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A positive environmental ethic, comprised of a set of values and behaviors that help to
preserve the ecological integrity of Earth, must be seen as a part of each person¶s total
bei 13. For any EVE program to be successful, the learner¶s intellect, emotions, psychology,
personality, cultural and spiritual background need to be considered. Cultural beliefs play
a large role in determining environmental attitudes µ. Environmental values will be more
effective if they are taught early so that they become an integral part of the learner¶s
morality. Developing a strong system of general moral values is the basis on which environmentai
values must be founded 2.
Before proceeding to outline this integrative EVE strategy, the current confusion and
controversy regarding the existence of objective values must be addressed. The following
discussion lays the groundwork needed to establish the existence of objective values, in the
context of today¶s environmental realities.
TOWAt?D A LIFE ETHIC
The term ³ecology´ comes from the Greek word ³oikos´, which means house. With each passing
year it become increasingly clear that our house, the Earth, including all of the countries
of the world, is an ecologically interdependent unit. People the world over are eating food
that was grown in the soil of distant countries, thousands of miles away. Both industrialized
and non-industrialized countries are burning increasing amounts of oil, much of which
is pumped from beneath the desert sands of the Middle East. The sulfur and nitrogen oxide
emissions from burning these fuels in the midwestern United States and the industrialized
Ruhr Valley of Europe have created lifeless lakes in the eastern Canadian provinces and in
the Scandinavian countries respectively. The political, social and economic stresses and
strains of these international environmental problems are becoming increasingly manifest.
As Henry Nelson Wieman tells us in Seeking Faith for a New Age : ³The problem is to find and
to establish a way of life which all men can follow to the good of all while living on a
planet that is swiftly contracting.´ 3
With the development of human intellect, the evolution of life on this planet
appears to have reached a turning point. In the past, all forms of life were
subject to automatic natural controls... Today this condition has changed,
Through the use of his intellect, man has part ially escaped from the controls of
nature. He has achieved almost unlimited power to multiply his numbers and at the
same time to destroy the world¶s resources that might have supported him. Under
the domination of his intellect, the world¶s life, and the environment of that
life, seem to have reached a crossroads, and the choice of direction is for the
future to decide. ¶

The modern realities of overpopulation, overconsumpt ion, high technology and resulting
resource scarcities and environmental alteration have made it more difficult to chart an
idealistic moral course. With growing awareness of humankind¶s intimate relationship with,
and reliance upon, our environment for survival, individuals are realizing that an assault
on the environment is often a violation of another person¶s or country¶s health and wellbeing.
Even more profound is the notion that the components of the environment possess
value in themselves, apart from their utility to humankind.
In ethics, as in other moral matters, the non-human elements of the world are being
considered increasingly more important. Hourani reminds us that ³Our modern Western concept
of justice does not at the present time give equal consideration to animals and less articulate
forms of life as to men.´ 5 This raises the further question, should non-living
components of the environment have possession of equal rights under our system of ethical
judgment ?
Obligations have no meanings without conscience, and the problem we face is the
extension of the social conscience from people to land. 6
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stabili;y and beauty of
the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise.
Aldo Starker Leopold
A Sand County Almanac
Leopold took the important step of applying the ethic of social conscience to the earth
itself, with all of its living and non-living parts. A definition of what is right, however,
of what it means to live in a loving, just relationship with our surroundings, must
include people as well. The integration of social and environmental conscience is seminal
to the development of a life ethic, favcringc