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ISSUES OF ENVIRONMENTAL (IR)RESPONSIBILITY

ACTA UNIVERSITATIS AGRICULTURAE ET SILVICULTURAE MENDELIANAE BRUNENSIS

Volume LXI

230

http://dx.doi.org/10.11118/actaun201361072085

Number 7, 2013

ISSUES OF ENVIRONMENTAL

(IR)RESPONSIBILITY

Jana Dundelová

Received: April 11, 2013

Abstract

DUNDELOVÁ JANA: Issues of environmental (ir)responsibility. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae

et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, 2013, LXI, No. 7, pp. 2085–2092

In this paper the author reﬂects the questions of humans’ relationship to the environment and of

their ecological behaviour that becomes together with the development of modern technologies

increasingly relevant just as the question whether humans are able to aﬀect fundamentally the

environment on the Earth by their activities. According to some authors (e.g. Ehrlich, 1968; Gore, 2006;

Wilson, 1995; Winter, Koger, 2009; Šmajs, 2005) human survival is directly connected with people’s

relationship to the nature; but other inﬂuential authors have contradictory opinions or they are at

least afraid of overestimation of ecological activities that can lead to neglecting of other important

problems (e.g. Simon, 1981; Goklany, 2007; Lomborg, 2007; Klaus, 2007, 2009).

These issues are dealt in this article mainly from the perspective of psychological theories and

concepts – the Freud’s concept of unconsciousness is discussed as well as groupthink, theory of

dissonance, contingency trap, Milgram’s theory of autonomous and agentic state of consciousness,

group and intergroup behaviour, social dilemma – tragedy of the commons.

Achieving a sustainable way of life depends on the equilibrium between consumption of individuals

and regenerative abilities of the natural environment. However, people still behave as if they were

separated from the nature. The linking axis of this article is the question of psychic powers causing

individual and collective ecological (ir)responsibility and the resulting consequences.

environmentalism, ecopsychology, paradigm, sustainable development, pseudo-ecology, global

solution, responsibility

1 AIM AND METHODS

The aim of this paper is a critical evaluation

of relation of human to its environment, to the

nature. This issue can be viewed from many

perspectives – ecological, environmentalistic,

political, economic, philosophical, psychological

etc. In this article psychological aspects of this

problem are highlighted, but elaborating this text

I realized that they cannot be solved separately,

that is why in the opening part of this study

important terms and concepts are deﬁned as well

as the neverending dilemma of human ability to

inﬂuence fundamentally the changes in the nature

is mentioned here. The core of this paper is devoted

to psychological aspects that cause that some people

have tendency to environmentally protective

behaviour while the others feel to be separated

from nature or even to be superior to it. These

questions are set into the political and economical

frame and behind the lines is emphasized that for

understanding human behaviour to the nature is

required more than the knowledge of separated

disciplines.

This paper was based mainly on analysis of written

sources using a comparative approach enriched by

the author’s notes and comments.

2 DEFINITION OF BASIC TERMS AND

CONCEPTS

To be able to speak about issues of environmental

responsibility or irresponsibility we have to mention

basic terms, concepts and paradigms that create

platform for – in many times diﬀerent – attitudes

and conclusions.

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Jana Dundelová

Environmentalism1 is a philosophy, ideology,

social and political movement whose central topic is

the relationship of humankind to the environment.

Environmentalism strives to change the social,

political and economic mechanisms that damage

the environment. The origins of environmentalism

as a political theory were set in the 60th of 20th

century, when scientists and populists began to

point to an impending population explosion.

Environmentalism o en comes into opinion

conﬂict with proponents of freedom as basic

value of humans. So we can see on the one hand

o en very suggestive eﬀorts drawing attention to

a deteriorating quality of the environment due

to human activities and to proposals of various

ecological arrangements, and on the other hand

endeavours emphasizing human freedom and

the danger of misuse of environmental activities

for economic and political manipulation with

consequences of limitation of human freedom.

The representative of the ﬁrst approach is one of

the founders of environmentalism Paul Ehrlich, who

in his book “The Population Bomb” 2 (Ehrlich, 1968)

warned of a population explosion and predicted that

in the 70th of 20th century massive starvation in the

world will start and millions of people die of hunger.

