Natural Acts

by David Quammen

  Having spent the past week amid these books, Singer’s and Regan’s and the rest, I’m now more puzzled than ever. I keep thinking about monkeys and frogs and mosquitoes and—sorry, but I’m quite serious—carrots.

  Peter Singer’s view is grounded upon the work of Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth-century British philosopher widely known as the founder of utilitarianism. “The greatest good for the greatest number” is the familiar, simplistic version of what, according to Bentham, should be achieved by an ethical ordering of society and personal behavior. A more precise summary is offered by Singer: “In other words, the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and given the same weight as the like interests of any other being.” If this much is granted, the crucial next point is deciding what things constitute “interests” and who or what qualifies as a “being.” Evidently Bentham did not have just humans in mind. Back in 1789, optimistically and perhaps presciently, he wrote: “The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been with holden from them but by the hand of tyranny.” Most philosophers of his day were inclined, as most in our day are still inclined, to extend moral coverage only to humans, on the grounds that only humans are rational and communicative. Jeremy Bentham took exception: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?” On this crucial point, Peter Singer follows Bentham.

  The capacity to suffer, says Singer, is what separates a being with legitimate interests from an entity without interests. A stone has no interests that must be respected, because it cannot suffer. A mouse can suffer; therefore it has interests and those interests must be weighed in the moral balance. Fine, that much seems clear enough. Certain people of sophistic or Skinnerian bent would argue that there is no proof a mouse can in fact suffer and that to believe so is merely an anthropomorphic assumption; but since each of us has no proof that anyone else actually suffers besides ourselves, we are willing, most of us, to grant the assumption. More problematic is that very large gray area between stones and mice.

  Peter Singer states: “If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering, or for refusing to count it equally with the like suffering of any other being. But the converse of this is also true. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.” Where is the boundary? Where falls the line between creatures who suffer and those that are incapable? Singer’s cold philosophic eye travels across the pageant of living species—chickens suffer, mice suffer, fish suffer, um, lobsters most likely suffer, look alive, you creatures!—and his damning gaze lands on the oyster.

  The oyster, by Singer’s best guess, doesn’t suffer. Its nervous system lacks the requisite complexity. Therefore, while lobsters and crawfish and shrimp possess inviolable moral status, the oyster has none. It is a difficult judgment, Singer admits, by no means an infallible one, but “somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most.”

  Moral philosophy, no one denies, is an imperfect science.

  Tom Regan takes exception with Singer on two important points. First, he disavows the utilitarian framework, with its logic that abuse or killing of animals by humans is wrong because it yields a net overall decrease in welfare among all beings who qualify for moral status. No, argues Regan, that logic is false and pernicious. The abuse or killing is wrong in its essence, however the balance comes out on overall welfare, because it violates the rights of those individual animals. Individual rights, in other words, take precedence over maximizing the common good. Second, in Regan’s opinion, the capacity to suffer is not what marks the elect. Mere suffering is not sufficient. Instead he posits the concept of inherent value, a complex and magical quality possessed by some living creatures but not others.

  A large portion of Regan’s book is devoted to arguing toward this concept. He is more uncompromisingly protective of certain creatures—those with rights—than Singer, but he is also more selective; the hull of his ark is sturdier, but the gangplank is narrower. According to Regan, individual beings possess inherent value (and therefore inviolable rights) if they “are able to perceive and remember; if they have beliefs, desires, and preferences; if they are able to act intentionally in pursuit of their desires or goals; if they are sentient and have an emotional life; if they have a sense of the future, including a sense of their own future; if they have a psychological identity over time; and if they have an individual experiential welfare that is logically independent of their utility for, and the interests of, others.” So Tom Regan is not handing rights around profligately to every cute little beast that crawls over his foot. In fact, we all probably know a few humans who, at least on a bad night, might have trouble meeting those standards. But how would Regan himself apply them? Where does he see the line? Who qualifies for inherent value, and what doesn’t?

