Chapter 2 - Environmental Ethics

Salmon and sea lions are both protected species. Sea lions are feeding on the salmon. What species should we protect more?

2.1 The Call for a New Ethic

A lot of what we do on our home planet connects us to something or somebody else. Managing the interactions between people and their environment has been transformed by unprecedented increases in the rate, scale, and complexity of the interactions.

  • Across the world, thousands of people believe that today’s environmental challenges must be met with a new and more robust environmental ethic.

2.2 Environmental Ethics

Ethics - one branch of philosophy; it seeks to define what is right and what is wrong

  • Can help us understand what actions are wrong and why they are wrong
  • Environmental ethics apply ethical thinking to the natural world and the relationship between humans and the earth.
    • Despite the presence of some differences, there are many cases in which ethical commitments can and should be globally agreed upon.

Three Key Propositions:

  1. The earth and its creatures have moral status, in other words, are worthy of our ethical concern.
  2. The earth and its creatures have moral value merely because they exist, not only because they meet human needs
  3. Based on the concept of an ecosystem, human beings should consider “wholes” that include other forms of life and the environment

Three Philosophical Approaches to Environmental Ethics:

  1. Anthropocentrism - protect only when it benefits humans
  2. Biocentrism - all living organisms have an inherent value; we protect and respect all life including humans
  3. Ecocentrism - protect ecosystems in addition to the organisms living in them

Aldo Leopold - author of A Sand County Almanac, 1949

Rachel Carson - author of Silent Spring, 1962: documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides

2.3 Environmental Attitudes

3 Most Common Attitudes:

  1. Development

   

  1. This approach is the most anthropocentric

       1. It assumes the human race is the master of nature 2. It assumes that the earth and its resources exist solely for our benefit 3. This approach is reinforced by the capitalist work ethic 4. This approach thinks highly of human creativity and holds that continual economic growth is a moral ideal for society

  1. Preservation

   

  1. This approach is the most ecocentric

       1. It holds that capture has intrinsic value apart from human uses 2. Preservationists such as John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman all viewed nature as a refuge from economic activity, not as resources for it

          1. John Muir - father of preservation; most known for liking the Sierra Nevada mountain range. 3. Some preservationists wish to keep large parts of nature enacted for aesthetic or recreational reasons

  1. Conservation

   

  1. This approach finds a balance between unrestrained development and preservationism
  2. Conservation promotes human well-being but considers a wider range of long-term human goods in its decisions about environmental management

       1. Many of the ideas in conservatism have been incorporated into an approach known as sustainable development 2. Theodore Roosevelt was a big conservationist

Sustainable Development - a middle ground that seeks to promote development while still preserving the ecological health of the landscape

2.4 Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice - no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local and tribal programs and policies.

  • Environmental justice is closely related to civil rights
  • Studies show that the affluent members of society generate most of the waste while the impoverished members tend to bear most of the burden of this waste

Examples of issues: where to place hazardous and polluting facilities, transportation, safe housing, lead poisoning and water quality, access to recreation, exposure to noise pollution, access to environmental information, hazardous waste cleanup, exposure to natural disasters