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Environmental Perspectives
Environmental Systems and Society
Environmental Value System
The “world view” or set of paradigms that shape the ways that
individuals and groups approach
environmental issues.
Inputs and outputs
Inputs: Media, religion, education, background, science, politics, economics
Outputs: Decisions, perspectives, course of action
Environmentalism
Ecocentric AnthropocentricTechnocentric(Nature Centered) (people centered) (Technology Centered)
Minimum disturbances People are managers Technology solvesto nature of the Earth problems
Ecocentrism
All life has inherent value
We should not cause extinction of other species
We should protect habitats and ecosystems
Humans are not more important than other species
Resources are limited
We need the Earth more than it needs us.
Deep ecologists and Soft Technologists
Deep Ecologists:
Nature has more value than humanity.
Biorights for all species
Soft Technologists /Self-reliance
Small scale, local community action
Individuals make a difference
Anthropocentrism Humanity centered
Nature is to benefit mankind
MEDC’s?
Humans are the most important species
Technocentrism
We will control and manage these resources
We can solve any problem we cause, including pollution
Economic growth is a good thing
Environmental Managers and Cornucopians
Environmental Managers
The Earth needs tending: Stewardship
Governments legislate and protect the environment
Cornucopians
The world has infinite resources
Technology and inventiveness can solve problems and increase living standards
Earth is a spaceship and we are the crew!
Chief Seattle
“Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. “
Aldo Leapold, 1949
“ 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. “
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
The Land Ethic
The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land….A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence ,and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.
In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”
~Aldo Leopold
“The most serious, insidious danger in the environmental movement is that it may sap the will of advanced communities to face the problems which no doubt lie ahead. Throughout history, hope for the future has been a powerful incentive for constructive change.”
Maddox (1972) in Environmentalism T. O’Riordan
Rachel Carson“ Like the resource it seeks to protect, wildlife
conservation must be dynamic, changing as conditions change, seeking always to become more effective.”
"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world—the very nature of its life."
James Lovelock – The Gaia Hypothesis
“A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.”
“ Any species that harms the environment to a point where it threatens its own progeny is doomed and will become extinct...and that's us.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“The earth, the air, the land and the water are not am inheritance from our fore fathers but on loan from our children. So we have to handover to them at least as it was handed over to us.”
“There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.”
George W. Bush
"It would be helpful if we opened up ANWR (The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge – a wilderness reserve). I think it's a mistake not to. And I would urge you all to travel up there and take a look at it and you can make the determination as to how beautiful that country is.”
Mar. 29, 2001
Barrack Obama“ One of the things I draw from the Genesis story is the importance of us being good stewards of the land, of this incredible gift. And I think there have been times where we haven’t been [good stewards], and this is one of those times where we’ve got to take the warning seriously [about climate change]. And part of what my religious faith teaches me is to take an intergenerational view, to recognize that we are borrowing this planet from our children and our grandchildren…. We have to find resources in ourselves to make sacrifices so we don’t leave it to the next generation. We’ve got to be less wasteful, both as a society and in our own individual lives … As president, I hope to rally the entire world around the importance of us being good stewards of the land.”
Source: 2008 Democratic Compassion Forum at Messiah College Apr 13, 2008
John Passmore
“ To take our ecological crises seriously...is to recognize, first, man's utter dependence on nature, but secondly, nature's vulnerability to human depredations—the fragility, that is, of both man and nature, for all their notable powers of recuperation. And this means that neither man nor nature is sacred or quasi-divine."
Seymore Papert
“I think there is good reason to believe that if everything were open, fewer bad things could happen. So give everyone the tools to observe and communicate what is happening.”
Wes Jackson
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113766846