  Like Singer, Regan has thought this point through. Based on his grasp of biology and ethology, he is willing to grant rights to “mentally normal mammals of a year or more.”

  Also like Singer, he admits that the judgment is not infallible: “Because we are uncertain where the boundaries of consciousness lie, it is not unreasonable to advocate a policy that bespeaks moral caution.” So chickens and frogs should be given the benefit of the doubt, as should all other animals that bear a certain degree of anatomical and physiological resemblance to us mentally normal mammals.

  But Regan doesn’t specify just what degree of resemblance.

  The books by Singer and Regan leave me with two very separate reactions. The first combines admiration and gratitude. These men are applying the methods of systematic philosophy to an important and much-neglected question. Furthermore, they don’t content themselves with just understanding and describing a pattern of gross injustice; they also argue, emphatically, that the injustice should stop. They are fighting a good fight. Peter Singer’s book in particular has focused attention on the outrageous practices that are routine in American factory farms, in “psychological” experimentation, in research on the toxicity of cosmetics. Do you know how chickens are dealt with on large poultry operations? How veal is produced? How the udders of dairy cows are kept flowing? Do you know the sorts of ingenious but pointless torment that thousands of monkeys and millions of rats endure each year to fill the time and the dissertations of uninspired graduate students? If you don’t, by all means read Singer’s Animal Liberation.

  My second reaction is negative. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, it seems to me, share a myopic complacence not too dissimilar to the brand they so forcefully condemn. Theirs is a righteous and vigorous complacence, not a passive and unreflective one. But still.

  Singer inveighs against a sin he labels speciesism—that is, discrimination against certain creatures based solely on the species to which they belong. Regan uses a slightly less confused and clumsy phrase, human chauvinism, to indicate roughly the same thing. Both of them arrive, supposedly by sheer logic, at the position that vegetarianism is morally mandatory. To kill and eat a “higher” animal, they assert, represents an absolute violation of one being’s rights; to kill and eat a plant violates nothing at all. Both Singer and Regan claim to disparage the notion—pervasive in Western philosophy since Protagoras—that “Man is the measure of all things.” Both argue elaborately against anthropocentrism, while creating new moral frameworks that are also decidedly anthropocentric. Make no mistake: Man is still the measure, for Singer and Regan. The test for inherent value has changed only slightly. Instead of asking Is the creature a human? they ask How similar to human is similar enough?

  Peter Singer explains that shrimp deserve brotherly treatment but oysters, so different from us, are morally inconsiderable. In Tom Regan’s vocabulary, the redwood tree is an “inanimate natural object,” sharing that category with clouds and rocks. But some simple minds would say: Life is life.

  Alias Benowitz Shoe Repai
r

  I FIRST HEARD ABOUT GEORGE OCHENSKI from a friend of mine who happens to be president of the Montana River-Snorkelers Association. We were in a fancy restaurant, as I recall, and there was wine involved. Ochenski had come to my friend’s attention in the course of his (the friend’s) presidential duties, which in strict point of fact are nonexistent. I should explain that the MRSA presidency is a purely honorary title, self-bestowed actually, because the MRSA is a mythical organization. This is quite different, please note, from labeling the organization itself nonexistent. Certainly the Montana River-Snorkelers Association does exist (mainly over wine and beer at various bars and restaurants, occasionally also around a campfire); it just isn’t real. An actual mythical entity, then, the MRSA, of roughly the same ontological status as the NCAA national championship in football, or the domino theory of international relations. You should look into this fellow Ochenski, my friend told me. He can be reached care of Benowitz Shoe Repair, in a tiny town called Southern Cross, up in the Flint Mountains above Anaconda. Have some more cabernet, I said. But sure enough, it turned out to be true. Benowitz Shoe Repair is another mythical entity, existent in its own way but not real. George Ochenski is both mythical and real. Are you with me so far?

