Environmental Worldviews,Ethics, and Sustainabili

Environmental Worldviews,Ethics, and Sustainability

What Is an Environmental

Worldview?

Can We Manage the Earth?

Some people believe any human-centered worldview will eventually fail because it wrongly assumes we now have or can gain enough knowledge to become effective managers or stewards of the earth.

To biologist and environmental philosopher René Dubois (1901–1982), “The belief that we can manage the earth and improve on nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal.”

According to environmental leader Gus Speth, “This view of the world—that nature belongs to us rather than we to nature—is powerful and pervasive—and it has led to much mischief.”

According to some critics of human-centered worldviews, the unregulated global free-market approach will not work because it is based on increased degradation and depletion of the earth’s natural capital, and it focuses on short-term economic benefits with little regard for the long term harmful environmental, health, and social consequences.

Most People Have Human-Centered

Environmental Worldviews

One human-centered worldview held by many people is the planetary management worldview. According to this view, we are the planet’s most important and dominant species, and we can and should manage the earth mostly for our own benefit. Other species and parts of nature are seen as having only instrumental value based on how useful they are to us . According to this view of nature, human well-being depends on the degree of control that we have over natural processes. This view holds that, as the world’s most important and intelligent species, we can bypass the biological limitations imposed by nature on other species and redesign the planet and its life support systems to support us and our ever-growing economies.

Some environmental worldviews are human-centered

(anthropocentric), focusing on the needs and wants of

people; others are life-centered (biocentric), focusing on

individual species, the entire biosphere, or some level

in between. Also, some worldviews are based on environmental knowledge and understanding, and some are guided more by one’s moral

or spiritual beliefs.

People disagree on how serious various environmental

problems are and on what we should do about them.

These conflicts arise mostly out of differing environmental

worldviews—how people think the world

works and what they believe their role in the world

should be. Part of that perceived role is determined by

a person’s environmental ethics—what one believes

about what is right and what is wrong in our behavior

toward the environment.

Here are three variations of the planetary management

environmental worldview:

• The no-problem school. We can solve any environmental, population, or resource problem with more economic growth and development, better management, and better technology.

• The free-market school. The best way to manage the planet for human benefit is through a free-market global economy with minimal government interference and regulations.

• The spaceship-earth school. The earth is like a spaceship: a complex machine that we can understand, dominate, change, and manage, in order to provide a good life for everyone without overloading natural systems.

Some People Have Life-Centered and Earth-Centered

Environmental Worldviews

Most people with a life-centered worldview believe we have an ethical responsibility to avoid causing the premature extinction of species through our activities, for two reasons. First, each species is a unique storehouse of genetic information that should be respected and protected simply because it exists (intrinsic value). Second, each species has potential economic value (instrumental value). The latter is also an important part of the more human-centered stewardship environmental worldview. Some people think we should go beyond focusing mostly on species. They believe we have an ethical responsibility to prevent degradation of the earth’s ecosystems, biodiversity, and the biosphere. This earth centered environmental worldview is devoted to preserving the earth’s biodiversity and the functioning of its life-support systems for all forms of life, now and in the future. This worldview sees the earth as a single community whose members are bound together through a web of life—a complex and adaptable network of interdependent relationships.