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PHIL 253: Environmental Ethics

Alexander Rother

Introduction

Environmentalism is an interest of mine. In high school I really enjoyed learning about environmental

issues and the concern I have for the state of the world after taking the course. My perspective coming

into this course is important because I did not expect environmentalism to have as many philosophical

perspectives as there are. Most importantly, I didn’t realize that there was such a large connection

between nature and religion/spirituality.

While I thought I had a grasp on environmental issues, I had never looked at environmentalism

from a philosophical perspective. I found ideas such as transcendentalism, religious views on nature, the

sublime, bio empathy, or the Reverence for Life most fascinating because I found they all aligned with

my own understanding of the world. Spirituality and a connection with nature was never something I

explored before and was not expecting to align with many of the perspectives on god/nature taught in

class.

I consider myself to be an atheist as I don’t believe in the traditional sense of a god. I never considered

my own connection to nature/wilderness as a connection with god. Before taking this course the idea of

spirituality/god was synonymous with faith/religion in my head. The idea that nature is your god and the

stewardship view that we must provide for our wilderness as a way of pleasing “God” intrigued me.

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is the philosophical idea that we should have an inherent respect for nature,

that we should live in a manner that is sustainable and has a large focus on self-reliance.
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Transcendentalists look at nature or wilderness in a spiritual way. In many ways isolation in nature leads

to revelation and their source of spirituality. Nature has its own inherent value, even in its smallest form.

Transcendentalists believe that nature is intrinsically value and their quest to find spiritual

meaning through self-reliance in nature causes them to live a lifestyle that likely isn’t harmful to nature

as their environmental footprint is very small.

Knowledge through revelation is the key to life and understanding the universe.

Transcendentalists believe that in society you cannot find revelations as society forces conformity.

Therefore, the only way to truly find spiritual understanding is through a self-reliant lifestyle in the

wilderness.

Transcendentalism is similar to the Stewardship view of Christianity, the Intrinsic value of nature,

the Buddhist perspective on nature, and the sublime beauty of nature. These perspectives all focus on

the spiritual/godlike connection you find in nature. Another connection between all these beliefs is the

value they have in preserving and nurturing nature.

The social conformity aspect of transcendentalism is the most fascinating belief. Social conformity is

a real deal, we will never know how we truly are outside of our social confines. Like transcendentalists I

believe that all nature has an intrinsic value as much as we humans do. At the end of the day all

conscious beings and objects made of atoms have the same right to existence as you or me. “Reverence

for Life”, the concept and book written by Albert Schweitzer talks about this concept in great detail and

explains better than me why all of life (nature) is equally important.

The common connection between all these differing viewpoints is the value immense value or

spiritual value seen in nature. The difference with transcendentalism is that transcendentalists prefer to

be self-reliant and outside of society. I don’t care to be self-reliant and while I find leaving society to be

fascinating, I don’t align with those ideas.

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I too believe that nature is intrinsically valuable and enjoy the varying worldviews.

Transcendentalism and bio empathy was a large part of the course for me and really enjoyed the

readings. I find myself most aligning with “Reverence for Life” and enjoyed the points Albert made.

Buddhism and nature

The core objective of Buddhism is to “eradicate suffering”. Buddhists believe that the world

constantly changes, and our lack of ethical integrity accelerates the rate of negative change. Buddhists

find nature to be important and put a large emphasis on being eco-friendly, living sustainable lives.

Buddhists believe that if you mistreat nature, you will receive adverse effects from nature. We see

these adverse effects because of humans in many environmental issues. Issues like climate change,

overpopulation, pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, food waste, soil degradation, overfishing, and

droughts. These issues are all a result of our human impact on the world, overconsumption, and greed

with a lack of foresight are the causes for these issues.

Like transcendentalists, Buddhists value wilderness and see intrinsic value in nature. Indirect

stewardship is involved in both perspectives, through bio-empathy and care for the environment

through lifestyle choices. There are also connections to Buddhism and the stewardship view seen in

Christianity. Buddhists see themselves as responsible to care for the world to appease their god with

what they have done.

I wasn’t aware Buddhism was so deeply connected with nature. I think that the lack of care for

nature having adverse effects is exactly right. These beliefs outlined correlate perfectly with my own

worldview and broadened my horizons to investigate the perspectives of religions more deeply.

Environmental issues
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There are so many environmental issues that are a threat to our lives. Caring for the world isn’t

altruistic, it’s self-preservation. We are going to die if we don’t repair the environmental issues we’ve

caused. We’ve explored many environmental issues in class and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter

which environmental issue we’re talking about because they’re all a threat to the future of humanity

and life on Earth.

Some of the issues covered in class are climate change and overpopulation. Personally, I am not

worried about overpopulation as eventually the population will plateau, and we’ve already seen birth

rates in developed countries start to drop. I am for free contraception efforts in developing countries as

that’s already seen great success. It’s a shame because, like the Buddhists, I also want to eliminate

suffering and a greater population result in more starvation in developing countries. Unlike

overpopulation we are lost at how we are going to solve the climate change issue.

We need our energy and manufacturing to survive. We are used to the current lifestyle we are

living in, and it would be unethical/unrealistic to start making massive changes to our current demands.

The current proposal is to become carbon neutral and move away from fossil fuels for energy

production. Greener sources for energy don’t cause as much devastating harm to our ecosystem so the

hope is we can make the switch to living sustainably in time. The problem with climate change is it

doesn’t just go away. The change has already been made and many environmentalists believe it’s

already too late for us. Even if we stop tomorrow, never emitting any more climate change causing

gases again we still will face the impacts of climate change.

Like most environmental issues humans are the cause and we are scared for what we are going

to do in the future because it’s too late. A poem I read for the environmental activity; “Earth Summit”

talked about how once it’s out of the jar it’s very hard to get back in. An analogy for explaining that once

we experience the issues, we’ve caused it’s very difficult to undo the change we have made. Near the
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end of the poem, Oliver writes “[T]ried turning the lights off. They hoped against hope that it would be

enough”, an analogy to mean that we try eliminating the source that’s causing the issue and hope that

it’s enough to solve the problem even though it’s likely already too late to solve. It’s a very bleak take to

have on our future but it’s hard not to with our understanding of the impact we’ve had on our Earth.

Environmental issues are a byproduct of the lack of value we have for our wilderness. Through

technological advancement and quality of life improvements we have caused a plethora of

environmental issues. If we all lived more sustainably and had more consideration for our own impact

maybe, we wouldn’t have such a bleak outlook on our future.

Conclusion

I chose this class because I previously enjoyed learning about the environment/environmental

issues, I enjoyed the philosophy that was covered in class especially relating to bio empathy and

spirituality through nature. Even though I consider myself an atheist I enjoyed learning about the

sublime and perspectives that speak to nature’s intrinsic value. I enjoyed that transcendentalist see

“god” as more of a mindset than God a deity.

I didn’t expect religions to find such a spiritual connection in wilderness because I had never made

that connection before. The philosophical understanding of “wilderness” and nature gives me a new

understanding of environmentalism I hadn’t thought of before. I thought environmentalism was only a

science rather than a philosophy.