Essays

Many say that at the current rate of development, we're headed for an environmental disaster. Humans don't exactly hold the best track record for environmental protection and preservation. Throughout time we have exploited nature and its creatures for our own benefit. We have made technological advances that threaten and disrupt the environment with total disregard for that fact. We took slipshod short cuts that are now catching up to us today and we can think of no available alternatives that will remedy the problem quickly and usefully.

We have developed a huge and thriving society and in the process we deforest huge sections of land for living and livestock grazing. This decreases oxygen and increases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere possibly adding to global warming though the greenhouse effect.' This massive population produces massive amounts of waste, so to deal with that we just throw it into the ground, which in turn contaminates our water supply and contributes to further deforestation. We develop motorized transportation and then burn non-renewable fossil fuels that put lead, carbon monoxide, sulphur and nitrogen oxides, ozone, excel carbon dioxide and other harmful particulates into that atmosphere. This produces dangers like smog and cancer and contributes to global warming. In the production of fuel we exhaust oil reserves and pollute the oceans through spills from tankers. This endangers wilderness and wildlife. We produce an inert, easily producible propellant for aerosols and then realize it's inert only on the ground.

Once it's bombarded by UV ray in the upper atmosphere it releases a highly destructive ion that wreaks havoc on the protective ozone layer shielding us from those same deadly UV rays, creating a hole in the layer allowing the radiation through, increasing cancer and other genetic defects. We build rockets capable of going into space and breaking the earth's gravitational pull and then immediately start to pollute this new environment with spent rockets and boosters along with other miscellaneous particles of debris.

To the common person our current situation contains little hope. All the advancement and improvements have done little to further our species. With each one has come a new environmental issue. You almost need to evaluate each situation in terms of positives and negatives.

However, at the root of all this chaos you'll find anthropocentrism, a human centred way of thinking. This way of thinking as an attitude and moral theory, centres on humans as the highest of the significant beings. The theory views nature and the environment in terms of their use value for humans only. So all of the above developments with costs can be justified through their usefulness for humans. philosophies. Conservationists attempt to conserve natural resources while still looking for better ways to keep society functioning using modern techniques. This way additional adverse effects are minimized and an attempt is made to maintain some areas of open wilderness. The only problem with this view is that it is still a human centred ethic. It still sees the environment as a thing to be utilized by humans for their own pleasure. It doesn't do enough. The problems aren't getting fixed. Better ways of doing things are being researched, but the underlying problem is not receiving any attention.  So the environmental downward spiral is only slowed down and is not fixed. We've still got the same problems. To take the conservationist attitude further you would see all sentient beings as holding moral standing and due ; consideration. This includes most of the animals in the world, any animal capable of experiencing pleasure and " pain. Through these experiences you form the basis for the extended moral theory. If the animals perish through their habitat's destruction or outside influences, then their future pleasures will no longer be. When you take into account whole societies and communities of animals then the added value to the environment increases exponentially as you combine their happiness with the happiness never experienced by their future generations. So by taking this viewpoint you place even more intrinsic value on the environment through the experiences of all sentient animals involved.

Even if we wake up and try to fix our current conditions, face the facts, we may be too late. The possibility remains that the environmental situation may have gone too far and there's no fixing it but in the end what's really in danger is us. Humans' only concern with fixing the environment deals with providing one in which we can continue to survive, whether that be in a dominant or submissive role.

We're still stuck in a human centred philosophy. Some people think that no matter what we do, it will have an incredibly great impact on the environment. No matter how much we think we matter when dealing with the survival of the planet, in actuality we don't mean squat. In its four billion year existence the earth has undergone drastic change, violent geographic upheaval with mountains and oceans rising and falling and life played out on top of this constant and chaotic change. Even if we caused some quick, drastic change, like a nuclear accident, life, probably bacteria somewhere like in the icecaps or in the ground, would still survive after all the other plants and animals died.

So in the end we have a choice to make, how centred on ourselves will we be in the future when dealing with the environment? There may be time left to fix what we've done or maybe not and we’ll just have to trust that the earth can take care of itself just like it has in the past.