Do Humans Have an Ethical or Moral Responsibility to Protect the Environment - Essay Example

Yuxin Cui Do Humans Have an Ethical or Moral Responsibility to Protect the Environment? The environment is made up of everything that is around us (Gardiner 390). This means that all tangible and intangible properties around us that make our existence complete as human beings make up the environment. All people are born into the environment, and there is every indication that through whatever means the world came into existence, the environment existed before human beings. If not for this, there should be no way that the first kind or group of human beings to have occupied the earth would have survived because the environment supports both the natural and artificial needs of mankind. The issue of who is responsible for the protection of the environment is something that has gone on for years. As a natural phenomenon, there are some who think that the environment is responsible for its own care and protection. This position is however not shared. This is because humans are the major beneficiaries of the environment (quote). As a result, all the ethical and moral responsibility of protection falls on us to undertake. This is especially so as humans are part of the environment and a protection of it benefits us directly. This essay debates this position taken through three major generational processes, which are the past, the present and the future. Eventually, the justification of this stand is consolidated by the position that a refusal to protect the environment is something that comes with consequences that we must suffer as human beings. There are various forms of responsibilities, with one of the most common being legal responsibility. Once mention is made of legal responsibility, we are quick to think of it as something that we have no option but to oblige because we are bound by law to do so. Ethical or moral responsibility is however different. With ethical or moral responsibility, the core idea of honoring a piece of responsibility is based on the conscience and reasoning of a person, whereby a person admits without compulsion that he or she has an allegiance to get something done (Feinberg 21). From the deontological ethics, which is a moral framework conceived by Immanuel Kant, there is a better understanding of ethical and moral responsibility, where it is explained that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined as a function of reason (Gardiner 392). It is further stated that right and wrong assigns an infinite worth to human beings. This means that human beings are rational based on the fact that they are free to form their own intentions and act upon them, but such intentions must be backed by reason. In the same way, it is argued that the need to protect the environment is not one that must be forced on humans through legalities, but through an infinite worth on human beings that acknowledges a function of reason to do so. With man’s responsibility to protect the environment seen as an ethical or moral responsibility, there is better self-consciousness to fulfill that responsibility. One of the major reasons why it is argued that humans have an ethical or moral responsibility to protect the environment is that we have a moral allegiance to pay our debt to the past generation, which handed the existing environment to us. Until today, nations of the world continue to depend very heavily on natural resources for their socio-economic development. Meanwhile, most of these natural resources, which are components of the environment, existed years ago, when none of us were born (Chan 40). This means that the existing environment was once the property of the past generation, which they had every right to use in a way that pleased them and satisfied their selfish needs, including the total destruction of it. However, the past generation did not choose this line, but put in conscious efforts to ensure that the environment remained preserved and conserved for those of us in the present generation. It is not surprising that up to date, there is sufficient forestland, water bodies, soil, and mineral resources to satisfy our present needs. If deontological ethics teaches that we are free to formulate our actions but our actions must be based on function of reason, then we have a function to reason to ensure that we pay our debts to the past generation by following their steps in remaining responsible to the environment. The present generation has often described itself as more advanced than the past generation, which lived before modern technology was invented. One of the major bases for this argument is the advancement in technology which the present generation currently enjoys. Technology has really come to make the world much more advanced and modernized than it used to be some years back. Meanwhile, the invention of technology did not happen overnight but through the systematic and gradual efforts of the past generation. The reason for this argument is that most forms of technology take their basis from such mathematical and scientific discoveries that were made even before electricity was discovered (Elliot 102). So if technology, part of which is attributable to the past generation, has made our world advanced, then we have the ethical or moral responsibility to use the advancement to protect the environment. The connection between modern technology and our ethical responsibility is that current forms of technology makes it easier for us to protect the environment. For example, there is meteorological equipment that can be used to predict bad weather. With all these knowledge, a refusal to protect the environment only comes as an intentional means to disregard the needs of unborn generations. For the present generation therefore, we are to see the environment as our responsibility to care rather than our privilege to enjoy. This is because the actual privilege we had was with the efforts that were started by the generations of old, of which we have been able to make our world advanced and modernized. If we have now discovered technology, it becomes our responsibility to use technology to protect the environment rather than to destroy it. With