When it comes to the environment, there are many different philosophies on how the land should be treated, and how to get the most out of the land. It is a battle of morals, and it seems nearly impossible to come to a concrete conclusion on how things should be dealt with. I will argue how a utilitarian approach to the treatment of nature is one that is destructive in the long run, and shouldn’t be embraced by the community of the Adirondacks.

For starters, utilitarianism is a moral theory that focuses on how people should approach decisions. The approach that is taken is one that concerns the consequences of one’s actions, which is why some people refer to it as consequentialism. One popular way to determine what makes the most desirable outcome from a decision is to make choices based on what produces the most happiness for everyone.

If we are to take everything that was just said and apply it to the adirondacks, we would see that a lot of decisions are made this way. People are constantly thinking in terms of the future. They want economic stability, and they act on this desire by taking risks for greater wealth as they believe it will produce the most happiness. Although this may seem like a great idea, there is one key part to the equation that I have left out up until this point. One of the major critiques of utilitarianism is how people use the philosophy, “the ends justify the means”. This is an extremely controversial statement, and when speaking in terms of nature, things get even more tricky.

To break it down even further, we must understand what we mean by this statement. The “ends” are literally just the result of everything. Very simple to understand. The “means” is whatever had to be done in order to get to the ends. To put this into perspective, let’s pretend our end is 0% unemployment in the adirondacks. This sounds amazing, who wouldn’t want everyone to be working and have a form of income? But the means would be an increase in logging jobs, leading to the further destruction of the landscape. This is the main weakness of the utilitarian approach. If you truly believe that happiness is the most important factor in what makes an action morally correct, it seems that you have to sacrifice a lot of other things in order to reach that point. Who is to say that the decimation of the forest is justifiable by lower unemployment rates and happier people?

The truth is, in the case of the Adirondacks, the means to the goal of happiness most of the time is going to interfere with the integrity of the forest. It isn’t worth the sacrifice of the land for greater happiness. Utilitarianism isn’t the answer to how we should approach things, as things aren’t as good as they may seem when you dig below the surface.