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Environmentalism and Animal Rights
Environmentalism, also called environmental ethics, is an applied and theoretical philosophy about how humans should interact with nature: the natural non-human world, living and inanimate. It poses a challenge to anthropocentrism, an outlook that assumes moral superiority of humans over other species, and thus is related to animal rights. Some environmental ethics questions are should mountains be demolished for their ore, should forests be cut down for wood, should rivers be dammed for electricity, should wild animals be killed to make grazing for livestock, and should fish be fished-out to feed a burgeoning human population? Are these actions necessary and do we have a right to do them? Do plants, animals, rivers, mountains, environments have rights? Are we free to pollute and use up natural resources? Are we morally obligated to restore what we disrupt or destroy? Do artificially restored environments have the same value as natural ones, morally, ecologically, and aesthetically?
Questions about environmental ethics date back to ancient times. But the modern era of environmental ethics is widely considered to begin with the 1962 book Silent Spring, written by the American writer and ecologist Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964). Rachel Carson warned about the ruinous use of modern man-made chemicals on the environment and called for a change in attitude to nature. Serious attention about the rights and wrongs of human behaviour to nature gradually started gathering pace about this time. Early milestones in environmental ethics are:
Critics of environmentalism argue that our moral duty to the environment comes solely from our duty to humans. By protecting the environment and dealing with environmental degradation for the benefit of humanity we look after the environment at the same time. Thus, in this view, we need enlightened anthropocentrism, not environmental ethics, to guide our interaction with animals and the non-human world. From an ecological perspective, some corporations and businesses accept claims by environmentalists and do not deny the powerful influence humanity has on the biosphere. But they argue that the biosphere is durable and resilient, can withstand humanity�s beating, and therefore we should not be overly concerned about it. At the levels of Government and economics shallow ecology rules.
See the entries, Anthropocentrism, Deep Ecology, and Intrinsic Value. ›› To Entries & Home |
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