PHILOSOPHY FOR GENIUSES
LIBERTY, RESPONSIBILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT:
Over the past few years you might have noticed a growing movement towards individual rights over community good. It’s expressed in many ways over many issues. Once you start to recognise it, you’ll hear it every day. Look out, it’s the libertarians!
We’re seeing it now about the Solitary Islands Marine Park plan. ‘It’s my right to fish where I want.’ Anyone who’s interested in the Clarence Regional Vegetation Management Plan process will have heard it: ‘It’s my land. I’ve got the right to cut down trees on my land.’ And the Water Management Plan. ‘It’s my right to pump as much water as I want out of the river on my land.’ Or, ‘My right to light a fire.’ Or, ‘I should have the right to subdivide my land as many times as I want.’ ‘The greenies have got in the Government’s ear and they’re interfering with my rights.’
This view is based on the primacy of individual rights. It’s called libertarianism. It goes back a long way in philosophical thought to John Stuart Mill, and it’s always been big in the United States. Libertarians like small, non-interventionist government, they love free enterprise, and they don’t like any kind of assistance such as welfare or subsidies. They believe in user-pay taxes. They don’t like laws. They believe in the survival of the fittest, and that government should only exist to protect individual rights.
People who speak out for the environment and social justice tend to talk about things like the public good, or future generations, or other species. We support laws which protect the environment. We accept that for the greater good there should be limits to our individual actions. We won’t cut down all the trees on our land because we know the planet needs a healthy atmosphere. We see the health of a whole river ecosystem as being more important than our right to pump unlimited amounts of water from it. We believe in the well-off helping the disadvantaged, and we support public health and education for all. We know that the value of our society is more than the sum of its parts.
Tyranny is the end product of sovereign rule. Read George Orwell’s 1984 to see a society without individual rights. Anarchy is the end product of total individual freedom. There are many shades in between. Do we form societies based on kinship and affection, or do we trade some of our individual rights for security and peace? Should individual rights prevail over the common good? Many Australians are rejecting the old myths of collective action and are looking to the US model, which enshrines individual rights through the Bill of Rights.
What’s the message we need to give the loud libertarian lobby? Firstly, government laws and policies should certainly be scrutinised by communities to make sure they will bring true collective benefits. Secondly, any notion of individual rights must include responsibilities. One reason we’ve come to need environmental laws is that land managers over the past 200 years haven’t cared for land in a responsible way. Before anyone can assert property rights, an environmental duty of care needs to be articulated and demonstrated. Total individual liberty only works when everyone’s doing the right thing – by each other, by the environment and by future generations. One thing is certain - the last person left on the planet after all other organisms have been destroyed won’t live very long.
Next in our Philosophy for Geniuses series: utilitarianism – traybacks, falcons and how to stop your dog falling off the back.