5.1 Approaches in environmental ethics for business and engineering  (Page 9/9)

Exercise five: should the bison be saved?

• If you were there, would you join Nielson in attempting to save the bear?
• Choose an ethical approach from above that best supports the Park Service's position of nonintervention and construct an ethical argument in its support.
• Choose an ethical approach from above that best supports the position of intervention and construct an ethical argument in its support.
• Is Harvey right when he claims that the Park Service assumes this a scientific issue when in fact it is a moral/religious issue? Is nonintervention clearly the position that must be derived from the ecological standpoint?

Exercise six: stop having babies

• The platform of Deep Ecology uses the position that nature is intrinsically valuable to assert that human population must be drastically curtained.
• Examine the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable, that is, it has value on its own independently of its usefulness as a resource to serve human needs.
• Examine the additional premise that human activity is "excessive and the situation is rapidly worsening."
• Do you think that human population should be seriously curtailed to mitigate or eliminate the harmful impact of human activity on the environment?
• Norton would hold that the Deep Ecology platform is decidedly nonanthropocentric. Do you agree? Can, as Norton claims, a sustainable environmental policy be carried out on anthropocentric grounds?

What did you learn?

Take time to do a Muddy Point exercise on this module. What did you learn? (Something positive.) What was the muddiest point? (Something you didn't understand or disagreed with.)

Presentation on module

Presentation on environmental ethics with exercises

Presentation at schoenstatt january 22, 2010

Presentation taped october 30, 2011 at schoenstatt

Appendix

References

1. Callicott, B. (1989). In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy . Albany, NY: Suny Unversity Press.
2. Des Jardins, J.R. (1993). Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth: 217.
3. Hickman, L. (1996). Nature as Culture: John Dewey’s Pragmatic Naturalism. In Environmental Pragmatism , Light, A. and Katz, E. (Eds.). London: Routledge: 50-72.
4. Horst, W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning . In Policy Sciences 4: 155-169.
5. Leopold, A. (1949/1978). A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River . New York, Ballentine Books.
6. Norton, B.G. (2005) Sustainability . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
7. Regan, T. (1983). The Case For Animal Rights . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
8. Robbins, J. (1984). "Do Not Feed the Bears?" Natural History , January 1984: 12, 14-16.
9. Rosenthal, S.B., and Buchholz, R.A. (1996). How Pragmatism Is An Environmental Ethic. In Environmental Pragmatism , Light, A. and Katz, E. (Eds.). London: Routledge: 38-49.
10. Rua, E. (2000) "Super Aqueduct Coming Online," in Caribbean Business . http://www.puertorico-herald.org/issues/vol4n09/CBAqueduct-en.html (accessed April 17, 2009).
11. Sagoff, M. (1988). The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law, and the Environnment . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
12. Shaw, Bill. (2005) A Virtue Ethics Approach to Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic. In Environmental Virtue Ethics (Sandler and Cafaro, Eds.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield: 100-102.
13. Shrader-Frechette, K.S. (1984). Ethics and Energy. In Earthbound: New Introductory Essays in Environmental Ethics . Regan, T. (Ed.). New York: Random House: 107-146.
14. Singer, P. (1975/1977) Animal Liberation: A New Ethics For Our Treatment Of Animals . New York: Avon.
15. Stone, C.D. (1987). Earth and Other Ethics: The Case for Moral Pluralism . New York: Harper and Row: 155.
16. Taylor, P.W. (1986) Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics . Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press.
17. Wensveen, Louke Van. (2005) Cardinal Environmental Virtues. In Environmental Virtue Ethics (Sandler and Cafaro, Eds.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield: 176-177.
18. Worster, D. (1977/1994). Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas: 2nd Ed . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eac toolkit project

This module is a work-in-progress; the author(s) may update the content as needed. others are welcome to use this module or create a new derived module. you can collaborate to improve this module by providing suggestions and/or feedback on your experiences with this module.

Please see the Creative Commons License regarding permission to reuse this material.