Ethics and Environmental Issues?

I have to write a paper for my Environmental Science class. The paper needs to identify my ethics, then identify an environmental issue (the one I picked is urbanization) and tie my ethics and environmental issue together, and answer the main question "are they in line with eachother"? I am at a loss of how to even tie the two in together. I'm just stuck right now. Any ideas?

This teacher is actually really good. He is very open minded, and said that this class will absolutely deal with politics and there's no way around it, but it is an Environmental Science class, and we are really studying about environmental issues right now. I just went with urbanization and my ethics had to do with growing up on a ranch and blah blah blah. :)

Your first mistake was taking an 'environmental sciences' class. It is obviously weighted towards an 'eco-friendly' perspective and all that that entails. Your ethics have nothing to do with real environmental science, though the professors who teach such classes are hippy, Greenpeace, save the owls, whales, duck billed platapus activists.

Your class has nothing to do with the environment; it is a political class. Why else would your professor be asking you to expose your 'ethical' leanings in such a way? You are being set up by this assignment. Frame your arguments in such a way as to satisfy your leftist instructor and stroke his ego. Be anti-development and pro-waterfowl, or whatever.

All that being said, I am a Democrat, anti-development, eco-sensitive person, but I chafe at how college professors squelch opposing views by constructing assignments that will lead opposing viewholders to either betray their beliefs or risk failing a course. My instinct is to take a fundamentally diametric stand, just to piss them off. If this class just started, then that is proof of what I'm saying about his trying to see which side of the fence you're on. That is an abuse of his office.

As to the specifics of your question, not knowing what your 'ethics' are, I would argue that any infiltration of human civilization into virgin land is bad. (filling in swamps, cutting down trees, etc.) Any argument for the betterment of people will fall on deaf ears and risk your failing the course. People like this are easy to manipulate, so take advatage of it and quit thinking so much. Just say what you already know he wants to hear and be done with him. Personally, I could write a convincing paper supporting either side, but I'm more of a liguist than I am an enviromentalist, so it would be easy for me to assume either role.