Culture and Environmental Crisis

Culture and Environmental Crisis

In “The Cultural Basis for Our Environment” Lewis Moncrief argues that America has three main reasons for the environmental crisis that we are currently stuck in. He argues that we have a lack of moral direction concerning nature, social institutions are not trying to make any adjustments to the “stress” on the environment, and our “abiding faith in technology” to fix everything. Moncrief takes the stand that in America we do absolutely nothing to combat our environmental crisis that we are stuck in. He puts up good arguments, but they are flawed.

Moncrief states that America has an absence of moral direction when it comes to nature. He gives an example of a corporation making a lot of profit and destroying nature rather than saving it. He argues that our accounting systems aren’t efficiently computing the cost of our irresponsibility concerning the environment. He states that if we knew the total cost and toll of what we do to our environment, we would do better. But how do we really figure out the cost of what we are doing to our environment will be? We can’t accurately know the total cost of what we do to the environment. Corporations are usually well aware of the harm that they are causing the environment, but they are acting in the interest of the company. It poses a problem for them to come to an agreement on being both economically successful and environmentally friendly. The idea of the moral direction and value of the environment is very greyed. There are constantly differing views about what should be done, making it difficult for people to finalize a plan to better the environment.

Moncrief’s second argument is that our social institutions are doing nothing to minimize the stress on the environment. He believes they are currently responding with very little, and ineffective legislative acts or court decisions to regulate natural resources. However, the government has passed plenty of acts in regard to the environment and making it safer. For example, the Clean Air Act of 1970. This law sets a standard for the quality and purity of the air and is constantly being reviewed and changed. In 1990 the standards for air purity were raised. The government isn’t just idly sitting by. We have the Environmental Protection Agency setup, which monitors what happens