In my experience teaching philosophy, applied ethics courses always pose unique challenges. Because applied ethics goes beyond canonical texts and involves developments in current events, there is a need to refresh these courses each time they are offered to ensure course material and discussion stay relevant and topical. Environmental Ethics is such a course, and I am contemplating how to reformulate its reading materials and course goals for the fall semester. The last time I taught Environmental Ethics was the spring 2020 semester when the pandemic hit; the course was derailed as the semester ended with a whimper. While only two years ago, so much has happened since then, and I face a series of challenges unique not only to the current era but also to my students.
My college campus is comparatively diverse. The plurality of lived experiences and perspectives creates a vibrant atmosphere on campus, but it also brings with it certain obligations about representation and epistemic justice. The call to decolonize your syllabus has made me more aware of who and what is represented among the scholars and issues covered in my courses. Indeed, a longstanding critique of environmentalism and environmental writers is that they are historically over-represented by white men. A diversified approach to the environment includes, among other things, ecofeminism, urban ecology, Native American and aborigine philosophy, and examining national/international environmental racism.
What is also true about my campus is the notable number of students considered low-income. This reality impacts my expectations of my students since, for instance, many hold full-time jobs in addition to carrying a full course load. It informs how much of a demand I feel comfortable placing on their evenings and weekends. Mindful of all these factors, I aim to design an environmental ethics course with a healthy balance of diverse theory and real-life case studies. I also aim to include a volunteer component for the course. As applied ethics, environmentalism addresses increasingly urgent global crises that demand involvement from everyday citizens. However, given my students’ time constraints, I have decided to make volunteering optional for the course. I also plan to volunteer alongside my students for various events; doing so reinforces the message of both community and intergenerational responsibility.
The relevant current events around environmentalism change each time I teach the course. During the Trump presidency, our discussions focused on his administration’s rollback of regulations that protect natural habitats and wildlife, as well as his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017. Trump’s reputation for policies that disproportionately affected Black and Brown people (like the Muslim ban) made their way into class discussions about animal ethics as students confronted who gets to count as “persons.”
Another shift in discussing environmental issues is the waning of climate denial. At one time a major political obstacle to action on climate change, the denial of global warming seems to have subsided, perhaps because of the increasing number of catastrophic weather events or that other, more urgent, global issues like Covid-19 have dominated our collective attention. My comprehensive lesson on the corporate figures behind climate denial (described in Merchants of Doubt) will be replaced with discussing eco despair. The international inertia around effective environmental change contributes to a common response of apathy and helplessness among students. My course has always included Bryan Norton’s article about what moral obligations we owe to future generations due to the environmental burdens each successive generation will be forced to endure. But it will now be the focal point of a multifaceted lesson given the prominence this argument has gained in environmental activism, especially through figures like Greta Thunberg and the Youth Movement. Dovetailing with the goals of representation means highlighting Black and Brown young people committed to “intersectional environmentalism” like Leah Thomas who has created an “Intersectional Environmentalist Pledge.”
A new development in my own life will serve as the basis for a case study about volunteering with environmental organizations. A year and a half ago, I joined an environmental committee that advises the local municipal council. As a quasi-governmental body, we discuss issues relevant to our suburban town’s environmental health like potentially implementing a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers or the importance of native plants in protecting biodiversity. It has shown me that, frequently, the public isn’t fully aware of the negative impact of choices like spraying for mosquitoes or removing fallen leaves from their property. Part of environmental activism, then, is informing the public about the often-hidden harms of the status quo. As one committee member said, “We need to redefine what a beautiful yard looks like.” I point out to my students that environmental ethics itself asks us to rethink and redefine a lot of our typical attitudes towards nature. Most importantly, my volunteer experiences have taught me that change happens slowly, sometimes at a frustrating pace, and that acting locally within your own community helps ease the sense of powerlessness too common in today’s world.
Finally, all of my best, well-crafted plans nevertheless will occur at a time when the mental health of young people is at crisis levels. I aim to teach the whole person by recognizing that we professors must meet students where they are and work with them with patience and support. My goal at the beginning of the semester is to convince students about why ethics is even needed beyond human beings toward the natural world. By the end, my hope is that they understand the nuances of different positions, that they have gained an understanding of various issues, and that they feel empowered moving forward.
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Margaret Betz
Margaret Betz is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. She is the author of The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt and, the recent book,Modes of Protest and Resistance: Strange Change in Morals Political.
