25.1 What Are Some Major Environmental Worldviews?

There Are a Variety of Environmental Worldviews

• Environmental worldviews: How people think the world works and what they think their role should be

• Environmental ethics: Beliefs about what behavior is right and what behavior is wrong with regard to the environment

Environmental Worldviews

Planetary Management

• We are apart from the rest of nature and can manage nature to meet our increasing needs and wants.

• Because of our ingenuity and technology, we will not run out of resources.

• The potential for economic growth is essentially unlimited.

• Our success depends on how well we manage the earth's life-support systems, mostly for our benefit.

Stewardship

• We have an ethical responsibility to be caring managers, or stewards, of the earth.

• We will probably not run out of resources, but they should not be wasted.

• We should encourage environmentally beneficial forms of economic growth and discourage environmentally harmful forms.

• Our success depends on how well we manage the earth's life-support systems for our benefit and for the rest of nature.

Environmental Wisdom

• We are a part of and totally dependent on nature, and nature exists for all species.

• Resources are limited and should not be wasted.

• We should encourage earth-sustaining forms of economic growth and discourage earth-degrading forms.

• Our success depends on learning how nature sustains itself and integrating such lessons from nature into the ways we think and act.

Most People Have Human-Centered Environmental Worldviews

• Two human-centered worldviews

  • Planetary management worldview: We can and should manage the earth for our own benefit

    • No-problem school

    • Free-market school

    • Spaceship-earth school

  • Stewardship worldview: We have an ethical responsibility to be caring stewards

• Criticism of the human-centered worldviews

  • Wrongly assumes we can be good stewards

  • We do not know enough about the earth

Some Environmental Worldviews Are Life-Centered and Others are Earth-Centered

• The inherent or intrinsic value of all forms of life

• Environmental wisdom worldview: We are all part of the community of life and the ecological processes that sustain all life

  • The earth does not need our management

25.2 What Is the Role of Education in Living More Sustainably?

• Environmentally literate citizens are needed to build a more environmentally sustainable society.

  • Requires an understanding of how the earth works, our interactions with the earth, and the methods we use to deal with environmental problems.

  • Requires an understanding of ecological identity.

• Nature must be experienced directly to complete environmental education.

We Can Become More Environmentally Literate

• Three foundations of environmental literacy:

  • Natural capital matters

  • Our ecological footprints are immense and growing rapidly

  • Ecological and climate tipping points: irreversible and should never be crossed

• Requires answering key questions and having a basic understanding of key topics

Components

• Basic concepts; sustainability, natural capital, exponential growth, carrying capacity

• Principles of sustainability

• Environmental history

• The two laws of thermodynamics and the law of conservation of matter

• Basic principles of ecology: food webs, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, ecological succession

• Population dynamics

• Sustainable agriculture and forestry

• Soil conservation

• Sustainable water use

• Nonrenewable mineral resources

• Nonrenewable and renewable energy resources

• Climate disruption and ozone depletion

• Pollution prevention and waste reduction

• Environmentally sustainable economic and political systems

• Environmental worldviews and ethics

25.3 How Can We Live More Sustainably?

• Learning to live more simply with fewer material things is a key component of a sustainable lifestyle.

• The largest human impacts are agriculture, transportation, home energy use, water use, and overall resource consumption and waste. Sustainable lifestyles will involve changes in all these components of our interaction with the earth.

• Effective environmental citizens avoid feelings of hopelessness, blind technological optimism, and paralysis by analysis and have skepticism of simple, easy answers.

• Religion can play an important role in the sustainability revolution.

• Sustainability is an achievable goal.

We Can Live More Simply and Lightly on the Earth

• Ethical guidelines

  • Apply principles such as the principles of sustainability

  • Protect the Earth’s natural capital

  • Use matter and energy resources efficiently

  • Protect biodiversity

  • Leave the earth in as good condition as we found it, or better

• Voluntary simplicity: Learn to live with less

  • Start by asking “How much is enough?”

• Living more sustainably is not easy

  • Change the way we think about, and act in, the world

  • Mental traps

    • Gloom-and-doom pessimism

    • Blind technological optimism

We Can Bring About a Sustainability Revolution in Your Lifetime

• Sustainability revolution:

  • Increase energy efficiency

  • Shift to renewable energy resources

  • Stabilize climate change

  • Stop destroying forests

  • Produce food more sustainably

  • Reuse or recycle 80% of the solid wastes we produce

  • Reconnect and work with the biosphere

Current Emphasis

Energy and Climate

• Fossil fuels

• Energy waste

• Climate disruption

Matter

• High resource use and waste

• Consume and throwaway

• Waste disposal and pollution control

Life

• Deplete and degrade natural capital

• Reduce biodiversity

• Population growth

Sustainability Emphasis

Energy and Climate

• Direct and indirect solar energy

• Energy efficiency

• Climate stabilization

Matter

• Less resource use

• Reduce reuse and recycled

• waste prevention and pollution prevention

Life

• Protect natural capital

• Protect biodiversity

• Population stabilization

Three Big Ideas

• Our environmental worldviews play a key role in how we treat the earth that sustains us, and thus, in how we treat ourselves

• We need to become more environmentally literate about:

  • How the earthworks

  • How we are affecting its life-support systems that keep us and other species alive

  • What we can do to live more sustainably

• Living more sustainably means:

  • Learning from nature

  • Living more lightly

  • Becoming active environmental citizens who leave small environmental footprints on the earth

Tying It All Together: Biosphere 2 and Sustainability

• We need to look for win-win solutions

  • Satisfying the largest number of individuals while minimizing environmental harms

  • Example→ paying more for the harmful environmental and health costs of our goods and services

• We need to band together as individuals to make progress