  Ochenski must certainly be the preeminent river-snorkeler in the Rocky Mountains. He has talent, commitment, infectious enthusiasm, broad experience, state-of-the-art equipment, and a measure of lunatic daring. He has precious little competition. Most importantly, he has self-abnegating dedication to a larger purpose. Sometimes you have to snorkel a river, Ochenski believes, in order to save it.

  So dedicated is George Ochenski, and so scornful of risk, that—if necessary to make a point—he is willing even to snorkel the Clark Fork River downstream from the Anaconda smelter.

  A river-snorkeler, in case this isn’t self-evident, is someone who swims downstream in a river with his face underwater, enjoying the ride, watching the scenery, breathing through a little tube. It’s a lazy, hypnotic pastime best practiced on pellucid trout streams in midsummer. A few of us have been toying at it for years.

  But George Ochenski does not toy. He jimmies himself into a full wetsuit, adds fins and a hood and neoprene gloves and a fanny pack holding three cans of beer, pulls a pair of skateboarding knee pads into place, defogs his mask, and jumps into rivers. Gentle rivers, and raging whitewater monsters. Last year, for instance, he did 38 miles of the Salmon River in Idaho without benefit of a boat. Also last year he leapt into the Quake Lake trench—an unusually steep and ragged stretch of the Madison River, created by rockfall during an earthquake, famous for biting kayaks in half—and nearly died. On that run his mask was ripped off six times while he tumbled head over teakettle through a garden of sharp boulders. The trench experience, George admits today, was a miscalculation. In Montana this kind of behavior does not pass unnoticed. By word, and more discreetly by the looks on their faces, people frequently tell him: Son, you must be out of your everlovin’ skull. But they said that to Orville Wright, and they were wrong. Then again, they said it to Evel Knievel, and they were right. George Ochenski figures somewhere in between.

  He has an enduring though ambivalent attraction to what he calls “death sports.” Huge squinting grin from George as he acknowledges this ambivalence. Mountaineering. Ice climbing. Scuba. Never a major injury, never a bad accident—unless you count the time he fell 600 feet down a rock slope in the Alaska Range and did a self-arrest on his nose. Back in those years he traveled exotically for serious climbing, with generous sponsorship from the equipment companies, and took part in the first successful ascent of the west face of Alaska’s Mount Hayes. Scaled some breathtaking frozen waterfalls. Around the same time, a consummate autodidact, he turned himself into an expert cobbler, because he wasn’t satisfied with the professional repair work on his climbing boots; before long he was doing work for his friends too, and they had rechristened him, whimsically and metonymically, “Benowitz Shoe Repair.” Today he mostly stays close to the little wood-heated cabin at Southern Cross, in the front of which stands a bass fiddle. The fiddle is a logical switch from tuba, which he played for thirteen years. Benowitz is a man of many skills.

  Several years ago, in response to pressures both internal and external, he gave up the glorious climbing, thanked the sponsors, and settled down to being useful politically. He had come to feel that he owed something back to the mountains and rivers; meanwhile, there happened to be a certain crisis brewing near home. He now makes his living as an editorial assistant to an author of textbooks on environmental science. The cabin is filled ceiling-high with an eclectic library. On one wall is a quote from Congressman Ron Dellums, a statement of mixed metaphors and straightforward passion: “Democracy is not about being a damn spectator against the backdrop of tap-dancing politicians swinging in the winds of expediency.” Ochenski himself, by disposition and habit, is certainly no spectator. Some people, particularly among interests on the opposing side, might still take him for a wild-haired, good-timing, reckless flake. They would be grievously mistaken. George Ochenski has an excellent brain, he has chutzpah, he has focus.

  And in a small trailer up the hill behind his cabin, he has an Apple computer, its floppy disks full of damning information concerning the Anaconda Minerals Company.

