On The Environmental Ethic Issues From The Perspective Of Social Development

Since the 19 th century, especially the 20 th century, the global environmental crisis brought about by the industrialization has greatly affected the survival and development of human society, becoming the biggest problem humans have to be confronted with. Under enormous pressure of environmental problem, many people begin to query the development path of humans and hold that the development of human society and the development of economic field in particular, give rise to current severe environmental challenges of the world. Actually, the environmental crisis is not just the by-product of human economic activity but proves to be the underlying problem of the ethical system, the relationship between human and nature. Thus, the superficial study on the social and economic activities can not explore the essence of environmental problem fundamentally while more and more scholars takes the study on the ethical relations among the human, society and nature as the key to solve the environmental crisis. This thesis attempts to probe into the ethical relation between human society and nature from the perspective of social development by selecting the value reflection on the traditional social development view as the starting point for exploring the solution to current social environmental crisis and the harmonious coexistence of social development of human being and natural harmony.Before the environmental problems arouse people’s high attention, all countries constantly conquer and transform the nature with the purpose of promoting economic development, enhancing national power and improving people’s material standard of living. Environmental problems, particularly the globalization ecological crisis and the crisis of human survival caused by environmental problems, compel people to reflect traditional development mode and view. People’s attention turns into “why develops” from “how to develop”, into the environmental ethics of giving attention to the existence value and environmental value of nature and the harmonious co-existence between humans and nature from the traditional ethics of concerning about the relationship among people and the relationship between humans and society and taking humans as the core and measure value and nature as the tool for meeting human demand. Only when humans accomplish the value shift in terms of social development, shifting from taking the interests, desire and needs of humans as the value judgment criteria into the value dimension of harmonious co-existence between human and nature advocated by the environmental ethics can the environmental crisis and survival crisis of human society be solved.China is also confronted with the severe environmental problem in economic and social development process. The solution shares the similarity of solving international environmental problem and also has its own characteristics. As a developing country, China is faced with the urgent task of development and meanwhile the environmental problems arising from the development become more and more severe which may lead to the “growth without development’ and even restrict the sustainable development of economy and society, making it go beyond the ultimate development goal of people living a happy life. Based on the special international and domestic situation and the actual state of being a developing country, the author suggests that China’s environmental ethics construction should draw lessons from the useful experiences of western developed countries and meanwhile give consideration to the relationship between economic and social development and natural development protection so as to realize the harmonious co-existence between human and natural.