We’re not that special

Ever run into a retired stockbroker who said he was not flying to Bali—though it was a lifelong dream—because he realized that the emissions from airline travel are a significant cause of global warming and ocean acidification? Neither have I. Know anyone who ever considered making the sacrifice of not traveling long distances, because of conscience? Why is it so rare?

Probably the No. 1 reason that this sort of thought and sacrifice is so rare is that we are products of a culture that puts human advantage and human experience at the apex of a pyramid of values. Destroying some vaguely defined “environment” by burning 15,000 passenger miles’ worth of aviation fuel can hardly matter when an enhancement of the human experience is on the line.

What causes the flame of pride to burn more brightly than describing our 10-day trip to Tierra del Fuego? It has all the elements, as defined by our culture: from the “making good” materially—as in, being waited upon from the moment we embark—to the human conquest of nature through flight, to the whiff of magnanimity suggested by our willingness to dabble in the languages and customs of other people. Life on the planet need not be afforded a variable in such a magnificent equation.

The question then arises—as the hour of Earth’s biological collapse draws near—what would have to happen to make questioning the morality of the many-thousand-mile trip a compelling or even thinkable consideration? How do we become a culture in which nine out of 10 people are asking about the morality of that recreational flight, as opposed to a society in which 999 out of a thousand never consider it?

It seems that we would have to take flight with a new morality—more innovative than what the Wright brothers created at Kitty Hawk. That new morality could not have human experience or human life as the exclusive focal point of our moral system. It would have to make the welfare of all life equally pivotal to our moral understanding—and equally pivotal in our decision-making process. It would have to erase the lines between life forms. We would have to give up the story of the specialness of humankind and the “epic-ness” of all of our “adventures.” Because, more than anything else, it is that story of human specialness and privilege that stands in the way of “saving the planet.”