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10 J. Juris 383 (2011)
Gratitude and the Environment: Toward Individual and Collective Ecological Virtue

handle is hein.journals/jnljur10 and id is 169 raw text is: THE _JOURNAL JURISPRUDEN(CE GRATITUDE AND THE ENVIRONMENT: TOWARD INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE ECOLOGICAL VIRTUE Reed Elizabeth Loder* I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS A hillside, fine weather day, wild creature or plant often leaves the observer with a sense of fortune and thankfulness. Either fleeting, or marshalling commitment to preserve or restore such ecological bounty, the feeling is expected and familiar to most. People pity or condemn those who fail to respond to their natural surroundings with gratitude as missing an elemental experience. Other bounties are less visible and familiar. Ecological services make life possible, not just pleasant. These include agricultural services like pollination, soil fertilization, and erosion control. They include wedand protections from some ravages of storms and floods and forest influences on water purit and climate stability. The emotional response of gratitude is less spontaneous toward processes and systems hidden from direct view and thus taken more for granted. Beyond elusive properties of the environment itself, people's capacities for environmental gratitude are quite varied. The emotion has different objects, accompanying beliefs and attitudes, intensity, durability, and relationship to commitments and conduct. Environmental gratitude has moral content people that can and do evaluate in everyday life. We can assess gratitude as attached to the right or wrong objects, based on accurate understanding or misinformation, and enduring or shallow. We can also estimate gratitude collectively, considering how cultural and other institutions facilitate or impede the response. Law is one of those institutions that can both reflect and deliberately promote gratitude as a collective virtue. The goal of this project is to examine environmental gratitude systematically, a project missing from environmental policy or ethics literature. I intend to Professor, Vermont Law School. (2011) J. JURIs 383

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