Eco Saboteurs

1. Partridge means that humans have moral responsibilities towards people that they do not know individually and who may not even exist at the present. He uses a metaphor about a campsite to explain his argument: when they have finished camping at a campsite, a person has a moral obligation to clean it for the next person who will use it. While they do not know this person, they still have good reason to believe that someone will eventually come to use the campsite in the future and that by not cleaning the campsite they are wrongfully causing harm to this future person. He is effectively arguing that a person being “nonexistent is, morally speaking, nonrelevant” (59). In essence, morality is not solely based around a group of living people …show more content…
In recent years, there have been an increasing number of acts of Eco-sabotage committed in the name of protecting the environment. Michael Martin defines Eco-sabotage as acts which are illegal, non-public, morally or religiously motivated done with the goal of hampering a process or act which they believe is causing harm to the environment (294). It is important to note that Eco-saboteurs make every attempt to not be arrested for their crimes; their aim is to immediately and directly stop what they believe is harming the environment. Many other Eco-activists criticize this tactic because it only gains short-term results and can actively hamper attempts for long term reform. Eco-saboteurs usually counter this by only committing acts of Eco-sabotage against targets that they believe require drastic action or targets that are unlikely to be peacefully reformed without being pressured by their actions. However this rationalization often leads to further problems. Eco-sabotage is by definition illegal. By passing laws or ruling that are desired by Eco-saboteurs, even for unrelated reasons, courts and lawmakers set a dangerous precedent: that breaking the law is a legitimate and effective means of achieving ones goals. Few if any governments are willing to set this precedent and deal with its long term consequences. This often causes governments to resist passing Eco-friendly laws when Eco-sabotage is a major issue, often causing more damage to the environment in the long run that could have been stopped if less destructive means of protest where used. As a result many argue that this, quite justified, government response makes eco-sabotage ineffective and that even if it were effective that the results would be overshadowed by the long term effects of the precedent that it