Chapter 5: Environmental Ethics

Supplemental resources

Environmental Ethics

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (more information)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/

Dr. Ron Epstein (links)

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Environ/Enviroethics.htm

Ethics Updates – Environmental Ethics Resources (links)

http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Applied/Environment/index.asp

Environmental Ethics: Whose Planet is it, Anyway? Irish Council for Bioethics. A pdf about the environmental ethics of climate change.

http://www.rte.ie/science/enviro_ethics_leaflet.pdf

Conflict within Environmental Ethics

Restore Hetch Hetchy

http://www.hetchhetchy.org/

The Sierra Club (preservation)

http://www.sierraclub.org/

Conservation International (conservation)

http://www.conservation.org/

The Aldo Leopold Foundation (land ethic)

http://www.aldoleopold.org/

See especially the Teaching Tools

http://www.aldoleopold.org/AldoLeopold/teachingtools.shtml

The Animal Liberation Movement

The Animal Liberation Front

http://www.animalliberationfront.com/

Animal Liberation (Australia)

http://animal-lib.org.au/


Recommended films

There is no shortage of films related to environmental issues. Here are a few of the many.

Food, Inc. is a documentary that discusses the human and environmental health issues surrounding industrial food production, from the farm to processing centers to the grocery store. Although the entire film is not devoted to animal or environmental ethics, there are quite a few segments that would be useful for discussion. The segment on industrial chicken farms is one example that addresses animal suffering as a means to efficiency.

Ferngully: the Last Rainforest is a film intended for youth that has an extremely ecocentric and preservationist view. A group of forest residents and an inadvertently shrunken human try to protect a section of rainforest from loggers and a black sludge monster that feeds on contamination. Topics addressed in the film include the intrinsic value of nature, animal testing, and whether humans belong within or outside of ecosystems. Additionally, individual trees are said to suffer pain, which is quite a bit more extreme than animal liberation in that it suggests that plants are also sentient beings. As a children’s movie it can at times be childish, but this type of film has a clear message that can be used to spark several types of discussions. If you are looking for something a bit more recent and more adult in theme, you can try Avatar, but most of the concepts from that film are taken directly from Ferngully. In either case, you can also discuss the relatively unexplored point of view of the “evil” side, those who seek the multi-purpose resource of wood or the highly-efficient energy source unobtainium, and what points of view might fall somewhere in between.