reflection-znt

Taoning Zhang

Dr.Walter

2021/1/30

Stewards of the Earth: A Role for Humankind

“The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We

cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.” These

are the words of John Paul II. The majority of us can hardly imagine that the Catholic Pope

would one day enlighten scientists on how to do their work, and it seems that we have arrived

exactly to this point. The efforts put across so far to settle the debate on the diverse disasters

befalling on us and those that we have engineered have been futile (Holbrook 62). For how many

years have we been trying to come up with an argument to avoid the climate change disaster? We

are currently encountering the utter failure of a way of reasoning that we sometimes refer to as

"positivism," a term that has its origin in the 19th century supported by philosophers like Comte,

Saint Simon, and Condorcet, among others. During that period, it seemed to be an excellent idea

to apply reason and science to settle questions, maybe a good idea, but in practice, it does not

work. Despite this, we are familiar with what exactly is happening and why; it is all about

scientific logic and method, yet the message does not pass. In the process, we keep destroying

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everything, including ourselves. Human beings have a responsibility of coming up with proper

strategies of conserving the environment by focusing on ethical issues affecting the ecosystem

like environmental justice and sustainability, anthropocentric and ethical biocentrism principles.

Sustainability is important in improving our ability to achieve environmental justice. Pure

reason does not tell us that we should do something to keep other species that share the earth

with us alive. Rather, it has led us to such absurdity as believing that individual egoism is the

most effective means of handling the earth's commons. It has turned the ecosystem into a

gigantic food store where one does not need to pay for what they get. This is why environmental

justice has emerged as a vital matter of concern in environmental ethics. According to the US

Environmental Protection Agency, environmental justice is the expressive participation and

reasonable treatment of all persons irrespective of their backgrounds, income levels, national

origin, color, or race in line with the implementation, development, and enforcement of

environmental policies, regulations, and laws (Hettinger 15). Environmental ethicists have raised

several worldwide issues concerning justice and the environment. This is because it has been

challenging to temporally or geographically contain environmental hazards. The environmental

settings of individuals not yet born are majorly affected by our present policies, lifestyle, and

practices. This has made it necessary for environmental ethicists to determine what we owe to

individuals who are far away from us across time and space, especially those who are not yet

born. Therefore, the vital area of ethical research concerning the issue of environmental justice

and sustainability is the debate revolving around sustainable development, which focuses on

attaining the wants of the current generation without compromising the ability of the

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forthcoming generations to meet their own needs by trying to bind together concerns about

equality, economics, and environment.

Anthropocentric approaches are linked to environmental challenges and thus a sensitive

issue in environmental ethics. Linn White Jr, the author of a highly influential paper titled "The

Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," upheld the fact that humans were both superior to and

separate from nature and was the root source of environmental catastrophe (Carter 62). This

means that only humans are perceived to have intrinsic value meaning that things other than

human beings can only be considered valuable as a means of our ends, which is usually known

as strong anthropocentrism. It can also mean that only humans possess value in their own right,

considering that everything else must get its value from some relations. To balance this

reasoning, some people who may consider themselves non-anthropocentric about the moral

status may maintain that at least some nonhuman things like the ecosystem, animals, populations,

living organisms, and species also have interest ought to be considered in human moral decision-

making.

The ethical biocentrism notion claims that all living things have a moral status. The idea

of reverence for life instigated by Schweitzer in the book The Philosophy of Civilization is

considered an early form of ethical biocentrism. His work outlined the philosophy for a

civilization that included the ethical foundations, the connection between nature and humans, as

well as the limitations human population and its exploitation of natural resources (Cochrane 5).

The majority of biocentric ethicists maintain that all living things can be harmed or benefited.

This thus means that they have a good of their own or interests or a good of their own and that all

human beings should respect this good. However, there are some objections to biocentrism. For

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example, it is usually argued that biocentric advocacy cannot be put into practice totally

considering that human cannot shy away from constantly causing harm to living things and that

it is totally insane to think that we must consider the welfare of bacteria, especially if we are to

consider them as of equal importance to cognitively complex animals. On the other hand,

inegalitarian biocentrism avoids this reasoning. This is because being alive need not be the only

standard for moral worth. A Streptococcus pneumoniae and a lion are both alive, and they may

be both alive, meanings that this is morally relevant. However, it is important to note that that the

lion has a brain. This means that an individual who maintains that it is worse to kill a lion than a

Streptococcus pneumoniae is misguided. Therefore, even though biocentric ethicists may cling to

egalitarianism in principle, they seem to support practical methods that are in conflict with the

egalitarianism principles that prioritize some organisms over others, resulting in an alteration of

inconsistency.

Moreover, conservation of wild animals and areas should be prioritized due to changes in

the climate and increase in human demands for land, freshwater and sea. The two significant

methods of nature and wildlife management are the preservation and the wise use of nature

(Singer 199). These two methods oppose the extermination of wildlife and the unthinking

marginalization. However, in terms of the actual management of nature and wildlife, the two

tactics vary (Singer 199). The wise use approach purposes of accommodating humanity's

continuous use of wild nature as a resource for raw material, timber, and recreation. Therefore, it

means that the idea of wise use appeals to our individual interest or to the interest of humankind

over time that includes the forthcoming generation (Singer 199). Thus, the main purpose of

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management should be in line with enhancing and maintaining nature's yield as a valuable

resource for human beings.

To conclude, when it comes to the issue of environmental conservation, we need to take a

totally different view. This is because it is crucial for us as the stewards of the earth to understand

that every individual has the right to live in an ecologically sound and adequate environment for

our well-being, dignity, culture, and fulfillment because it is our role as humans to conserve our

environment. Our view should not direct us to think that we are the owners of the planet, but on

the contrary, it should make us understand that we are the stewards of the earth. It is thus

important to note that we do not need to be religious or scientists to take up stewardship; we just

have to have at least a feeling that there is something out there that goes beyond the mere

satisfaction of individual desires. It is never a question of survival, but it is a question of

humanity and dignity.

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Work Cited Page

Carter, Alan. "Inegalitarian biocentric consequentialism, the minimax implication and

multidimensional value theory: a brief proposal for a new direction in environmental

ethics." Utilitas 17.1 (2017): 62.

Holbrook, Daniel. "The consequentialistic side of environmental ethics." Environmental

Values (2018): 87-96.

Singer, Peter. "All animals are equal." Other books by the same author 1.5 (1989): 199.

Hettinger, Ned, and Bill Throop. "Refocusing ecocentrism." Environmental Ethics 21.1 (2015):

3-21.

Cochrane, Alasdair. Animal rights without liberation: Applied ethics and human obligations.

Columbia University Press, 2015.

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