Does nature show us the way to flourish?

There are good reasons to look to nature for an understanding of what it means for a human to flourish. By looking at nature we know that in many respects humans are similar to other animals. We consider some aspects of human flourishing in same way as we might consider whether animals in a zoo have adequate opportunities to flourish. For example, we consider whether humans have the food, shelter, companionship, and environmental interactions that are necessary for their physical and mental health.

However, when we look at human nature we also see potentialities that differ from those of other animals. We see greater cognitive capabilities, and greater potential for choice and self-direction. That suggests that human flourishing must involve development and exercise of cognitive abilities and skills in self-direction. When humans are flourishing they make fewer bad choices and are better at learning from their mistakes than when they are languishing.

The view just expressed is, of course, a Western libertarian view that owes much to Aristotle’s naturalistic perceptions of human flourishing. Contrary views are often heard, some of which also claim links to Aristotle. It is often argued that even adult humans are so prone to making bad choices – despite the help of family, friends and professional advisors - that they are unlikely to have happy lives unless they are subjected to a lot of paternalistic intervention by governments. Those who hold that view seem to think that governments are capable of designing and implementing regulatory systems that will enable people to have happier lives than under a spontaneous order relying on individual autonomy and mutually beneficial interactions with others. Such paternalists encourage people to become dependent on government like animals in a zoo become dependent on their keepers. 

 

The seemingly endless dispute over the relative merits of spontaneous orders and paternalistic governance has parallels in the disputes between Daoism and Confucianism in ancient China. That became evident to me while I was reading An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies by Steve Coutinho. The book also provides people in the West with a different way of considering what nature shows us about human flourishing.

I first encountered Daoist philosophy a few years ago when I stumbled across a quote from Laozi (also referred to as Lao-tzu or Lao-tze). I then read the Laozi (also referred to simply as the Tao Te Ching) and posted to my blog asking: Was Lao-Tzu a libertarian? When I wrote that post I had the impression Laozi was a person who lived in the 6^th century BCE, but there is actually no indisputable historical evidence of his existence. The Laozi may be a collection of the works of several authors.

In the early Daoist texts nature is perceived as the context in which humans finds their place, nurtured and sustained along with all other things. Nature is perceived as untamed, but it is not viewed through the frame of the predatory survivalism often seen in wildlife documentaries. Nor is nature viewed through the frame of Rousseau’s ideal of harmony and perfection. The Daoists saw nature as a source of inspiration about how we should live.

The Laozi does not view nature as some kind of entity which micromanages natural phenomena. It recognizes that the complex natural world could not exist if it had to be controlled or manipulated deliberately. The natural world allows living things to grow and flourish according to their natures.

The point of observing and understanding natural functioning is to provide a model of how we ourselves should behave. Steve Coutinho suggests that the inspiration that we can take from the Laozi is that we should refrain from imposing artificial structures in an attempt to control and manipulate things:

“We must first appreciate the natural tendencies of the circumstances, of our surroundings, of other people, and of ourselves. We should then explore the most efficient way of dealing with things, one that accords closely with their immediate tendencies. Rather than planning for all contingencies in advance, we should wait to observe how things develop, sense how they tend to move themselves, and then move with them, redirecting them with minimal effort”.

The somewhat anarchistic approach of Daoist philosophy stands in contrast to the Confucians, who sought to maintain social order through social hierarchies and ethical cultivation, and other branches of Chinese philosophy which advocated clear laws, regulations and standards, and emphasized language and linguistic distinctions.

Steve Coutinho’s book contains a chapter discussing the Daoist philosophy of skill, which is directly relevant to question of what nature tells us about how we can flourish. The chapter is based on the Zhuangzi and Liezi, which were written after the Laozi, but share some broad themes with it.

As Coutinho explains it, the path of cultivation of natural tendencies involves more than just going with the flow and following your desires - the interpretation of Daoist philosophy that is often implied by popularizations in the West.  Most of us no longer know instinctively how to live naturally because our thoughts and actions have become shaped by excessive artifice – unnatural complexity - which is a by-product of thousands of years of cultural development. The degree of artifice in our lives has divorced us from an intuitive understanding of the nature of things and of ourselves. The cultivation of natural tendencies and recovery of spontaneity require the undoing of some of this artifice.

