what i have so far

Environmental Ethics from a Former Ant Burner

What is wilderness? This was the question posed to the class from our first reading and I’ve been contemplating it ever since. Strangely enough, this was the first time that I had deeply thought about my environment. Sure I had had discussions with family, friends, and classmates about topics such as global warming, alternative energy, and endangered species, but I had never truly understood what I was supposed to care about. I had never explored how I had felt about our planet further than mainstream media cared to talk about. This apathy goes back as far as I can remember. Heck, I was that kid who seared ants with a magnifying glass and thought it was cool. This class, Eng 308J, my junior composition class has not just taught me the definition of environmental ethics, something that I wasn’t aware even existed for the first 21 years of my life, but enlightened me on my own views on the topic. Through the readings, the discussions, and a forced reflection on my views on how I think about our planet, my environmental ethics have changed this quarter.

I guess to get down to how my ethics to have changed, it first took an understanding of what environmental ethics is. The first things about environmental ethics that need to be considered are both whose interests count and whose interests matter. Originally I was anthropocentric, period. I cared very little about the interests of anything other than human beings and even then I had nationalistic views. The only animals I cared about were the pets in my house; otherwise, animals existed for my entertainment or for me to eat. Same for the environment, in my previous opinion, it existed to benefit me in either materials or for me to enjoy. I cared nothing about what I could do for it. Thinking about this, I began to wonder where this position on the environment came from. It really started when I was a kid.

As I stated above, I was that kid I burned ants, I also used to catch spider and keep them in jars, but that was more of a fascination with arachnids than sheer cruelty. My father even encouraged a slight cruelty to animals view. We used to have a squirrel problem in the summer and he would send me out with his slingshot to shoot a few. Neither of my parents were very “green” individuals, I mean we recycle, but that is about it.

Even though my upbringing didn’t encourage an environmentally friendly lifestyle for me, there were some events prior to taking this class that did make me appreciate the world that we live in. Starting when I was 12, I’d go visit my aunt who lived in Boulder, Colorado and she would take me mountain climbing. I was instantly addicted. Not only did I enjoy the feeling of conquering something as massive as a mountain, but it was the first time that I had truly experienced the wonder of nature. The freshness of the mountain air, the feeling of devoting myself to a piece of earth for a day or two at a time was a completely new idea to me. But what really woke me up was the view. I’ll say this: there is nothing quite as breathtaking as the view from a mountain top and it was the first time that I experienced this view that I felt any communion with nature. If I had any appreciation for nature before this class, it was brought about by my summers climbing.

Still, even with this appreciation of the beauty of nature, my values are still mainly intrinsic, which is a point of view that I only became aware of during this class. But it was this class that made me think deeper than the superficial views that I had developed throughout my life. Thinking back on it though, I’m surprised that I took such an interest in a subject that prior to this class, I could have cared very little about.

The aspect of the class that had the largest impact on me was the readings. In fact it was the first reading, William Cronon’s The Trouble with Wilderness that immediately had me rethinking how I viewed the environment. The reading made me rethink how I viewed the term wilderness. T first I had just thought of it as this dark, scary place where the bad guys from Disney movies lived and it was full of dangers, never to be enjoyed, but after reading Cronon’s essay, my view changed.