Deep ecology and Arne Næss

   

The world has many environmental challenges today. We are hearing words like this all the time: global warming, overpopulation, war deceases, pollution, overuse, climate changes, threatened animals and ozone holes. But is it enough just to speak about these things? Or is it time for action? How is the future of the human civilization on Planet Earth going to be?

During the last weeks at school we have worked with Deep ecology and Arne Næss’ thoughts in English and Religion classes.

Arne Næss is a Norwegian philosopher and the founder of Deep ecology, a view of life which goal is to take better care of nature and animals by consider them as equal to humans. The main point of the Deep ecology is that all living creatures are mutually dependent on each other. Humans cannot act as we are above or beside the nature, but a part of it. The relationship between humans and nature has to change if we want to save and share the Earth’s resources.    

Many of the environmental problems are created by human choices. For example, according to Searching 10, 75,000 trees could be spared each week by recycling the Sunday edition of the New York Times.

Arne Næss philosophy implies that the way to change the unfortunate development is that the population in rich, western countries change their way of living dramatically.  

Everyone can do small things to make a big and important difference. For example we can all start to recycle our garbage to reduce polluting emissions. That contributes to reduce the damages that make the hole in the ozone layer larger and make plants and animals in the rainforest die.


Humans are destroying the quality of water, air and soil by poisonous agriculture as they use chemicals that are environmentally harmfull. Farmers all over the world must take this seriously and not only focus on short-term profit. 


We can all start to buy secondhand clothes and furniture to stop the increase of the rubbish heaps in rich countires. 


As a conclusion people have to change their consumption habits and way of living. We have to listen to a smart man like Arne Næss. We all have to start with ourselves and give the consideration of The Earth's future priority before our own selfish needs.


-Marie