Environmental Ethics Ethical Responsibility to Essay

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The latest research shows that the eastern United States has experienced drastic increases in rainfall in the last sixty years, as well as drastic increases in the frequency of the most powerful storms. Some scientists tentatively report that the incidence of catastrophic natural events -- hurricanes especially -- is increasing. Deterioration of air quality is also strongly cited. The loss of the polar ice cap -- and the subsequent rise in sea levels and loss of unique habitats -- is perennially in the news; the more alarmist talking heads predict widespread flooding all over coastal regions of the world. Meanwhile, it is scientific fact that our oceans are getting hotter, about one degree Celsius averaged world-wide, but in some local surveys as much as ten or twelve degrees. Other habitats are at risk too; and certain invasive species, which do not co-exist well with humans, have begun to spread north and south, away from the equator and into regions made warmer by the problem. Some of these species bring disease and danger for humanity with them. Certainly it is agreed that climate change has created a favorable environment for the spread of disease. Many experts agree that unless carbon emissions can be almost completely stopped by 2050, the damage will become irreversible.

The case, in fact, seems nearly hopeless. Yet, there is a solution and it begins at the grassroots level. To experience the startling power of individual humans working in concert one has to but do a Google search for anything, or see the Great Pyramids, or examine the New York skyline. Humans are industrious when actuated; should they be actuated en masse by the feeling of kinship for their environment there would certainly be no concern about meeting deadlines. This kind of ant-hill industriousness, each man working on his own little piece of the great puzzle, is the planet's only hope.

Various institutionally oriented solutions are currently working at the problem, and though useful and necessary, alone and all together they will be unable to achieve in a million years what a concerted effort of personal man could in a generation.

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New caps on greenhouse emissions have recently cleared the House floor and passed on to the Senate. At Copenhagen, landmark agreements in halting deforestation and carbon-credit systems were reached. On the business level, green sector jobs have partially fueled the economy's comeback, and green corporate practices -- such as energy efficient offices and green roofs -- are becoming marketable on the public relations scale. Scientists, meanwhile, continue research on carbon capture and scrubbing methods, which may be the most important concern. It probably will not be enough to simply reduce, or even altogether halt emissions, but the human race will likely have to try and undo some of what it's done.

That the problem of global warming is ethical seems, frankly, almost secondary to concern for human lives amid a changing climate. Yet, the root of the problem is a question of ethics and therein must the change begin. By being insulated from their natural heritage, humanity has permitted itself to disregard the destruction of that heritage; to be blunt: the rape of that heritage. Crime is much less palatable when it happens to our dearest, to our friends and families. So the solution to the ethical root of the global warming problem is to bring the mass of humanity into closer contact with their natural heritage, whereby they may be arrested by the feeling of kinship for that heritage, and from thence they cannot help but be outraged by what is still going on today......

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"Environmental Ethics Ethical Responsibility To" (2010, April 06) Retrieved May 5, 2025, from
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