Environmental Ethics

The discipline of environmental ethics took off in the 1970s, in response to the environmental movement protesting air and water pollution. Moral arguments for laws to protect the environment initially emphasized the government’s duty (moral and legal) to protect the public welfare. Scientific evidence that environmental pollution is a threat to human health was used to argue that taking action to clean up the environment is rationally justified (right).

A few activists, however, argued that reducing pollution and taking other actions to preserve the environment are justified simply because nature has moral worth, and not because humans will benefit. Blazing this trail meant diverging from the main path of moral philosophy, which these activists now identified as anthropocentric (centered on humans). They proposed various adjectives (biocentric, ecocentric, and holistic) to distinguish their new non-anthropocentric ethics from traditional ethics.27

Those who defend anthropocentric ethics hold that only humans have value, so ethical decisions about nature only involve assessing human welfare.28 Our actions may adversely impact other organisms, but we have no duty to these organisms to mitigate these consequences. Proponents of non-anthropocentric ethics assert that nature has value for itself, which humans should recognize. In using natural resources for our own ends, we have a duty to preserve the natural habitats of other organisms.29

In traditional ethics our moral community consists only of persons. The deontological argument for a duty of mutual respect, and the teleological argument for the goal of personal and social happiness, each presume a moral community that includes all humans. Also, the moral community for international human rights law includes every person. In environmental ethics, however, non-anthropocentric advocates assert that our moral community also includes other organisms, endangered species, ecosystems, and even the entire biosphere.

Environmental ethics is a adventure you don’t want to miss!

analogy to rule of law 
constructing presumptions
critical reasoning
faith and reason 
ethical traditions
feelings
ethical relativism
right and good 
testing presumptions

27.  Aldo Leopold’s land ethics and J. Baird Callicott’s interpretation and articulation of this approach have been characterized as holistic. In the literature of contemporary moral philosophy, ecocentric ethics emphasizes ecosystems and ecology, whereas biocentric ethics is focused on individual animals.

28.  In a new book, two active environmentalists argue that the environmental movement needs to be more anthropocentric, by supporting investment in alternative energy development that creates new jobs, if it is to be successful. “We are Nature and Nature is us. Nature can neither instruct our actions nor punish them. Whatever actions we choose to take or not to take in the name of the survival of the human species or human societies will be natural.” Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), 142–143.

29.  Some moral philosophers have tried to reconcile these conceptions. “Although these ethics are generally considered to be polar opposites, in fact, I believe, both often make use of the same moral theory, namely, preference or ‘interest’ utilitarianism.” Roger Paden, “Two Kinds of Preservationist Ethics,” Louis P. Pojman and Paul Pojman, eds., Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application, fifth edition (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008), 209. See also James P. Sterba, “Environmental Justice: Reconciling Anthropocentric and Nonanthropocentric Ethics,” Louis P. Pojman and Paul Pojman, eds., Environmental Ethics, 252.

  Our crisis...

We are responsible for this crisis. Our use of natural resources has disrupted the natural cycles of nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorus, causing the loss of forests and topsoil, as well as climate change.

Our industrialized way of life has also disturbed the earth's water cycle. The result is acid rain, declining water levels in underground aquifers, a loss of fertile land due to salts deposited by irrigation, more intense storms, and devastating drought, as well as a scarcity of water for many.

We have ignored the environmental costs of extracting and using natural resources, and leaving waste products in the air, water, and soil.

To address our environmental crisis, we must see more clearly our place in nature. We are ethical primates. We are creatures of the earth and depend on its natural cycles, habitats, and other species.