After a semester's hard work, I conclude my blog with this final post, summarizing what I have learned and declaring my own personal position as an environmental stakeholder and citizen. One of the overarching concepts we have studied has been Anthropocentrism and how it aligns with the three leading world views of Planetary Management, Stewardship,... Continue Reading →
This post will be a continuation of the discussion on Animal Rights activism (see Blog Posts 8-10 for background) and associated environmental ethics within different worldviews. I will revisit the evaluation in Post 10 of Peter Singer’s Egalitarian Utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s Egalitarian Kant-based Abolitionism, as well as Leopold’s community based Land Ethic in Post... Continue Reading →
“The Question is not, Can they reason? Nor Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”- Jeremy Bentham (Image. the March and the Blessing. Google Images, Public Domain) In my previous blog post, “Speciesism in Industrial Agriculture”, I briefly touched upon the different criterion of moral standing as they relate to the treatment of animals and their... Continue Reading →
“’Speciesism’ the view that the members of one species or their interests are more valuable than the interests of other species- or more extremely, that the interests of only one species has any intrinsic value” (VanDeVeer, p 654). As the world’s populations have grown, the demand for meat and other animal products has also grown,... Continue Reading →
The two thinkers I will now explore address ethics which are under the umbrella of the Earth Wisdom worldview. Paul Taylor, in “Competing Claims and Principles” and “The Ethics of Respect for Nature”, argues for biocentrism and biocentric egalitarianism, which share some of the same principles of Deep Ecology. In “The Power and the Promise... Continue Reading →
Dr. Thomas Berry, a catholic priest, cosmologist, and geologist, is a proponent of the Earth Wisdom environmental worldview through his advocacy for Ecotheology. In his Schumacher lecture,“The Ecozoic Era”,he argues that a misunderstanding of and lack of respect for the natural world have resulted in such an enormous disturbance of the biosphere that humans have... Continue Reading →
env entry 8- link to class presentation “Quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It... Continue Reading →
According to Arne Naess in ““The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movements: A Summary”, two fields of thought in the modern Ecology movement are competing for the attention of the scientific and ethical communities. He distinguishes between these two movements, and summarizes them as Deep Ecology and Shallow Ecology. Shallow Ecology has a... Continue Reading →
William Baxter, in a passage from his book on the law and economics of pollution control, People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution, provides an Anthropocentric view of animal rights through his criterion for solving the problem of pollution and waste. When approaching how to solve a problem, specifically the problem of Environmental pollution,... Continue Reading →
When analyzing environmental Issues and where one stands, one must consider central questions at the heart of environmental ethics: what value do humans and nonhumans have? Do they share the same value? Do either have “moral standing”, or intrinsic value beyond being a means to an end? Humans, as moral agents capable of reflecting on... Continue Reading →
Environmental Ethics 