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Environmental Ethics > Unit 3 flashcards > Flashcards

Unit 3 flashcards

1
Q

What was Aldo Leopold’s last ethic?

A

a thing is right when it tends to pressure the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise

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2
Q

What is plato’s thoughts on humans in nature?

A

Humans are immaterial beings who belong in an eternal realm of perfect forms. This world of nature is not our true home.

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3
Q

What is Gould’s view on humans in nature?

A

Humans are embedded in nature, products of nature, and values are ephemeral

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4
Q

What is Murdy’s view on humans in nature?

A

Humans are the present crest of the evolutionary wave. Transcendent values exist and humans emerge into a dual sphere of biological and spiritual evolution.

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5
Q

What is Descartes’ view on humans in nature?

A

humans are composed of corporeal substance and thinking substance. Thinking substance is what makes us human and distinguishing us from animals.

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6
Q

What is Kant’s view on humans in nature?

A

Only humans are able to rationally determine the universal moral laws, and there is no discernible goal in the rest of nature.

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7
Q

What is Singer’s/Regan’s view on humans in nature?

A

Human culture gives rise to ethical rules that do not apply in nature. Humans create a world within a world.

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8
Q

What is Dillard’s view on humans in nature?

A

Nature is amoral, humans are moral. We are moral freaks in nature

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9
Q

What is the physical world definition of nature?

A

the physical world including all natural phenomena and living things

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10
Q

What is definition of nature for the forces controlling the physical world?

A

the forces and processes collectively that control the phenomena of the physical world independently of human volition or intervention

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11
Q

What is the definition of nature that is for non-human world (free of human influence or presence)?

A

a basic state of existence, untouched and uninfluenced by civilization

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12
Q

What are the ways in which we thought we could know about the nature of things?

A
  • Aristotle: the essence of a thing (the pigness of a pig)
  • shared eastern cultures where taoist and buddhist thought focused on nature
  • teleology: purpose and final causes
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13
Q

What are the ways in which are we no longer confident that we can know nature?

A
  • Immanuel Kant: noumena (the thing itself) and phenomena (the thing as it appears)
  • science deals with phenomena and delivers near-certain knowledge
  • the humanities use an entirely different sort of reason altogether
  • we can’t know nature
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14
Q

What does ecstasy mean?

A
  • to stand out(side of one’s self)
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15
Q

What are some characteristics of the idea of wilderness?

A
  • the word ‘wilderness comes from the same root as the word “will”, meaning self-willed, uncontrollable
  • an ancient Scandinavian symbol for wilderness is boiling water, unruly and chaotic
  • what is the closest English word to “wilderness”? bewilder
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16
Q

What are some ancient perceptions of wilderness?

A
  • greeks considered wilderness the domain of wild, sensuous gods and beasts (panic)
  • romans considered it uncivilized
  • in barbarian Europe, it was the domain of wood-sprites, trolls, and the wild-man
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17
Q

What are the Judeo-christian perspectives on wilderness?

A
  • wilderness is mentioned in the Hebrew and christian scriptures over 200 times
  • refers to desert, or waste places
  • is the abode of demons (temptation of Jesus)
  • is forsaken by God, absence of blessing
  • is a place of punishment
  • is the place where God finds you
  • the place of purification
  • facilitates spiritual strengthening
  • is the first taste of freedom from bondage
  • is a place for communion with dependence upon God
  • essenes/eremitic monasticism
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18
Q

When did romanticism in Europe take place?

A

1800-1850

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19
Q

What is romanticism?

A
  • emphasis on natural over artificial
  • closely related ideas were ‘the sublime’, nature as an arena of a deistic God’s grandeur, vigor, ad virtue
    -Civilization seen as corrupting; nature seen as invigorating and virtuous.
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20
Q

What was Lord Byron’s view on romanticism and nature?

A
  • pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture on the lonely shore, there is society where non intrudes, I love not the man less, but nature more
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21
Q

What was eastwick evans’ view on romanticism and nature?

A
  • how great are the advantages of solitude! how sublime is the silence of nature’s ever-active energies! there is something in the very name of wilderness, which charms the ear, and soothes the spirit of man. there is religion in it.
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22
Q

What are American attitudes toward wilderness?

