Enviornmental Ethics

            
             Let me start off by saying that these subjects, environmental ethics, radical ecology, and the many chapters and schools of thought that fall beneath them are very new to me. I will not use this as an excuse for writing a poor paper; instead I will use it as inspiration to explore the basic schools of thought and the differences between them. At the beginning of this term I was asked to look at egocentric ethics, homocentric ethics, and ecocentric ethics. These are three different ways of thinking that seem to cover almost any group of people on our planet. I was asked to look at these three options, evaluate them, and then mark the chalk board where my opinions led me; I had a lot of trouble deciding what my opinions were. I had honestly never really thought that much about what was going on with our resources and what is left of our planets natural habitats. I always just assumed that there were people out there that had the answers and it would all be ok. Now I realize that there are many problems in our environment that we still do not have the answers to. Eventually I just put my mark in the middle of the chalk board because I figured it was the safest choice. I am still not satisfied with the position of my mark because I am not sure that it is in the right place. Throughout the rest of this essay I will use Carolyn Merchants book Radical Ecology (Chapter 3) to evaluate these three different schools of thought. I will use the knowledge gained from the chapter, and the experiences in my life, to try and better understand where my mark should fall on the scale of environmental ethics.
             Egocentric ethics as stated in radical ecology are "grounded in the self". They focus on the good for you as an individual. It is believed that what is good for the individual will in turn benefit society. In other words, individual good has priority over social good, but social good will follow.