What nature shows us is that natural creatures have a natural capacity to flourish without written instructions. Even when they know what they do, they do not necessarily know how or why they do what they do. It is the nature of humans to use their cognitive abilities to design and produce things and to enjoy cultural activities. What we can learn from nature is how to do these things in a simple way that is intuitive, natural, fluid and responsive to the natural tendencies of the phenomena one is engaged with.

An understanding of the Daoist message can be gained most readily by considering acquisition of physical skills. For example, in order to become skilled at archery a focus on scientific knowledge about how eyes and muscles work would be an unhelpful distraction. The skill can only be acquired through experiments in actual movement, which the teacher then attempts to correct and adjust. There are good reasons why this reminds me of the lessons I had in the Alexander Technique to help rectify stress-related back and neck problems.

The path to skill lies in nurturing the natural abilities we are born with. Many years of training are often required to develop increased sensitivity to the “innermost subtle tendencies” of the phenomena we are dealing with. Skilful performance requires awareness to be focused on the task so that potential distractions do not interfere.

The Daoist texts point toward the acquisition of the meta-level skill of being able to acquire new skills as well as the acquisition of specific skills. This “skill of skilfulness” can be applied more broadly to the art of living. As Steve Coutinho puts it:

“A flourishing life, a life lived well, for a Daoist, is one performed with consummate artistry”.

It seems to me that if more people in the West could think about that for a while it might help them to see the merits of spontaneous orders and to reject the artifices of paternalistic government. 

What is the appropriate discount rate to use in assessing climate change mitigation policies?

The correct answer, in my view, is that the appropriate discount rate depends on the kind of policy that is being considered. If that answer seems odd to you then there is a good chance you have not yet read Mark Harrison’s paper entitled ‘Addressing Wellbeing in the Longer-Term: a Review of Intergenerational Equity and Discount Rates in Climate Change Analysis’. The paper was published last year in Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing, a collection of essays in honour of Ian Castles (an Australian who deserved to be honoured highly for his work on measurement of wellbeing).

The kind of policy that was evaluated in the famous cost benefit study by Nicholas Stern (and the subsequent study by Ross Garnaut) involves imposing some kind of tax (perhaps via a cap and trade mechanism) on carbon emissions in order to improve the well-being of future generations. Stern and Garnaut assume that economic growth will continue even in the absence of policies to mitigate carbon emissions and global warming, resulting in much higher average income levels in future (3.6 times higher 100 years from now in Stern’s projection).

Photo by Robin Ellis. Some rights reserved.

The carbon tax that this kind of modelling exercise suggests to be appropriate is highly sensitive to the discount rate that is used to determine the present value of mitigation efforts. The use of a low discount rate suggests that strong immediate action is warranted to mitigate climate change, whereas a higher discount rate suggests that the most appropriate course of action is to begin with a very low carbon tax and raise it gradually. In an illustrative example Harrison shows that with a discount rate of 1.35%, as assumed by Stern, the optimal current carbon tax is $78.48 per tonne, whereas with a discount rate of 6% it is only $0.88.

The discount rates used by Stern and Garnaut are an application of the social welfare function approach. Social welfare functions necessarily embody ethical judgements, even though such judgements are hidden beneath empirical facts in some versions of the, so called, Ramsey formula used by climate change modellers. Opinions differ on what ethical judgements are appropriate and discount rates can vary widely depending on what assumptions are made. Harrison demonstrates that the Ramsey formula gives estimates of a risk free discount rate ranging from 0.24% to 11% under the range of parameter values used in a variety of studies over the past decade.

At this point some readers will probably be throwing up, while others will be wondering what discount rates would be consistent with ethical judgements that they would be prepared to endorse. One way to consider whether you would be prepared to pay a carbon tax costing you $x per month in order to make your great grandchildren better off is to ask yourself whether you would prefer to make a financial investment of the same amount each month into some kind of trust for their benefit. The answer you obtain by considering opportunity costs in this way is equivalent to discounting the real money value of the benefits of climate change mitigation by the rate of return that you could expect to obtain on the alternative investment – presumably higher than the average real long term bond rate over the past 20 years or so.

One possible objection to this approach is that the rate of return on alternative investments will incorporate an element of compensation for risk, which is not appropriate in considering public investments such as climate change mitigation. The response which Mark Harrison provides is to point out that investment in climate change mitigation are far from risk free. There is a great deal of uncertainty about future costs and benefits of such policies. Most obviously, if you decide to vote for the carbon tax option you have no guarantee that people in other countries will pull their weight by imposing similar taxes on their citizens.