(Of course the failure of this prediction was later

attacked by his opponents, including Václav Klaus).

Another important representative of ecological

activities is former candidate for U.S. president – Al

Gore – who in his book “An Inconvenient Truth”

(Gore, 2006) and in his presentations suggestively

warns against “the worst disaster in human history”

– which is undoubtedly meant an ecological disaster

mainly caused by global warming. 3

Environmental activities have their support even

in philosophical works, for example Šmajs (2005)

puts into contradiction “natural evolution” that

created the universe and “the evolution of anti-

natural human culture” – this ontic conﬂict of

culture and nature is, according to Šmajs, the deepest

essence of the current ecological crisis. “People

uncritically admire culture, and on the contrary,

they consider the nature to be useless, boring and

uninteresting” Šmajs (2005, p.7). “But the ‘romantic’

idea of nature as inﬁnitely loving mother that all

human activities willingly accepts and endures,

and does not punish them evilly is unsustainable.

Development of cultural being is aimed against the

creativity of natural evolution; this development

destroys the most precious values of nature and

causes impairment of values of natural being”

Šmajs (2005, p. 11). These values of natural being

represented by biological diversity (biodiversity),

which is now reduced the most quickly since the

natural disasters at the end of the Mesozoic, which

killed the dinosaurs (Wilson, 1995).

Contradictorily, Klaus (see below) assigns an

insigniﬁcant value to biodiversity (and thus also

to its reduction) and considers also the question

of values; according to him they are likewise

biodiversity indeﬁnable without human subject and

they have no sense – the man attributes the sense

to all values (Klaus, 2007, 2009). Klaus and other

authors with similar paradigm are afraid of abuse

“conservation” for promoting of various political

and economic arrangements. Klaus in his book

“Blue, not Green Planet” points out the possibility

of this negative impact already in the subtitle of the

book: “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?”,

and he highlights the lack of scientiﬁc evidence

conﬁrming the inﬂuence of human activities on

global warming.

The polemic issue is also the depletion of

exhaustible natural resources (which are non-

renewable) and from the point of view of the

anti-environmentalists these resources are only

potential because the meaning, respectively

the usability, is given to them only the human

and their technology that is constantly evolving

and with this development “new” resources are

“discovered”. This idea is elaborated in Simon’s

book “The Ultimate Resource” (Simon, 1981) where

the ultimate resource is represented by human and

their ability to transform potential resources into

real. Similarly, a few years ago mass media published

a statement of Sheikh Zaki Yamani4 (which is an

evident paraphrase of the ideas of Goklany, 2007

and Lomborg, 2007; author’s note): “The Stone Age

did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will

end long before the world runs out of oil” (www.

economist.com).5

Also Lomborg (2007) in his book “The Sceptical

Environmentalist” says that things are getting

better, not worse. The life expectancy increases,

infant mortality declines and the prosperity rises.

1 Environmentalism emphasizes the preservation, restoration and/or improvement of the natural environment, and

may be called as a movement to control pollution. Concepts such as a land ethic, environmental ethics, biodiversity,

ecology and the biophilia hypothesis (Wilson, 1984) are relevant in this context. /author’s note/

2 Paul R. Ehrlich wrote this book together with his wife, Anne Ehrlich, but she is quoted as a co-author in later editions.

/author’s note/

3 Global warming (and the depletion of nonrenewable resources) has become the most topical issue of

environmentalists and ecologists currently. /author’s note/

4 Ahmed Zaki Yamani (born 1930) is a Saudi Arabian politician who was Minister of Oil (Petroleum) and Mineral

Resources from 1962 to 1986, and a minister in OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) for 25

years. /author’s note/

5 However, if the abovementioned authors are wrong and people do not invented new technologies using “new” natural

resources to replace those depleted ones, it will be diﬃcult to ﬁnd a consolation in these theories. /author’s note/

Issues of environmental (ir)responsibility

2087

Lomborg’s main argument is that vast majority

of environmental problems such as pollution,

water shortages, deforestation, and species loss as

well as population growth, hunger, and AIDS, are

area-speciﬁc and highly correlated with poverty.

