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Why Care for Nature? In Search of an Ethical Framework for Environmental Responsibility and Education by Dirk Willem Postma. Netherlands: Springer, 2006. 219 pp. ISBN 978-1-4020-5002-2. On March 26, 2008 an ice chunk about seven times the size of Manhattan collapsed off the Antarctic—an event likely to be the precursor to the collapse of the Wilkins shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut. Although this claim has been contested by a few of their colleagues, the majority of scientists acknowledge that such events, which decrease our planet’s overall ice mass, are caused by global warming. Carbon-based pollutants are released into our atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels in exchange for the energy necessary for the modern world. According to Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, melting ice produces negative consequences, such as submerging most of the world’s current coastal areas under a rising ocean, resulting in over a hundred million refugees, as well as disturbing nature’s delicate balance in providing water in a timely fashion from mountain snowpack. On the eve of hope in a new administration, Barack Obama promises on his website to decrease the burning of fossil fuels by “ensuring 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.” 1 However, even the best intentions from the head of government need public “care” for this and other similar statements to become a reality. How do we arouse concern for such events and develop a sense of responsibility for what we have done if we do not suffer immediate consequences? Negative effects might not be witnessed until our generation has passed away. Due to the perceived economic losses associated with decreasing emissions, global warming has become a political issue as much as a scientific one. When fifty thousand copies of An Inconvenient Truth were offered for free to the United States National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the organization declined the offer and explained in an internal email that accepting them would be an “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” 2 Global warming does have some immediate effects, such as increasing the frequency and intensity of devastating storms, as witnessed recently with Hurricane Katrina. Other activities have a much longer time frame for environmental consequences, such as the storage of radioactive waste, which emits rays for up to and over a million years. Two of the most prevalent frameworks discussed in this book which negatively oppose a sense of environmental responsibility are liberalism, which “tends to neglect the structural nature and causes of the environmental crisis” (p. 49), and sustainable development, which “posits an economic-distributive and anthropocentric perspective” (p. 52). Activities that cause the extinction of entire species every day require concern that goes beyond a merely anthropocentric |
