Environmental Science : The Challenges Of Environmental Ethics And The Environment

Growing up in Switzerland and Oregon, I learned that nature is greatly valued and it is necessary to respect the environment to prevent impending environmental collapse. Living in a society whose morals and ethics include

Instead of focusing on the individual, “ecological economics invites us to picture ourselves not as isolated individuals but as housemates” (McFague 132). This model has two goals striving for sustainability and distributive justice which will allow for the earth’s resources to be sustained for future generations. McFague feels that the ecological economic system will provide an efficient system that will suit and support the needs of the world.

“Many current discussions about sustainability focus on the ways in which human activity...can be maintained in the future without exhausting all of our current resources… there has been a close correlation between the growth of human society and environmental degradation - as communities grow, the environment often declines” (603).

The environment can be described as all those elements, both the living and the non-living that surrounds us. The environment can also refer to the condition within which individuals, animals and plants lives. Mankind has a role to play in the environment, which mainly concerns taking care of the environment as well as improving it. Since, we as human beings are different from animals as we have a gift consciousness, we have an obligation of being improvers of the environment through ensuring that we observe environmental consciousness and that we avoid all those practices that negatively affects the environment and cause ecological crisis and problems. This essay will use the article “Towards a Buddhist Environmental Ethics” by Rita M Gross to help in the answering of the question “What is our appropriate role in relation the environment?” The essay will additionally look into the concept of ‘deep ecology’ by Bill Devall and George Sessions to get a deeper understanding of the ecology and our relationship with it, a concept that will help us to be in a better position to answer our appropriate role concerning the environment.

While environmental questions are frequently channeled through practical and economic prisms, it is also appropriate to consider our econolgy as a function of morality. The ethical dilemmas which contribute to our policies and our behaviors regarding the use of fossil fuels and our attention to global climate change are frequently overshadowed by more immediate concerns of survival or mere comfort.

No matter what problem we have or how big that problem is, we are going to face questions that are both social and ethical in nature. Geoengineering is a proposal that the scientific community agrees might be necessary to stop the global warming crisis. However, many question if this is ethically acceptable. Humans have already manipulated the ecosystem, but intentionally and unintentionally, but are intentional acts on a large scale a good idea or not (Corner & Pidgeon, 2010). We have no idea what can occur when trying any of the methods, as no one has ever done anything like this in the past to reflect on or to give us suggestions for how we can be successful. Depending on where the manipulation occurs, it can cause different responses

emphasizes on the common value that is shared by all human beings. “Environmental rights are fundamental human rights.” Everyone deserves the basic rights to live and have the responsibility to protect our rights. Similarly, humans are just like other animals and we cannot live by ourselves. We need a good environment for us to sustain our lives. Therefore, it is our responsibility to care about any environmental issues on the earth.

The first challenge in this essay is to shift the way people think about some of the biggest environmental problems that are affecting humanity in a global level, rather to see them as independent and isolated problems to view them as a whole, as a part of a system and as a consequence of other different problems that are being faced in other parts of the world.

White’s thesis in The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis states that in order to confront the expanding environmental crises, humans must begin to analyze and alter their treatment and attitudes towards nature. The slow destruction of the environment derives from the Western scientific and technological advancements made since the Medieval time period. “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them” (RON p.7). Technology and science alone will not be able to save humans until we adjust the way of thinking and suppress the old ideas of humans power above nature. Instead, we need to learn how to think of ourselves as being

We are taught about the relation of human beings with their environment from the early days of our schooling. But what we have achieved is failure in protecting our environment.We have not, as a species, come to grips with the explosive events that have changed our relationship with the planet. For most of human existence, we lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers whose impact on nature could be absorbed by the resilience of the biosphere. Even after the Agricultural Revolution 10,000

The decline of the environment due to natural and human exertion is known as the degradation of the environment. The natural weather occurrences such as heavy rain, flooding, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. are not administered under human control. These meteorological phenomenon’s wreak devastation on the environment from time to time causing the land to become unsuitable to cultivate. On this subject matter, the human population does not contain the power to stop the wrath of Mother Nature. Rather, we are forced to sit back and watch. Nevertheless, humans engage in a crucial role towards the degradation of the environment in which we live in. Unavoidably, the degradation of the environment is a rising and utmost worldwide subject. I accept that the root cause to environmental degradation is the excessive use of resources on our land utilized by the processes under capitalism. As Jensen wrote in Endgame, “The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human and (nonhuman) impoverishment.

To keep our environment healthy, all these element need to work together. There are no global laws protecting the environment and that is why everyone should practice good ethics when it comes to the environment. Environmental ethics is the part of environment philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from only including hum and to non-humans. There are many ethical decisions that human beings make with respect to the environment. Humans are been considered of rational agents because they have clear preference, models uncertainty via expected values, and always to perform the action with the optimal expected outcome of itself. The action of the rational agent performs depends on the

The inspiration for environmental ethics was the first Earth Day in 1970 when environmentalists started urging philosophers who were involved with environmental groups to do something about environmental ethics. An intellectual climate had developed in the last few years of the 1960s in large part because of the publication of two papers in Science: Lynn White's "The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis" (March 1967) and Garett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" (December 1968). Most influential with regard to this kind of thinking, however, was an essay in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, "The Land Ethic," in which Leopold explicitly claimed that the roots of the ecological

Ethics is the study of what is right and wrong in human conduct. Environmental ethics studies the effects of human’s moral relationships on the environment and everything within it (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008). The ethical principles that govern those relations determine human duties, obligations, and responsibilities with regard to the Earth’s natural environment and all of the animals and plants that inhabit it (Taylor, 1989). The purpose of this paper is to reveal environmental issues that are threatening the existence of life on Earth, and discus our social obligations to refrain from further damaging our environment, health and life for future generations. I will discus the need for appropriate actions and the ethical

Environmental issues have been a cause of a lot of debate in the recent past. Governments and nongovernmental organizations have been in constant consultations on how to help protect the environment. Apparently, as a result of man’s many actions, the natural environment is getting torn apart so quickly that the coming generations will not enjoy this kind of environment, unless a