Grizzly Man

Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers in the wilds of Alaska living along with grizzly bears and other wild animals like the fox. He showed his crazy love for the grizzly bear,and he would even be willing to die for them.He believed that he found a way to live in harmony with them without any weapons.Unfortunately, he was attacked by a bear,and finally died for what he loved.

After seeing this film, I was impressed by the video footage shot by Timothy in the first place. He was at the edge of death for very minute when he was in the wildness, which made me think of Deep Ecology, of which he was obviously not a follower though. He greatly raised the public's awareness of protecting grizzly bears at the cost of his now life. He succeeded in reaching his goal if he aimed at causing people's attention. However, I personally believe he'd better think it twice before doing so.

He insisted on his crazy plan though he was warned by the park officials that his action would actually do harm to the grizzly bear. It mad me feel he just did so out of his own interest with ignorance of real impacts on the grizzly bear.Apart from this, I believe there should be better ways to educate people of protecting grizzly bears.

Environmental Justice

Different people have various standards for cleanness. For me, I personally prefer to gather garbage in a fixed place and throw it daily. At least, my family does it like this. I hate seeing stuff everywhere in my apartment.

I think, on the one hand, environmental justice indicates respect for others in a public place.For example, my 4-person apartment should be considered as a public place.Each one of us should take the responsibility to keep it clean and tidy. Also, people should care about others' feeling while living together in order to achieve a harmonious living environment. I've been struggled in an unpleasant living condition since the last semester! One of my roommates doesn't respect the rest of us by setting her alarm clock at 3am in the morning!! This is one example of breaking the environmental justice.

On the other hand, environment justice also means an equity concerning living situations among different people in different areas and different social status. It's good to see people enjoy a better environment by gathering together wastes, transferring them to certain places, and recycling them. However, have you ever thought of those people who lives in those certain places? Have you ever thought of those people who work on the wastes? Obviously, it's not fair for them to pay for our better living environment. A better solution might be to call for every single person to reduce their wastes.

The Cove

I've formed a habit of trying to understand issues in an environmental ethics way since I took this class. And I've gained a totally differently view of the world. Human beings are no longer the ruler of the universe, thus we shouldn't understand the world only from the interests of ourselves. To live in harmony with the whole nature world, the right of plants and animals should be respected as equally important as that of human beings. I got to know how cruel people treat animals for the first time was when I saw a disgusting website where some people uploaded videos and pictures of how they maltreating their pets, like dogs and cats, for fun. However, I didn't realize how common human beings treat animals unfairly until I watched the documentary The Cove.

The cove reveals the cruel treatment of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. Most part of the movie is with the voice of dolphins which deeply broke my heart. I cannot imagine how Japanese people treat the slaughter so indifferently. The local government even tried to conceal and connive at the on-going slaughter. The only reason is the huge business benefit. It's not even because of the interests of people, but the staggering profits of those manufacturers. It was proved that dolphin meat containing toxins which would do harm to people's health. With this awareness, those manufacturers and governors still tried to sell dolphin meat with the tag of whales. This behavior is not even ethical in the world of business, let alone from the environmental perspective.

The Cove also raises people's awareness of protecting dolphins by showing the communication between dolphins and human. In this case, dolphins are proved to have self-awareness, which can easily raise people's sympathy and take action. How about other species? Should we have beef? Should we have milk? Should we make use of plants, such as trees and herbals? Should we distort the growth of plants because of the so called "art"? These are all considerable questions. Furthermore, in what way should people protect animals? Is the existence of zoos necessary? The Cove brings about more questions worth discussion for us.

Land Ethic

As part of the worldview, people's land ethic has been formed throughout their life. Some people prefer to live in the suburbs, while others not.These all are influenced by people's experience.

I was brought up in an outer urban community, 30-minute away from downtown. I prefer to call it a little isolated paradise which used to be surrounded by acres and acres of fields where I always did kite flying with other kids. That picture occupies my mind every now and then. Besides, 30-minute way is not that far. People can have fun in downtown whenever they want. For me,land ethic is no more than a reasonably harmonious allocation between nature and human being world. It's worth noting that there doesn't exist a clear all-or-nothing dividing line with regard to the allocation.

Given the chance to live wherever I want, I would choose to live in Chinese traditional  courtyard dwelling houses in urban area. Usually, there lives four families together in one set of courtyard dwelling houses. Each of them occupies one side of the house with the courtyard at the center. This is a classic architecture typically in Beijing. I'm so into it, because it perfectly shows a harmonious relationship between human and nature as well as a friendly neighborhood relationship.In this way, people will learn to get along well with each other, also get close to nature in downtown. Personally speaking, a city doesn't necessarily have to be a land of skyscrapers. It's just a stereotype that city dwellers merely have little cubicles to live in.I wish I could live in a fancy courtyard dwelling house to enjoy a combination of city and nature.

Perspectives

It's the first time for me to really get to know the environmental ethics which is far from what I used to think. I'm deeply impressed by many interesting opinions concerning the definition of "ethics". Among them, the holistic environmental ethics resonates with me the most, and it inspires me as well.

Theoretically, I basically agree with the "Gaia hypothesis" which emphasizes the entire Earth. The entire Earth is the focus of moral significance. I personally think this concept actually coincides with Leopold and Callicott's view in essence, not conflicting with it at the least to say. Historically, human beings have been keeping trying to look for new ways to survive from and then to live better in the great nature. Those behaviors considered to do good to people's life used to be deemed as being ethical. However, evidence shows that some methods, adopted by people from good will, ultimately turned out to be harmful, such as the use of pesticide. Human beings gradually figured out what is right and what is wrong through many years' trial and error. And most right things are proved to be in compliance with the intrinsic rule of the nature. Hence, ethical behavior in human beings is defined as responses by individuals which make species more likely to survive (Pojman,21).This definition suggests people follow the concept of "natural law", under which people should leave species and the environment as what they are. The nature will achieve its potential as every element of it works in their original way.

People may wonder: Does it mean human beings can do nothing in front of the nature? The answer is NO. As demonstrated in the Principles of Marxist Philosophy, human beings task is to understand the world and then change the world. Human beings can undoubtedly transform the world depending on their preference. The key is they should change the world in a right way. Then, what is the right way? I think it is to follow and utilize the intrinsic nature of every other thing on the earth to fulfill human's needs rather than distort the universe and try to create a brand-new world for the King: Human. Therefore, I think ethics behavior in human beings means behave instinctively in accordance with the natural law.

Apart from this, I don't agree with Callicott in terms of the scarification of the human. I think to make the whole world good doesn't necessarily sacrifice human beings. As I see it, the current many undesirable situations, such as global warming, are the consequences of many wrong methods adopted by people before. It's not a mistake that people transform the environment in their preferable way instinctively. The problem is they took improper approaches. So I think the benefit of human beings eventually identifies with the whole world. If people employ a right way to live in harmony with the environment, they won't be sacrificed as indicated by Callicott.