A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TO THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

Abstract

Today no one questions the fact that our earth's ecological system is in real crisis. The non-renewable resources of nature are running out at a fast pace. Owing to over-industrialization, the air and water are polluted; acid-rain and other phenomena caused by man's rape of nature are taking a heavy toll on human health. In the super-affluent and heavily industrialized countries, one is faced with the irony that there is rarely a family without one or more members terminally ill with cancer, emphezema and other ecorelated diseases. The real tragedy is that since the developed world cannot reconcile itself with any possible diminution in its present standard of living, there is little hope that it will readily give up its present extravagant way of squandering the patrimony of nature .. We can fully agree with the statement that tlie present ecological crisis is mostly due to man's ignorance, greed, aggression, and arrogance, and that an inadequate understanding of the natural world and its laws is the potent cause of the environmental disaster. The only way open to us is to educate people on the root causes of the present rape of. nature, so that they will change their attitudes and habits before it is too late.