There is no question that humans are the dominant ecological force in today’s society. If humans are the dominant force, would it not make sense that humans have the moral responsibility to protect and care for nature? Nature provides humans with the resources to survive, yet humans are the ones who are slowly destroying it. Fortunately, there are people who do believe that it is their moral responsibility to protect nature. The Conservation Movement provides an excellent example of humans being obedient in the fight for protecting nature. Unfortunately, there is also disobedience occurring that is slowing down the Conservation Movement. This disobedience comes in many forms such as the pollution of ocean waters, or the overharvesting of trees in rainforests. These acts occur from humans that are disobedient in their responsibility to protect nature. Out of all the disobedient acts that are occurring in nature, poaching proves to be one of the most severe. In Rosaleen Duffy’s book Nature Crime: How We’re Getting Conservation Wrong, she introduces the topic of poaching by writing, “Conservation International tell us that the loss of wildlife is one of the most important challenges facing our planet, that we are facing an extinction crisis to rival the end of the dinosaurs” (1). If the Conservation movement is going to make progress in the future, humans must put an end to poaching. In order for poaching to end people will have to be willing to work together, while exemplifying obedience towards moral responsibilities, and even disobedience towards the social norms.
As Stephen R. Fox demonstrates in his book John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement, The conservation movement started around the 1850's when peopl...
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...people versus nature. People are a part of nature, and conservation is for the benefit of people as well as other species” (20).
Works Cited
Beech, Hannah, Alex Perry, Jeffrey T. Iverson, and Jessie Jiang. "Killing Fields: Africa's Rhinos
Under Threat." Time 16 June 2011: 40-47. EBSCOhost. Web. 18 Mar. 2012.
Duffy, Rosaleen. Nature Crime: How We're Getting Conservation Wrong. New Haven,
CT: Yale UP, 2010. Print.
Fox, Stephen R. The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy. Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin, 1985. Print.
Fromm, Erich. “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Writing and
Reading Across the Curriculum. 11th Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen.
Kareiva, Peter M., and Michelle Marvier. Conservation Science: Balancing the Needs of People
and Nature. Greenwood Village, CO: Roberts and, 2011. Print.
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Throughout the nineteenth century, Americans advanced westward at an unparalleled pace. Motivated by greed, these pioneers plundered through the previously plush territory, believing the nation’s resources to be inexhaustible and failing to contemplate possible consequences. In particular, anxious lumbermen and ranchers rapaciously ravaged the land in pursuit of instant profits. Fortunately, a few prudent people recognized the need for protective legislation. This nascent environmentalist movement was officially recognized when the federal government claimed responsibility over the preservation of the nation’s natural resources in 1877, with the passage of the Desert Land Act. Though this legislation was insignificant in itself, its creation
The long-term aim is to develop an approach to ethics that will help resolve contemporary issues regarding animals and the environment. In their classical formulations and as recently revised by animal and environmental ethicists, mainstream Kantian, utilitarian, and virtue theories have failed adequately to include either animals or the environment, or both. The result has been theoretical fragmentation and intractability, which in turn have contributed, at the practical level, to both public and private indecision, disagreement, and conflict. Immensely important are the practical issues; for instance, at the public level: the biologically unacceptable and perhaps cataclysmic current rate of species extinctions, the development or preservation of the few remaining wilderness areas, the global limitations on the sustainable distribution of the current standard of living in the developed nations, and the nonsustainability and abusiveness of today's technologically intense crop and animal farming. For individuals in their private lives, the choices include, for example: what foods to eat, what clothing to wear, modes of transportation, labor-intensive work and housing, controlling reproduction, and the distribution of basic and luxury goods. What is needed is an ethical approach that will peacefully resolve these and other quandaries, either by producing consensus or by explaining the rational and moral basis for the continuing disagreement.
The purpose of this paper is to inform you about John Muir and his effect on America's national forests. He was a Scottish American and was born in Dunbar, UK on April 21, 1838. He arrived in the U.S in 1868 when he was 30 years of age. John Muir was one of the most influential naturalists in the world. If it wasn't for John Muir we probably would not have the national park known as Yosemite. Some of his goals in the U.S. were the preservations of the national forests. He was an environmental philosopher and did well for the U.S. national parks. John Muir founded the Sierra Club, an American organization and the 211-mile trail called the Sierra Nevada was named in his honor.(John Muir, wikipedia)
Since the rise of the American environmental romanticism the idea of preservation and conservation have been seen as competing ideologies. Literary scholars such as Thoreau and Muir have all spoke to the defense of our natural lands in a pristine, untouched form. These pro-preservation thinkers believed in the protecting of American lands to not only ensure that future generations will get to experiences these lands, but to protect the heavily rooted early American nationalism in our natural expanses. Muir was one of the most outspoken supports of the preservation ideology, yet his stylistic writing style and rhetoric resulted in conservation being an adopted practice in the early 20th century Muir is often seen as one of the most pro-preservation
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
... our way when we are trying to do something such as deforestations. We should respect living creatures in our world because they have a life they should enjoy. People never want to see the dark side of an industry which is why society doesn’t seem to care or be informed. What this reminds me of personally is the show Scooby Doo which is about monsters and teenagers investigating them, trying to figure out what it is and at the end of every show it’s always a human which gives a powerful message because at the end of the day humans are the monsters, are we the monsters today? We need to open our eyes before it's too late. Life is valuable and we need to cherish every moment.
To understand the nature-society relationship means that humans must also understand the benefits as well as problems that arise within the formation of this relationship. Nature as an essence and natural limits are just two of the ways in which this relationship can be broken down in order to further get an understanding of the ways nature and society both shape one another. These concepts provide useful approaches in defining what nature is and how individuals perceive and treat
Everyone’s all seen those wildlife shows on tv. The shows on National Geographic and such, showing animals in beautiful environments, everything lush and growing and nothing at all wrong that could threaten these creatures and places. But, have anyone seen the other side? The side where all these beautiful creatures and plants starve, are decimated by predators that have never been there before, and sometime even become poisoned by their very own homes and habitats? Of course no one has. That doesn’t mean that its not happening. It is happening, and its happening everywhere. And guess who is to blame? People. Society. Humans as a race pollute the environment, hunt animals simply for their parts, fish way more than humans will ever need just for the sake of money, introduce new species to new places for our own gain, and even purposefully destroy entire regions just for human expansion. And its starting to take its toll. While it is true that nature is constantly in flux and certain species come and go, humans are causing more species to disappear in the past few hundred years then nature has ever caused since the age of the dinosaurs, and therefore it is up to humans to repair the damage caused, be it cleaning the environment and habitats of these creatures, or taking more direct action to protect and preserve the species that are on the brink of extinction.
Although it may not seem saving or protecting endangered animals is important, it actually and truly is important because animals around the world are being killed for wildlife market goods which is illegal and destroys the species population in that environment. Citizens should take more concern with taking care of these endangered animals before they become totally extinct and will no longer be seen on the face of the earth. Recently researchers have found that poachers (hunters who hunt animals for their value with trading illegal merchandise) are killing thousands of animals a day, and they are doing so even to this day. These species should be treated with more responsibility and care. They are even being killed by human interactions