Some of you will by now be thinking that the cost benefit framework outlined above must be a load of garbage because you remain concerned about climate change, even though you would prefer to invest money for the benefit of your great grandchildren rather than to pay a carbon tax. If you are concerned about climate change, you are unlikely to be concerned that your great grandchildren will suffer losses that you could compensate for by increasing your savings rate by a small amount. The chances are that you (like me) will be concerned about the remote possibility that your great grandchildren might suffer from having to live with potentially catastrophic climate change outcomes.

Mark Harrison points out that by explicitly accounting for risk, rather than assuming it away, we can distinguish between policies that reduce risk and those that don’t. Mitigation policies that are potentially effective in averting disasters should be subjected to a discount rate that is below the risk-free rate because they pay off at a time when returns on other assets are low or negative, and when willingness to pay is great.

So, my conclusion:

•  the most appropriate discount rate to use to evaluate policies such as carbon taxes is the long-term average of real market rates of return on capital; and  
• the most appropriate discount rate to use to evaluate policies directed more specifically toward averting disasters - such as public investment in research to develop low-cost ways to removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - should be lower than the long-term average of real government bond rates.

In the unlikely event that we are faced with something close to the worst case climate scenario, our current policies to encourage adoption of inefficient alternative energy options are unlikely to avert catastrophe.  If the objective is to reduce the risk of catastrophe we should be using an evaluation methodology that helps us to choose the lowest cost method of achieving that objective.

Postscript:

There seems to be increasing awareness that we should be asking how we can insure against the worst climate change outcomes at lowest cost. Martin Wolf has published a relevant article entitled ‘Climate actions hould be seen as insurance’, in which he discusses Climate Shock, a new book by Gernot Wagner of the Environmental Defense Fund and Martin Weitzman of Harvard University. There has been a fairly favourable review of Climate Shock by William Nordhaus in the New York Review of Books.

I get the impression that the authors of Climate Shock have come to the conclusion that the best form of insurance is to reduce CO2 emissions as rapidly as possible. They rule out engineering solutions directed toward managing solar radiation (probably for good reasons) but it is not clear whether they have considered the potential benefits of research into ways to take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

It is also unclear whether urgent action is justified, given the fact that when global warming resumes it will probably have positive net economic benefits for a few more years. I expect the variance of potential outcomes is not as great over the next decade or so as it is when we look further into the future.

The review article by William Nordhaus offers a solution to the free rider problem in international negotiations in the form of a climate change club  imposing trade sanctions on countries that are perceived to be laggards. That kind of thinking makes me wonder whether the science of climate change might turn out to be less important for a country like Australia than foreign policy and trade considerations. The formation of a climate change club seems a more worrying prospect at the moment than the potential for an increased incidence of droughts and bushfires. 

How does nature connectedness affect happiness?

White sands walk: Jervis Bay, NSW, Australia

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!   Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 6 May 1851.

Thoreau still speaks eloquently for everyone who feels a need to spend time in the natural environment in order to re-charge their emotional batteries. Recognition of the importance of the natural environment to human happiness now seems to be supported by the findings of social research which show that nature connectedness - identifying with and feeling connected to the natural world – is correlated with happiness. The strength of this relationship is similar to that between happiness and personal income, marital status, volunteering, and personality traits such as conscientiousness and agreeableness.

Formal evidence on links between nature connectedness and happiness has only emerged during the last few years. What I write below is based mainly on a meta-analysis by Colin Capaldi, Raelyne Dopko and John Zelenski published in September last year. In order to be included in the meta-analysis, studies had to include at least one explicit, self-report measure of nature connectedness and at least one measure of happiness and report on their relationship. The meta-analysis covered 30 samples, giving a total sample size of 8523. Most samples came from Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

The meta-analysis showed that the strength of the measured relationship between nature connectedness and happiness was influenced by the way these variables were defined and measured. A measure of inclusion of nature in self had a stronger relationship than other measures of connectedness. Vitality was the happiness concept with the strongest relationship to nature connectedness.

The authors note that correlation between nature connectedness and happiness does not necessarily indicate that nature connectedness causes people to be happier. It is possible that causation might run from happiness to nature connectedness or that some third variable might be responsible for the observed correlation.