A

Pre-colonial period:
- wilderness is a threat to survival and humanity
- it’s a source of degeneracy: Hawthorne’s Scarlett letter
- in a subsequent generations, a lament at loss of strong virtues found in past from battling wilderness.

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23
Q

What is the American Post-revolutionary war perspective on wilderness?

A
  • primitivism: virtue inversely related to contact with civilization
  • eastwick evans: wilderness provides a temporary, exciting alternative
  • James Fennimore Cooper: wilderness produces the virtuous Natty Bumpo
  • Wilderness is something that America has that Europe does not. Almost levels the playing field between civilized Europe and juvenile America.
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24
Q

What is the perspective on Transcendentalism in America?

A
  • Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • inverted platoism - through wilderness one taps into spiritual and moral values
  • Thoreau: in wildness is the preservation of the world
  • Moral influences emanate from field and forest
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25
Q

How do you express Thoreau’s basic thesis?

A
  • Wildness is a pathway to the sacred/spirit
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26
Q

What is the expression or Muir’s basic thesis?

A

Wilderness is a manifestation of God/the divine

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27
Q

What is wildness to Thoreau?

A
  • a characteristic of natural places that provides a pathway to individual transcendence and enlightenment
  • This is a Utilitarian, anthropocentric perspective: wilderness is good because it provides a service to human beings
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28
Q

What is wilderness to muir?

A
  • A place. It’s God’s natural cathedral, a location to encounter the sacred or divine
  • Non-utilitarian perspective: wilderness has intrinsic value, was not created specifically for humans
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29
Q

From William Cronon’s perspective, what wilderness?

A
  • American notions of wilderness built on the concepts of the sublime and the frontier.
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30
Q

What is the sublime?

A
  • a quality with religious overtones that was grasped by Romantics and transcendentalists as exemplary of Nature at its best
  • a focus of the Hudson River School, movement of landscape painters based in New York and founded by Thomas Cole
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31
Q

What was Thomas Cole’s perspective on American scenery

A
  • heard that America lacked quality scenery
  • Romantic movement in Europe highlighted solitude/individuality, the picturesque, and historical time
  • believed that American scenery was equal to and different from European scenery
  • wildness, mountains, lakes, waterfalls, rivers, forests, and skies are worthy scenery
    -identifies 3 elements that the American landscape painting should manifest: the magnificent, the picturesque, and the sublime
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32
Q

What is considered the sublime in paintings?

A
  • refers to raising above a threshold level to the transcendent
  • what elevates a person from the mundane to the transcendent
  • brushes up against the notion of beauty, also encompasses fear and a sense of magnitude and power that dwarfs the individual human person
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33
Q

What was the frontier?

A
  • primitivism: hostility to modernity
  • rugged individualism: Owen sister the Virginian and teddy Roosevelt “rough rider of the plains
  • Nostalgia for transient lifestyle
  • Masculinity found in the wilderness, civilization as emasculation
  • sentiment of the bourgeois
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34
Q

What is the unnatural history of wilderness?

A
  • areas created to protect the nation’s most sacred myth of origin
  • forceful removal of native Americans to fit idealized notion of uninhabited pristine ness
  • most wilderness has a history of logging, farming, or occupation
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35
Q

What ist he trouble with wilderness?

A
  • pristine, uninhabited wilderness is a myth
  • leaves no room for humans within nature
  • any use is abuse = example of romanticism
  • evade responsibility where we actually live
  • need environmental ethic that tells us about how to use nature, as much as how not to use nature
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36
Q

What are critical points about wilderness?

A
  • modern environmentalist thought still shows its roots in the sublime and frontier myth
  • pristine wilderness locations are essentially nonexistent, humans have affected remote ecosystems on a global scale
  • wilderness as a place can lead us to conceptualize nature as only where humans are not, neglecting responsibility for our immediate environment and leaving little room for environmental actions
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37
Q

What might we mean when we say “eat well”?

A
  • enjoy your food (pleasure/satisfaction is the measure)
  • eat for good health (health/well-being is the measure
  • Eat for the good of the community (human, the biotic, and the land communities
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38
Q

What is Michael Pollan’s Thesis on food production?

A

The U.S. has developed 3 primary systems for the production of food:
- industrial (chemical)
- industrial organic
- beyond organic

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39
Q

What is the “good” behind industrial chemical farming?

