| Description |
The earth we inhabit faces an environmental crisis which is threatening the survival of its life systems. Recent attention to these problems has sparked an array of environmental legislation and public policy in an attempt to create solutions. While this legislation has done no additional harm, it has failed to solve the problems it set out to remedy. The answer to the environmental crisis does not lie in public policy alone. Social values substantially affect policy implementation. As long as social values are anthropocentric and self-serving, public policy will continue to support similar values, sacrificing Nature and life systems in the process. For environmental policy to be effective, societal values must shift toward more holisitic and biocentric paradigms. In order to make this shift, communities and individuals must embrace their natural places. They must reestablish their connections with the natural world and make decisions compatible with those natural values. Only this paradigm shift will set the stage for a new era of environmentalism which will be effective in the protection, conservation, and recovery of natural systems. |
