What are Environmental Ethics?
A Short Course - with Lesson Plans - for Beginners
By Keith Warner, OFM, Director of the Faith, Ethics, and Vocation
Project of the Environmental Studies Institute at Santa Clara
University
and David DeCosse, Director of Campus Ethics Programs at the
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Assisted by Meredith Swinehart, SCU '06 and Fellow in Environmental
Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Photo used with permission of
Sanctuary Cruises
This short course is meant for beginners in environmental
ethics. By "beginners," we mean those who have begun
to be aware of obligations toward the natural world but who
have not yet done something like taken a class or read a book
about environmental ethics. Perhaps you are a weekend camper,
a weeklong backpacker, a high school student, college sophomore,
member of a church, activist against factory farms, resident
of a polluted neighborhood, or just "green" and curious:
Whatever the state of your involvement with the natural world,
we aim in this short course to provide a point of entry into
the field of environmental ethics.
More specifically, we have developed this course with three
goals in mind. The first goal is to deepen the connection between
our experience of the natural world and our awareness of environmental
ethics. The second goal is to provide a bridge between our understanding
of personal ethics and our understanding of environmental ethics.
The third goal is to provide a basic model for making a decision
based on environmental ethics. The three lesson plans that constitute
this short course correspond to these three goals.
There is already a great deal of excellent material on environmental
ethics. Why add this short course to what already exists?
We have found much of this material, as excellent as it is,
to be quite advanced. Either books on environmental ethics tend
to presume their readers will already have a more advanced knowledge
of philosophy and ethical reasoning. Or websites on environmental
ethics too readily use "green" words like "biocentric"
and "ecosystem" without sufficient explanation. Or
these materials are targeted more to the already-converted:
That is, to those already committed to environmental ethics
but not to those seeking reasons for making this commitment.
We cannot encourage you enough to pursue the study of these
excellent materials in literature, philosophy, journalism, film,
courses in high school and college, and more. Please find below
a bibliography and a list of Web links that we believe will
aid in this study. But we hope that this short course can be
a point of entry into those deeper reflections.
The three lesson plans that constitute the course each focus
on a different aspect of environmental ethics. The first
plan invites us to consider the roots of our ethical convictions
by having us write an autobiography of our relationship with
the earth. The second
plan introduces us to the particular character of environmental
- in distinction from interpersonal - ethics. The final
lesson plan invites us to make a decision about a particular
environmental case.
Each of the plans involves an assignment and discussion questions
for a class or for a small group. A teacher need not be formally
trained in environmental ethics to lead these classes. Students
need have no background in philosophy or environmental studies.
It is expected that each lesson plan can be accomplished in
an hour to an hour-and-a-half class. The lesson plans can also
be done by a person working alone.
Lesson
01
Lesson
02
Lesson
03
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