Jordi Giró i París
The ecological ethics: the man's new responsibility in front of nature [JORDI GIRÓ] Today, the great challenge that draws the attention of those who work on the Ecoethics, is the construction of a collective Ethics based on respect towards nature. What we are talking about is not only an Ethics of men as rational individual beings, but a collective Ethics based on respect towards nature and the man itself, seeing it as a species. A person who cares for the future. The construction of the modernity was based on the concept of the individual, and, that is why, nowadays, the problems that the mankind has to face, ie the ecological crisis, have not got a solution if we regard beyond an individualist point of view. Even though 1 make a biodegradable compound, my usual mean of transport is a bicycle and my only food care vegetables grown in a biological garden, the truth is that, whatever I do, my action will never be more than a mere testimonial one, that is, useless, if we are not capable of spreading all over a society, all over the mankind, a new conscience of responsibility for all human actions in the nature.
This means that in everything I do I am not only risking the eticity of the next relationship, in the time as well as in the space, with the person next to me, but it also means that I am risking the mankind's future. I cannot say any longer: << I did not know the future effects of the use of this product)>, A knew nothing about the harmful effects this technical or scientific transformation could have on the environment.>) That is, we cannot use the ignorance about the future as an apology for damaging the environment. Any action, event the most insignificant one, because of the multiplier effect of the whole previous actions done throughout mankind's history, can unbalance the fragility of a vulnerable and fragile harmony, and, thus, lead to the unviability of the future we are obliged to preserve and bequeath to the rising and future generations.
We all are responsible, in anything we do, for the mankind's future. This is, indeed, a really new way of expressing ideas which are already known, but which requires a new way of rewriting the Ethics. This is the challenge, neither more, nor less.