The environment is a touchy subject in contemporary political discourse and praxis. Much of it belongs to the domain of sound bites and emotional rhetoric that is conveniently packaged and distributed with a degree of fear-mongering that can make even the most stolid individuals react in a somewhat visceral manner. On the other side, we are faced with wilful denialism — of the growth of a pernicious fad that seeks to find solace not in prudence but in escape. The excesses of the former’s brand of hysteria and the latter’s outright denialism are both the signs of a hyper-charged discourse that bears no relation with the brutal realities of the recent centuries of our existence: the widespread destruction of the environment and creeping urbanism that seeks to transform the world not into the cities of yonder but sprawling and uniform entities without regard for the consequences of the damage that such uniformity and banality can cause, and without thought for the impacts of a burgeoning population, of greed and materialism that has been left unchecked by more conventional mores — whatever their source, it does not matter — that have now evaporated into thin air.

But is there really an environmental politics? Must there be one? The two sides spar but do not seek to identify the unspoken but looming figures clad in the extensive fencing suits that protects the soft, mushy muscular mass of the inside turning into a bloody font. It is my contention that those who seek to differ on the very purpose of man’s existence on this planet form two different political factions, even if they do not seek to advance to more important speculations about the nature of man. What they do differ on is the cause and ends of man’s existence on this planet and his relation to the world he inhabits, and while such rationalisations of conduct exist in far more diverse forms than the two that I explore, they represent a unique and pliable mixture of these two stances, which we must consider in turn.

The first is those who seek to deny the importance of environmental stewardship. The unspoken assumption that is made is that no environmental damage is too high, too significant, if it produces the ability to practice more freely some abstract principle — ‘liberty’ being the most common one. The tyranny of environmental protection seeks to prevent them from doing whatever is suitable to either engage in the pursuit of prosperity or some other aim that is more often than not quantifiable in financial terms. The costs of environmental protection and stewardship are just that — costs that must be taken into account, amortised — and so when it is done, it is often done to provide some indication of compliance with the law or with the wills and wishes of those it seeks to benefit from: take, for example, green posturing and environmental work done by a firm that produces highly polluting machinery of some sort, or uses enough electricity to keep multiple coal plants occupied for decades in a second, but hides the environmental costs of such actions. The creation of a green ‘facade’ is farcical and disingenuous — but the conduct that it seeks to hide comes from the same impetus that denialism traffics in: that the consequences of such conduct are of no material or moral importance to man. Where do we first see this ideology?

It is in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government that we find a prominent occurrence of this. Locke argues “that God gave the world to Adam, and his Posterity in common” (V.25), but this is not the prominent statement of record that we seek. To what end was man granted dominion over Earth, even if it was to be held in common? Locke insinuates that the question of dominion exists to cover even the primitive tribes that seek not to improve nature or appropriate from it anything beyond that which their needs demand of them — they are “Tenant[s] in common” (V.26). But those who seek to live in a primitivistic fashion do not live in accordance with the moral precepts laid down, as shown by “Revelation” (V.25): he argues that “God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best Advantage of Life, and Convenience” (V.26). Once created, the Earth was man’s, and was to be exploited not merely for what he needed, but for what he wanted. Of course, Locke imposed his constraints on property, but his sleight of hand ensured that property was more or less unlimited and without consequence for the world outside of the plot of land thus enclosed by one’s labour, as C.B. MacPherson argues in Possessive Individualism. But this misses the point: Locke’s sleight of hand gifts to this acquisition of property, unbounded and uncontrolled, the sanction of divine right: “God and his Reason commanded him to subdue the Earth” (V.32). Thus, man is “in Obedience to this Command of God” (V.32) when he seeks to take away from nature and to his bosom whatever feeds his fancy, whatever makes him think of the alienation of discomfort from him. Throughout the entire chapter (V.25–51), we see a constant emphasis and repetition of this theme — that mankind was gifted the world in common and commanded to appropriate it instead of letting it remain fallow and unproductive at the natural rate of growth. Indeed, Locke makes a definitive statement condemning this — that not taking from Nature and not ‘improving’ it by mixing one’s labour in it is the essential characteristic of someone who seeks not to obey God’s commands: “it cannot be supposed he [God] meant it should always remain common and uncultivated” (V.34). Locke’s argument is wholly identical to the ‘prosperity gospel’ found in certain branches of evangelical Protestantism today: that God gave mankind in common the Earth and labour, and exhorted that Man put labour to chip away from the common for comfort, wealth, and riches. There is no practical end to acquisition — if that which it is held in does not spoil.¹

