The Immorality of Ecosabotage
where there is no reciprocity.” 9 This makes for an incredibly interesting argument because what Curtin offers is an extension of Gilligan’s philosophy. Not only should humans see themselves in relation to other humans and their actions, but also the environment. In other words, seeing ourselves as part of, or in relation to, the natural world forces us to act in a state of balance- if we see our actions as relative to other beings, not just humans, the issue of climate change suddenly becomes an interconnected problem with a new perspective to tackle it. However, if taking the perspective of an ethics of care is arguably a better way to tackle the climate crisis than ecosabotage, I need to prove that this perspective is a moral obligation for a person to have. I argued that ecosabotage is immoral because it will cause harm to the environment, and even though that harm may not have as much of an impact at the present time, it will have a much greater impact (in the future. So, to prove that an ethics of care is moral, do I not just need to argue the opposite? While that may be the most clear-cut way, it is important to note that ecosabotage is an action, which allows it to have a kind of immediate impact, while the ethics of care is a mentality that can only have a delayed impact. In these terms, the ethics of care has to be defined as moral or immoral on a temporal scale. Say that one person decides to adopt the mentality of care ethics. If that same person forces, or preaches, their new-found perspective onto others, that is immoral as it is causing harm to people on (potentially) both a physical and mental level depending on how far they go. To act morally, a person should adopt this perspective with the intention of educating others on it, but not forcing them into it. This allows an ethics of care to actually form between people, as they are changing their perceptions of their own accord which deepens the impact this change will have. This is not causing direct harm to those that have not adopted this consciousness as they are not being forced to think in this way. Unlike ecosabotage, where the result of one person’s perspective negatively impacts (on a
9 Curtin, “Toward an Ecological Ethic of Care,” 65.
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