Status Updates From The Wild and the Wicked: On...

Rules are rational according to Kant's 'Categorical Imperative'. There are many rules that exist because it doesn't make sense not to follow that rule. I think this is meant to apply to the services nature provides. We must protect nature because it makes no sense to destroy nature to the point at which it can no longer provide for us. Author doesn't really go into this detail, but that's what I've gleaned.

Best chapter so far. Environmentalism cannot be about 'winning', through which human actors are treated as objects and obstructions. This politicisation of the movement is not ethical, is no longer about acting rightly, because it does not open the action to scrutiny from a community of evaluators. "Whether an action is effective is not a morally robust answer to the question of what we ought to do"

"if you're reasons can't withstand the scrutiny of outside parties, then you might a week abandon any thought of yourself as reasonable." A 'good' action is not explained by an end state of the world that only those sharing your values believe in, but is justified by a rigorous consideration of what it is to be an environmental citizen. Even if that action cannot be rationalised by simple self-interested motivations.

Getting into the meat of the climate debate now, questioning the end state of the world narrative of geoengineering. Too narrow a conception of what is a 'good' outcome for any action will have unintended and potentially disastrous consequences for those not involved in the decision making process. It is easier to accept nature's naturalness than to bear the guilt of damaging nature irreversibly through intervention.

Quite a stifling view on agency as only borne by humans. He ignores some fascinating recent theorising on animal agency, but it helps him to get his point across at least. Our actions cannot only be motivated externally by forces out of our control, but are justified internally by a set of reasons. Environmentalism, he posits, must re-make a distinction between the human agent and exclusionary desire-driven nature.

This chapter makes me concur with one review I read which is that the book reads as an introduction to ethics, but I think it's going to be more of an application of basic ethics than that review lets on. Ch.4 - the author has established the fundamental flaw in environmentalism judging human actions (eg. burning fossil fuels) by state of the world outcome. We have to investigate our reasons for all of our actions.

"figuring out the right thing to do isn't so easy"
I think he's spent 100 pages deconstructing the precious literature. It makes it really easy to follow and it's enjoyable, but he needs some balance now. I think he's being clever not to promise answers to environmentalism's current flaws, but to get us to rethink our understanding of the natures within and around us. It's all about the journey...