{"id":1403,"date":"2015-01-20T17:57:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T17:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=1403"},"modified":"2015-01-20T17:57:25","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T17:57:25","slug":"think-of-pollution-as-trespassing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2015\/01\/20\/think-of-pollution-as-trespassing\/","title":{"rendered":"Think of Pollution as Trespassing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"biker\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why take the \u2018harms\u2019 approach? Try this instead.<\/em><\/p>\n

High Country News<\/a>
\nJanuary 19, 2015
\nby Benjamin Hale<\/p>\n

In 2013, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper sat before a Senate committee and testified to drinking a glass of fracking fluid, in an attempt to illustrate just how safe hydraulic fracturing can be. He hoped, presumably, to allay growing concerns in what has become one of the West\u2019s most contentious energy issues. But in doing so, the former geologist employed a basic assumption about wrongdoing that has long underlain the environmental debate. In my view, this assumption has done far more harm than good to the environmental movement.<\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019d care to join Hick in his swashbuckling imbibition. I certainly wouldn\u2019t. Either way, it is easy to see how quickly this kind of discussion can spiral into a futile tug-of-war between two sides: One side insists that the practice is safe, and the other side insists that it\u2019s not. Almost all discussions of pollution \u2014 oil spills, gas leaks, nuclear contamination, water pollution \u2014 end up lost in the same eternal back-and-forth.<\/p>\n

Many environmentalists will tell you that we should care about pollution because it threatens to degrade our environment and harm us in some palpable and important way. These statements reflect a much wider tendency within the environmental community to confuse wrongs with harms.<\/p>\n

The so-called \u201charms view\u201d associates environmental damage with environmental wrongdoing, meaning that the moral complications of pollution can be captured by describing its harmful effects. According to this way of thinking, it is enough to say that it is wrong to harm people by adding toxic substances to their drinking water.<\/p>\n

But this view, in fact, is not the only way to understand fracking, or any kind of pollution. As far as I\u2019m concerned, it\u2019s not even the best way to do so. There is a related but less common position that considers the moral complications of pollution not in terms of doing harm, but in terms of trespassing. And trespassing, particularly in the West, is something we can all understand.<\/p>\n

According to the \u201ctrespass view,\u201d what is wrong with fracking \u2014 or any kind of pollution \u2014 isn\u2019t simply that it causes, or risks causing, harm to me and my family. It is that certain kinds of pollution harm me without my authorization, without clear justification. One might take this even further: It\u2019s not necessarily the harm done that does the moral work of distinguishing pollutants from non-pollutants. It is instead whether the introduction of a substance, or the alteration of a situation, impacts my life in a way that I can and will countenance. Read more \u2026 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why take the \u2018harms\u2019 approach? Try this instead. High Country News January 19, 2015 by Benjamin Hale In 2013, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper sat before a Senate committee and testified to drinking a glass of fracking fluid, in an attempt … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-30 13:34:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1405,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions\/1405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}