Evolving Ethics: On Not Killing Bulls...or Rivers
BBC reports today that the pariliament of Catalonia, Spain, has voted to outlaw bull fighting. It's an ancient, deep-rooted tradition, but the public killing of bulls is now seen as barbaric and unethical. This evolution of ethics was predicted by Aldo Leopold in his famous essay on The Land Ethic. He notes that slavery was just part of the normal order of things for the Ancient Greeks (not to mention the pre-Civil War American South). Gradually we are enlarging our ethical purview. Today we are dealing with animal rights. Perhaps tomorrow we'll decide that rivers also deserve to be inside our ethical boundary.
I thought about this yesterday when I was in Cochiti Pueblo, a prehispanic community along the Rio Grande, near Santa Fe. I was there for a meeting with the Natural Resources director to talk about the tribe's vision for the future of the river. In the 1960s, the US government constructed what was then the longest earth-filled dam in the world, on top of the community's fields and sacred sites. Cochiti Dam, and associated short-sighted developments around the reservoir, nearly destroyed the community as well as the river, a history recounted in a 2007 article by Regis Pecos, former tribal governor. What seemed to make sense at the time, is now considered a tragic mistake. The US Army Corps of Engineers who built the dam have since issued a formal apology to the tribe. The prevailing ethics are shifting. Will the Amry Corps also apologize to the river? Perhaps someday!
Cochiti dam and lake, looking upstream (Google Earth image)
I thought about this yesterday when I was in Cochiti Pueblo, a prehispanic community along the Rio Grande, near Santa Fe. I was there for a meeting with the Natural Resources director to talk about the tribe's vision for the future of the river. In the 1960s, the US government constructed what was then the longest earth-filled dam in the world, on top of the community's fields and sacred sites. Cochiti Dam, and associated short-sighted developments around the reservoir, nearly destroyed the community as well as the river, a history recounted in a 2007 article by Regis Pecos, former tribal governor. What seemed to make sense at the time, is now considered a tragic mistake. The US Army Corps of Engineers who built the dam have since issued a formal apology to the tribe. The prevailing ethics are shifting. Will the Amry Corps also apologize to the river? Perhaps someday!
Cochiti dam and lake, looking upstream (Google Earth image)
Posted by Dave Groenfeldt at 28 Jul 2010, 10:31 AM 
Categories: water ethics
Tags: bull fighting Cochiti Dam animal rights Rio Grande environmental ethics
Categories: water ethics
Tags: bull fighting Cochiti Dam animal rights Rio Grande environmental ethics
Comments