However, there is fairly clear evidence from another meta-study (by  Diana Bowler et al) that exercise in natural environments promotes greater emotional health benefits – in terms of feelings of energy, and less anxiety, anger, fatigue and sadness - than exercise in an artificial environment. There is also evidence that nature connectedness is positively related with time spend outdoors in contact with nature.

It is possible that some part of the correlation between nature connectedness and happiness is associated with feeling connected. Feeling connected to nature might be similar in that respect to feeling connected with the community. The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness is still evident, however, when other connections (e.g. family and culture) are controlled for.

The authors note that the relationship between nature connectedness and some forms of happiness may be adversely affected, to some extent, by a tendency of people who feel connected to nature to be worried about the future of the environment. Such concerns are more likely to dampen positive emotions than eudaimonic measures of happiness because such people are likely to become engaged in pro-environmental behaviours that make their lives seem more meaningful.

There is evidence that feelings of nature connectedness are stronger in some cultures than others and are influenced by early childhood experiences. That suggests to me that causation runs from nature connectedness to happiness, rather than vice versa.

Is human flourishing inconsistent with living in harmony with nature?

A view of Sydney in 2014

I like many of the ideas in the Ecomodernist Manifesto, but I don’t like the idea of having to choose between making room for nature and living in harmony with nature. Before discussing this issue I will provide some background.

The Manifesto, published in April of this year, has 18 authors of whom the best known are probably Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthough Institute.

The Ecomodernists begin with the proposition that the earth has entered into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, or age of humans. That provides the backdrop for consideration of the interaction between human flourishing and the natural environment.

Many environmentalists assert that a good Anthropocene is not consistent with the ongoing expansion of opportunities for human flourishing which economic growth provides. By contrast, the authors of the Manifesto are optimistic that the Anthropocene can offer expanding opportunities for humans, as well as protecting the natural environment, if knowledge and technology are applied with wisdom.

I endorse this proposition:

“A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.”

My problem is with what follows immediately after:

“In this we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse.

These two ideals can no longer be reconciled”.

I don’t see any necessary conflict between the two ideals. It seems to me that the ideal of harmonizing with nature means that we should seek to live in harmony with the natural laws of the world in which we live. That means accepting that humans are in many respects like other animals and have deep emotional connections to the natural environment and other living things. These emotional connections are explicitly recognized in Chapter 5 of the Manifesto.

That suggests to me that the problem is just definitional. Nevertheless, it is hard to understand why the authors of the Manifesto would risk losing support by asking people to make an unnecessary choice between ideals.

What is the real choice that the authors want us to make?  When they object to the ideal of human societies harmonizing with “nature”, it seems that what they are referring to are natural systems - the part of the natural environment that has not yet been significantly modified by human activity. 

The authors argue:

“Natural systems will not, as a general rule, be protected or enhanced by the expansion of humankind’s dependence upon them for sustenance and well-being.

Intensifying many human activities — particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement — so that they use less land and interfere less with the natural world is the key to decoupling human development from environmental impacts. These socioeconomic and technological processes are central to economic modernization and environmental protection. Together they allow people to mitigate climate change, to spare nature, and to alleviate global poverty”.

The real choice the authors want us to make is between intensifying human activities in particular regions and allowing them to spread in ways that would be detrimental to the natural environment.

The idea of decoupling human development from environmental impacts seems to me to make a great deal of sense as a broad generalization. I expect that governments will encounter difficulties in implementing such a strategy sensibly, but outcomes are likely to be worse if they do not try. One of the difficulties that is likely to stand in the way of implementation in some areas is the need to recognize the rights of indigenous people to use the natural resources they own. Another difficulty is the tendency of over-zealous supporters of wilderness to oppose the eco-tourism which is likely to be necessary to maintain broad political support for protection of wilderness areas. In some areas the involvement of indigenous people in eco-tourism is helping to meet the twin objectives of improving their economic opportunities and enlisting their support for greater environmental protection.

It seems to me to be particularly important for human well-being that attempts to decouple human development from environmental impacts does not occur at the expense of the ideal of living in harmony with nature in areas of intense human activity. The emotional needs that humans have for connection with the natural environment and other living things are unlikely to be satisfied by observing nature on TV and a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a wilderness area. 

Postscript:
In my next post I discuss the link between happiness and feeling connected with nature.