Env Science: Environmental Ethics & Policy
To address environmental issues, we need to understand how people value their environment.
Economics deals with how things are valued in terms of monetary value.
Ethics deals with how things are morally valued by society.
Grounded in permitting human welfare, maximizing human freedom, and minimizing pain and suffering.
Environmental ethics is the application of ethical standards to relationships between humans and the environment.
Anthropocentrism: a human-centered view of our relationship to the environment.
Biocentrism: gives value to all living things in our environment
Ecocentrism: judges our actions in terms of their benefit or harm to the ecosystem by regarding living and nonliving things and their relationships.
Culture can be regarded as the ensemble of knowledge, beliefs, values, and learned ways of life shared by a group of people.
Influences each person’s perception of the world and their place within it.
Creates a worldview, which in turn influences science and data.
Governments and decision-makers employ ethics when deciding on public policy.
Modern environmentalism started in the 1960s and ushered in a wave of public advances and legislation, which was triggered by many environmental disasters in the decade.
Grounded in reducing air and water pollution, preserving ecosystems, and the promotion of sustainability.
Some of the environmental disasters that brought about modern environmentalism include:
When the U.S. tested nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in 1946, which exposed native islanders and soldiers to radioactive fallout.
The material was carcinogenic.
The air pollution from a zinc and steel plant produced a dense smog that would sicken thousands in Donora, Pennsylvania.
In 1962, Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring,” which documented the impacts that pesticides such as DDT were having on wildlife.
DDT does not naturally break down — it is not biodegradable.
Environmental policy is a set of principles declaring how humans and the environment can coexist.
Effective policies involve input from science, ethics, and economics.
All three branches of the U.S. government are involved in making environmental policy.
State and local environmental laws are allowed to be drafted independently from the federal government, as long as it does not violate the Constitution.
The strength of policies varies by state.
Usually, states that have had environmental disasters have stricter laws.
The first period of U.S. environmental policy was from the 1780s to 1880s, and they focused primarily on public land management as the nation moved west.
The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed citizens to buy 160 acres of land for $16, but you had to actually use the land.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 enabled the creation of National Parks in 1906.
The Clean Water Act of 1968 restricted pollution of surface waters.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 restricted pollutants in the atmosphere.
The Environmental Policy Act of 1970 made all federal projects assess environmental impacts.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 identified species at risk of extinction and made plans for recovery.
The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 called for testing and treatments for tap water.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1980 required safe transport and storage of waste.
In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established to enforce federal environmental laws.
In the 1970s, the environmentalist movement established global environmentalism, questioning and considering issues that affect the whole world.
Biodiversity loss, food production, climate change, human population growth, and economic inequalities.
Environmental organizations seek to promote cooperation between nations.
The UN, EU, World Trade Organization, and the World Bank.
NGOs, such as Green Peace, influence international policies and help contribute to research and funding.
UNEP was established in 1972 with the mission of having countries achieve sustainability.
Environmental issues often involve more than one nation.
There are many different approaches to environmental policy.
Command-and-Control: a government body sets rules and threatens punishment for violations.
Tex-breaks/Subsidies: tax-breaks are omissions from paying taxes for those who do good deeds; subsidies are giveaways of cash or public resources that are intended to encourage a particular activity or to lower the price of a product.
Green Taxes: these are taxes imposed on companies that participate in activities or produce products that are harmful to the environment.
Cap-and-Trade: a government decides the overall amount of pollution it will accept from a specific pollutant and issues permits that allow polluters to emit a certain amount of that pollutant.