Chapter 2 Flashcards
Environmental Ethics
What you believe about what is right and what is wrong in our behavior toward the environment
Environmental Worldviews
The assumptions and beliefs that you have about how the natural world works and how you think you should interact with the environment
Nature-Deficit Disorder
-Coined by Richard Louv
-a wide range of problems, including anxiety, depression, and attention-deficit disorders, that can result from a lack of contact with nature.
Planetary Management World View
-Humans are the planet’s most important, intelligent, and dominant species
-Humans should and can manage and dominate the earth mostly for their own benefit.
-Other species and parts of nature should be valued primarily on how useful they are to humans.
-Because of ever-increasing economic growth, there is always more and it is for us.
-Human Centered
Stewardship Worldview
This view assumes that we have an ethical responsibility to be responsible managers, or stewards, of the earth. It also calls for us to encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and development and discourage environmentally harmful forms.
Environmental Wisdom Worldview
-Earth Centered
-We need to learn how nature has sustained life on the earth for 3.8 billion years and use these lessons from nature (environmental wisdom or biomimicry) to guide us in living more simply and sustainably.
-We are part of—not apart from—the community of life and the ecological processes that sustain all life.
-We are not in charge of the world.
-We are subject to nature’s scientific laws that cannot be broken.
Voluntary Simplicity
Voluntary simplicity involves learning to live with less stuff, using products and services that have smaller harmful environmental impacts, and creating beneficial environmental impacts.
Mental Traps for Environmental Inaction
1) gloom and doom pessimism (it is hopeless)
2) blind technological optimism (sciences and technological fixes will save us)
3) hoping we can move to another planet
Warning signs of civilization collapse
-gridlock (can’t solve complex issues)
-substituting beliefs for facts
Foundational Ideas of Environmental Literacy
-Natural capital matters because it sustains our lives and economies
-Our ecological footprints are huge and growing rapidly
-We should not reach the tipping point with Earth because the consequences will be long lasting
No-Problem School
Humans can solve any issue with the environment through advancing technology
Free-Market School
Government should not have control over environmental issues
Spaceship Earth School
Earth is a complex machine that we can dominate
