Environmental Ethics
This should not be a strange topic. Everyone knows that the environment is in
trouble and the victim of many threats. Environmentalism is the concern of many.
There are only too many questions about methods of saving the environment.
In the western states such as California or Washington there is a real threat
of wildfires every summer and, at the same time, there is a serious shortage
of water to put out those fires, to irrigate farmland, and to maintain
astonishingly green golf courses. Different parts of the country face different
threats but nowhere is the environment safe. But are these problems problems in ethics? Everyone, whether they live in houses
or in apartments or in rooms are admonished about the safety of the spaces they
live in. They need smoke alarms; the windows need to open easily and, in the winter,
they need to shut very tight. Would you think of these as ethical commandments? No, they are just reminders of what safety requires. It is in everyone's best interest to obey rules like this. Ethical rules tell us what we must do, whether it is in our immediate self-interest or not.
Suppose your car scrapes the fender of another car as you leave the grocery store
parking lot. Should you just leave, or leave a note on the other car with your
name and telephone number? What is in your self-interest? What is the morally right
thing to do? You could just leave and hope that no one sees you. Or you could
leave your address, name, and telephone number so that the owner of the damaged
car can be in touch. Often what ethics demands is that you do something that is not in your immediate
best interest, that you would rather not do. If you try to sell your house,
ethics demands that you not misrepresent it to potential buyers. If you make an
offer of marriage to a person, you must not lie about yourself, your past, about
possible reasons why you would not be a good marriage candidate. Don't forget
to mention that you spent years being addicted to alcohol or that you have been
married and divorced three times before.
You must not misrepresent who you are. It is clearly in everyone's interest to reduce how much coal or oil we burn
to generate electricity. But if you have money invested in a coal mine or an oil
company, it is in your interest that this company make a sizable profit by selling
more coal or more oil. Taking good care of the environment is not in the best
interest of many citizens, such as all the elderly whose savings, that now support
them, may well be invested in coal, or oil, or natural gas. Environmental ethics tells us not to profit from products that further damage our
environment, already threatened by excessive heat in the summer, by major droughts,
overwhelmed by rain storms and floods. Around the planet farmland loses its
fertility and the families it once supported are now moving to countries that
are very reluctant to accept them. Millions of persons are on the move because
their homeland is no longer able to support them. This situation confronts us with a serious ethical dilemma: Shall we withdraw our
money from investments that further damage the environment? What shall we do with
our life savings that must support us for our waning years? Or shall we ignore the
terrible damages these investments do to millions of persons in Africa and Asia? Environmental ethics tells us clearly that we must do everything we can to minimize the damage we do in many countries because we burn so much coal and oil. Self-interest tells us to maintain our investments in those damaging industries.
How will we respond to the demands of environmental ethics?
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