A Comparative Study of Environmental Ethics in Early Buddhism and Northern Thai Tradition

Statement of the Problem At present, without any doubt, human beings are confronting with the consequences from many enormous problems such as problems of using technology in a wrong way, problems from social movements in some countries, problem of inefficiency in managing natural resources and so on. One of the significant outcomes of those problems is about the effects of environmental problems. There are many kinds of environmental problems, as for example, global warming and its consequences, depletion of ozone layer, including earthquake, destroying landscape like increasing sink hole and deforestation. Those problems have evidently been affecting humans and all living beings. Global warming is a phenomenon that the average temperature of the earth's atmosphere has been continuously increasing since the midtwentieth century.1 It is estimated that in the next hundred years the world's temperature will be averagely increased by about 5 Celsius.2 It is not a huge temperature increasing on human's understanding, but it is surely very dangerous on a global scale for human beings and all beings in the natural world. Global warming is believed to be from the result of increasing the use of greenhouse gases and emission of them continuously into the atmosphere by humans' activities. An evidence mentioned that the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane have increased by 31% and 149% respectively above pre-industrial levels since 17503 proving the increasing of anthropogenic use. Besides that, the emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere during the past 20 years has been resulted from the fossil fuel burning by human beings through the majority of the fuel consumed in the productions and transportations, 1 Som Nath Tiwari, Global Warming and its Effects on Environment, New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers & Distributors, 2007, p.1. 2 Matthew Bennett, Environmental Ethics, West Sussex: Abacus Educational Services, 2010, p.7. 3 Aluri Jacob Solomon Raju, Global Warming:Myth or Reality, New Delhi: MD Publication Pvt Ltd, 2008, p.5.