PH 255D - Advanced Ethics: Environmental

4.00 credits.

This ethics course explores the novel biocentric point of view, based on ecological principles, and its expansive sense of community. We will investigate the thinking of pioneering ecologists like Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson to answer challenging moral questions like: Do we have a responsibility to the natural world? Do non-humans have rights? Do trees have legal standing? These and other questions will be asked from the vantage point of what is now called the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which human activity has appreciably altered natural processes. The course culminates in the exploration of case studies of environmental disasters and the policies and regulations which followed.