A
  • with scientific efficiency behind cheap, plentiful, and profitable-processed food
  • utilitarian - strong anthropocentrism
40
Q

What is the “good” behind industrial organic food production?

A
  • With appreciation for real, natural food toward natural ends
  • utilitarian - weak anthropocentrism
41
Q

What is the “good” behind beyond organic food production?

A

with respect for nature’s patterns
- artisanal - ecocentric

42
Q

What is the main point of industrial chemical?

A

efficiency in inputs and outputs

43
Q

What is the ecological effects of Hunter-Gatherer Agriculture?

A
  • minimally disruptive
  • changed mix of plants
  • could contribute to greater biodiversity and habitat diversity
44
Q

What are the ecological effects of traditional farming?

A
  • development of plow and move from scratch plow to deep plow = highly disruptive to land organisms (soil, fungi, bacteria, insects, worms, aeration)
  • transformed ecosystems and created agrarian landscapes
  • select grains came to dominate (wheat, maize)
  • husbandry and breading shaped plants and animals
  • fertilizers and pest controls were organic in nature
45
Q

What are the ecological effects of industrial farming?

A
  • inorganic fertilizers (NPK)
  • mechanization of agriculture
  • pesticides and herbicides proliferate
  • hybridization and GM to date reduces number of varieties grown
  • some adoption of no-till practices
46
Q

What has been the revolutionary change in food production since 1950?

A
  • local to international
  • land dependent to chemical dependent
  • medium-sized operations to mega farms and agribusiness
  • high variety of crops to High yield cultivars
  • GMOs
  • from artisanal food to commodified food
47
Q

What did policy do up until the 1920s?

A
  • policy on agriculture was devoted to encouraging the conversion of land to farming and protecting it from land speculators
48
Q

What did the land act of 1820 do?

A
  • reduced the price of federal land (northwest and Missouri territory) to $1.25 and acre, with a minimum purchase of 80 acres, and a down payment of only $100
49
Q

What did the homestead Act of 1862 do?

A
  • accelerated the settlement of western territory
  • granting adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public land for a minimal filing fee and 5 years of continuous residence on that land
50
Q

What did the Morrill Act of 1862 do?

A
  • set aside federal lands to create colleges to benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts
51
Q

What is the “good” about the current farming system?

A
  • greater yields
  • lower prices
  • greater uniformity in crops and larger markets
  • Famine alleviation
52
Q

What is true about American food spending and shares of their income?

A
  • poorer Americans are spending less money on food, with more of their shares coming out of their income
  • richer people are spending more money on food, with less of a share coming out of their income
53
Q

What types of crops are not subsidized?

A
  • corn
  • wheat
  • soybeans
  • cotton
  • rice
  • sorghum
  • livestock
  • tobacco
54
Q

What does the narrative ethics of industrial chemical agriculture leave out?

A
  • negative effects on humans of agricultural changes
  • more food is processed with an accompanying effect on nutrition
  • obesity has become an epidemic
  • less variety of food is consumed
  • almost no connection to land and food production
55
Q

What does the narrative ethics of industrial chemical agriculture leave out? (ecological effects)

A
  • reduction in biodiversity
  • alteration of land ecosystem
  • poisoning of soil: effect on soil and surrounding water/land systems of fertilizers and pesticides
  • loss of topsoil: up to several tons/acre/yr in exposed fields, whereas it takes 100-500 years for an inch of topsoil to develop
  • source of energy/climate change: movement from agriculture as harnessing of renewable solar energy to mining of past solar energy
56
Q

What are the ecological effects of beef production?

A
  • greater quantity of land under cultivation to convert grain to beef (in feedlot, 6:1 ration corn-to-beef)
  • disrupts the cattle/grass symbiosis
  • cattle feedlots and stockyards (CAFOs) constitute one of the major types of non-point source pollutants
57
Q

Who where the main characters in developing organic farming?

A
  • Sir Albert Howard: stressed composting all organic waste material = his “Law of Return”
  • Walter Northbourne: coined the term “organic” (complex, necessary interrelationship of parts
58
Q

What was the organic movement like in the 60s and 70s?

A
  • a small movement resisted the industrialization of agriculture and rebelled against the use of chemicals in farming
    = Co-op movement
59
Q

What was the organic movement like in the 80s?