this said, practices based on technological advancement and industrialization that destroy the environment will be most concerned. Again, it will be argued that one reason that we have ethical and moral responsibility to protect the environment and, consequently, no ethical and moral right to destroy the environment is because the environment does not belong to us but to the future generation. This should be a very simple position to accept because the existing environment is not something that we brought with us, but something we came to inherit. Meanwhile, when a generational or family inheritance exists, it exists as perpetual property and not just for the current generation. For this reason, the morality in the basis of protecting the environment in a non-questionable manner is because we have a responsibility toward the environment to protect it for its rightful owners, who are the future generations. Most certainly, when one is entrusted with the responsibility of catering for two things, one of which belongs to one person and the other belongs to another person, there is much personal reasoning to be more careful with that which belongs to another person, because it is that which, when gets missing, comes with the duty of replacing. Since the environment is not something we can in anyway recreate or refund to its rightful owners, which is the future generation when we destroy it, we are morally and ethically obliged to be highly responsible for it as the only way of remaining accountable to it. One other major factor that constitutes factors explaining why humans have a moral and ethical right to protect the environment is the consequences that people face when people refuse to do so. As indicated earlier, the environment supports the human being a lot and the human being cannot actually do without the dependence on the environment. For example, with current concerns for global warming due to the depletion of the ozone layer, human beings continue to be the worst affected by this as the phenomenon has opened us up for such forms of disasters as tsunamis and heating of the planet (Chan 33). There are other consequences that we face when we refuse to protect the environment, including famine and drought. All these are factors that put so much pressure on humans not to wait to protect the environment as a form of legal responsibility but an ethical and moral one. In the ecosystem, which is a component of the environment, humans are much more dependent on other organisms than most of these are dependent on humans (Clayton 460). For example, while plants are able to prepare their own food through photosynthesis, man is not. Rather, humans depend on plants for most forms of food and other necessities of life, such as oxygen for breathing. This means that if humans do not appreciate the protection of the environment as a moral and ethical responsibility, and destroy it, humans will be the worst affected. From the discussions above, there is one major conclusion that can be drawn: Should humans existing in the present generation admit that they only have a responsibility to protect the environment and that the true owner of the environment is the future generation, then there will forever be a protected environment. This is because there will be cycles of ethical and moral responsibility to protect the environment, where each generation that comes cannot claim ownership of the environment because the future is actually an infinite phenomenon that will never come. As much as each generation waits for the future generation to take its ownership, there will be a perpetual protection of the environment. What is more, once the current generation is able to adequately stay responsible to the environment, then the generation to come can also argue that they have a moral and ethical responsible to pay their debt of gratitude to the past generation, thereby continuing the cycle of protection for the environment. Bjorn’s comments: This is a really interesting draft, Yuxin, and I really like the general idea that you’re discussing in it. However, I have a few concerns that I’d like you to consider for when you begin revising this essay for the next version. I noticed that the tone is a little different from what you’ve written in the past, which is fine; I encourage you to experiment with tone and style. However, the way you approached this argument does not meet the requirements of this class. While you provide a logical argument about whether or not humans have a moral or ethical responsibility to protect the environment, you don’t actually consider the environment itself. The discourse community that this essay addresses seems more like a philosophy class than the discourse community of our WR121 classroom. Here are a few things I’d like to see in the next version of this essay: you can keep the overall argument (that humans have a moral and ethical responsibility to protect the environment), but you need to tie it in more directly to the ideas we’ve been developing in class, both through the readings themselves and the responses you have done in class for those readings. To do this, I think you should show more explicit examples of humans’ relationship to the environment and why the environment itself needs to be protected. You might be able to use some of what you have here, but I urge you to refocus your ideas a little bit so that you consider in greater detail the idea of “place” and humans’ relationship to those places. Let me know if you want to talk about your ideas for this essay. I’m happy to meet with you to discuss writing strategies and ideas for the next version. Reference Chan, Kai M.A. “The Golden Rule and the Potentiality Principle: Future Persons and Contingent Interests.” Journal of Applied Psychology 21.1 (2004): 33–41. Print. Clayton, Susan. “Models of Justice in the Environmental Debate.” Journal of Social Issues. 56.3 (2000): 459–474. Print. Elliot, Robert. Environmental Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Print. Feinberg, Joel. Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print. Gardiner, Stephen M. “The Real Tragedy of the Commons.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30.4 (2002): 387–416. Print. Read More