  On September 29, 1980, the Anaconda Company announced that it was closing its copper-smelting operations at the town of Anaconda. This came as a severe shock to the 1,000 smelter workers suddenly unemployed, and marked the end of a century of awesome environmental pillage. For one hundred years the Company (as it’s known in Anaconda and Butte) had cut down forests, poisoned streams, smelted copper and other valuable metals, piled up vast mounds of slag, filled the air of the county with a sulfurous smog, and preserved its standing with the local community—despite such depredations—by dispensing regular paychecks. Now the economics of copper had shifted. Goodbye, thanks for everything. “The Company thought they could just lock the doors and walk away,” says George Ochenski.

  He and a few other Anaconda folk, some of them former smelter workers, think otherwise. They are after the Company like a fice dog after a bear. They have formed an enraged-citizens’ organization, pressured the governor, pressured the congressional delegation, pressured the EPA. They want more than goodbyes. They want reclamation. They want accountability. At the very least they want precise information about the nature and magnitude of the poisonous mess left behind.

  With sulfur dioxide no longer pouring from the smelter stack, the chief concern now is over toxic metals: lead, cadmium, mercury, zinc, copper itself, and especially arsenic. One hundred years of copper smelting have left various concentrations of some or all of these in the waters, in the plants, in the soil, in the animals of the county. George Ochenski and his compatriots want to know: how much? How much was dumped in the ponds, how much was buried, how much is still blowing free off the smelter site? How much is already in our lungs and our bones? How much is ingested with each rainbow trout from the Clark Fork River, if a person should be so lucky as to catch one of the surviving fish and so foolhardy as to eat it?

  How much lead? How much cadmium? How much arsenic? The Anaconda Company no doubt devoutly wishes that these questions would go away.

  Sometimes you have to snorkel a river in order to save it. Guided by this dictum, George Ochenski loaded his gear into the back of my car. It was late in the season, Labor Day weekend, with the air already growing cool. We paused briefly, where the gravel lane down from Southern Cross joins a paved county road, to check the Benowitz Shoe Repair mailbox. Then George led me off on a pair of brief but illuminating tours.

  We went to the Big Hole River, across the Continental Divide from Anaconda and clear of the war zone over heavy metals. The Big Hole is still a pellucid trout stream. We jimmied ourselves into wetsuits, added fins and hoods and neoprene gloves; I pulled George’s one extra skateboarding pad into position over one of my knees, leaving the other to chance. Masks were defogged, snorkels
adjusted, and we jumped in.

  The view was beautiful. Trout and whitefish looked me in the eye, aghast, and skittered away. Sculpins darted discreetly for cover. I observed the differences in underwater behavior among three different species of stonefly. I gazed at the funnel webs of Arctopsyche caddisfly larvae, down between rocks in the fast water, which I had read about often but never before seen. I found a mayfly nymph equipped with an elephantine pair of tusks. We passed through a few modest rapids, where the current abruptly accelerated and the boulders came at us like blitzing linebackers who had to be straight-armed away. After two hours of cruising, we were nearly hypothermic, but the experience had been delightful.

  Our other tour was to the Clark Fork River, downstream from the settling ponds into which the Anaconda Company has voided its years of industrial offal. “We’re off to snorkel the Clark Fork,” George told a friend as we pulled out of town. The friend looked puzzled. Huge squinting grin from George. “Then we’ll come back and glow in the dark.”

  We snorkeled a long section of the Clark Fork. Here the water was turbid; visibility was poor. The rocks of the streambed were largely cemented together with silt, leaving no habitat for stone-flies or Arctopsyche. I didn’t see a single fish. I didn’t see a single insect. Some people claim that the Clark Fork today is actually much improved over its sorry condition two decades ago, before the Company adopted certain technical measures to mitigate the toxicity of its releases. Maybe those people are right. But I remain skeptical. The river I was swimming through, with my eyes open and my nose very close to the bottom, was definitely no basis for passing out congratulations.