A
  • in the late 80s, the fringe movement had developed a substantial following so much so that it was an economically significant marker segment and the term Organic was identified as a potent advertisement, still no uniform standards
  • some states attempted to initiate standards
  • the Alar (daminozide) scare in the apple industry tipped the balance in favor of national organic standards and the act was passed
60
Q

What was the organic movement like in the 90s and early 2000s?

A
  • 90s: the organic foods production act mandated the establishment of national organic program, a board was constituted in 1992
  • final rules went into effect October 2002
  • standards were the responsibility of the agency
  • first set of rule drafts were issued in 1997
61
Q

What were the draft standards in 1997?

A
  • large businesses had a lot of influence in drafting the organic standards
  • use of sewage sludge as fertilizer
  • irradiation for sterilization
  • genetic modification
62
Q

What were the final 2002 standards like?

A
  • synthetic pesticides were prohibited
  • GMOs are prohibited
  • irradiation is prohibited
  • use of biosolids, sewage sludge, prohibited
  • livestock must be given access to pasture
  • livestock not given growth hormones or antibiotics and given organically grown feed
  • land must be free of chemical applications for three years before crops are considered to be organic
  • written farm plans and audit trails are required
63
Q

What is the “good” of the Organic food system?

A
  • produce food that is “natural” and to protect humans health from man-made substances
64
Q

What are the twelve fruits and veggies to buy organic?

A
  • Peaches, apples, pears, winter squash, green beans, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, spinach, potatoes, tomatoes, and cantaloupe
65
Q

What are some criticisms of the the organic standards?

A
  • says nothing about food-miles and their impact off the environment
  • little importance of local and regional organic foods
  • preservations of biodiversity and diverse crops and animals
  • humane treatment of farm animals
  • social justice and equity for farm workers
  • fitting farm operations within an ecosystem of relationships
66
Q

What are the goals of Beyond organic farming?

A
  • treat farming ecosystemically as a relationship between humans and the land organism
  • re-establish a relationship between the general population, land, and the people who grow food
  • reduce reliance on transportation and encourage local farming
  • recover a sense of the practical in farming
  • recognize th symbioses that exist between different plants animals and humans
  • return farming to being the work of artisans rather than factory workers
  • health the land and the biotic community
67
Q

What is the animal rights/liberation movements’ view on killing/eating/using animals?

A
  • no, but yes if it is below the sentience line
68
Q

What is the animal welfare movements’ view on killing/eating/using animals?

A

yes, if done humanely

69
Q

What is the CAFO cartesianism movements’ view on killing/eating/using animals?

A

yes, they’re just production units

70
Q

What is the CAFO Organic movements’ view on killing/eating/using animals?

A

yes, so long as everything is natural

71
Q

What is the Traditional/Beyond Organic movements’ view on killing/eating/using animals?

A

Respect sacred bond

72
Q

What are the ecological challenges of CAFOs?

A
  • concentration and dispersal of waste
  • prevention of pollution/runoff
73
Q

What are characteristics of CAFOs?

A
  • 4000 dairy cows (all holstein)
  • corn and soy fields
  • nearby waterway
  • 3 manure lagoons
  • sileage stacks
74
Q

What are the characteristics of using cows for milk production?

A
  • significantly controlled living conditions
  • average life cycle of 2+ years
  • bred yearly and calves removed immediately
  • closely monitored milk production
  • when production wanes, sent for slaughter
75
Q

What are the characteristics of a pig’s life on a CAFO?

A
  • significantly controlled living conditions
  • life cycle of 6 months for pigs raised for pork
  • average life cycles of 6 pregnancies (14 piglets per pregnancy) in 2+ years for sows, then made out of pork
  • bred as often as possible
76
Q

What did Idaho do?

A

ban secret filming of animal abuse at agriculture facilities is unconstitutional

77
Q

What are the types of Ag-Gag laws?

A
  • prohibiting filming or recording for purposes of damaging a business or its reputation
  • requiring that abusive behavior be reported within 24 hours of observing such behavior
  • preventing employees form entering areas of business not within their responsibilities.
78
Q

What are some recent Ag-Gag business?

