Our modern industrial society provides us with great physical and psychological comfort. We live not with a fear for our lives, we are politically stable and dominant; even the terrorist attacks against us cannot strip us of our safety bubble. We live with the luxury of convenience provided by our technologies, such as household appliances, personal computers, indoor heating and plumbing, personal automobiles with “endless fuel” the list is infinite. We live in a disposable society, where it is not commonplace to have material goods fixed, but rather replaced. We have disposable everything, diapers, water bottles, contacts, paintbrushes… again, our convenience is never-ending. This convenient lifestyle coupled with our massive desire for material goods has created immense devastation to the Earth. As time progresses we learn of more tragic outcomes of our lifestyles. I will discuss the major environmental tragedies that are facing our planet and possible solutions to the disasters. I will also give comparative thoughts by a handful of philosophers and dispute our moral obligations to the environment and for those whom occupy it. I feel that we need to do something soon to stop the destruction before it is too late. First off, the biggest argument for preserving the environment would be; we have an obligation to future generations. Singer discusses these thoughts in his chapter on environmental ethics in his book, Practical Ethics. He begins with the assumption that people are self-interested, and while current philosophy and economics fail to present answers to the problem of obligations to future generations, we still have them. He recognizes that we do not know exactly what future people will cherish; will they cho... ... middle of paper ... ...e need to come together and work towards a common goal: a cleaner America. Don’t think with tunnel vision, think long term, and consider how quickly humans have made an impact on the environment. Earth has been surviving with out us for millions of years and it took us a couple hundred to wreck havoc. There are small things that we can do everyday to help right here in Alma; recycle, walk to 7-11, bike to the baseball games, and etc. All great things start with an idea and starting is the hardest part. Sources * Flavin, Christopher. The Heat is On: The Greenhouse Effect. * Gross, Rita. Toward a Buddhist Environmental Ethic. * Pajman, Louis. Environmental Ethics: Reading in Theory and Application. Wadsworth Publishing Co. March 2002. * Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Cases have been widely used in medical ethics and law. In both fields, numerous books and articles about cases have appeared, including book-length catalogs of cases. I argue that pluralistic casuistry provides an adequate approach to environmental ethics. It retains the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses of the other approaches. Importantly, it resolves some broader theoretical issues and provides a clear, explicit methodology for education and praxis.
Kohak, Erazim V. "Part II." The Green Halo: a Bird's-eye View of Ecological Ethics. Chicago,
Ethics is the study of how people should live. people have different views and beliefs of how they're supposed to live their life. people from all over the world have different ethical beliefs and different ways to determine which beliefs are right and which are wrong. when you visit a different country, you notice things they are doing and those things might seem wrong to you and you would never consider doing what they have just done but in their society its normal and everyone does it. inside the margins of this paper I am going to analyze the top three models used to determine a morally significant being based on the criteria in your book. I will first define a moral agent and a morally significant being then take you through the steps to deciding what a significant being is and which criteria you would use for each.
Schlosberg, D. (2013). Theorising environmental justice: the expanding sphere of a discourse. Environmental Politics , 22 (1), 37-55.
When it comes to environmental issues there are many value perspectives and different opinions on how the issues should be resolved. These perspectives that author Judith Lazyer describes her book “The Environmental Case” includes Promethean, conservationist, preservationist, and ecological perspectives. In our class we connected topics we learned in our Environmental Policy class to the books such as “Flight Behavior” and Ecotopia in our English Reality and Utopia class. A connection I found between these books and the policies we learned about in POLS 336 was that all our books included the Promethean and Ecological perspectives when it came to environmental issues. These perspectives were also included in the case studies we read in “The
Desjardins, J.R. (2013). Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Analyzing human obligation pertaining to all that is not man made, apart from humans, we discover an assortment of concerns, some of which have been voiced by philosophers such as Tom Regan, Peter Singer and Aldo Leopold. Environmentally ethical ideals hold a broad spectrum of perspectives that, not only attempt to identify a problem, but also focus on how that problem is addressed through determining what is right and wrong.
