Lecture 1

Lecture 1

1. History

   • Romantic justifications (Wordsworth/Glipin)
   • 1700s just resource
   • George Perkins Marsh - Argued against destruction/waste
   • Protectionism - Darwin
   • Yellowstone NP - Muir 1872
   • Modern environmentalism - env crisis, public debates
   • Carson, Silent Spring 1962
     • Pesticide danger
   • Limits to growth
     • Earth finite
     • Interdependence
     • Pace of eco growth exponential
     • Techno fixes inadequate
   • Current
     • Climate change, ozone depletion +
     • Range of groups: FOE, Rising Tide+
   • Evolution
     • 1st - Preservation/Conservation
     • 2nd - Modern environmentalism (e.g. pop growth)
     • 3rd - Global Issues

2. Values

   • Sustainability
     • Broad, vague, contested
     • 'Sustainable Development' - Bruntland Report
   • Ecological Modernisation
     • 'reorient economic growth'
     • Technological solutions
       • instead of reducing - wind turbines
   • Types
     • Instrumental
       • Means to an end
       • Chop tree, get heat
     • Inherent
       • not as means to end
       • like tree, way tree makes you feel
     • Intrinsic
       • Simply value it has
   • Rule of no-sibstitution
     • Instrumental
       • Value disappears if preferable substitute

3. Consequences

   • Threat to wild tigers
     • Medicine
     • Solution - tiger farms

4. Anthropocentrism

   • Only humans intrinsic
   • Nature Instrumental
   • Deforestation, meat
   • Morality unique

5. Ecocentrism

   • Non-humans intrinsic

6. 'Humans will always be the distributors of value, but they are not necessarily the only bearers of value'