Environmental Ethics Final Paper

The Uninformed to the Conscious

Prior to this course I really did not have a stance on environmental ethics. I grew up thinking that the only way to save the environment was to recycle. It is beaten into our brains as kids that we need to save the planet by reducing, reusing and recycling. I thought, since I was taking part in the recycling process, I was doing my part to help save the environment and keep it clean. Obviously it is not the only action that increases sustainability, but Northwestern, the grade school I attended, did not feel the need to inform us about the multitude of problems and issues our plant faces. I wasn’t even sure exactly what sustainability was until I stepped foot into the ENG308J course. There is such a large number of students and faculty at the university who are greatly informed about the environmental problems and what can be done to fix them, you would think that I would have at least heard about sustainability when I was a freshman. I am nearing the end of my junior year and the world “sustainability” has just now been introduced into my vocabulary. Now that it is the end of this class, I can say that I am much more informed about sustainability and how it is positive for our environment.

Without knowing anything about environmental sustainability or ethics before this class, jumping into the readings was a little confusing and over whelming at first. Before the readings, I never thought about wilderness as being a negative, unknown and scary place as some of our ancestors saw the world (Cronon, 11-30). I thought, like many other students in our class, that wilderness was a quiet place with woods and fuzzy little animals. The readings in “Saving Place” made me criticize my view a little more. Aldo Leopold’s essay, “Thinking Like a Mountain”, was one of the main readings that stood out and made me think about our environment and how we as humans affect it. In the essay a man hunts for deer but first comes across a wolf instead. His instinct tells him to shoot the wolf so that there are more deer around the mountain for him to hunt. After killing the wolf he starts to see the real picture of why the wolf is there: to help keep the deer population down for the vegetation on the mountain to survive. Leopold believes that the wilderness is what is protecting the world from harm, not people. It was then that I started to realize that humans sometimes do not think about how their actions, such as hunting, can harm the earth. He viewed the mountain as its own ecosystem with every part of it working together. We feel that we are helping the environment sometimes, but it has its way of surviving its self. I know now that we need to work hand in hand with the environment and not against it in order to keep it sustainable.

The readings were very informative and a huge part of the class, but I am not a person that enjoys reading all the time, so being made to read was not an effective way for me to pick up on the messages of the essays. The discussions we had within class after the readings were very helpful in understanding what the authors wanted the audience to get out of their essays. The films, though, are what had the most effect on me. I am a very visual person and understand things better when I can see what is being discussed. My favorite part of the class was watching Food Inc., which was a very interesting and controversial film. I had heard so much about Food Inc. before we watched it in class, but none of the comments about the film were ever good. My classmates who had previously seen the film had said they were not prepared to see the animals being slaughtered and how the companies worked, so I tried to prepare myself for what I was going to see. Not many people think about where their food comes from and the entire process it undergoes before reaching their dinner plate. When most Americans think about food, their first thought is the grocery store shelf. They see the thousands of items available for purchase, but the reality of where they came from (mainly meat products) is tucked away in the back of their minds. Coming from a farming community I know better than to think that.

(My family at work on the farm)

Many farmers in my area have a few heads of cattle or hogs, but mostly we are a grain community. When my family started farming we worked around 1,000 acres of corn, wheat and soy beans. Due to the economy, in the past years we cut down to about 100 acres of seasonal summer produce such as sweet corn, green beans and a variety of other vegetables. Looking back on our years in the grain business, I never knew how much we were involved in the food industry. So many items of food are made from corn, which more than likely was made from some of our labor. The farms that I know may not be to the extent of the large corporate farms, but we all have the same goal for work. We have to work by the demand of the customers. That is what the farms in the film were dealing with as the food industry was demanding them to increase the quantity of their products. This film was very interesting and opened my eyes a lot. I do not agree with how animals are thought of in quantity, not quality and how are treated horribly. I would like to think that not every company is like that, but I can't say that is true. There were some farmers in the film that raise their animals correctly, butcher them and sell the meat themselves. Living and understanding that life, these are the kind of people I agree with. I myself have not changed my idea about eating meat after watching this film, but I will try to purchase meat that I feel is locally and correctly produced unlike that from the large corporations.

My ‘aha’ moment in the course was the realization of how much we consume as Americans. We have access to life’s basic necessities but we tend to also purchase our wants and desires. I like to think of myself as a frugal person when it comes to purchasing items. Being a "poor college student," I try to buy food when I run down to nearly nothing, limit my shopping to when I need an item of clothing for a specific reason, and restrain myself from impulse buying. It has helped me a lot to not spend as much money but performing those simple tasks does not cut my consumption down a significant amount. After reading “The Conundrum of Consumption” by Alan Thein Durning, I thought a lot more about how much I actually consume. He says that our society is known as “the consumer society.” As Americans we have been influenced to purchase as much as we can so that we can help our economy grow. Durning states, “Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life... We need things to be consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.” This might help our economy, but I definitely do not see it helping sustain our environment. Discarding items in the trash is harmful, but the process of making the items is just as bad.

I have started to realize that it is not just the items I buy and use, but it goes even farther back in the process. With each product purchased, more and more of the environment is being harmed. Just thinking about everything that goes into making a cup of coffee I would buy at the Front Room makes me cringe a little. One cup of coffee can affect so many things, but we often don’t realize it. The coffee starts off as a bean which must be sorted through a machine that uses a lot of energy. From there it is packaged (using more energy). Packages are shipped to its destination (using an abundance of fuel and creating air pollution). The coffee beans are processed into the coffee purchased (using more energy from its machines). The coffee is purchased in disposable containers that most toss in the trash (creating waste). The trash is transported to the landfills (using more fuel and creating more air pollution).... and the process continues even further. There are simple ways to cut down on transportation and energy use, including purchasing local products. Not buying as much at the grocery, not purchasing the daily coffee and not spending money definitely cuts down on my consumption and the toll it takes on the environment. I may purchase a cup of coffee here and there, but after reading “The conundrum of Consumption” I have and will continue to cut down on the daily coffee purchase.

Considering that I did not see myself as having an environmental ethic before this class, you can say that I definitely do now. Studying the readings from “Saving Place” and watching Food, Inc. has opened my eyes a great deal about the different thoughts and perspectives people have regarding our environment. I never noticed a problem before because I was not informed about what was happening. It has obviously been an issue for a long time as the authors of the numerous essays have works that have spread over multiple decades. I may not have known much before, but I will most definitely be taking something away from this class. There are many ways to be environmentally friendly without having to go to huge extremes and completely changing my life. I can make a change in simple things like purchasing local foods, recycling, composting and reducing on consumption of products by cutting down on the daily coffee. I can and will continue to make the small changes that will eventually lead to a huge benefit in the end: the sustainability of our planet.

Works Cited

Clark, Emma. "My family at work on the farm." 2010. Image.

Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness.” Saving Place. Ed. Sidney Dorbin. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 11-30. Print.

Durning, Alan Thein. "The Conundrum of Consumption." Saving Place. Ed. Sidney Dobrin. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 197-202. Print.

Food, Inc.. Dir. Robert Kenner. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2008. DVD.

Leopold, Aldo. “Thinking Like a Mountain.” Saving Place. Ed. Sidney Dorbin. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 87-89. Print.