Therefore, challenges to human prosperity are

essentially logistical matters, and can be solved

largely through economic and social development.

Concerning problems that are more pressing at the

global level, such as the depletion of fossil fuels

and global warming, Lomborg argues that these

issues are o en overstated and that recommended

policies are o en inappropriate if assessed against

alternatives.

Lomborg argues that scientists – conservationists,

environmentalists and ecologists – work on

the assumption based on exaggerated and

sometimes even falsiﬁed information about global

environmental problems, which is exactly the same

accusation that these scientists ascribe to Lomborg

(Winter, Koger, 2009).

We can see that the environmental activities

are viewed from two totally diﬀerent paradigms

and the aim of this paper is not to ﬁnd arguments

in favour of one or the other, but to consider the

psychological phenomena causing that humans like

predators fundamentally change the environment

and with this attempt their own survival tries to

ignore the nature or solve the ecological problems

only utilitaristicly with the eﬀort to overshadow the

economic or political proﬁt of these activities.

3 ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR IN

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTEXT

The theme of the nature and the environment

becomes an important issue for psychology in the

early twenties of the last century. First, psychologists

focused more on the impact of environment on

humans (J. B. Watson, K. Lewin, E. Brunswik).

Environmentally oriented researchers recognized

the need to explore the relationship between

environmental stimuli and human reactions, and

use this knowledge to solve current problems

(Výrost, Slaměník, 1998).

Thus, the discipline, which is called

environmental psychology, is established

and at that time it is deﬁned as a study of the

inﬂuence of environment on the human psyche.

Since the early seventies of the 20th century the

environmental movement has been formed and the

issues related to the protection of the environment

also began to be asked by some psychologists –

gradually “ecological psychology”, “conservation

psychology”, “psychology of environmental

problems” and “psychology of sustainable

development” came into existence. For all these

disciplines there are common themes expressing

human’s relationship to the nature.

For this relationship between human and

nature we can ﬁnd two diﬀerent approaches in the

literature:

a) the human is an exogenous factor for the nature;

which means that the human is an external factor

for the nature and is able to change it (to destroy,

“to save” it etc.);

b) the human an endogenous factor in relation

to the nature, i.e. the human is a part of the

nature (which however in my opinion cannot be

a paradigm for excuses of all bad human deeds

and actions in their relation to the nature).

As we can see both these approaches can be

used within the ecological eﬀorts or misused in

the context of “pseudoecological” activities, in

which beautiful speeches about the protection of

nature only hide economic and political objectives.

Unfortunately, it is very diﬃcult to distinguish one

from the other not only for the concerned ones

but especially for bystanders. Moreover, even good

intentions may be based on false premises; nothing

to say about the power of our unconsciousness (see

below).

If we look at the human psyche from the

perspective of psychoanalysis, we can see that

under the visible part of the imaginary iceberg

illustrating our personality a much larger part is

hidden, i.e. our unconscious, which can sometimes

give unexpected turn to our decisions and actions. In

the context of relation human – environment would

be appropriate to underline here Freud’s concept of

eros versus thanatos.6 The terms eros and thanatos

originally come from Greek mythology and Freud

used these mythical ﬁgures for description of the

life and death drives that co-exist within the psyche.

Eros represents the sexual drive, life, creative forces,

growth, productivity, construction and increase

of tension; eros inspires us to strive for individual

happiness and realize our wishes. It drives living

organisms to develop. Thanatos represents the

eﬀort to eliminate all tensions, and it heads for

dissolution, negation, destructiveness and death.

Thanatos drives us toward a return to the inorganic.

We are constantly stimulated and driven into action

by a balance of these energies. Both fundamental

drives are empowered by libido energy. According

to Freud, these two forces ﬁght each other, and their

conﬂict and interaction determine the development

of individual life and culture.

For one of the options how to explain the

destructive tendencies that are concealed in humans

Freud’s concept of thanatos can be used, which is in

6 The terms Eros and Thanatos originally come from Greek mythology. Eros was the God of love and desire; it has been

argued that Eros has two possible origins: the ﬁrst theory states that Eros was the son of the Goddess Aphrodite. The

second suggests that “Eros emerged from Chaos…along with Gaia (the Earth) and Tartarus (the Underword).” Thanatos,

in contrast to Eros, was the Greek God of death and the son of Nyx (the Goddess of night).

