The reading assignments for this week has been very educative about the environment and making it a better place for living. In this written assignment, I will examine some of the ethical issues related to population growth and their effect to the environment. Also, I will propose solutions to these problems base on the reading material available for this Unit. But before I continue, I wish to introduce us to environmental ethics and its definition which I think it is very important for us to understand so as to know our role to play in this beautiful planet.
Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its non-human contents
…show more content…
Therefore, we need to think about tomorrow with respect to every action that we take in the environment and in this case we can say that sustainable development requires slower population growth. With this in mind, we need to be educated through our cultures about the impact we caused to the environment as we continue to reproduce. The challenge of environmental ethics has led to the attempt to apply traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; the preservation of biodiversity as an ethical goal; the broader concerns of some thinkers with wilderness, the built environment and the politics of poverty; the ethics of sustainability and climate change, and some directions for possible future developments of the discipline [ CITATION And15 \l 1033 ]. With this multi-dimensional approach one can see that it is more of a cultural issue to think of it from its origin. We have grown to see our parents have children, build houses, buy cars cultivate farmlands, explore timber and many other aspects. I think that this is the time to ask ourselves the question how good or bad are our actions to the environment? We should not inherit the habits of our forefathers because we are now responsible for the consequences of our action base on consequential ethics which states that it is common for us to determine our moral responsibility by weighing the consequences of our actions. According to consequentialism, correct moral conduct is determined solely by a cost-benefit analysis of an action's consequences. And in this case, if we apply sustainable development and consequential ethics, I am sure that we will protect our environment looking at it as a social
Summary The article “Returning the Gift” that written by Robin Kimmerer has discussed the importance of having our appreciations for nature. The Earth is providing many valuable gifts for us, including fresh air, water, lands and many more natural resources to keep us alive. The author has pointed out that human beings are being greedy, and taking everything for granted. From the author’s perspective, human beings should feel grateful of what we have.
The frightening notion of the rapid expendability of resources in an environmentally rich region created a civilization that was quickly unsustainable. This unsustainable style of existence needs to exist as a lesson for our contemporary society, as our own expendability of nature has only recently been recognized. Kennecott has shown that one viewpoint must be understood to successfully coexist and
When people think of the environment they think of many things. To some, the environment could mean nature while others may consider it to be an entire ecosystem. In the book, “The Spell of the Sensuous,” philosopher David Abram discusses how humanity needs to reconnect with the environment and that the solution is to reduce our use of technology. He believes that once we are one with the environment, we can then proceed to treat it correctly and fix our mistakes. In the book, “Animal Liberation” the author, Peter Singer, defines “speciesism” and how animals and humans should be considered equally due to the fact that they both feel pleasure and pain.
At what point are we going to take responsibility and protect the Earth instead of allowing it to be destroyed? The Earth can only handle a so much growth before it reaches its max sustainability. In each text, sustainability refers to how much growth the Earth can maintain without being destroyed. Wendell Berry, Jared Diamond, and Bill McKibben all use rhetoric to appeal to their audience using ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is an appeal to the audience’s ethics.
Environmental justice is in many ways a safety net used when humanity has destroyed the earth to the point humans no longer can live a healthy life style. This coincides with mother cultures perception. The taker mentality views the world as centered on humanity, for the earth is nothing more than a, “…human life-support system, as a machine designed to produce and sustain human life”(59). In other words, the world is meant to sustain man and nothing more. Therefore, humans do not have to take care of the earth, the earth is meant to take care of humanity.
The inhabitants right to an “environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being” and the right to “ecologically sustainable development” is violated. Environmental ethics, on the other hand, is the area of applied ethics that discusses, reflects and reasons on normative measures (values, rules, norms, criteria) for dealing with non-human natural entities in a responsible way (Karafyllis 2013, p.292). In particular, it refers to the value that mankind places on protecting, conserving, and efficiently using resources that the earth provides. Simply put, environmental ethics poses the question - what, if any, moral obligation does man have to the preservation and care of the non-human
Jane Goodall, a primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist, explains that the greatest risk to our future is lacking enthusiasm and concern about its outcome. Considering Goodall is extremely environmentally keen, it is more than likely she is emphasizing this towards the future of the entire ecosystem, including plants and animals, rather than only the future of the human race. She explains that if the human race falls to a deficiency of caring about our environment, it can and will lead to a vast threat to the future of the world’s ecosystem. Often humans forget about the importance of the ecosystem and instead we become caught up in ourselves and our own individual needs. Goodall is stressing that if these egotistical human acts continue to occur, the future of our ecosystem is in jeopardy.
Which view seems to you to be the more adequate? Explain your answer. Ecological ethics states that ecological systems are intrinsically valuable and that they deserve
He argues that we should treat our land with care and respect as we now treat one another, for we will be ushering a new era of change the is all for the better. The second half of the essay begins with "The Ecological Conscience". Starting off by stating “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land” and going on to describe how our fight for land is improving it is moving far too slow. This transforms into the
Professional ethics on interior industry What is ethics? Ethics is moral principles that represent a man 's conduct or the directing an action the branch of information that arrangements with moral principles. As a designer we have a responsibility to, public, client, other designers & colleagues, association and interior design profession employee and our self as well. SLIID (Sri Lanka institute of interior design) has set a “code of conduct” principals for interior designers to follow. As interior designers member of SLIID we are bound to ‘code of conduct’.
Prince Ea’s video titled “Dear Future Generations: Sorry” portrays the possible future faced by future generations if people don’t take responsibility for environmental issues that mankind has caused. Humankind must apologize for leaving the Earth an eyesore for the generations to come because they gave themselves reasons to not act. The descendents of the people of today will be forced to live without tree, for the reason that people of today didn’t realize how extraordinary the Earth was. Trees did a great deal such as, provide oxygen, fight against human ailments and contamination, but they were cut down so humans could obtain money. Unlike the Native Americans who took care of the planet for their children’s children, humans now aren’t thinking about
A significant number of international human rights and environmental instruments show how environmental protection contributes to the enjoyment of human rights. Human rights became a focus of international law long before environmental concerns did. While the United Nations Charter of 1945 marked the beginning of modern international human rights law, the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 is generally seen as the starting point of the modern international framework for environmental protection. Certain international human rights instruments concluded after the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment explicitly recognized the linkage between human rights and the environment.
To become a sustainable society, we must eliminate our contributions to: No1. The increase of concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust (heavy metals and fossil fuels) No2. The increase of concentrations of substances produced by society (plastics, dioxins and DDT) No3. The physical degradation of nature and natural processes (harvesting forests and destroying habitat)
Introduction: Our earth is the most precious gift of the universe. It is the sustenance of ‘nature’ that is the key to the development of the future of mankind. It is the duty and responsibility of each one of us to protect nature. It is here that the understanding of the ‘environment’ comes into the picture. The degradation of our environment is linked with the development process and the ignorance of people about retaining the ecological balance.
By the early 1970s, thanks to investigative writers like Rachel Carson who looked at the use of pesticides in Agriculture and especially thanks to the media attention surrounding santa barbara Oil Spill . There is this strong national trend in America towards Environmentalism-It became very popular. And the media really played a very big part in advancing this cause here. In the early 1970s, the Keep America Beautiful organization was founded.