The physically of the environmental problems facing Nepal, Korea, and the Russian Fareast are overwhelmingly evident and unfortunately, impossible to ignore. They are factual burdens on these countries’ socioeconomic welfare. Nevertheless, a candid comparison to the Australian and the American experience insinuates a prevailing conflict in values towards the “political importance” of environment problems in lure of necessary social development. According to Elson Strahan’s (2000) article Comparative Environmental Policy: Australia and the U.S., he questions what set of values that will ultimately drive policymakers in these two countries, and thus “…environmental policies must be considered in the context of values and ethics-for this is the heart of political and social agendas” ( p.26). Thus, in following this reference, a socioeconomic continuum on environmental values (emphasizing the transformation of a society into adapting postmodern values) is generated and concludes: how does sustainable environmental policy ramify these sociality ills that have led to each countries’ severe environmental degradation, yet, at the same time, still be in alliance with economic growth and development?
The logical semantics indicates that each country is designated in the traditional time-developed synchronization of an agricultural to industrial to Postmodern society as the measurement tool to administer effective environmental policy. In other words, using the American and European developed countries’ experience as the template. But on any level of social development, the strong salient issues leading to the current state of environmental degradation are in a state of continual concession as each country tries to identify the most pre...
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...ioning the fundamental underlying motivations of democracy and its ascension into a Postmodern economy, while Australia is considered in the Postmodern group despite…“its (economic) characteristics that better define an underdeveloped nation with little economic diversification” (Strahan, 2000, p.26). Yet, the Korea experience is totally engulfed in the elixirs that are associated with continual economic growth.
Shall we say this confliction of values merits an alternative outlook to the traditional time-developed synchronization into a Postmodern society. For instance, “by involving the entire stakeholders-public and private alike-and looking first to ethical values, solutions can be found that reflect progressive public policy-or what Inglehart considers Postmaterialist values” (Strahan, 2000, p. 27) in the aforementioned country’s current socioeconomic status.
Apply their understanding of social, economic, and environmental justice to advocate for human rights at the individual and system level: making sure that I familiarize myself with current political events and how these events can affect our clients. Making sure we identify forms of oppression of our clients and discuss this with my supervisor, and identify common barriers to care.
I will begin this report with a summary of this great book and delve deeper into the thoughts that the literary family has of it. I will then go on to explain its importance in the development of environmental policy and impact, and end with my thoughts regarding the material and the interaction among social and environmental values and impacts presented by the author Michael Pollan.
Without doubt, the early period of the 21st century is characterised by unprecedented social and cultural change. In this new context, the old Conservative-Liberal divide no longer has the capacity to effectively describe the place of values in the Western world. A better, more comprehensive explanation must be found for the origins of social ethics, political values and religious insight. Thomas Sowell’s ‘conflict of visions’ model offers an important key for understanding and interpreting values in the 21st century Western context.
In 1989, seventy five percent of Americans identified themselves as environmentalists, and the number has continued to grow since then (Walls 1). Environmentalism is now the most popular social movement in the United States, with over five million American families donating regularly to environmental organizations (Walls 1). Environmentalists today focus on what kind of world they hope to see in the future, and largely deal with limiting pollution and changing consumption rates (Kent 1 and 9). Modern environmentalists also have much different issues than those Carson’s America faced. With climate change becoming more threatening each year, protection of the natural world is needed more than ever. Pollution has caused the warmest decade in history, the deterioration of the ozone layer, and species extinction in extreme numbers (Hunter 2). It not only threatens nature, but also human populations, who already suffer from lack of clean water and poisoning from toxic chemicals (Hunter 16). Unlike environmental actions in the 1960’s, which were mostly focused on protection, a massive increase in pollution has caused efforts to be focused on environmental restoration (Hunter 16). Like in the time of Silent Spring, environmentalists are not only concerned with one country. Protecting the environment remains a global issue, and every nation is threatened by the
Because of human and nonhuman connections to specific places including knowledge, experience and community, using a sense of place and permanence as a green transnational multilateral initiative could be a successful step towards green democracy and ecological citizenship. Robyn Eckersley offers the suggestion of a constitutionally entrenched principle that would enhance ecological and social responsibility: the precautionary principle. I suggest connecting localized, place-specific boundaries with the principle. This addition is meant to aid in fostering ecological citizenship, expanding the moral community, and creating a responsible society. This addition would also be meant to unite a transnational issue that all nations could agree upon. This would create a binding multilateral principle that would be thoroughly accepting of specific ecological needs and characteristics of specific places.