A
  • Kansas: a federal judge in Kansas rule in 2020 that the ag-gag law was unconstitutional
  • North Carolina - federal court rulesNC’s Ag-Gag law is unconstitutional
  • Iowa: federal judge finds ag-gag law as unconstitutional
79
Q

Who is Arne Naess?

A
  • 20th century Norwegian Philosopher
  • Professor at 20, Retired at 50
  • founded deep ecology with bill Devall and George Sessions
  • His own ecological philosophy is Ecosophy-T (Tvergastein)
80
Q

What is Ecosophy-T?

A
  • to seek the maximal flourishing of every other self to which it is connected?
  • includes self realization as being part of the thing you are trying to protect
  • opposite of egocentrism
  • self realization is the overcoming of a separate ego; increasing maturity and compatibility with others
81
Q

What are the 7 points of Deep Ecology?

A

1) reject “Man in the Environment” approach in favor of the relational, total field image
2) Biological egalitarianism - all ecosystem organisms have an equal right to protection and life-space requirements; humans should not be favored
3) Diversity and symbiosis: encourages new modes of life and diversity of form
4) Anti-class: no organism, except through evolution, should hold sway over another
5) Fight against pollution and resource depletion
6) Complexity vs. Complication
7) Emphasis on local political autonomy and decentrilization

82
Q

What are the 8 principles?

A

1) both human and non-human life have intrinsic and inherent value which are independent of their usefulness to humans
- ecocentristic life, not biocentric

83
Q

What is the 2nd of the 8 principles?

A

Richness and diversity of life have value in themselves

84
Q

What is the 3rd of the 8 principles?

A

Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except for vital needs
- life implies over time an increase in richness and diversity, primitive species have value in themselves, not just as a means
- vital needs is deliberately vague, up to your judgement

85
Q

What is the 4th of the 8 principles?

A

The flourishing of human and non-human life requires a substantial decrease in human population
- cannot happen over night, interim strategies are needed, but that does not excuse complacency
- end goal being to reduce the excessive interference of countries on the non-human world
- the daily consequence is a loss in the richness and diversity of the non-human world. Great extinction of species will occur.

86
Q

What is the 5th of the 8 principles?

A

human interference with non-human world is excessive and the situation rapidly worsens
- not that no mode of changing ecosystems is allowed
- the nature nd extent of interference; asks developing countries not to replicate rich countries actions
- preserve and extend free nature, focusing on the ecological functions of the areas

87
Q

What is the 6th of the 8 principles?

A

Future economic, technological and ideological policies must be deeply different from the present
- economic growth is incompatible with principles 1-5
- while deep ecology promotes local governance, implementation of deep changes requires global action
- cultural diversity today requires advanced/technology

88
Q

What is the 7th of the 8 principles?

A

The needed ideological change is mainly that of appreciating the quality of life rather than economic growth

89
Q

What is the 8th of the 8 principles?

A

Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation to implement the changes
- Quality of life is purposefully vague
- It was purposeful to allow for the reordering of priorities based on the individual supporter of the deep ecology movement

90
Q

What is the difference between deep and shallow ecology?

A
  • shallow ecology presents electric vehicles, but there are growing concerns about the critical minerals required
    (might not be enough lithium to supply batteries to reduce our emissions)
  • Deep ecology asks: white vital needs to electric cars fill (How can resource use serve the quality of life rather than the economic standard of living of consumerism)
91
Q

What is ecofascism?

A

violent nativists used in environmentalism to justify violent nativists actions in Christchurch, NZ and El Paso, TX

92
Q

What is Ecoterrorism?

A

Animal liberation front, tree spiking
- deep ecology does not excuse or promote islamophobia, racism, or murder in any form. The obligation of action in no way prescribes or implies violence

93
Q

What are ecotage and monkey wrenching?

A

specifically non-violent forms of protest: Greenpeace and Naess himself

94
Q

Difference between Deep and integral ecology?

A
  • can be nearly synonymous or at odds
  • Integral ecology recognizes humans as having a duty to the environment as stewards (placing humanity above nature)
95
Q

How to practice deep ecology?

A
  • simple, elegant means
  • quality of living, not standard of living
  • life-style based on deep ecological principles
  • buy products from ones own bioregion
  • reduce energy consumption
  • live simply that others may simply live
  • right livelihood means not destructive of life
  • participation in bioregional actions
96
Q
A

Environmental Ethics (2 decks)

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