2088

Jana Dundelová

this theory inextricably linked with eros, that is (or)

should be a creative force, but humans’ creativity

is a problematic aspect for the nature even if it is

associated with the best intentions, without the

intervention of unconscious destructive forces.

Positives of eros can be seen in the source of our

philosophic or religious explorations and in the

urge for self-actualization provided it is connected

with positive ethical values.

Humans are social creatures and carry out most

of their activities together with other individuals

who may ultimately aﬀect their decisions. The

psychological literature o en mentions the term

groupthink, which is related mainly to political

causes, but it can be applied to group decisions

with environmental impacts. The principle of this

phenomenon lies in the fact that the group is closed

to relevant and objective information from the

outside and consequently takes decisions which

catastrophically fail.

The illusion of invulnerability is one of

symptoms of groupthink. It is connected with

excessive optimism that encourages members of the

group to take extreme risks. So people overestimate

their „immunity“ to threats in many situations. This

symptom is interconnected with rationalization.

The classic example o en cited in the literature is

a crisis in the Bay of Pigs (1962). A er this military

ﬁasco J. F. Kennedy (the president of U.S.A. that time)

took action that led to the new decision strategy:

supporting free expression of ideas, openness to

information, the occasional absence of authority

(the president) in the decision making process, the

role of “devil’s advocate” (i.e. the opponent or critic

of the authority). In the case of environmental

management decisions should be incorporated the

role of “devil’s advocate”, i.e. of a critic who should

defend environmental interests (which are however

o en in a discord with the economic interests of the

company).

Similar phenomena like groupthink are

obedience and conformity. Obedience is primarily

known from experiments of Milgram (1963)

and Hoﬂing (1966 in Hayes, 2007), when most of

the participants were willing to obey at the ﬁrst

sight unreasonable order of authority even if it

was contrary to their conscience. Also studies of

conformity (Sherif, 1935, Asch 1951 in Hewstone,

Stroebe 2006) show how diﬃcult it is to resist

authority, or more precisely in these cases, to group

pressure and keep own opinion. For environmental

or ecological education is a positive ﬁnding that the

mere knowledge of these experiments reduced the

conformity of the research participants in some

subsequent experiments; and thus we can assume

that training of resisting the group pressure should

have positive results. But the question remains

whether the corporate culture will sometimes

reach such an eco-ethical level to be interested

in education and training of their employees

in resisting the pressure of the group, pointless

conformity or obedience, and if environmental/

ecological aspects will be sometimes superior to

economic aims and, if we do not get rather stuck in

what Baum (1994) called “contingency trap” – that is

a concept similar to the “social trap” – and expresses

the diﬃculty to change our bad habits. We will not

give up driving, using cosmetics tested on animals,

etc. because we are lazy, we are accustomed to do it

and it is convenient for us.

This issue of human selﬁshness and ruthlessness

and its impact on the environment is elaborated in

the concept “the Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin,

1968). The tragedy of the commons represents

the depletion of a shared resource by individuals,

acting independently and rationally according to

man’s self-interest, despite their understanding that

depleting of the common resource is contrary to

the group’s long-term best interests. The tragedy of

the commons occurs when individuals neglect the

well-being of society (or the group) in the pursuit of

personal gain.

“The tragedy of the commons” is frequently

cited as a consequence for policies which restrict

private property and espouse expansion of public

property. Hardin’s proposals how to solve this

tragedy emphasize private property put an accent

on regulatory measures7 (according to Hardin even

freedom in the commons brings a ruin to all).

Both these proposals (private property and/

or regulations), however, have their weaknesses.

We can be witnesses how various responsibility

took the new owners to their possessions acquired

in restitution, we can see that private ownership

does not always correlate positively with the

responsibility to this object, but that the desire

for proﬁt can on the contrary to devastate it (e.g.

urban development on fertile soil, environmentally

unsecured dump sites, junk yards in inappropriate

places). And if we look at regulatory measures,

we would get back into the vicious circle of

bureaucracy, corruption that products usefulness

but in reality useless measures.8 Therefore,

from the psychological point of view the issue of

responsibility and conscience is further mentioned.

One of the main outcomes of famous Milgram’s

experiment with electroshocks (Milgram, 1963)9

was the creation of agency theory in which Milgram

7 Legal aspects of this issue considers e.g. Jurčík (2007).

8 The question: what are the real environmental concerns, and what are mere meaningless measures, whose goals are

only political and/or economic is a topic for endless debate. /author’s note/

9 Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be inﬂuenced into committing atrocities for

example, Germans in WWII.Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to

authority ﬁgures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. He examined justiﬁcations

Issues of environmental (ir)responsibility

2089

suggested two states in which people operate – the

autonomous and agentic. In autonomous state

individuals make decisions based on their own

ideas, beliefs and experiences. In agentic state

individuals give up their own responsibility, even

if they had to act in contrary to their own values,

and they only obey superiors. When people shi

from the autonomous state to the agentic state (the

agentic shi ) they give up their responsibility and

follow orders without considering adequacy and

the consequences of the request. This diﬀusion

of responsibility means that the person no longer

monitors their own behaviour. Milgram believed

that his participants were ‘just following orders’

and did not consider themselves to be responsible;

his participants even sighed with relief when the

experimenter said: “I am responsible for what

happens here.”

Agency theory also explains why some

people do not obey – they have remained in the

autonomous state (or they shi back to it from

agentic state) where they are able to make informed

decisions about how to behave in concordance with

their values and consciousness. A weakness of this

theory is, however, the diﬃculty to verify the ‘shi ’,

experimentally reveal the processes involved in

the shi s. Another weak point of this theory is the

possibility of misuse of it for the excuse of all bad

deeds committed on orders of authorities.

Milgram’s theory was developed for other

purposes (see note), but it can be successfully

applied to any explanation of absurd obedience

to authority, when orders are inconsistent with

the ethical standards of his subordinates (e.g. for

explanation of anti-environmental behaviour in

some companies).

The consequences of conﬂict between our

attitudes, but also between our thoughts and actions

are expressed in the theory of cognitive dissonance

(Festinger, 1957). If we are in the state of cognitive

dissonance, we experience unpleasant feelings of

tension, which force us to take the necessary steps to

reduce this tension. If a man has in his value system

internalized ecological behaviour, and for some

reason he made actions against these values and

beliefs (for example, secretly exported waste into

wood), usually he has three options how to deal with

cognitive dissonance which strikingly reminiscent

of bad conscience (Dundelová, 2011):

He/she can take away this (and possibly other)

waste from the forest; although it sounds simple

in reality it is the unlikeliest way of coping with

cognitive dissonance, because in this case people

have to denounce their previous bad behaviour and

thus suﬀers their self-esteem, thus we meet with this

response, I dare to say, really very rarely.

The second eventuality of solving this problem is

the trivialization of the problem when this polluter

excuses himself that he did not harm the forest

so much, that worse things happen in the world

and he basically had no choice (he was forced by

circumstances, he did not have enough money, etc.).

A third option is an addition of a new positive

value to this action; in this case for example “our

oﬀender” can start to think that although he

established a new forbidden dump in the forest, he

spared money for the family (because he did not

have to pay a fee for a legal dump site) and that’s

a ‘good thing’.10

Cognitive dissonance can also be used for

enlarging the scale of pro-environmental behaviour;

in the literature is o en mentioned the technique

“foot-in-the-door-technique”. This technique is

based on the idea that if we are willing to cooperate

on a small project, then it is probable that we will

cooperate on larger events solving similar issues.

Results of many surveys (in Winter, Koger, 2009)

verify that people are more likely to fulﬁl their

promises to participate in the project (in our case

in a project with environmental objective), if their

names are public if they are “forced” to talk about

the project with neighbours or if they conﬁrm their

participation with their signature.11

The diﬃculty to persuade individuals or groups

to cooperate is shown in a classic (but in Czech

literature less known) social psychological study

conducted by Sherif (1956) that demonstrated that

prejudices and animosity towards members of other

groups occurs when they are in competition for

the same resources. This was very important on the

heels of the Holocaust to explain how the Germans

(who saw the Jews as competition for economic

resources) could mutually support their egregious

acts against Jews.

