Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ethics and The Environment
Ethics and The Environment
Depletion of Non-Renewable
Resources
Extinction of species through destruction of
natural habitats.
Natural resources depleted at peaked rate, not
exponential rate.
Fossil fuel depletion:
Coal in 150 years
Natural gas in 3040 years
Oil between 2010 and 2040
Mineral depletion:
Ethical Approaches to
Environmental Protection
Ecological approach.
nonhumans have intrinsic value
Market approach.
external costs violate utility, rights, and
justice; therefore, they should be
internalized.
Ecological Ethics
In addition to human beings, other animals
have intrinsic value and are deserving of our
respect and protection.
Pain is an evil whether it is inflicted on
humans or members of other animal species.
(Utilitarian)
Because of intrinsic value of its life each
animal has certain moral rights, in particular
right to be treated with respect. (nonutilitarian)
Broader versions of ecological ethics would
extend our duties beyond the animal world to
include plants.
Environmental problem as
Market Defects: Partial
Control
Private cost: The cost an individual or
1.
Social audit: report of the social costs and social benefits of the firms
activities
Alternative Approaches to
Pollution
Social Ecology
Environmental crisis are rooted in social system of hierarchy and
domination that characterize our society.
Ecofeminism
The position that there are important connections- historical,
experimental, symbolical, theoretical- between the domination of
women and the domination of nature.
Roots of crisis lies in a pattern of domination of nature that it tightly
linked to the social practice and institutions through which women
have been subordinated to men.
Key pattern of thinking- the logic of domination sets up dualism
(masculine-feminine, reason-emotion, artifact-nature, mind-body,
objective-subjective etc.)
Because of their role in childbearing, child raising, and human
sexuality, women are seen as more emotional, closer to nature and
the body, and more subjective and passive, whereas men are
masculine, more rational, closer to constructed artifacts and the life
of the mind, and more objective and active.
Other feminists
Extend the ethic of care toward nature
Conservation
Conservation: Saving or rationing of natural resources for
later use.
A number of writers have claimed that it is a mistake to
think that future generations have rights. They advance
three main reasons to show this:
First, future generations cannot intelligently be said to
have rights because they do not now exist and may never
exist. Because there is a possibility that future generations
may never exist, they cannot "possess" rights.
Second, if future generations did have rights, we might be
led to the absurd conclusion that we must sacrifice our
entire civilization for their sake.
Third, we can say that someone has a certain right only if
we know that he or she has a certain interest which that
right protects.
Conservation Based on
Ethics
Rawls: Though it is unjust to impose heavy burdens on
present generations for the sake of the future, it is
also unjust for present generations to leave nothing
for the future. We should ask ourselves what we can
reasonably expect they might want and, putting
ourselves in their place, leave what we would like
them to have left for us. Justice, in short, requires that
we hand over to our children a world in no worse
condition than the one we received ourselves.
The ethics of care support conservation policies similar
to the ones Rawls advocates.
Utilitarian reasoning, too, supports Rawls' conclusions.
Some posit that the ethical thing to do is to discount
future consequences based on their uncertainty and
distance from the future.
Sustainability
We must deal with the environment,
society, and economy so that they
have the capacity to continue to meet
the needs of present generations
without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own
needs.
Environmental sustainability,
economic sustainability, and social
sustainability are interdependent.
Environmental Sustainability
Not depleting renewable resources
faster than their replacement.
Not creating more pollution than
environment can absorb.
Not depleting non-renewable
resources faster than we find
replacements.
Economic Growth
Schumacher
We must abandon the goal of economic
growth if we are to allow future
generations to live as we do.
Others
We must achieve a steady state where
births equal deaths and production
equals consumption and these remain
constant at their lowest feasible level.