To What Extent Is It True to Claim That People Have an Individual Sense of Moral Responsibility for Environment? (35 Marks)

“Let every individual and institution now think and act as a responsible trustee of Earth, seeking choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will provide a sustainable future.”

Aldo Leopold is another American environmentalist who was dominant in the development of modern environmental ethics. Aldo was more for holistic ethics regarding land. According to him, “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.” He describes in his article that politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which free-for-all competition has been replaced by co-operative mechanism with an ethical content.” He thought that ethics direct individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. Also he believes that community should be

If everyone thought this way our wildlife, animals, nature, and environment would be in better the way you would want them to be treated. This saying is simply stating to people love to have nice things and when we get them we like to keep it that way. So in relation to Leopold we have a nice beautiful environment in which we should keep it that way. Think of our environment as a condition than what it is now. Aldo Leopold was right when he said “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and the beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”(Sand CountyAlmanac, pg. 224-225). It is important for people to reach and follow the values of Leopold explaining that beauty is not just scenery, stability does not mean unchanging for change is essential to nature and the natural world and integrity is wholeness, having all the parts. These three simple values will change our perspective of the

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

In Paul Taylor’s essay, “The Ethics for Respect for Nature,” he argues that… In this paper I will first describe Taylor’s concept of “respect for nature.” I will then explain the part this attitude plays in rationally grounding a biocentric outlook on environmental ethics. Lastly, I will present Rosalind Hursthouse’s criticism of Taylor’s view, and state how Taylor might respond to this criticism.

Aldo Leopold laid the foundation for environmental awareness decades ahead of a “ecological conscience” (257). There have many pleas to reconnect humanity with nature since the release of Leopold’s cherished book. Intuition and reason tell us that living in harmony with our world is more than idealistic—the future of our planet depends on it. The desire for harmony is not new one. Humans have long time sought to live in peace. It is genuine feelings of love and

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” said by none other, Aldo Leopold. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist, brought a new idea to the environmentalist’s table: “land ethic.” His idea of a land ethic is a moral responsibility of humans to the natural Earth. Leopold’s idea has been discussed since the publication by a wide variety of people, from the public to scholars. Since

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

In the introduction of Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston’s book , Environmental Ethics: An Anthology, the authors explain the basic concepts of ethics: more specifically environmental ethics, and how they apply to everyday life. The main concepts discussed include moral agents, moral patients, anthropocentrism, weak or broad anthropocentrism, indirectly morally considerable, and directly morally considerable. These concepts are the foundations to the environmental ethics that Light and Rolston wrote about; however, in regards to the short story written by J. Lanham titled: “Hope and Feathers: A crisis in birder identification,” the two terms most predominately relating to the text are moral patients and moral agents. Lanham, in this text, describes the epitome of what it means to be a good moral agent, as interpreted by Light and Rolston, where others failed.

"Save the Planet," "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," "Go Green." Quotes like these have become a commonality in today's age. We all are familiar with the large efforts to help preserve the environment. In "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments," Thomas E. Hill Jr. sums up his essay by stating, "The point is not to insinuate that all anti-environmentalists are defective, but to see that those who value such traits as humility, gratitude, and sensitivity to others have reason to promote the love of nature" (688; par. 4) This excerpt provides the thesis behind Hill's argument. The author found that

Humans have an ethical responsibility to care for the earth, they should make a better world and repay the earth by

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

During his time, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist who believed in the longevity of the land and that we should protect it, even if we must protect the land from ourselves. While this was an unpopular opinion, realizing that the land and animals naturally work together in a symbiotic relationship to protect one another was very apparent to Leopold. He believed that humans should be doing our best to lessen our impact on the environment. Time has caught up with Leopold’s ideologies and it is time that our efforts and contributions to the earth did too.

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

These perspectives are anthropocentric or human centered and view all non-human life as less important than humans themselves. Environmental ethics challenges these beliefs by questioning the assumed moral superiority of human beings to members of other species on earth (SEP, 2008). Preservation of the environment is essential to the preservation of the human race.