Environmental issues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Environmental issues - Essay ExampleAldo Leopolds environmental philosophy has offered fresh insights into the preservation of the environment. Similarly, Garret Hardins calamity of the Commons has clearly demonstrated the dangers associated with the anthropocentric view of environment. Environmental issues have also given rising to the emergence of radical environmental rights approaches that emphasized the rights of non- humane entities. Even when most of these theoretical underpinnings on environment argon quite a anthropocentric they also underline mans responsibility to protect the environment and its cancel resources to correspond his own survival and existence. It is worthwhile to analyze the conflict between anthropocentric and bio-centric views on environmental protection. go anthropocentrism emphasizes the well-being of humans alone biocentrism take into account the interdependence and well-being of all liveness things. It has been identified that the preservation o f habitats (of animals, birds, and plants) and diverse ecosystems is essential for the maintenance and protection of the ecosystem. The depletion of nonrenewable resources calls for the need to reduce, re function, and recycle them, befall resources for them, and to the free market to control conservation. The extinction of various species of animals and plants pose the greatest threat to the balance of the natural environment. However, it is a relief to environmentalists that many world nations have levied legal restrictions on such human activities that would give-up the ghost to the extinction of various endangered species. The ethicists hold that endangered species have intrinsic value and their extinction would prolong to loss of biodiversity that would threaten human survival. From an anthropocentric point of view some other ethicists hold that human beings alone have intrinsic value while biocentrism postulates that one can never undermine the interdependence among all li ving things take to the woodsing towards biodiversity. Western religious tradition and give-and-take have stressed on the anthropocentric views on environment. Bibles teaching that human beings were created in the image of paragon and that God has given him dominion over everything else in the world has led many to conclude that humans are superior to nature and nature exists only to satisfy human needs and wants. However, there are alternative views propagated by people like Francis of Assisi on the value of nonhuman creation and the Noah story in Bible offers the best testimony for biocentrism. Garret Hardin, in his Tragedy of the Commons uses the analogy of the herdsmen and the common grass to interrelate to the environmental crisis. The herdsmen make use of the common grass as a bountiful resource until this lead to lack of grass and Hardin points out that the herdsmens use of the commons is analogous to humankinds use of the planets shared resources, such as air, waterways, atmosphere, and climate. Hardin postulates that increased use of resources in the long press would make such resources limited. Hardin thus forecasts that indiscriminate use of resources will be catastrophic for the humans as it will lead to their own destruction. It is therefore imperative that man undertakes steps to avert this imminent tragedy awaiting mankind. The two possible solutions offered by Hardin are government coercion and privatization of some parts of the commons to throw in the free market to regulate their use. No doubt, Hardins analogy of the tragedy of commons with that of mankind has elicited favorable responses towards the environmental crisis. The environmental debate has also led to questions regarding the environmental rights of nonhuman entities. Kants categoric imperative, being anthropocentric, attributes rights