Environmental Ethics and Sustainability

Coming to MTSU, Fall 2014-

Beyond Activism: Environmental Ethics and Sustainability

(PHIL 3340-001, Environmental Ethics MW 02:20 – 03:45 JUB 202)

The modern environmental movement has been with us in one form or another at least since the first Earth Day in 1970, if not longer. (Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, 1962, is another significant modern marker.) It has achieved undoubted success in elevating the awareness of many to our profound obligation (in Carl Sagan's memorable words) to "preserve and protect the Pale Blue Dot, the only home we've ever known." 

And yet, many "friends of the Earth" find themselves deeply frustrated by encounters in the wider culture with apathy, indifference, ignorance, misinformation, and hostility concerning environmental issues, and dire reports like that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, and the problem is likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control... ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct... 

In this course, we'll ask what it may take to move the conversation beyond passionate but still-relatively-marginal activism, towards a more widely shared understanding that everyone has a vital stake in fashioning truly sustainable ways of living on Earth.

One answer: work to enlist community leaders and campus power-brokers, including university presidents, as allies in the public battle for hearts and minds. We'll look for practical ways to "think globally and act locally" on our own campus, and beyond. 

Required texts:

• Bill McKibben, Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist - "Sometime in the course of the past decade I figured out that I needed to do more than write—if this fight was about power, then we who wanted change had to assemble some. Environmentalists clearly weren't going to outspend the fossil fuel industry, so we'd need to find other currencies: the currencies of movement. Instead of money, passion; instead of money, numbers; instead of money, creativity... But if you've built a movement, you've eventually got to put it to work. And now 'eventually' had come. Education needed to yield to action..."
• E.O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth - "Forget about life's origins, Wilson suggests, and focus on the fact that while nature achieves "sustainability through complexity," human activities are driving myriad species into extinction, thus depleting the biosphere and jeopardizing civilization. Wilson deplores the use of religious belief (God will take care of it) as an impediment to conservation..."
• Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century [Paperback] Robin Attfield 978-0745652535 ...advocating biocentric consequentialism among theories of normative ethics and defending objectivism in meta-ethics. The possibilities of ethical consumerism and investment are discussed, and the nature and basis of responsibilities for future generations in such areas as sustainable development are given detailed consideration. Attfield adopts an inclusive, cosmopolitan perspective in discussions of global ethics and citizenship, and illustrates his argument with a discussion of global warming, mitigation, adaptation and global justice. The revised edition features a new chapter on climate change, new treatments of animal issues, ecofeminism, environmental aesthetics, invasion biology and virtue ethics, and new applications of the precautionary principle to fisheries, genetic engineering and synthetic biology. The glossary and bibliography have been updated to assist understanding of these themes. The text uses a range of devices to aid understanding, such as summaries of key issues, and guides to further reading and relevant websites. It has been written particularly with a view to the needs of students taking courses in environmental ethics... $25.19

Possible additional texts:

• Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History - If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. It's also a fascinating one. In the pages that follow, I try to convey both sides: the excitement of what's being learned as well as the horror of it. My hope is that readers of this book will come away with an appreciation of the truly extraordinary moment in which we live."

• John Ehrenfield, Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability - "Present-day efforts at sustainability, and indeed society's foundational values themselves, have been corrupted and subverted by utilitarian values that turn them into a marketing pitch. In drifting toward unsustainability we have lost our vision... 'Sustainability still has not entered our consciousness, in spite of the torrent of its use and that of its distant cousin,green'..."

• Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability - "Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around the world, often in opposition to the agendas pursued by governments and big corporations..." 

• Carl Herndl, Sustainability: A Reader for Writers - "focuses on the timely and vital subject of sustainability, examining the latest research on economics, society, resource planning, and the environment. It takes on key issues including climate change; food, water, and soil; energy and resource management; and trash. The articles embody a range of experiences, ideas, and strategies-from scientific research and engaging questions to poetic reflection and powerful arguments."

• Ecological Ethics [Paperback] Patrick Curry 978-0745651262 ...He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and dark or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective.

  This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public... $23.38 
• Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century [Paperback] Robin Attfield 978-0745652535 ...advocating biocentric consequentialism among theories of normative ethics and defending objectivism in meta-ethics. The possibilities of ethical consumerism and investment are discussed, and the nature and basis of responsibilities for future generations in such areas as sustainable development are given detailed consideration. Attfield adopts an inclusive, cosmopolitan perspective in discussions of global ethics and citizenship, and illustrates his argument with a discussion of global warming, mitigation, adaptation and global justice. The revised edition features a new chapter on climate change, new treatments of animal issues, ecofeminism, environmental aesthetics, invasion biology and virtue ethics, and new applications of the precautionary principle to fisheries, genetic engineering and synthetic biology. The glossary and bibliography have been updated to assist understanding of these themes. The text uses a range of devices to aid understanding, such as summaries of key issues, and guides to further reading and relevant websites. It has been written particularly with a view to the needs of students taking courses in environmental ethics... $25.19

• Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach (1981) This prequel to Callenbach's classic Ecotopia is a multi-stranded novel that dramatizes the rise and triumph of a powerful American movement to preserve the earth as a safe, sustainable environment. The story springs from harsh realities: Toxic contamination of air, water, and food has become intolerable. Nuclear meltdowns threaten. Military spending burdens the economy. Politicians squabble over outdated agendas... 978-0960432035 

• Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias (1997) by Kim Stanley Robinson (Editor) Ernest Callenbach's classic novel Ecotopia sparked a movement that is growing rapidly around the world. Ecotopians embrace high technology as a a tool for preserving and living gently within the natural environment of Planet Earth... Kim Stanley Robinson has gathered here in this volume bright tales... 978-0312863500

• The Bridge atbther Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability by James Gustave Speth 0300151152 How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe.
  
  
  Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today’s destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that.                                                                                                                                                            For more info, contact Dr. Phil Oliver - phil.oliver@mtsu.edu.