After completing all of the assigned readings, I have come to the conclusion that my personal philosophy will be that of an ecological ethics position. I can clearly see now that ecological view is the right choice because it can better describe the environment and our role in that environment. After reading Callicott’s view of land ethics, I felt more discussion was needed on the topic, manly regarding human obligation and how to maintain the balance of the biotic community with humanity. Almost all of the group projects presented today are dependent on our role in the environment and subject to our actions. The two topics I chose to focus closely on were Wilderness Preservation and Climate Change. I found both topics extremely interesting because they are heavily dependent on maintaining balance between the biotic community and humanity.
My first instinct before researching the topic of wilderness preservation was that of excluding all human contact from the wilderness creating two separate entities; humanity and the environment. I soon realized that this was a foolish and impractical way of approaching the wilderness preservation. To cut natural resources abruptly would wreak economic havoc and would be to extreme of a change. This caused me to appreciate Mathew’s view of letting be. Mathew discussed that humanity needs to return to nature to preserve the wilderness. This would call for living in the wilderness and becoming part of the environment. Although this would be a violation of the definition of the environment according to Nelson, I thought it would align closely to my environmental beliefs. We would create a balance between the human community and the biotic community, thus becoming less removed from the ecosystem as we are today. Although I agreed with this view, I knew that this model was impractical for the reason of converting people to leave their current life style of consumerism to live off the land. This made me realize that although I personally believe in a balance between the environment and humanity, we must find this balance in a way that allows us to keep a similar life style to our current way of life in order for the preservation of the wilderness to be effective.
I found my solution while learning of Noss’s view of how to deal with wilderness preservation. Noss believes that society should maintain an ethical balance with the biotic community, while steadily decreasing our dependence off resources located in the wilderness. I believe this moderate view is the most logical way to effectively protect the wilderness because it does not rely on a drastic change on society’s part, which humans are notoriously resistant to change. This means developing renewable energy sources and focusing on decreasing our imprint on the environment. This would mean society would have to make ethical decisions to focus scientific research to rely less on the environment. Focusing on this research would mean more jobs and a growth of the economy which is part of the human community’s natural way. This means humanity can maintain a balance between humanity and the biotic community through scientific developments. After completing the group project, I could clearly see that I did not only look at environmental issues from an ecological standpoint, but from a practical view as well. With this new philosophy, I could now look at climate change issues in a new light from when I first started developing my environmental views.
Climate change held a close connection to the preservation of wilderness in my opinion because wilderness areas are extremely effective at converting CO2 into oxygen which is the leading cause of climate change. Another connection I felt when reading about climate change was that both the preservation of the wilderness and climate issues could be solved through ethical choices to focus on scientific research. ] Gardiner’s essay stated that his view of climate change was “in terms of it being as much a moral quandary as an economic and scientific problem.” I saw this view to be very practical and level headed, thus why I felt it was a great approach to climate change. Similar to Noss’s ethical balance theory, Gardiner see’s climate change as a moral issues that needs to be understood both economically and scientifically. When looking at Dawson, it is clear that not every philosopher would like to focus on these topics but rather on the discrimination and societal problems climate change causes. Although an important subject that should be looked into, I feel we need to understand climate change in scientific terms in order to combat the changes and then discuss the implications climate change can have on society. Thus if we approach our environment, encompassing climate change and wilderness preservation, in an ethically, scientifically and practically light, then I believe we have the best chance at halting the trauma humanity has already caused to the environment, allowing for an ethical balance between the biotic community and society.