I think Watson in his “Critique of Anti-Anthropocentric Ethics” focuses on one of the toughest objections to the philosophy presented by deep ecology. The goal of deep ecology is for human beings to see themselves as being a part of nature. The sense of yourself is more than just you as an individual but your self is expanded to include all living things with which you have a connection. However, this deep ecology movement puts limits on human expansion, consumption, and materialism. Why is it then, if we are equal to everything other species, that we are the only species needing to hold ourselves back? “If man is a part of nature, if he is a ‘plain citizen’, if he is just one nonprivileged member of a ‘biosphereical egalitarianism’, then the humans species should be treated in no way different from any other species”(p. 237).

Watson explores this and realizes that is does not make sense to argue from the deep ecology stand point to answer this question because if we are part of nature there is no reason to stop doing whatever we, in our capacities as humans, are capable of. However, if you argue, like he does, from an anthropocentric view you will find that it is for our own good that we need to scale back, for the preservation of the species. While this argument makes sense it still does not solve the problem of practicality that both views are missing. Yes, it may be easier to formulate a curriculum around the threat our activities are posing on our future, it is more or less the environmental education happening today.

Yet, some would argue that this education is failing, why? Humans have self interest in mind because that is their nature. They fail to see the need for drastic change because they do not feel threatened by the environmental changes happening. Deep ecology feels that this would change if they expanded their understanding of self to include the whole world, but I think this is a leap and the solution is still not found.