Preview

Applying Leopold’s Ethic to our Planet Earth

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
421 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Applying Leopold’s Ethic to our Planet Earth
Applying Leopold’s Ethic to our Planet Earth

The world is changing. It is a fact that humans have been slow to accept, but based on scientific experiments, the environment of planet Earth is undergoing massive changes in temperature and climate, landscape, molecular distribution, and species diversity. The planet
Earth is very different than it used to be, based on the actions of one species among possibly millions that inhabit the earth. Humans have managed to transform everything they touch, taking a position of dominance over all that is within their reach. Staking such a claim on the control of the Earth and its developments has left the planet with many problems, and the human attitude of living "right here, right now" has brought tensions on air, water, and land resources. Environmental ethics is a new path that makes it possible to respond to the new challenges posed by the rapidly increasing development of technology which has negative consequences on people, biodiversity, the environment and the planet as a whole. When the first photographs were taken from the Moon of Planet Earth, everything changed. According to Rolston, the views of the Earth from space are the most impressive photographs ever taken. They are the most widely distributed ever, having been seen by millions of people. The astronaut, Michael Collins, states “I remember that day vividly. What I saw when I looked at my fragile home…Earth is to be treasured and nurtured, something precious must be endure.”

Many people today want to live a good life in relationship to nature and the environment. Aldo Leopold, an environmentalist, adopted a new relationship with nature by creating a “land ethnic” which is widely recognized in environmental ethics. Leopold wants to create a sense of what is right and wrong when it comes to how we relate to land. He wants everyone to play a part in protecting and preserving a healthy,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    We've gone far on the planet, we have traveled to places for survival, hunting & using our knowledge to get us where we are. We are one of the most advanced and smartest of mammals. We are… humans. We started out in the place you'd least expect and by doing so, we depended on whatever the earth gave us. With that, our beliefs formed, and we worshipped what we thought had life. We stayed together in tight groups, protecting one another… until we spread. Within the separation, we meet new dangers and obstacles such as harsh weather, new edible specimens of food, and we even came up with new ideas. For the past 50,000 years human society has changed our location, thoughts, and inventions. And through this we've managed to stay alive.…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    As the author says waiting for an ecological crisis to persuade mankind to change their troubled relationship with nature would mean waiting a long, long time.” (MacKinnon, 2013). The author’s novel has impacted my understanding and appreciation of nature and has raised questions and concerns about its fate. As a result, I have gained a more diverse perspective on environmental thought and human nature…

    • 1468 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Biocentric Ethics Analysis

    • 1058 Words
    • 5 Pages

    References: DesJardins, J. R. (2013). Environmental ethics: An introduction to environmental philosophy (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.…

    • 1058 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After reading “The Land Ethic” by Aldo Leopold I found that his research and understanding of land ethics is very thorough and he makes valid points that should be read by everyone in our society. He gives a different outlook on land that makes sense and creates a vivid image of the way that we as human should view land. He describes land as not just soil that lies beneath our feet or below the plants that we walk on, cut, or eat, but as the first layer in a community of which each piece is dependent on one another. If one piece of the community were to fall or not do what it is intended, it would in turn make it difficult for the rest of the community the thrive as it should. When thinking of land it makes it easier if it is thought of as…

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aldo Leopold

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages

    One of Leopold’s most important contributions to the conservation movement was the development of the concept of the “land ethic” which must first be defined in order to understand Leopold’s basic argument in favor of protecting the wilderness and nature. One of the first premises of this concept is the presumption that humans are co-members of the global community instead of conquerors of the different members of the community. According to Leopold, “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals…” (Leopold 129) and thus, as…

    • 1075 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Humankind is advancing, but the environment is deteriorating, yet there are changes that the world is still waiting for. Both Yann Arthus-Bertrand in “A Wide Angle View of Fragile Earth” and Elizabeth Kolbert in “The Weight of the World” have an underlying agreement that society is to blame for these environmental changes. Although they persuade the audience in various ways, they have the same main goal: protecting the environment.…

    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When reading Leopold’s expression of land ethics discussing the complex relationship of humans with each other in terms of community as well as both humans and community factors impacting the land I found his positions nearly moving in parallel motions with my own. The continually changing society and the environment surrounding it require a morally and ethically directed connection in terms of logic and emotion. Understanding how people treat their interactions with each other and the land are necessary when understanding how moral obligations impact our surroundings. Although I'm in agreeance with Leopold, there are forever changing flaws in his statements. To fully understand how we as humans should treat the earth that surrounds us,…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ethics and Moral Reasoning

    • 1382 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Environmental ethics: is known as the discipline in philosophy that focuses on studying the moral relationship of human beings and our status of value with the environment and its nonhuman contents. Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world. It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, eco-theology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.…

    • 1382 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    <br>In just the last fifty years, humans, namely Americans have virtually remodeled the Earth and everything on it. We have changed its landscapes, wind patterns, migration routes, and weather; diminished its greenery and killed its animals. Nature did not seem a force that could be controlled and yet it has been. We are conducting an inadvertent global experiment by changing the face of the entire planet. We are destroying the ozone layer, which allows life to exist on the Earth's surface, clearing the majority of the earth's forests, and disrupting countless ecosystems. The result has been an unfavorable alteration of the composition of the biosphere and the Earth's heat balance. If we do not slow down our use of fossil fuels and stop destroying the forests, the world will become hotter than it has been in the past million years. This warming will rearrange entire biological communities and cause many species to become extinct.…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In countless accounts throughout our planet’s history, there has been an overwhelming sense of change…

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In concluding utilitarianism is a two part theory, theory of good and the theory of the right. Which compasses that the greatest good is happiness and the freedom from pain and suffering. The acts that will promote the greatest good or the (principle of utility) are morally right and acts that reduces happiness and/or acts that promotes pain is morally wrong and that not all environmental ethics believe that a valid environmental ethic must be non-anthropocentric holistic, or embrace the concept of intrinsic values these are dominant themes in our environment ethics, however, and the lack of conscious only highlights the fact that there is no widely accepts alternative to a utilitarianism environmental ethics” (Wolff, 2008, p.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Technology, pollution, and human consumption are what will always continue to change the appearance and structure of our planet. People in today’s society always seem to shy away from the consequences of human consumption of earth’s natural resources…

    • 2695 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Our current exploration of space makes the point vividly: Here is testimony to man's vision and to man's courage. The journey of the astronauts is more than a technological achievement; it is a reaching-out of the human spirit. It lifts our sights; it demonstrates that magnificent conceptions can be made real. They inspire us and at the same time they teach us true humility. What could bring home to us more the limitations of the human scale than the hauntingly beautiful picture of our earth seen from the moon?…

    • 369 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Nature Cure

    • 1087 Words
    • 7 Pages

    It would seem that our modern way of living has lead us away from these natural…

    • 1087 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    The Importance of Water

    • 3881 Words
    • 111 Pages

    Humans have been on this earth for thousands of years. We have learned to survive and adapt to our environmental surroundings. The relationship between the environment and us humans has changed drastically over the past few decades. Our ancestors and those before them, saw the environment as a haven which should be protected and not over used. They believed that humans and the environment were one, and needed one another to fully be complete. The environment was praised as the ruler of the earth, for humans had to adapt and comply to what ever mother nature had in store.…

    • 3881 Words
    • 111 Pages
    Best Essays