Download BIO 212 Environmental Biology 9/10 1 LECTURE 2 Environmental

BIO 212
Environmental Biology
1
LECTURE 2
Environmental Ethics
I. Culture, Worldview and the Environment
Any approach to addressing environmental issues is a function of an individual’s Ethical and
Economical perspective.
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Culture influences our thinking through - knowledge, beliefs, values, and learned ways
of life shared by a group of people.
A Worldview = a person’s or group’s beliefs about the meaning, purpose, operation,
and essence of the world.
One’s Worldview is influenced by
• Culture
• Personal experience
• Economics may also play a role through influencing
• Personal experience (I never want to be poor again)
• Culture
II. Environmental Ethics
1. Ethics is the study of good and bad, right and wrong. We often mean this to be the moral
principles or values that are held by a person, or a society.
People with different Worldviews and cultures may have different values, and hence, their
actions toward the environment may differ as well.
As a consequence, there are two possible types of ethicists.
¾ Relativists = Ethics should and do vary with social context
¾ Universalists = Objective notions of right and wrong exist across all cultures and
situations.
2. Ethical standards = criteria that help differentiate right from wrong.
E.g. the Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
3. Environmental ethics = the study of ethical questions regarding human interactions with
the environment
D. History of Environmental Ethics
1. There has been a long history on ethics, beginning with the concern for ones-self!
2. And as an individual’s survival came to depend upon other groups, the feeling of moral
obligation to those groups would develop.
3. Over time, the feeling of moral obligation has been extended to groups from which we do
not derive an immediate benefit, but with whom we feel a kinship.
4. A growing awareness of our similarities changes our ethical standards, and we feel that
other groups should be afforded the same rights.
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BIO 212
Environmental Biology
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E. The roots of Environmental Awareness are ancient.
1. “Roman law, our most ancient legal heritage, held that the most fundamental “natural” law
required that the “air, running water, the sea, and consequently the sea shore” could not be
owned as private property but were “common to all” Roman citizens. The Romans
vigorously protected public resources of the sea, seashore, estuaries, wetlands, and fisheries
from control by private individuals. ” The Riverkeepers
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Protection of the environment can be said to be based in the protection of the natural
resources for the enjoyment and use by all. Those rights are often taken from us by
polluters.
In The Riverkeepers, Kennedy takes General Electric to task for polluting the Hudson
River with toxic PCBs.
It closed the fisheries industry, robbing current and future generations of a livelihood and
of recreation.
Riverboat traffic, including barge traffic has dropped 75% on the Hudson because of PCB
laden sediments.
The sediments cannot be dredged without further contaminating the river.
Essentially, the benefits of a natural resource have been taken from the people by a
corporation – without repercussion. Essentially, the pubic has been robbed.
2. A continuum of perspectives on the ethical concern for non-human entities.
Roderick Nash, in his book The Rights of Nature, (1989) has divided this continuum into 3
groups.
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Anthropocentrism – a human centered view of nature. Anything not providing positive
benefit to people is considered of negligible value.
Biocentrism – all life has ethical standing, and any actions taken consider the effects on
all living things, or the biotic world in general.
Ecocentrism – considers the integrity of ecological systems – not just individual animals
(or species). Recognizes the need to preserve not just entities, but also their relationships
with each other.
III. Economics
A. Economics studies how people use resources to provide goods and services in the face of
variable supply and demand.
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Economics are very similar to ethics. That is, what factors guide human behavior?
Economic problems become environmental problems, since often it is the environment
that provides the resource.
For example, pollution can be considered as the depletion of resources of clean air, clean
water or clean soil.
Indeed, the Greek root “Oikos” (the household) and hence the prefix “eco” gave rise to
both ecology and economics.
BIO 212
Environmental Biology
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B. Adam Smith and the laissez-faire attitude of free-market economy is thought to contribute
to environmental degradation.
Adam Smith felt that when people are free to pursue their own economic self-interest in a
competitive marketplace, the marketplace will behave as if guided by, “an invisible hand”
that ensures their actions will benefit society as a whole.
C. The neoclassical approach to economics is not always favorable to the environment.
1. The cost-benefit analysis that precedes making a business decision.
a. Not all costs and benefits are easily quantifiable or even identifiable.
2. People often view the environment from an economic perspective. They think of it as an
external factor that only supplies resources – for free.
3. The environment does supply many services – what are called ecosystem services.
a. Estimates of various Ecosystem Services in 1997 were at $33.3 trillion dollars.
b. This is nearly twice the Global Gross National Product of $18 Trillion.
4. The precepts of neoclassical economics have had profound, and negative consequences
for the environment.
a. Resources are considered infinite or substitutable.
b. Long-term effects are discounted.
c. Costs and benefits are internal.
d. Growth is good.
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