Environmental Ethics & Humanity's Relationship With Nature: Philosophy Lesson (Ages 8-16) [P4C]

This fun philosophy lesson is focused on ‘environmental ethics’: the branch of ethics that studies the moral relationship between humans and the natural environment. This multi-use session will help your students to explore how we should act towards the environment and the creatures that live in it.

This philosophy session is useful as a part of your schools PSHE/SMSC provision and is of particular interest to biology teachers, geography teachers, teachers of environmental sciences and ethics teachers. It’s also a perfect resource for educators to use for ‘Earth Day’ (April 22nd). The session explores topics such as:

• Humanity’s relationship to nature
• Climate change and its implications
• Moral duties towards wildlife
• How to live an eco-friendly lifestyle
• Sustainable Societies
• The environmental impact of lifestyle choices

The big question asked in this session is “To what extent is it climate change a problem that can be solved?”. Using a variety of engaging activities students will discuss and debate a wide range of other philosophical and ethical questions such as:

• What is the single biggest threat to the health of our planet’s ecosystem at the moment?
• To what extent is spending time in natural environments important for maintaining good mental health?
• In terms of choosing a career: which careers and jobs cause the most harm, and which the least, to the environment?
• If the meat industry is one of the leading producers of greenhouse gasses that cause climate change: should we all go vegan?
• What are our moral duties to ‘climate change refugees’?
• If you were the ruler of the world: what laws would you create in order to protect the planet from environmental harm?

This session uses our unique format for philosophy teaching resources and features an integrated menu that allows teachers to select from a variety of starter, main, plenary, assessment and end-of-lesson reflection activities. With a massive selection of activities designed to trigger philosophical discussions, debates and reflections: you can re-use the resource numerous times with the same group.

Students will also analyse and evaluate an eclectic mix of philosophical and ethical claims such as:

“It is never acceptable for a company to pollute a river”’
“Since an asteroid will one day destroy all life on earth: environmentalism doesn’t actually matter”
“The basic drivers of climate change will not change – so humanity is doomed”
“There are too many humans on this planet: it’s best not to reproduce and create more” and
“Humans have a right to do with the planet whatever we want”

The file is a PowerPoint Show: no planning or preparation is required, just run the file and the intuitive menu system will make delivering a powerful philosophy session very easy!