Right angles aren’t friendly to our round planet.

That was the message Holmes Rolston, regarded as the founder of environmental ethics, drove home at the end of his talk on “The Future of Environmental Ethics” at the University of Northern Colorado on Wednesday.

About 100 students attended the Earth Day presentation, organized by an environmental club at UNC, in the University Center.

Rolston spoke bluntly in response to a question about the effect of the growing human population on the environment.

“Concerns of escalating population have been suppressed by a number of (professional) societies to which I belong,” Rolston said. “They tend to downplay that. I think that may be a mistake.”

In the environmental arena, he said, it’s generally more popular, and more politically correct, to discuss sustainability ” namely, how humans can practice sustainability in their habits, construction and travel on the planet.

But the reality is that human “consumption takes a right-angle turn (upward) in the last century. Population takes a right-angle turn (upward) in the last century. All of these things are not sustainable,” Rolston said. “I do think escalating population is a very serious problem. If people can move freely from country to country it’s very likely to undo many of the gains in conservation we’ve had within national boundaries.”

In 2003, Rolston, a distinguished professor at Colorado State University, won the Templeton Prize Laureate, the world’s most prestigious prize in religion. It recognized Rolston’s work on the intrinsic value of nature and the relationship between science and religion.

Rolston’s writings ” he has authored several books and hundreds of essays ” reflect his passion for nature and ethics. He was an official observer at the 1992 United Nations Rio Summit on the Environment and spoke to the World Congress of Philosophy in 1998.

Also afflicting the global environment is an escalating imbalance between rich and poor countries, Rolston said.

He pointed out that the ratio of poor-to-wealthy nations was 3-to-1 in 1820 and 35-to-1 in 1950. “Now, it’s closer to 100-to-1, so we’ve got wealthy nations and enormous numbers of poor.”

Also, in the past few hundred years the rate of species becoming endangered has grown dramatically compared to previous world history.

Rolston, displaying his remarks as bullet points on a screen, projected many quotes by notable figures such as astronaut Edgar Mitchell (“this marvelous planet”) and former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (“we need an ethical contract with nature”).

He included former President George W. Bush’s comment in support of global environmental protection as long as “first things first” was the welfare of U.S. citizens.

Rolston took issue with philosophies that espouse human health and survival over environmental concerns.

“I think there’s something morally naive about living in a reference frame where one species takes itself as absolute and devalues everything else as secondary,” he said.

Ecology means “the logic of home” and home constitutes planet Earth, he said. Humans’ citizenship is “not yet well synchronized” with the planet.

Rolston said an urgent global vision is needed “that is adequate to respect for life on Earth.”

“The future of environmental ethics has to think about Earth in advance of nationality,” he added. “This is Earth Day, and we live on a superb planet. In a way, the planet is the most valued entity of all.”