and I find that it works pretty well.