In this study Sherif (1956) conducted a quite

complicated ﬁeld experiment to examine group

dynamics. This experiment is known as the

Summer Camp; boys of age from 11 to 12 were

brought to a summer camp and they were randomly

assigned to one of two groups. During the ﬁrst phase

of the experiment group members participated in

challenging tasks with each other (e.g. hiking); this

lead to creation of social hierarchies and also leaders

emerged.

9 for acts of genocide oﬀered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense o en

was based on “obedience” – that they were just following orders of their superiors. The experiments began in July

1961, a year a er the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question

“Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call

them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).

10 The ﬁrst example represents the action, the redress of previous bad behaviour and also atonement. The second and

third solutions are typical examples of rationalization. /author’s note/

11 In marketing we meet quite a misuse of this technique. /author’s note/

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Jana Dundelová

During the second phase of the experiment, the

groups had to compete against each other in various

types of contests with trophies and prizes being

oﬀered to the winning group. During this phase,

group cohesiveness increased while intergroup

conﬂict and animosity strengthened.

During the third phase of the experiment, Sherif

attempted to reconcile the two groups. This was

accomplished by presenting them with problems

in which they had to all work together to solve

them (and which successful solution was good for

all of them). They had to repair interrupted pipes

leading water from a tank or push a truck having

a “breakdown”. These activities were important

for all of them and required members from both

groups. These joint eﬀorts did not immediately

dispel hostility but gradually frictions and conﬂicts

were reduced and new friendships were developed.

This ﬁnding can lead us to suggestions how to make

people cooperate and considerations if it is actually

feasible in the global extent.

4 POSSIBLE GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

The Sherif’s experiment shows how diﬃcult it

is to make two groups that have developed mutual

rivalries and hatred to cooperate. The results of

this study also set a solution (probably the only

possible in this situation) – two or more groups

would have to face a common threat, in which all

of them are involved. In the case of environmental

issues, it is easy to imagine how extensive

damage or danger it should be … and moreover

the planet Earth is not small Sherif’s Summer

camp; organization, communication, dynamics,

hierarchies, relationships – this everything would

be modiﬁed in the global extend compared to the

model situation. Nevertheless, some authors try to

develop ecological concepts embracing the whole

planet, e.g. Campbell (1988), who introduced the

concept of “society of the planet”, which should

be interconnected society on the Earth that works in

harmony with the nature.

Shrivastava (in Stead and Stead, 1998) proposes

to implement into business organizations so called

“ecocentric management paradigm” that puts

nature into the center of interest of management

and organization. The problem is that managers are

usually trained only for one subsystem of the Earth

– the economic subsystem – which cannot exist

separately from the other subsystems.

Recently, we can encounter the concept

“environmental management”, which deals

with the issue of environmental problems, and

especially with their solution; the aim should be

to achieve the very o en discussed sustainable

development. Even though this issue is commonly

viewed from the planetary perspective, the key to

the solution must be in an attitudinal change of

the companies, or rather of the individuals who

work in them. An example can be the diﬀerence in

thinking about long-term planning in terms of age

of the Earth instead of in terms of human life, which

oﬀers a completely diﬀerent paradigm for decision

making. Unfortunately, for contemporary western

world the short-term thinking – the concentration

on the consumer way of life – is very typical in

which consumption prevails over life, and a genuine

interest in solving environmental problems is o en

mistaken for a mere eﬀort to gain visibility, to attract

the public attention with the aim of getting public

support; and the ecological issues are abused for

advertising, marketing gimmicks with the only aim

to acquire the greatest number of customers.

The abovementioned concepts (society of the

planet, environmental management, ecocentric

management paradigm) seem to be idealistic,

even unrealistic and utopian, but their beneﬁts

can be seen in visualization of environmental and

ecological issues, in establishing basements for

changes in only proﬁt-oriented, and anti-ecological

and pseudoecological12 paradigms.

CONCLUSION

Probably it is not in human powers to prevent

major natural or evolutionary changes, but to treat

the nature according to our own conscience and

resist various pressures – psychological, economic

or political – it should be a challenge for each

responsible human. Even if we agreed with eco-

pessimists we had to cope with the question of

ethical values and respect for life, for the nature. The

boundary between ecology and pseudo-ecology will

always remain very thin and the results of scientiﬁc

researches as well as theories are o en contradictory

and we can guess that in some cases also apparently

purpose-built.

At the beginning of this paper some inﬂuential

and conﬂicting theories related to ecology were

discussed: according to some authors (e.g. Ehrlich,

1968, Gore, 2006, Wilson, 1995, Winter, Koger, 2009,

Šmajs 2005) human survival is directly connected

with people’s relationship to the nature; but other

inﬂuential authors have divergent opinions or they

are at least afraid of overestimation of ecological

activities that can lead to neglecting of other

important problems (e.g. Simon 1981, Goklany,

2007, Lomborg, 2007, Klaus, 2007, 2009).

As it was documented in the overview of selected

psychological theories and researches, all of them

described a human psychic phenomenon that

can be generally called destructive element (in

this context were mentioned Freud’s concept of

12 Pseudo-ecological paradigms (or concepts, products etc.) are presented as ecological, but their goal is not the genuine

interest in the environment and in solutions of ecological problems, but the visibility with the only goal of gain of their

promoters. /author’s note/

Issues of environmental (ir)responsibility

2091

unconscious – especially his idea of thanatos;

illusion of invulnerability, contingency trap or

social trap that corresponds with laziness, egoism;

conformity, obedience that corresponds to fear,

self-interest, egoism, fear to disagree with authority

or group, animosity, tragedy of commons that can

be related to individualism and short-sightedness

and egoism) which might positively correlate with

development and with the survival of the individual,

a group, but the question remains whether this

element cannot cause the extinction of entire

species, i.e. of humankind. We can seek footholds

in philosophy, education, and particularly in the

personal eco-responsibility, in general values, and in

questionable term “human’s conscience”. Of course

it is possible to argue that everyone has diﬀerent

boundaries of their own conscience but those who

feel superior to the nature, should remember Albert

Einstein’s quote: “If the bee disappeared oﬀ the

surface of the earth, man would only have four years

le to live.”

SUMMARY

This paper is focused on the critical evaluation of humans’ relation to their environment, to the

nature. With the development of modern technologies is this issue increasingly relevant as well as

the question whether humans are able to aﬀect fundamentally the environment on the Earth by their

activities.

The author reﬂects these issues mainly from the psychological point of view but also some inﬂuential

and conﬂicting theories related to ecology are discussed: according to some authors (e.g. Ehrlich, 1968,

Gore, 2006, Wilson, 1995, Winter, Koger, 2009, Šmajs 2005) human survival is directly connected with

people’s relationship to the nature; but other inﬂuential authors have divergent opinions or they are

at least afraid of overestimation of ecological activities that can lead to neglecting of other important

problems (e.g. Simon, 1981; Goklany, 2007; Lomborg, 2007; Klaus, 2007, 2009).

The core of this paper is devoted to psychological aspects that cause that some people have tendency

to environmentally protective behaviour while the others feel to be separated from nature or even to

be superior to it (in this context is mentioned Freud’s concept of eros versus thanatos, groupthink,

the illusion of invulnerability and rationalization, phenomena like obedience and conformity, the

concept “the Tragedy of the Commons”, the theory of cognitive dissonance, group dynamics and

Sherif’s experiments). This article is set into the political and economical frame and behind the lines

is emphasized that for understanding human behaviour to the nature is required more than the

knowledge of separated disciplines.

For contemporary western world is typical the short-term thinking and pseudo-ecological paradigms

(or concepts, products etc.) that are presented as ecological, but their goal is not the genuine interest

in the environment and in solutions of ecological problems, but the visibility with the only goal of

gain of their promoters. Finally, there are discussed possible solutions of ecological problems and

common obstacles that honest ecologists and environmentalists have to cope with.

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Address

PhDr. Jana Dundelová, Ph.D., Department of Law and Social Sciences, Faculty of Business and Economics,

Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic, e-mail: jana.dundelova@mendelu.