Philosophy Department

Environmental Ethics
(PHLV 3109)

J. Davenport

This course is an introduction to the main moral questions involved in our relation to the natural environment, including duties to other human beings that involve environmental issues, and the perhaps duties to animals, species, and ecosystems. The main question in this course is whether a sound philosophical defense of such environmental values can be given: are human beings stewards of a global environment that we ought to preserve? However, in addition to reading in ethics, about half the class focuses on understanding the largest-scale global problems that confront us, from pollution, deforestation, the loss of animal species, and global warming to sustainable development and the rate at which we are using up the world's resources.  We'll ask hard questions about animal rights, the intrinsic value of biodiversity, human population growth, the problem of political management of the environment, fair ways of holding different nation-states responsible for their impact on the world environment. Beginning with Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, the course readings will show how different ethical standards can be applied to these problems to yield different implications. 

In addition to an oral report and short essay on a philosophical reading, each student will complete a longer research project involving one or more of the global environmental problems that confront the human race in the 21st century.  In addition to Leopold, students may want to start reading the environmental audit of the planet in The World According to Pimm.

Above: Dragonfly wing close up

Below: Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in southern Brazil: