Why Do We Pollute Our Planet?

While humans are often the creators of waste, we also hold complex emotional relationships with its production, presence, and management.

To the extent that consumption and acquisition have become individualist or libertarian markers of self-identity or value, the right to consume is interrelated to the right to produce waste; however, and impossibly, much of the time, wastefulness could imply ill-discipline, irresponsibility, or inefficiency (Hawkins 2006). As items which what we no longer consider part of our identity or value then become waste, what we choose to discard also signifies who we are as we seek constantly to define the boundaries of the self (Hawkins 2006). In modern times, one’s waste disposal and management habits have come to signify moral goodness or obedience to norms, the visibility of waste serving as proof of some sort of failure (Hawkins 2006).

The origins of pollution can be natural or anthropogenic. Anthropogenic pollution can be intentional or unintentional; however, intentional waste is within our control.

In the case of air pollution, while natural sources include volcanic eruptions and naturally occurring atmospheric greenhouse gases, most air pollution is the result of human activity, specifically fossil fuel combustion in automotives and industry (National Geographic). The choice to use fossil fuels in energy generation is a human one, and as the range of affordable low- or zero-carbon alternatives broadens, more humans could be empowered to make different and less-pollutive choices.

It is both unethical to pollute our planet and to uphold the structures and processes that allow pollution to continue.

The effects of pollution are unevenly distributed and skewed toward persons who are more exposed or vulnerable, as individuals of lower income groups, from minority communities, the elderly, and those with medical conditions, who bear the direct burdens of immediate physical symptoms and the indirect burdens of the expenses and opportunity costs incurred (Dwyer and Sambath 2019). Continuing to participate in such a system at both the substructure and superstructure levels represents the enactment and reinforcement of these power imbalances and inequities. Any effort toward social and environmental justice must therefore focus on the “responsibilities citizens have to try to change the social structures, background conditions, economic systems, and accepted practices that underlie the problem” (Dwyer and Sambath 2019:203). Hawkins (2006) paraphrases Foucault's conception of ethics as an ethos originating from and interconnected with the actions, and eventually habits, of the body, suggesting the role of our own practices – the personal as the political – in forging new norms and systems. An ethical relationship with the planet could therefore be achieved through meaningful participation and collective civil action (Dwyer and Sambath 2019).

References:

• Dwyer, J. and Sambath, V. (2019). ‘Power, pollution, and ethics’. Indian J Med Ethics. 2019 Jul-Sep;4(3) NS:203-6. DOI:10.20529/IJME.209.045

• Hawkins, G. (2006). ‘The Ethics of Waste: How we relate to rubbish’. (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

• National Geographic. ‘Pollution’.