Denial and the Process of Moral Exclusion in Environmental Conflict

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 2000 by Susan Opotow, Leah Weiss

Specialized Knowledge

Environmental conflicts depend on the interpretation of scientific and technical data. This often results in two classes of stakeholders: those with and those without sufficient knowledge to interpret these data. Relatedly, environmental conflicts result from and shape public policies involving government agencies and formal regulatory decision-making processes. Some stakeholders are more knowledgeable about the complex array of regulatory mechanisms than others.

Throughout the article we will illustrate our analysis with examples of air quality conflict. This approach not only offers a coherent focus but also illustrates the three main characteristics of environmental conflict:

1. Large scale: The airshed is shared and needed by everyone. It also has limits on its use if it is to be maintained at a particular level or quality. Geographically the airshed is also large scale. Air pollutants can travel hundreds of miles; consequently, geographic areas that may not have a localized air pollution problem contribute to problems experienced downwind.

2. Commons: Air pollution results from micro and macro behaviors. Although major industrial sources contribute to the air pollution problem, so do an individual's activities. Adding a few small sources of polluting emissions yields nonenvironmental benefits (i.e., convenience) and minimal environmental impacts for an individual, factory, or community at the micro level, but as emissions accumulate from many sources, impact on the airshed can be substantial and harmful.

3. Specialized knowledge: Monitoring air quality and interpreting these data takes specialized equipment, knowledge, and skills. Although clean air is critically important for public health, we neither see the air nor certain forms of pollution. Air pollution remains invisible to the public until it has reached unacceptable proportions, as in Los Angeles on a smoggy day. Long-term human costs of air pollution are also difficult for ordinary citizens to detect. They are, however, evident in chronic, debilitating respiratory and pulmonary disease. On a hospital pulmonary ward, where breathing can no longer be taken for granted, the effects of day-to-day air pollution are obvious, dramatic, and frightening.

In sum, the complex, large-scale dynamics of environmental conflicts make them difficult to analyze and resolve. They are particularly complex because they simultaneously involve multiple kinds of conflicts, including conflicts of interests and conflicts of values (Thompson & Gonzalez, 1997). The next sections describe the processes by which environmental conflicts are justified, progress, and escalate and can lead to destructive outcomes.

Moral Exclusion

The scope of justice is our psychological boundary for fairness. Norms, moral rules, and concerns about rights and fairness govern our conduct toward those inside our scope of justice (also called the moral community; Deutsch, 1985; Opotow, 1990). Our scope of justice is attuned to: Who and what counts? Who and what simply does not matter? The scope of justice emerges from three attitudes toward others: (1) believing that considerations of fairness apply to them, (2) willingness to allocate a share of community resources to them, and (3) willingness to make sacrifices to foster their well-being (Opotow, 1987, 1993). As Table 1 illustrates, these attitudes are consistent with environmentalism because they place the well being of the larger ecosystem above anthropocentic or personal concerns (cf., Merchant, 1980; Stern & Dietz, 1994), emphasize the interdependence of people and nature, view humans as only one of many parts of nature, and advocate decision making that considers the larger natural system in whic h humans are embedded. This perspective is evident in the Gaia hypothesis and its depiction of Earth as a single, interconnected system (Lovelock, 1979). It is also evident in philosophies that characterize inanimate natural objects, such as soil, land, rivers, and mountains, as part of the biotic community and therefore of concern when considering public policy (Leopold, 1949; Stone, 1974).