Embracing Philanthropic Environmentalism
Embracing Philanthropic Environmentalism: The Grand Responsibility of Stewardship (McFarland, 2019) is an environmental philosophy book by Will Sarvis. This volume addresses a broad range of topics and policy, including climate change, species extinction, environmental racism, and green technology.
Sarvis takes a cautionary note regarding climate change, rejecting the false dichotomy of alarmists and deniers. Instead, there is much examination of difficulties in making climate science determinations with any precision, particularly regarding prediction based upon climate modeling. There is also much discussion about the “politicization” of environmental sciences (including climate science) in which policy agendas and funding schemata distort the potentials of disinterested science. An entire chapter addresses problematic media coverage of environmental matters, which journalists often depict as a crisis situation or even in apocalyptic terms. Sarvis makes a repeated case against environmental doomsdayism and a related myth of the “unspoiled” planet as a somewhat static form of Eden. Instead, he accepts a quasi-ecotechnocrat approach; a cautiously optimistic philosophy contingent upon green science and technology. Sarvis claims that preoccupation with “elite” causes like climate change and species extinction overshadow tangible, indisputable problems, such as the higher levels of chemical contamination repeatedly and regularly found in impoverished, non-white communities.
Throughout Embracing Philanthropic Environmentalism, Sarvis sees humanity as a part of nature, thus opposing strains of “misanthropic” environmentalism that tend to view humanity as separate from and (often) despoiling nature. Human stewardship of the environment remains inherently and eternally problematic, yet offers a preferable foundational approach to addressing indisputable environmental problems. But environmental problems are ever-related to human and societal problems, so ultimately Sarvis agrees with controversial writers like Bjorn Lomborg regarding the priority of global poverty. Following this logic, even contemporary developed nations (such as the United States and Japan) had a recent history of massive post-war environmental improvements contingent upon economic development and infrastructural improvement. Developing nations therefore must naturally focus on the basics of human survival and poverty eradication before they move on to amenities and luxuries often taken for granted in wealthier nations (like air and water pollution mitigation).
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