It is no surprise that Locke does not believe in a politics of the highest good, the summum bonum, but instead expresses the totality of his theory of the state in some form of contract. The state exists by convention to honour the contract: it is a figment of the imagination that seeks concord and protection not from the vagaries of some external force which might alter the condition of man, but to prevent misappropriation of that which had already been adopted. In Locke’s view, there is no reason why a beautiful vale or a calm lake ought to be protected: it is property that has not been subdued, and even if it is held in common it must be put t some use (cf. V.35). Why, then, must a Lockean care about the environment? It is merely something that exists to be overwhelmed and appropriated, and Man has a categorical duty and a divine command to do so: both reason and revelation, for Locke, point to this at length. Man exists as the labouring man who seeks to do whatever it takes to provide such things as he may deem desirable, but no where does he have a duty to care for the environment. This is not laissez faire:make no mistake of confusion and conflation. It is not enough to let the environment, if it can be ever articulated as a monolithic entity, be: one must actively wage a pseudo-war with it. If certain individuals and body corporates preach the virtues of ‘green’ life but do not seek to address substantial problems, it is because they are cut from Locke’s cloth, and that has locked them into a safe, not realising that when the ground under it crumbles, so will they. Such individuals are more likely to support some evolutionary metaphysics: that if man today is the result of the survival of the fittest, man is merely helping the evolutionary process and furthering the demands of nature by creating adverse conditions for the production of a fitter collection of species. Some might even think that to be their moral imperative.

On the other hand, we have another ideology, as poverty-stricken as this one. It thrives on apocalyptic hysteria: that the world as we know it might be ending, or that a sea-level rise will kill [insert some ridiculously large figure from your imagination]. It seeks to spur those who may be otherwise indifferent to act, but it never comprehends why it is that the environment is important except that it endangers man in some form. The focal point upon which is converges with our first type of thinking about the environment is the end to which the Earth exists: for the dominion of man. It only squeals moderation. The world is still man’s to conquer and subdue, but he must do it with some measure of regard for those who seek to live in this world as well. But the ends are almost always human: they are not conducive to a sincere appreciation of the environment, but to the creation of a fad or passing interest where one may perhaps treasure the memory of walks in the bucolic countryside but forget the necessities of conservation: that damage done to the planet is not merely damage done to some Lockean commons, enclosed by the boundaries of nations and by the labours of states, but to the Earth as a whole, which we inhabit, not as harbingers of domination.

Such hysteria over natural resources and environments is often a rationalised sentimentality: because ‘we’ think the environment is good, ‘we’ must promote such lines of argument that will seek to provide worst-case scenarios and not the unadulterated ltered and unbiased result of unimpassioned analyses. The scientific method, having been co-opted, produces goals for action but no reasonable methods for attaining them. When it does, it promotes some version of the Luddite manifesto — a stark reactionary tone — or some call for extreme and accelerated ‘progress’ in developing more ‘renewable’ forms of energy without the necessary prudential considerations, namely, how do we get there with the current systems we have? In other words, such individuals necessarily traffic in utopic politics: that some end countenances whatever means it takes to get there, even if the means are dubious in some form or compromise the demands of ethical representation of investigations and endeavours.

Part of this group, of the second typology, is a group of hard-core environmentalists often branded as ‘crunchy,’ who seek to impose their individual preferences upon others but use the same tool that we must be forced to condemn: a rationalised sentimentality. They are able to experience, like Petrarch did upon his ascent to Mount Ventoux, a rich sensual feast that is able to appreciate nature. But unlike Petrarch, they lack in reason: they do not know what it is that makes nature valuable; they do not seek to justify is but hold their views to be axiomatic and unshakeable, and all other views as deviations from the norm. But why? When they are called upon to justify themselves, as one inadvertently is when one seeks to posture and grandstand, the narrative breaks down, and the sentimentality turns into anger.

Thus, green politics as it is observed today, is bereft of principle [in that, it does not differ much from the claims made otherwise in the arena where politics is practiced]. But behind that irrationality, there is a way out, one that disagrees with both positions. What is it?

Beauty and justice are both inalienable components of the good life. But can the beautiful exist without reference to the larger world, the world from which we sprang from? The aesthetic component of nature is as important — if not more important — than the functional uses which it has been prescribed. And for most, nature is the first solace, the first calm after the storm of the city, of man’s jungles. Never before have we seen a world so aesthetically degraded, where man could walk on and on without seeing some semblance of the world he inhabits. This radical posturing over prosperity that our first group of ideologues practice does not care about the damage wrought upon the psyche and composition of man when he is taken away from that which is, quite literally, natural. The latter seek to instrumentalise that which ought not to be, for before instruments were something, it was a totality, and end in itself. But this appreciates with the force of the romantic imagination and the rational impulses of the aestheticians the importance of harmonious existence: it treats nature not to be the hypostatisation of some mystique or otherworldly machination, but of man’s corollary, as important as man’s existence and even central to it if not instrumental. It exists not for man’s dominion but only for his appreciation, and when we enter it Mammon must be left behind, forgotten and chastised. It seeks not to overburden, not to live beyond one’s means. Man can be the supreme animal, but he is still an animal of some kind; if he has been granted dominion, he cannot be the enforcer of a contract but the trustee of that which has been granted for past, present, and future.

This post was inspired by Q 13 of the Politics II examination conducted in September 2019 for fellowships at All Soul’s College, Oxford.