Intelligence Obligation

      We've discussed a lot this semester about how the environment gets treated, what we can do try to make things better, and learned a lot more about the environment as a whole, which makes sense, since this is an Environmental Ethics Course. A common theme that I noticed though is that a lot of our discussions come back to morality, and whether we are morally responsible for what we do the the environment.
       The most recent discussion we've had that has really stuck in my mind was the question about being morally responsible for actually giving up when people don't listen to what you have to say about protecting the environment, or changing the amount and preventing the damage we are causing. What I feel like we forgot to ask or to take into account is, do we have an obligation, due to our intelligence to try to save the world. A lot of our conversation talked about the tipping point where the world was going to end as we knew it regardless of what we do, but we didn't really talk about our obligations as intelligent sentient beings.
      We are causing all this damage to out planet, and although it's pretty obvious to me that it's not morally responsible to just throw our hands up and stop fighting for what needs to happen. Should there be more of an emphasis on our intelligent responsibility, or the thought process that, not only did we cause this mess, but we have the intelligence to at least try to alleviate the problem a little bit, so we should? What do you all think?

Prediction of the End of Society

   So, I remember in class, we talked a lot about the tipping point, and how society, and the world is eventually going to change as we know it, whether that means actually destruction of human life, or the end of modern civilization. I found this article online that predicts the end of our society ending in a few decades. The mathematician who predicted this, worked with NASA equipment, to estimate our collapse.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/85541/nasa-study-concludes-when-civilization-will-end-and-it-s-not-looking-good-for-us

Tell me what you all think!

Should Gorillas, Orangoutangs, and Monkeys have rights?

  I have been thinking a lot since our last class on Wednesday about how a lot of animals, especially monkeys, gorillas, and orangoutangs have had medical surgeries and experiments used on them to see if these procedures should be used on humans. Besides the fact that this is horrifying, it also brings up the question as to why this is okay. Upon thinking about this, the answer that seems to be the worst, but the explanation that most people use is that monkeys are not humans, although they have very similar genetic codes to that of humans.
  When referring to the argument that the reading we read for class went over, I think that outlining the similarities between humans and apes is a good foundation for a great argument, but it isn't convincing enough to cause action. The biggest reason being that most people choose to be, are just are ignorant of the treatment to the animals being abused. Spreading knowledge, showing similarities, and coming up with alternative ways to conduct research without using animals are three parts of the equation for the change to actually happen.
  I personally did not know that animals were experimented on, and beyond that, to the degree they were experimented on. After learning about it, I believe that people should be fighting for animal rights, that animals should have similar rights to that of humans, where in order to experiment on a human you need informed consent. One of the reasons animals are easy to experiment on is because they are unable to give informed consent. Is that wrong? What would you suggest we do to get animals the right's that they deserve?

Technology Being Held Morally Responsible

Is it possible to hold technology to be morally responsible for the actions it does. How is it possible? These are two questions that were posed in class yesterday that I have thought about a lot. Is there an easy answer? Is there an easy solution? No, there is not. Technology is something based on advancement, patterns, algorithms, and many other factors. Being so, is it possible to hold technology, a non-human thing, but a tool, morally accountable for it's actions? Should the people who invented the technology be punished instead? Should harmful technology be destroyed? Should technology have morals if it is a non-human, non-sentient, non-being tool?

What Would it Mean for the "Inconvenient Truth" to be a Lie?

    After watching the movie, "The Inconvenient Truth," a questions came to my mind. What would it mean if Al Gore had some facts wrong, or facts were disproven. What would it mean if the graphs that Gore showed in the movie and his lecture series were not completely accurate?
     After coming up with this question, I googled, "The Inconvenient Truth" and read on article that disproves 35 "truths" in the movie.

(article found on http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html)

     Knowing this brings up the question what does this mean for the state of our environment, and is it possible that we have more time to fix the issues happening within global climate change? Even though no one wants to think that something they've hold true is a lie, is it a good thing that we have more time for action? Or does it just mean we were given a little more rope to choke ourselves with?

Is it Possible to Add an Incentive to Going Green?

   So, I've been thinking about a lot since my last post, Are We Bleeding Out our Environment, and I feel that one way we could reduce the damage, and start to end the bleeding out is a way add an incentive into going green. But in order to sway people to do something, and to give them a reward for doing that, one must first decide what they are actually going to do. Would it make sense to make a new trend featuring green technology for my generation? Should the government create a monetary reward to people who start using more environment friendly appliances, and travel? I don't think that a large group of people will go green simply because they want to, and it's the right thing to do. I think people will go green, when and if, it is trending, and there can be a more groupthink around it as to individual thinking about it. Facts are great, but incentives are better. What are some possible ideas as to what can be done to incentivize going green?

Are We Bleeding out our Environment?

     In class this week, we discussed a lot of big things. One thing we discussed made me think about whether or not are we bleeding out our environment. George Washington was an amazing battle leader, and didn't want a lavish life. He wanted to live a basic life. One of the methods of treatments back in Washington's time when someone was sick was to remove the "bad blood," by bleeding them out. The cause of George Washington's death was being bled out, due to a fever he had. Is the Doctor who bled Washington out at fault, or was the cause of his death really the fever?

       This lead me to ask myself the question, Are we bleeding the environment out. Are we over using resources to the point that the environment will no longer have enough of an immune system to prevent sicknesses form destroying it? If a sickness managed to destroy the environment, whose fault is it, ours or the sickness?