Class notes Environmental Studies

The planet faces a variety of troubling issues that main stem rom man-made contaminations. Many of these lead environmental problems that are causing long term damage to the earth’s ecosystem. Environmentalism and frugality try to come up with solutions to this problem by suggesting people to live in a frugal means: which means one is less wasteful and more resourceful. It has been hard to adapt this method as a solution to the environmental problem due to differences among the people living on the planet. What Is the Environmental Case for Frugal Simplicity? Environmental frugality is the quality of being economical to the resources available on the planet. It means using less resources whilst expecting high productivity from these resources. According to Westacott.E (2016), frugality and environmentalism find a great deal of overlap because of similarity in tactics. Both of them find a great deal of value in minimizing one’s use of Earth’s resources and getting as much value as possible out of the resources that we do use. They all recommend the idea of “reduce, recycle, reuse” while seeking to get as much value out of things as possible and reducing overall environmental impact while also lowering individual cost. The tactics that both groups use in their daily life tend to match up really well. Strategies like consuming manufactured goods, finding low impact things to do with one’s life and using less electricity are some of the major common strategies that both the frugal people and environmentalists share even though they may be doing different things for different reasons. What Rebuttal Does Emrys Westacott Give to Claim That Individual Choices Make No Difference?1 Despite the idea of frugality being emphasized, individual choices make no difference. Westacott claims that we find frugality attractive because our attitudes today are ambivalent: we accept acquisitiveness as necessary condition of economic growth and prosperity while denouncing it as undesirable character trait that bespeaks false values and unethical conduct” (p.162). People in the world live in very different contexts and applying the ideas of simpler living where inequality and poverty are not persuasive but deepening is and hard sell. According to Westacott, despite some reversals, the course of human history is nevertheless on the up and up, because overall improvements in the quality of life have increased among great number of people, needs to take better account of negative trends. Everyone in this world has his/her different definition of a simple life due to the amount of resources they have. This makes it impossible to define frugality as the economic classes are diverse. Environmental resources are also unevenly distributed making it hard for the concept of frugality to be applied in the world we are living now. We have all ignored the lessons of simplicity and frugality so comprehensively that we face problems with the environment without drastic upheaval and change. However, individual actions multiplied many times can make a great difference in the environment.