RELG 248 - Environmental Ethics

FC ARHU CD WINT

4 credits
Environmental threats such as climate change and biodiversity loss are often posed as scientific, engineering, or political problems. Yet they are also profoundly ethical challenges: they require normative judgements about issues of justice, obligation, and responsibility. This course examines the ethical character of environmental issues, taking up the following questions: Who or what is most responsible for our contemporary environmental crises? What kinds of individual or collective interventions are necessary in response? Do we need a “new worldview” to create more sustainable relationships with nature? We examine these questions by reading materials from religious ethicists, philosophers, journalists, and novelists.