Blue River Declaration: An Ethic of the Earth

Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 2012

, a group of environmental thinkers-ecologists, philosophers, foresters, poets and novelists, religious and environmental studies specialists, and indigenous traditions experts-met with the audacious goal to write coUaboratively a new ethic. The result was a statement of conscience that drew on the collective wisdom of the assembled group about the human place in and responsibilities to the biosphere and its diverse and interconnected living systems. The ethic was named the Blue River Declaration for the river in Oregon's Cascade Mountain Range where it was crafted. The Declaration arose from a conviction that our species has precipitated an environmental and social catastrophe, through a complex mix of imprudent and unethical behaviors, and which have been justified, reinforced, and perhaps even directly precipitated, by ignorant, mistaken, outdated, and unethical ideas. Of course, times of social crisis have historically generated statements of conscience that condemn conditions, events, or trends considered pernicious, and which call for new ethical principles or moral virtues and corresponding actions, in ways that their authors hope will promote a more just and cooperative society. In 1934, for example, the Barmen Declaration was written by leaders of the 'Confessing Church' of Germany, Christians who opposed National Socialism and its many

Environmental Ethics, 2012

International Society For Environmental Ethics Vol. 23, No. 3 Winter 2012 ISSN 2224-8250

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2009

Environmental virtue ethics (EVE) first got off the ground in 1983, with Thomas Hill, Jr.'s ''Ideals of human excellence and preserving natural environments.'' Hill suggested that rather than trying to prove nature's intrinsic value or justify nonhuman rights, we might develop an environmental ethics by asking, in the face of environmentally destructive behavior: what kind of a person would do that? And: what kinds of persons will we become if we do likewise? Or perhaps EVE really started in 1853, with publication of Henry Thoreau's (1971) Walden, which lays out an approach to life focused on ''plain living and high thinking'' and connection to nature. It explicitly contrasts such a life with the materialism that has subsequently gotten us into so much environmental trouble. ''When [a person] has obtained those things which are necessary to life,'' Thoreau reminds us, ''there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.'' Unless, of course, EVE started in the mid-Fourth century BC, with the composition of Aristotle's Politics: ''Since one should take thought for the health of the [city's] inhabitants, this consists in the location being finely situated…and second, in using healthy sorts of water, and making this more than an incidental concern; for the things we use most of and most often for the body are what contribute most to health, and the capacity of waters and wind has such a nature'' (book 7, chapter 11). Or perhaps it began a century or so earlier, half a world away, in the sayings eventually collected in the Tao Te Ching, with their emphasis on nondoing (wu wei) and acceptance of the world as it is: Oh, for a small country with few people! …Although there exist boats and carriages, they have no occasion to ride in them.