Abstract
When ‘quality of life’ is applied generally to all members of a national or world community it may refer vaguely to the common good. In this description it does not refer to any objective standard, but rather to one which is subjectively determined in particular historical circumstances and within a pattern of particular social conditions and values. What is acceptable as a quality of life in one society, or at one period of history, may not be acceptable in another. If there is anything in common to all of these judgements of quality of life it is an adequacy of the basic necessities of life. But ‘quality of life’ is more than a descriptive expression: it is also normative or prescriptive. It conveys the notion that the enjoyments or satisfactions to which it refers are those everyone ought to have as a person — a judgement which conveys an appreciation of a potential common good. Further, it is normative in its insistence that some persons in every country, such as those living at bare subsistence level, ought to have a higher standard of living, one which enables them to enjoy a basic quality of life enjoyed by others.
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Notes
R. Carson, Silent Spring (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965) p. 59.
M. P. Ryan, ‘The Role of Citizen Advisory Boards in Administration of National Resources’, Environment Law Review (1972) p. 67.
The EIS system is not radically different in Australia. See A. Gilpin, Environment Policy in Australia (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1980) pp. 64–74.
One of the most controversial cases is the flooding of Lake Pedder in Tasmania in 1972 as part of a hydroelectric development plan. The Premier appointed himself Attorney-General in order to prevent a court challenge to the government decision. In the final report of a Committee of Inquiry in 1974, reference was made to ‘unwise alienation of land and the loss of important recreational, scientific and aesthetic values’. See G. M. Bates, Environmental Law in Australia (Sydney: Butterworths, 1983) pp.32, 128. Another controversial decision was made by a minister in Queensland to construct a road through a tropical rainforest. Heavy rains have made the road unusable and, much as predicted by naturalists, muddy waters from it have threatened the health of a coral reef below.
For an example of a specific statute calling for clear definition of terms before it can be implemented in any uniform way by the courts, see Yearn Hong Choi, ‘Low-level Radioactive Waste Management: Federal—State Cooperation or Confusion?’ The Journal of Environmental Sciences (July—August 1984) pp.41–6.
L. L. Fuller, The Morality of Law, revised edn (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969) pp. 39, 81.
L. L. Jaffe, ‘The Administrative Agency and Environmental Control’, Environment Law Review (1972) p. 7.
D. A. Kay and E. B. Skolnikoff (eds), World Eco-Crisis (University of Wisconsin Press, 1971) p. 310. The expression is quoted from Maurice F. Strong, Secretary-General of the Stockholm Conference, 1972.
Many inhabitants of Minamata died or suffered neurological disorders. Unborn children were afflicted, their brain cells destroyed by the mercury. Before any action was taken by the company, for twenty years local people had been falling ill unaccountably, fish had been seen floating dead in the bay, cats which had eaten fish had died or had developed brain disorders. Suggestion of a possible link between contamination of the rivers mentioned and a rather above-normal incidence of cancer is made by H. J. Kool et al., Organic Water Contaminants and Health Parameters (The Hague: National Institute for Water Supply, 1982).
In particular, the use of global models in research has been shown to lead to conclusions consistent with the assumptions originally used. The most conspicuous of recent research findings is that population trends are leading human life eventually to total self-destruction, or at least in that direction unless there are radical changes in man’s behaviour. See, for instance, P. R. Erlich and A. H. Erlich, Population, Resources, Environment. Issues in Human Ecology (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1972). In ‘Paying the Piper’, New Scientist, vol. 36, pp. 652–5, Paul Erlich forecast disaster between 1970–85, with hundreds of millions of people dying from famine.
See also D. H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972). Here the authors argued that the interaction between five variables — world population trends, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion - were highly dangerous unless man’s behavioural patterns changed. The argument relied heavily on preconceptions and on a methodology now widely challenged. Different sets of initial assumptions lead to quite different conclusions. See Environment Law Review (1977) p. 34.
One explanation is by J. H. Kittel, ‘The Status of Nuclear Waste Management’, The Journal of Environmental Sciences (Sept-Oct 1980) pp. 28–30.
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© 1987 Leslie Melville Brown
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Brown, L. (1987). Conservation and the Quality of Life: Practical Problems and Obstacles to Moral Solutions. In: Conservation and Practical Morality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08527-9_4
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