Cli-fi Literature Seminar – Reflection 1

Anthology story The Myth of Rain - Seanan McGuire

Course Materials How Ecological Collectives Are Morally Considerable

Learning outcome Critically evaluate ethical questions with relevance for sustainable
development.

The Myth of Rain by Seanan McGuire is a short story written from the first-person
perspective of Julie, an environmentalist attempting to rescue owls from impending habitat
loss on the Pacific Northwest of the USA. In this future scenario, climate change has
accelerated to the point that the Pacific Southwest (California) has dried up and has become
almost totally unfit for human habitation, prompting the rich and powerful to flood north. The
key effect of this move to the mountainous north is the further encroachment by humans into
local ecosystems, such as previously protected forests, wetlands and mountainous
microclimates (McGuire 20?)

Looking at this story through an ethical lens, the most prominent question it touches on is to
what extent do ecological collectives have an intrinsic moral value, as opposed to purely
instrumental value (Newman et al, (2017). In this future scenario, human technology has
developed DNA banks, zoos, and private collections where creatures from the natural world
could be preserved. If animals can be brought back at a later date, the politicians argue, then
shouldn’t the more pressing needs of humans come first? This instrumentalist mindset does
pose an ethical dilemma – when land and space for humans is limited, why should we worry
about whether an owl has a home? The politicians and tech firms, who appear to be the main
societal decision makers, make a clear ethical choice putting homes, cities and jobs ahead of
endangered species and habitats. Callicott (2015) would therefor conclude from this that
these decision makers have retained the Western moral philosophy of anthropocentrism and
have not been swayed by any ethicists attempting to construct a non-anthropocentric moral
ontology.

However, in this future scenario other ethical approaches endure. Julies motivations for
preserving nature come from her environmental science background and the loss of her
parents and family home to a climate change related fire. She tends towards at least a
biocentric, if not ecocentric, moral ontology in putting local ecosystems at the forefront of her
beliefs. She concludes that as humans are responsible for climate change, they are the ones
who should pay the price rather than the animals, who deserve a “second chance”. According
to Newman et al (2017), Julie has fallen into the “Naturalistic Fallacy” – she is assigning a
moral significance to the state of the environment and saying it should be conserved just
because it already exists. This can be seen is a manifestation of Humes ought-is gap; the
ecosystem ought to be preserved as it has always been there, and it is not their fault that it is
now threatened by climate change and human encroachment. Another criticism that can be
made of Julies reasoning is that of “environmental fascism” as discussed by Callicott (2015)
in reference to Aldo Leopolds moral maxim of the land ethic. By saying that humans
“deserve damnation” (McGuire, 2015) for changing the biotic community with climate
change, she is justifying the death of environmentally destructive humans. Callicott (2015)
points out that this sort of conclusion is abhorrent. To counterpoint however, he does not
discuss why the death of humans is necessarily abhorrent and is making his own ethical
judgement without supporting this conclusion. One can imagine overall that Julie would
agree with Taylor (2011), that earths community of nature would be much better off without
human existence.

Throughout the short story we are shown the results of the fictional societies ethical
judgements and poor decisions, and it is difficult to sympathise. Julie points out that once the
climate tipping point had happened, fighting climate change didn’t really matter anymore,
and preservation of ecosystems was now the priority. However, as the story progresses, it
becomes apparent the world has changed in such a way that ecosystems are rapidly changing
beyond all recognition – they find alligator lizards in a habitat that had never extended that
far north. Thus, it becomes apparent that their Sisyphean task was doomed from the start –
trying to preserve an ecosystem that was not even the ecosystem they believed it to be is in an
unattainable goal. Instead we can conclude that the task that she so despises, to merely
preserve biodiversity for the sake of biodiversity, is a far more practical use of her skills. Her
application of intrinsic moral value to the ecosystem is overshadowed by the realisation that
no matter what she had done, it was too late to save it in its original state. We are forced to
admit that in this scenario the fictional world conflicts with Leopolds land ethic, as it no
longer possible to “preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community”
(Caldicott 2015).
Bibliography

Adams, J., Bacigalupi, P., McGuire, S., Finley, T., Schroeder, K., Trudel, J., Buckell, T.,
Kress, N., Shepard, J., McMullen, S. and Silverberg, R., 2015. The Myth of Rain. In Loosed
Upon The World. Gallery / Saga Press.

Callicott, J. B., “How Ecological Collectives Are Morally Considerable,” in Stephen M.

Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S. (2017). Ecoholism: Do Ecological Wholes Have
Intrinsic Value? In Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics (pp. 274-300).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781139024105.012

Taylor, P., & JAMIESON, D. (1986). The Biocentric Outlook on Nature. In Respect for
Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (pp. 99-168). PRINCETON; OXFORD: Princeton
University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt7sk1j.7