HomeNewsCampus ActivityHolmes Rolston III Urges Students to Love the Planet More
2008.1008
Holmes Rolston III Urges Students to Love the Planet More
<p>By Kevin Tang<br />
Campus Reporter</p>
<p>World-renowned philosopher Holmes Rolston III shared his view of the complicated relationship between the nature and human beings during a speech at the National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) auditorium today.</p>
<p>"For millennia, human beings had abused the nature. Now, we are paying back for what we have done,” Rolston said.</p>
<p>Lecturing in front of a full house, Rolston explained how, throughout history, human beings had tried to manage and control the nature for their own comfort. He said that, through human beings’ devastation, the outlook of the Earth has been greatly changed.</p>
<p>Defined and divided by the year of 1850, human beings would accomplish their work mostly by manpower but after the dateline, however, human beings would rely on machines, as what Rolston explained.</p>
<p>"These engines and gears gave human beings more abilities to change and abuse the nature whatever and wherever,” he said. “Mankind would have enough capability to make that change but we failed to foresee the aftermath which would be caused by the damages to the nature.”</p>
<p>Rolston would regard global warming as one of those aftermaths of men’s devastating the earth. He primarily mentioned it as well as potential devastation that would come with it toward countries such as Taiwan.</p>
<p>"Ice caps are melting, and the rising sea level posed a direct threat to the shorelines of Taiwan, where most of the population lives,” Rolston said.</p>
<p>With such menaces ahead, Rolston said that human beings are about to make a decision, a point of no return.</p>
<p>"We now stand at the rupture of history. If we want a dwelling place, we must learn to live and get along with the nature. That is, we need to stop treating ourselves as the priority on the planet,” he said. “This is a challenge that will be happening in your lifetime.”</p>
<p>As a famous lecturer and author of six books, Rolston has been considered by many to be the father of environmental ethics, and was awarded with the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities in 2003. He is also a distinguished professor of Philosophy at the Colorado State University.</p>
