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Environmental philosophy
Q: How do you define your environmental philosophy?
MR. REILLY: My environmental philosophy fundamentally starts with a moral, if not a religious conviction that we have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the natural systems that sustain life. The created order is itself holy, in a sense. And we, as a part of it, have an obligation. One of the obvious and first obligations in any moral system is to sustain life, protect life, protect the underpinnings of life. So, I believe in sustainability, or sustainable development, to use the current phrase.
I have never considered myself a preservationist in the sense that I resist human interaction or intervention or even redirection sometimes of nature. I am a humanist. I believe, in fact, that humans have improved upon nature. Much of Europe has been reshaped by a very sensitive system of agriculture that has been concerned with productivity over the long term. The concepts of stewardship pioneered by the Benedictines who developed new strains of grape and grains is one that I have studied and deeply admire.
Before I became EPA Administrator I resisted calling myself an environmentalist because to me that had a connotation, particularly with others, of obstructionism, of excessive preservationism, of negativism, of anti-growth, of anti-government, anti-industry, anti-bigness. It needn't have that connotation, but to a lot of people it certainly did.
I call myself a conservationist. By that I mean someone more in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, who believed that nature should support human activities and can be depended upon to do so provided that more is not taken out than is put back; provided that there will be as much to support life in the next generation as there is in this one, provided that if you view it as a banking account, you're not always just making withdrawals.
I am just as concerned with poverty and the lack of development as I am with protection. I believe that the wisest form of protection is, in fact, creation. It's not enough to put fences around places and try to keep people out of them. One has to figure out a productive interaction that will make sense to people and cause them to think that their needs come first, as they must.
I find the notion of people as a pollution abhorrent. Humans have evolved right along with the rest of nature, of flora and fauna, and intelligent life is the crowning achievement of the created order. I believe both that humans are responsible for the earth, and that we're the best thing on it. That's a somewhat conservative philosophy for a contemporary environmentalist. (After so many years seeing the press characterize me as an environmentalist, and seeing that nearly 90% of the American public regard themselves as environmentalists, I accept the term for myself). But, mine is, I think, a philosophy that can command popular support and that's realistic. I've worked a lot in the developing world and one does not bring to problems there a priority that requires people to do without so we can keep natural systems healthy. One has to craft a system that builds new economic structures that will be reasonably protective of natural systems. But meeting human needs is the first priority. If these are not fulfilled, the system of protection will not endure.
Rene Dubos' writings have influenced me. I believe it was he who distinguished between the two traditions that have shaped Western conservation, traditions that began with two Saints from Umbria. One is the tradition established by Saint Benedict, who believed in shaping the land, organizing it for agriculture. Benedictines introduced crops and vines and fruits as far north as Scotland. They were growers, cultivators, and builders. They were also fine conservationists. The other great Umbrian Saint was Francis, who was a preservationist, really, who preached the profoundest reverence for what in his time were seen to be perfectly useless birds and wolves. Nothing like him had ever been seen before in Western thought. The Franciscan perspective has survived and come down to contemporary history through Henry David Thoreau and John Muir in America. And the Benedictine world view traces to our time through Thomas Jefferson and Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. I suppose I feel more comfortable with the latter, Benedictine outlook than with the Franciscan philosophy, simply because the wild world in which to apply Francis' precepts is so much smaller and more limited. But both views are powerful and compelling. And elements of both are necessary to a fully rounded conservation philosophy. Fundamentally, I believe that creation is the most intelligent and enduring form of protection.
In terms of my application of that philosophy to my responsibilities at EPA, I tried first of all, to cast the environmental issue in a new way. I wanted to affect how Americans thought about environmental issues, to change somewhat their environmental philosophy, to bring them to accept that regulatory priorities should be risk-based, and science-driven. I wanted those concerned about the environment to engage the broader world, to recognize the vital relationship between environmental protection and trade. I worked to promote understanding of the need to give the environment a much higher priority in U.S. foreign policy, for several reasons: the necessity to have international cooperation in solving so many environmental issues important to the United States, and also because, if you truly accept the concept of comparative risk as a basis for setting priorities, then you have to attend to the environment of the developing world where problems of health and ecological deterioration are egregious. I stressed the need to integrate environmental policies with economic decision making, both in the United States and internationally. And I made the case that natural systems deserve as much attention as health.