The two essays by Michael Pollan and Curtis white talk about climate change in regards to the relationship between the environment and human beings. Although the two essays share the same topic, they take the subject and engage the readers in totally different points of views. Pollan’s essay talks about global and ecological responsibility being a personal virtue while Curtis discusses the socio-economic or political issues underlying sustainability (Pollan; White). These two essays are very different in terms of voice; however these pieces of writing are both important for people all over the world to read. Climate change and environmental disasters are a real issue. Just this year, there have been more storms, cyclones, earthquakes and typhoons all over the world. One cannot look at the state of many developing counties where the majority of the population is exposed and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This issue on developing a viable solution for the problem of anthropogenic gases and global warming is long from being found. Not only this, many people do not want to hear about this issue since they do not think it is real. Unless people have tangible proof that their cars, thermostats and aerosol cans are contributing to climate change, they are not going to give up their lifestyles. By synthesizing the two essays, one can see that there is a need for change and that it is not an issue which should be dealt with in terms of ecological factors or even personal virtue. The social, economic and political factors affecting this problem and the move towards real sustainability should also be a topic that will raise awareness.
Transportation access for poor people and wealthy people will become more equal. In particular, social justice advocates contended that there was a relationship between social inequality and environmental inequality that needed to be recognized and understood more clearly. When it came to social justice issues, mainstream environmentalist did not focus on environmental inequalities to the extent they should have. The minorities and the poor lived in the most degraded environments. For poor people especially in the village or in a rural places most of them there are no own car. So, most people in that area use their neighbor’s vehicles for transportation. Other than that, in some cases, some people in rural areas which have their
WCED. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our Common Future. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sustainable development adapted after the Brundtlandt Report 1987, is a planned, aim- and process oriented procedure that meets the needs of today’s generations without endangering the needs of future generations and world regions (Ott & Döring 2004, 2006).2 The principle of sustainability describes the efforts of the international community, all countries and people to create equal opportunities for development by explicitly taking into account the interests of future generations. Most frequently the concepts of sustainability are based on a triple bottom line represented by the tree pillars – ecology, economy and social security (e.g. by the Enquete Commission, 1998). Apart from the general weaknesses of the column model that is the interchangeability of dimensions and the ignorance of (social) relatedness (c.f. Ott & Döring, 2004)3 the definition of sustainability (the model is illustrating), is seen as a bad compromise between the needs for conservation of natural resources and the aspirations for economic growth by some scholars (Döring & Muraca, 2010). Irrespective of that, the model sometimes is competed by other pillars such as “knowledge”, “institution”, ”governance”, “arts” or the like (c.f. a.o. Ott & Döring, 2004). Whereas in “Resetting the Compas...
The development of environmental regimes involves a five-fold process. The first process is the agenda setting and issue definition stage, which identifies and brings attention to an issue to the international community. Secon...
Political ecology began in the 1960s as a response to the neglect of the environment and political externalities from which it is spawned. Political ecology is the analysis of social forms and humans organizations that interact with the environment, the phenomena in and affecting the developing world. Political ecology also works to provide critiques and alternatives for negative reactions in the environment. This line of work draws from all sorts of fields, such as geography, forestry, environmental sociology, and environmental history in a complex relationship between politics, nature, and economics. It is a multi-sided field where power strategies are conceived to remove the unsustainable modern rationality and instead mobilize social actions in the globalized world for a sustainable future. The field is focused in political ethics to refresh sustainability, and the core questions of the relationships between society and ecology, and the large impacts of globalization of humanized nature.
The discipline of sociology provides a perspective that allows for individuals to expand and dig beyond “common knowledge” and inherit an approach to society that allows an advanced analysis of the root cause of activity in a certain society, opposed to assessing it on an assumption. A beneficial component to sociology is that it can be individually directed to different components of society that all contribute to its overall functioning. Under a sociological perspective we can use an engaged approach that once applied to social issues can improve the functioning of societies on both local and global scales that are considered complex, degrading, or facing considerable amounts of neglect. When we take into consideration the environment and
“Unless humanity is suicidal, it should want to preserve, at the minimum, the natural life-support systems and processes required to sustain its own existence” (Daily p.365). I agree with scientist Gretchen Daily that drastic action is needed now to prevent environmental disaster. Immediate action and changes in attitude are not only necessary for survival but are also morally required. In this paper, I will approach the topic of environmental ethics from several related sides. I will discuss why the environment is a morally significant concern, how an environmental ethic can be developed, and what actions such an ethic would require to maintain and protect the environment.
Over the past few decades there have been discourses both in favor and against Globalization’s capacity to guarantee a sustainable future. Authors attest societies and businesses’ inability to account for ecological and environmental limits when dealing with economic growth, examples of this are some of the traditional business metrics used by most global companies, and nations’ measure of wealth (GDP); both sides heavily resting on economic factors, fail to account for societal and environmental concerns (Byrnea & Gloverb, 2002). Other researchers point at the intensive use of resources, especially by global corporations; such as the increasing and careless consumption of fossil fuels, water, precious metals, etc. leading to a rise in GHG (Starke, 2002) (United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2000). Most fervent opponents go as far as to call ‘sustainable development’ an oxymoron (Ayres, 1995).
Environmental philosophy tries to make sense of the unexamined values, assumptions and ideologies behind humanities treatment of the environment and, in doing so, aims at helping to elicit an effective human response to related issues (Curry, 2011). Environmental philosophy, has gone beyond being merely an academic pursuit, now requiring the world’s population take moral responsibility for the damages caused by their industrial advances on natural systems.