"...We live in a breakable takeable world, an ever available possible worldÖ" These words, by poet and singer-songwriter Ani Difranco, articulate the relationship between the environment and its inhabitants. Society is constantly manipulating the environment. Our capacity for changing the environment is kept in check by the destructible aspect of nature. The changes we make, those advancements in technology, are limited. While the industrial revolution, per say, is over, industry is ever expanding, moving us into a faster, more efficient lifestyle. However, efficiency and advanced technology are not without their price, and that fee, even more so than monetary in nature, is more accurately quantified by an increased duress on the environment and its inhabitants. As industry expands, waste products increase, and often this waste is toxic to humans, plants, and animals. So-called advancements, such as pesticides, which can greatly increase crop production, may cause chronic health problems. Environmental stressors, such as smelters, chemical plants, incinerators, and landfills all result from efforts to improve the functioning of society, and all have adverse effects on the populations living within proximity of these stressors (Bullard 1994).
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
Environmental Ethics N. Scott Momaday, "Native American Attitudes toward the Environment" 1.) Using the XML file format. How does Mr. Momaday use stories to develop his ideas? Would you draw the same conclusions from his stories that Mr. Momaday does? Mr. Momaday uses stories to develop his ideas by constantly using imagery and imagination.
Evironmentalism: The Next Step Broad Social Change Through Personal Commitment Introduction In the last thirty years, America has witnessed an environmental revolution. New laws like the 1963 Clean Air Act and the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act forged new ground in political environmentalism. Social phenomena like Earth Day, organized by Dennis Hayes in 1970, and the beginning of large-scale recycling, marked by Oregon's 1972 Bottle Bill, have help change the way Americans think about the environment. As we approach the third millennium, however, we must reconsider our place on the planet and reflect on our efforts and progress towards a sustainable society. As global warming becomes a scientific reality, natural disasters make monthly appearances in the headlines, and communities continue to find their ground-water contaminated by industrial and nuclear waste, we must ask ourselves: are we doing enough? The environmental movement in the past has largely been a social and political phenomenon. While many of us recycle (yet still only 35 percent of us) and take dead batteries to our town's Hazardous Waste Day, most Americans have not made the environment a personal issue. Very few of us have taken the kind of personal life-changing steps that are necessary to create an environmentally sustainable society. It is simply naive to believe that America's present rates of consumption, waste production, and environmental contamination are sustainable. The kind of social change required can only happen when we as individuals embrace the effort in our everyday lives. Only then will corporate America and the government realize that they too must change to maintain their customer base and public support. This kind of personal commitment to change would also create a new social ethic based on the environment under which people and companies who do not care for the earth would be held socially and financially responsible. In six parts, this article will re-examine our place in the environmental movement and investigate exactly what changes we can make in our personal lives to bring about positive change. These areas are transportation, energy, recycling and waste management, toxins and pollution, food, and water. Some of the changes discussed will require sacrifice. But, more important, these changes will often simplify our lives, bring our families and communities closer ...
* Shirk, Evelyn. “New Dimensions in Ethics: Ethics and the Environment.” Ethics and the Environment. Proc. of Conf. on Ethics and the Environment, April 1985, Long Island University. Ed. Richard E. Hart. Lanham: University Press of America, 1992. 1-10.
Many people assume that the environment is not in danger. They believe that as technology advances, we do not need to worry about renewing natural resources, recycling, and finding new ways to produce energy. They state that one person in the world does not make a large difference. In reality, each individual's contribution greatly affects our environment. Our natural resources are slowly disappearing, and we must work together to save them and the Earth from ruin.
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.
Is it right that future generations, who have committed no crimes, be forced to live in a contaminated environment with freshwater depletion, polluted air, global warming and biodiversity reduction just because our present generation has caused the damage? Should our future children be ensured an ecologically healthy environment? I think they should. I strongly believe that protecting the environment is extremely important. We are all part of the environment; Earth is what we all share in common. It is our home and we are obliged to preserve it. As someone who is aware, who cares and who is concerned, I’d like to help you understand why protecting our environment is vital. I believe that protecting the environment is essential for healthy living, in creating a healthful environment for our future generation and last but not least, the Earth is our one and only home.