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Does Mankind Really Bear a Responsibility to the Environment?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

John L. Cloudsley-Thompson
John L. Cloudsley-Thompson
Affiliation:
Professor and Head, Department of Zoology, Birkbeck College(University of London), Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, England, UK.
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Extract

Economic considerations cannot be invoked to justify long-term protection of the environment. The appeal to posterity, as Goethe pointed out, springs from ‘the pure, strong feeling of the existence of something imperishable; something that will, in the end, be gratified by finding the minority turn into a majority’. There is nothing new in the paradox expounded in the opening paragraphs of this account: Goethe also wrote that there is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again. In answer to the question, ‘What is your duty?’ he replied, ‘the claims of the day’.

We should not expect to find a logical reason in the future for doing what seems right now. We should do what appears to be our duty in relation to the environment, as in all else, just because it seems right to do so, and in deference to future generations. We may not be justified in believing that there can be objective vindication of our subjective feelings; but this should never allow us to close our ears to the whispering of our inner conscience. There is much that is true which cannot be assessed, yet it is on the strength of truths such as these that actions have sometimes to be based: to ignore the future would make nonsense of the present.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1985 , pp. 255 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1985

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References

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