Environmental Ethics
The Ethical Basis for Ecosystem ManagementEcosystem Management: The Human DimensionEstablishing an environmental ethic is of utmost concern to the human species to better comprehend our place in the world and our potentials for the future. In doing so, we must extend our thinking of rights and responsibilities. I believe we must incorporate not only a temporal component, but also a spatial understanding of the world as an organic biotic community and how consumption is a part of the natural order. Aldo Leopold believes that conservation ethics must be rooted in a determination: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." I would like to start with Leopold's statement, and further explore how the definitions of integrity, stability and beauty can be better understood given three corollary's:1. All organic entities must consume to survive – it is not only a right, but a responsibility2. There are limited resources to be consumed by organic entities on the planet3. The human species has the ability, through rational thought, to conserve ever-depleting resources
Leopold emphasizes the diversity of the landscape and its contribution to the beauty that exists there. We must come to grips with our consumption patters, in relation to the amount of energy that is required for ourselves, and other entities, to exist. Here, it is important to see that individuals contribute to and affect the stability of the community as a whole. He helped build a flower, which became an acorn, which fattened a deer which fed an Indian, all in a single year. Bibliography Leopold, Aldo. The earth, itself, does nothing more than recycle energy. Of course, by removing the potential energy base for other organic entities, this can lead to instability in the organic community as a whole. The modern market-driven consumer society is very different from the consumer community of the totality of organic entities on the earth – and quite possible less complex. They are mechanical devices, driven by a materialistic ethic, meant to transform energy into types that our species can then consume. The individual components, aside from extremely damaging human events, will normally not put a dent in the community as a whole. Notions of right and wrong now have no standing – it is a fact that organic entities must consume to maintain life. This diversification that Leopold discusses can allow us to frame beauty in an energy-consumption view. It seems a fatalistic point of view, but in terms of human lifetimes, the end of usable resources may still be thousands of generations away. That is, the more we consume, the more waste is produced that is not available to organic entities to survive. Cars consume oil, power plants consume coal, and our packaging consumes trees.
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Acceptance Essays
