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The Idea of the Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Nigel Dower
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Extract

This is in part a reflection on issues raised by David Cooper in his paper entitled ‘The Idea of Environment’ (Cooper, 1992), a paper that I have an ambiguous attitude towards. On the one hand it has opened my eyes to a way of thinking about the environment, namely as a field of significance, but on the other hand it seems to be unfortunate in its tone of negative criticism of much of the thinking of deep environmentalists, and wrong in its dismissal of the idea that the environment as a whole should be a field of significance.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 36 , March 1994 , pp. 143 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1994

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References

1 Piet Hein said ‘We are global citizens with tribal souls’ (quoted in Barnaby, 1988, p. 192). Perhaps ‘local’ would be better than ‘tribal’.

2 These ideas are explored further in Nigel Dower, ‘Technology as Environment’, a paper delivered at a conference in Aberdeen in September 1993 (copies available from the author).

3 It involves changing the ‘T’ element rather than the ‘P’ or ‘A’ elements in Ehrlich's IPAT formula (Impact = Population × Affluence × Technology) (see Ehrlich et al., 1977, p. 720).