Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
massive scale) other people, moving towards a shift in our mentality (through care ethics) will result in a more approachable way to help the climate crisis.
V. Conclusion I acknowledge that this is an idealistic scenario, as asking people to change the way that they think has been proven to be incredibly difficult, but I am not even convinced that we can change. I am advocating for the fact that if humans ever come around to changing the way that they approach the environmental crisis, Gilligan’s ethics of care would be the best way to re-define our relationships between ourselves and the environment. This is not to say that implementing the ethics of care is not something to consider even if it is too late to end climate change. Much of the climate-anxiety or fear comes from the personal level: am I, as an individual, responsible for climate change through my actions? If this is true, which I am neither arguing for nor against in this paper, then implementing care ethics can be an incredibly positive thing. Even if the individual is responsible on some level for their emissions or actions, looking at the world through a new, interconnected lens can create awareness about how one lives that can benefit the environment. If one sees themselves in relation to the squirrels in their backyard, they might realize that using copious amounts of pesticides just to make the grass look nice may not be a considerate thing for the various forms of wildlife living in/around it. In this sense, holding an ethics of care toward the environment can have incredibly beneficial effects on the environment from the individual perspective. Even if this mentality never becomes widely accepted, the people that do live their lives by it will be able to have a positive impact on the climate and believe, truthfully, that they are doing what they can to the best of their abilities to help the environment.
Volume VII (2024) 49
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker