Corporate Environmental Ethics - McGraw-Hill

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Environmental Ethics CHAPTER OUTLINE 2.1 The Call for a New Ethic 2.2 Environmental Ethics Ethics and Laws Conflicting Ethical Positions The Greening of Religion Three Philosophical Approaches to Environmental Ethics Other Philosophical Approaches

2.3 Environmental Attitudes Development Preservation Conservation Sustainable Development

2.4 Environmental Justice 2.5 Societal Environmental Ethics 2.6 Corporate Environmental Ethics The Legal Status of Corporations Waste and Pollution Is There a Corporate Environmental Ethic? Green Business Concepts

2.7 Individual Environmental Ethics 2.8 The Ethics of Consumption Food Energy

Human use alters the natural world. Often we must ask what kind of use is ethical? Is clearing a tropical forest for agriculture ethically supportable?

Water Wild Nature

2.9 Personal Choices 2.10 Global Environmental Ethics

FOCUS ON

GOING GREEN

Early Philosophers of Nature 21

Do We Consume Too Much? 30

SCIENCE, POLITICS, & POLICY

ISSUES & ANALYSIS

Should Environmental Scientists Be Advocates for Environmental Policy? 29

Environmental Disasters and Poverty 33

OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter, you should be able to: • Understand the role of ethics in society. • Recognize the importance of a personal ethical commitment. • List three conflicting attitudes toward nature. • Explain the connection between material wealth and resource exploitation. • Describe the factors associated with environmental justice.

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• Explain how corporate behavior connects to the state of the environment. • Describe how environmental leaders in industry are promoting more sustainable practices. • Describe the triple bottom line. • Explain the concept “greenwashing.” • Describe the influence that corporations wield because of their size.

• Explain the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation. • Explain some of the relationships between affluence, poverty, and environmental degradation. • Explain the importance of individual ethical commitments toward environment. • Explain why global action on the environment is necessary.

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2.1 THE CALL FOR A NEW ETHIC The most beautiful object I have ever seen in a photograph in all my life is the planet Earth seen from the distance of the moon, hanging in space, obviously alive. Although it seems at first glance to be made up of innumerable separate species of living things, on closer examination every one of its things, working parts, including us, is interdependently connected to all the other working parts. It is, to put it one way, the only truly closed ecosystem any of us know about. —Lewis Thomas When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. —John Muir One of the marvels of recent technology is that we can see the Earth from the perspective of space, a blue sphere unique among all the planets in our solar system. (See figure 2.1.) Looking at ourselves from space, it becomes obvious that a lot of what we do on our home planet connects us to something or somebody else. This means, as Harvard University ecologist William Clark points out, that only as a global species, “pooling our knowledge, coordinating our actions, and sharing what the planet has to offer—do we have any prospect for managing the planet’s transformation along pathways of sustainable development.” Some people see little value in an undeveloped river and feel it is unreasonable to leave it flowing in a natural state. It could be argued that rivers throughout the world ought to be controlled to provide power, irrigation, and navigation for the benefit of

humans. It could also be argued that to not use these resources would be wasteful. In the U.S. Pacific Northwest, there is a conflict over the value of old-growth forests. Economic interests want to use the forests for timber production and feel that to not do so would cause economic hardship. They argue that trees are simply a resource to be used in any way deemed necessary for human economic benefit. An opposing view is that all the living things that make up the forest have a kind of value beyond their economic utility. Removing the trees would destroy something ethically significant that took hundreds of years to develop and may be almost impossible to replace. Interactions between people and their environment are as old as human civilization. The problem of managing those interactions, however, has been transformed today by unprecedented increases in the rate, scale, and complexity of the interactions. At one time, pollution was viewed as a local, temporary event. Today pollution may involve several countries and may affect multiple generations. The debates over chemical and radioactive waste disposal are examples of the increasingly international nature of pollution. Many European countries are concerned about the transportation of radioactive and toxic wastes across their borders. What were once straightforward confrontations between ecological preservation and economic growth have today become complex balancing acts containing multiple economic, political, and ethical dimensions. The character of the environmental changes that today’s technology makes possible and the increased public awareness of the importance of the natural environment mean that we have entered a new age of environmental challenges. Across the world, people are beginning to understand that part of what is needed to meet these challenges is the development of a new and more robust environmental ethic.

2.2 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Figure 2.1

The Earth as Seen from Space Political, geographic, and national differences among humans do not seem so important from this perspective. In reality, we all share the same planet.

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Ethics is one branch of philosophy. Ethics seeks to define what is right and what is wrong. For example, most cultures are ethically committed to the idea that it is wrong to needlessly take life. Many cultures ground this belief on the existence of a right to life. It is considered unethical to deprive humans of this right to their life. Ethics can help us to understand what actions are wrong and why they are wrong. Many of the issues discussed throughout this book (energy, population, environmental risk, biodiversity, land-use planning, air quality, etc.) have ethical dimensions. Across the world, not all cultures share the same ethical commitments. Cultural relativism in ethics acknowledges that these differences exist. On some occasions, it is appropriate to show sensitivity to legitimate differences in ethical commitments. However, despite the presence of some differences, there are also many cases in which ethical commitments can and should be globally agreed upon. The rights to life, liberty, and security of person, for example, are judged to be important across the globe. The 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights issued by the United Nations expressed a commitment to these basic human rights. Given the importance of the planetary ecosystem to all of

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Earth’s inhabitants, an area that shows potential for similar global agreement is the question of the proper treatment of the natural environment.

forest might lead to new jobs in recreation, fisheries, and tourism. Searching for genuine “win-win” situations has become a priority in environmental decision making.

Ethics and Laws

The Greening of Religion

Ideally, the laws of a particular nation or community should match the ethical commitments of those living there. Sometimes laws are changed to match ethical commitments only after a long period of struggle and debate. In the United States, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights laws, and regulations that protect the welfare of animals are all examples of changes in legislation that came about only after long periods of public debate and struggle. As a result of these struggles, the country’s laws now fall more in line with the ethical commitments of its people. Not every action that is ethically right can have a law supporting it. There are no laws saying that you have to help your elderly neighbor unload her groceries from the car. But even without a law this still might be the ethically right thing to do. In the case of environmental issues, care needs to be taken over when it is appropriate to legislate something and when action should be left up to the individual’s sense of right and wrong. For example, most people today agree that knowingly putting harmful pollutants into the water and into the air is unethical. But while it may be appropriate to legislate against deliberately dumping toxic chemicals into a river, it may not be appropriate to legislate against driving a car more than a certain amount per week. Similarly, it may not be appropriate to legislate how many material goods people can purchase, or how much food they can waste, or how many kilowatts of electricity they can use, or how large a family they can have. On these issues, individual environmental action tends to be determined more by custom, habit, and certain social and economic pressures. In addition to these factors, a strong personal ethical commitment can help guide behavior in the absence of supporting laws.

For many years, environmental issues were considered to be the concern of scientists, lawyers, and policymakers. Now the ethical dimensions of the environmental crisis are becoming more evident. What is our moral responsibility toward future generations? How can we ensure equitable development that does not destroy the environment? Can religious and cultural perspectives be considered in creating viable solutions to environmental challenges? Until recently, religious communities have been so absorbed in internal sectarian affairs that they were unaware of the magnitude of the environmental concerns facing the world. Certainly, the natural world figures prominently in the world’s major religions: God’s creation of material reality in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the manifestation of the divine in the karmic processes underlying the recycling of matter in Hinduism and Jainism; the interdependence of life in Buddhism; and the Tao (the Way) that courses through nature in Confucianism and Taoism. Today, many religious leaders recognize that religions, as enduring shapers of culture and values, can make major contributions to the rethinking of our current environmental impasse. Religions have developed ethics for homicide, suicide, and genocide; now they are challenged to respond to biocide and ecocide. Moreover, the environment presents itself as one of the most compelling concerns for robust inter-religious dialogue. The common ground is the Earth itself, along with a shared sense among the world’s religions of the interdependence of all life. Much of the credit for increases in such “faith-based” environmentalism can go the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE), which was founded in 1993 to “weave the mission of care for God’s creation across all areas of organized religion.” NRPE has forged relationships with a diverse group of religious organizations, including the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network. These organizations work with NRPE to develop environmental programs that mesh with their own varied spiritual teachings. For instance, some 135,000 congregations—counting Catholic parishes, synagogues, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches, and evangelical congregations—have been provided with resource kits on environmental issues, including sermons for clergy, lesson plans for Sunday school teachers, and even conservation tips for church and synagogue building managers. Even Evangelical Christians, known for their conservative stand on most issues, are becoming green. The Colorado-based National Association of Evangelicals is urging its 30 million members to pursue a “biblically balanced agenda” to protect the environment alongside fighting poverty. Indeed it was Evangelical minister, Reverend Jim Ball, who in 2004 started the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign, promoting hybrid cars.

Conflicting Ethical Positions Even when people have strong personal ethical commitments, they might find that some of their commitments conflict. For example, a mayor might have an ethical commitment to preserving the land around a city but at the same time have an ethical commitment to bringing in the jobs associated with the construction of a new factory on the outskirts of town. There are often difficult balances to be struck between multiple ethical values. As you can see, ethics can be very complicated. Ethical issues dealing with the environment are especially complex because sometimes it appears that what is good for people conflicts with what is good for the environment. Saving the forest might mean the loss of some logging jobs. While recognizing that there are some real conflicts involved, it is also important to see that it is not necessarily the case that when the environment wins people lose. In a surprising number of cases it turns out that what is good for the environment is also good for people. For example, even when forest protection reduces logging jobs, a healthier

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Three Philosophical Approaches to Environmental Ethics Given the complexity of the issues, environmental philosophers have developed a number of theoretical approaches to help us see more clearly our ethical responsibilities concerning the environment. In these environmentally conscious times, most people agree that we need to be environmentally responsible. Toxic waste contaminates groundwater, oil spills destroy shorelines, and fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide, thus adding to global warming. The goal of environmental ethics, then, is not simply to convince us that we should be concerned about the environment—many already are. Instead, environmental ethics focuses on the moral foundation of environmental responsibility and how far this responsibility extends. There are three primary theories of moral responsibility regarding the environment. Although each can support environmental responsibility, their approaches are different. (See figure 2.2.)

Anthropocentrism The first of these theories is anthropocentrism or humancentered ethics. Anthropocentrism is the view that all environmental responsibility is derived from human interests alone.

Anthropocentrism

Value

Pro te

ct o n

Environment provides value to humans.

ly w h e n it b e n e fi t s h

um

ans

The assumption here is that only human beings are morally significant and have direct moral standing. Since the environment is crucial to human well-being and human survival, we have an indirect duty toward the environment, that is, a duty derived from human interests. We must ensure that the Earth remains environmentally hospitable for supporting human life and even that it remains a pleasant place for humans to live. Nevertheless, according to this view, the value of the environment lies in its instrumental worth for humans. Nature is fundamentally an instrument for human manipulation. Some anthropocentrists have argued that our environmental duties are derived both from the immediate benefit that people receive from the environment and from the benefit that future generations of people will receive. But critics have maintained that since future generations of people do not yet exist, then, strictly speaking, they cannot have rights any more than a dead person can have rights. Nevertheless, both parties to this dispute acknowledge that environmental concern derives solely from human interests.

Biocentrism A second theory of moral responsibility to the environment is biocentrism or life-centered environmental ethics. According to the broadest version of the biocentric theory, all forms of life have an inherent right to exist. A number of biocentrists recognize a hierarchy of values among species. Some, for example, believe that we have a greater responsibility to protect animal species than plant species and a greater responsibility to protect mammals than invertebrates. Another group of biocentrists, known as “biocentric egalitarians,” take the view that all living organisms have an exactly equal right to exist. Since the act of survival inevitably involves some killing (for food and shelter) it is hard to know where biocentric egalitarians can draw the lines and still be ethically consistent.

Biocentrism

Ecocentrism Protect Respect

All living organisms have an inherent value.

Inc lu din g H u m a n s Ecocentrism Protect Respect

Ecosystems (in addition to the organisms they contain) have inherent value.

Inc lu din g H u m a n s

Figure 2.2

Philosophical Approaches Of the three major approaches only anthropocentrism refers all value back to human needs and interests.

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The third approach to environmental responsibility, called ecocentrism, maintains that the environment deserves direct moral consideration and not consideration that is merely derived from human or animal interests. In ecocentrism it is suggested that the environment itself, not just the living organisms that inhabit it, has moral worth. Some ecocentrists talk in terms of the systemic value that a particular ecosystem possesses as the matrix that makes biological life possible. Others, go beyond particular ecosystems and suggest that the biological system on Earth as a whole has an integrity to it that gives it moral standing. Another version goes even further and ascribes personhood to the planet, suggesting that Mother Earth or “Gaia” should have the same right to life as any mother. One of the earliest and most well known spokespersons for ecocentrism was the ecologist Aldo Leopold. Leopold is most famous for his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, which was written in response to the relentless destruction of the landscape that Leopold had witnessed during his life. A Sand County Almanac redefined the relationship between humankind

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and the Earth. Leopold devoted an entire chapter of his book to “The Land Ethic.” All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts…. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively the land . . . a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the landcommunity to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such. It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense. What Leopold put forth in “The Land Ethic” was viewed by many as a radical shift in how humans perceive themselves in relation to the environment. Originally we saw ourselves as conquerors of the land. Now, according to Leopold, we need to see ourselves as members of a community that also includes the land and the water. Leopold went on to claim that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. . . . We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

will come to many of the same conclusions about environmental policy as an ecocentric ethic. Consequently they find the emphasis on ethical theories unhelpful. Environmental aesthetics—the study of how to appreciate beauty in the natural world. Some environmental aesthetics advocates think that the most effective philosophical ground for protecting the natural environment is to think in terms of protecting natural beauty. Animal rights/welfare—this position asserts that humans have a strong moral obligation to nonhuman animals. Strictly speaking, this is not an environmental position because the commitment is to individual animals and not to ecosystems or ecological health. Animal rights advocates are particularly concerned about the treatment of farm animals and animals used in medical research.

2.3 ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES Even for those who have studied environmental ethics carefully, it is never easy to act in accordance with one particular ethic in everything. Ethical commitments pull in different directions at different times. Because of these difficulties, it is sometimes easier to talk in terms of general attitudes or approaches to the environment rather than in terms of particular ethics. The three most common approaches are (a) the development approach, (b) the preservation approach, and (c) the conservation approach. (See figure 2.3.)

Other Philosophical Approaches As traditional political and national boundaries fade or shift in importance, new variations of environmental philosophy are fast emerging. Many of these variations are founded on an awareness that humanity is part of nature and that nature’s component parts are interdependent. Beyond the three ethical positions discussed previously, other areas of thought recently developed by philosophers to address the environmental crisis include: Ecofeminism—the view that there are important theoretical, historical, and empirical connections between how society treats women and how it treats the environment. Social ecology—the view that social hierarchies are directly connected to behaviors that lead to environmental destruction. Social ecologists are strong supporters of the environmental justice movement (see pp. 22–24). Deep ecology—the generally ecocentric view that a new spiritual sense of oneness with the Earth is the essential starting point for a more healthy relationship with the environment. Deep ecology also includes a biocentric egalitarian world view. Many deep ecologists are environmental activists. Environmental pragmatism—an approach that focuses on policy rather than ethics. Environmental pragmatists think that a human-centered ethic with a long-range perspective

Development The development approach tends to be the most anthropocentric of the three. It assumes that the human race is and should be master of nature and that the Earth and its resources exist solely for our benefit and pleasure. This approach is reinforced by the capitalist work ethic, which historically dictated that humans should create value for themselves by putting their labor into both land and materials in order to convert them into marketable products. In its unrestrained form, the development approach suggests that improvements in the human condition require converting ever more of nature over to human use. The approach thinks highly of human creativity and ingenuity and holds that continual economic growth is itself a moral ideal for society. In the development approach, the environment has value only insofar as human beings economically utilize it. This mindset has very often accompanied the process of industrialization and modernization in a country.

Preservation The preservationist approach tends to be the most ecocentric of the three common attitudes toward the environment. Rather than seek to convert all of nature over to human uses, preservationists

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want to see large portions of nature preserved intact. Nature, they argue, has intrinsic value or inherent worth apart from human uses. Preservationists have various ways of articulating their position. During the nineteenth century, preservationists often gave openly religious reasons for protecting the natural world. John Muir condemned the “temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism” who, “instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty dollar.” This was not a call for better cost-benefit analysis: Muir described nature not as a commodity but as a companion. Nature is sacred, Muir held, whether or not resources are scarce. Philosophers such as Emerson and Thoreau thought of nature as full of divinity. Walt Whitman celebrated a leaf of grass as no less than the “journeywork of the stars.” “After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on and found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains,” Whitman wrote. These philosophers thought of nature as a refuge from economic activity, not as a resource for it. While many preservationists adopt an ecocentric ethic, some also include anthropocentric principles in their arguments. These preservationists wish to keep large parts of nature intact for aesthetic or recreational reasons. They believe that nature is beautiful and restorative and should be preserved to ensure that wild places exist for future humans to hike, camp, fish, or just enjoy some solitude.

(a) Development

Conservation

(b) Preservation

(c) Conservation

Figure 2.3

Environmental Attitudes Development, preservation, and conservation are different attitudes toward nature. These attitudes reflect a person’s ethical commitments.

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The third environmental approach is the conservationist approach. Conservationism tends to strike a balance between unrestrained development and preservationism. Conservationism is anthropocentric in the sense that it is interested in promoting human well-being. But conservationists tend to consider a wider range of long-term human goods in their decisions about environmental management. Conservationist Gifford Pinchot, for example, arguing with preservationist John Muir at the start of the twentieth century about how to manage American forests, thought that the forests should primarily be managed to serve human needs and interests. But Pinchot could see that timber harvest rates should be kept low enough for the forest to have time to regenerate itself. He also realized that water quality for nearby humans was best preserved by keeping large patches of forest intact. Many hunters are conservationists. Hunters throughout North America and Northern Europe have protected large amounts of habitat for waterfowl, deer, and elk. Hunters have both biocentric and anthropocentric elements to their thinking. Ethically sensitive hunters often see the value of nonhuman animal species and put ethical constraints on the way they hunt them. Even though a hunter tends to think that the human interest in harvesting the meat ultimately overrides the animal’s interest in staying alive, he or she often believes that the animal has a place on the landscape and that the world is a better place if it contains healthy populations of wild animals. www.mhhe.com/enger13e

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FOCUS ON Early Philosophers of Nature The philosophy behind the environmental movement had its roots in the nineteenth century. Among many notable conservationist philosophers, several stand out: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson. In an essay entitled “Nature” published in 1836, Emerson wrote that “behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present.” Emerson was an early critic of rampant economic development, and he sought to correct what he considered to be the social and spiritual errors of his time. In his Journals, published in 1840, Emerson stated that “a question which well deserves examination now is the Dangers of Commerce. This invasion of Nature by Trade with its Money, its Credit, its Steam, its Railroads, threatens to upset the balance of Man and Nature.” Henry David Thoreau was a writer and a naturalist who held beliefs similar to Emerson’s. Thoreau’s bias fell on the side of “truth in nature and wilderness over the deceits of urban civilization.” The countryside around Concord, Massachusetts, fascinated and exhilarated him as much as the commercialism of the city depressed him. It was near Concord that Thoreau wrote his classic, Walden, which describes the two years he lived in a small cabin on the edge of Walden pond in order to have direct contact with nature’s “essential facts of Life.” In his later writings and journals, Thoreau summarized his feelings toward nature with prophetic vision: But most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum— many for a glass of rum. Thank God, man cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! We are safe on that side for the present. It is for the very reason that some do not care for these things that we need to continue to protect all from the vandalism of a few. (1861) John Muir combined the intellectual ponderings of a philosopher with the hard-core, pragmatic characteristics of a leader. Muir believed that “wilderness mirrors divinity, nourishes humanity, and vivifies the spirit.” Muir tried to convince people to leave the cities for a while to enjoy the wilderness. However, he felt that the wilderness was threatened. In the 1876 article entitled, “God’s First Temples: How Shall We Preserve Our Forests?” published in the Sacramento Record Union, Muir argued that only government control could save California’s finest sequoia groves from the “ravages of fools.” In the early 1890s, Muir organized the Sierra Club to “explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast” and to enlist the support of the government in preserving these areas. His actions in the West convinced the federal government to restrict development in the Yosemite Valley, which preserved its beauty for generations to come. Aldo Leopold was a thinker as well as an activist in the early conservation movement. As a philosopher, Leopold summed up his feelings in A Sand County Almanac:

left the Forest Service he pioneered the field of game management. As a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, he argued that regulated hunting should be used to maintain a proper balance of wildlife on that landscape. His Sand County Almanac, published shortly after his death in 1949, laid down the principles of his land ethic. While most people talk about what’s wrong with the way things are, few actually go ahead and change it. Rachel Carson ranks among those few. A distinguished naturalist and best-selling nature writer, Rachel Carson published in the New Yorker in 1960 a series of articles that generated widespread discussion about pesticides. In 1962, she published Silent Spring, which dramatized the potential dangers of pesticides to food, wildlife, and humans and eventually led to changes in pesticide use in the United States. Although some technical details of her book have been shown to be in error by later research, her basic thesis that pesticides can contaminate and cause widespread damage to the ecosystem has been established. Unfortunately, Carson’s early death from cancer came before her book was recognized as one of the most important events in the history of environmental awareness and action in the twentieth century. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

John Muir

Aldo Leopold

Rachel Carson

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. No living man will see again the long grass prairie, where a sea of prairie flowers lapped at the stirrups of the pioneer. No living man will see again the virgin pineries of the Lake States, or the flatwoods of the coastal plain, or the giant hardwoods. While serving in the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico in the 1920s, Leopold worked for the protection of parts of the forest as early wilderness areas. An avid hunter himself, Leopold learned a great deal about attitudes toward the control of predators as part of his Forest Service job. When he

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differ in their opinions on how to strike the right balance between the development and preservation aspects of sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Sustainable development, a term first used in 1987 in a UNsponsored document called the Brundtland Report, is often defined as “meeting the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.” Like conservationism, sustainable development is a middle ground that seeks to promote appropriate development in order to alleviate poverty while still preserving the ecological health of the landscape. Sustainable development does not focus solely on environmental issues. The United Nations 2005 World Summit Document refers to the “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection. (See figure 2.4.) Indigenous peoples have argued that there are four pillars of sustainable development—the fourth being cultural. Green development is generally differentiated from sustainable development in that green development prioritizes what its proponents consider to be environmental sustainability over economic and cultural considerations. Proponents of sustainable development argue that it provides a context in which to improve overall sustainability where green development is unattainable. For example, a cutting-edge wastewater treatment plant with extremely high maintenance costs may not be sustainable in regions of the world with fewer financial resources. An environmentally ideal plant that is shut down due to bankruptcy is obviously less sustainable than one that is maintainable by the community, even if it is somewhat less effective from an environmental standpoint. Still other researchers view environmental and social challenges as opportunities for development action. This is particularly true in the concept of sustainable enterprise that frames these global needs as opportunities for private enterprise to provide innovative and entrepreneurial solutions. This view is now being taught at many business schools. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 produced a document entitled Agenda 21, which set out a roadmap for sustainable development. A follow-up conference in South Africa in 2002 drew up a Plan of Implementation for sustainable development. Many observers of the 2002 conference questioned why there had been such a lack of international progress in alleviating poverty and protecting the environment. Part of the problem is that people

2.4 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE In 1982, African-American residents of Warren County, North Carolina, protested the use of a landfill in their community as a dumpsite for PCB-contaminated waste. (See figure 2.5.) Some observers asserted that the proposal constituted a form of environmental racism that took advantage of the poorest and least politically influential people in the state. Residents of Warren County took direct action by lying down on the road in front of the trucks headed to the landfill. Hundreds were arrested including Walter Fauntroy, a U.S. Congressional delegate for Washington, D.C., who had traveled to North Carolina in support of the protests. Following the protests, a number of studies quickly confirmed that toxic waste facilities were indeed disproportionately located in minority neighborhoods. Not only that, the studies also revealed that enforcement of laws was slower and fines levied

(a)

Social

Bearable

Equitable Sustainable

Environment

Economic Viable (b)

Figure

2.4—Scheme

of Sustainable Development

Sustainable development occurs when social, environmental, and economic concerns are all met.

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Figure 2.5—Environmental

Justice (a) Residents of Warren County, North Carolina, protest the dumping of hazardous PCBs in their local landfill. (b) The direct action in Warren County marked the birth of the environmental justice movement in the United States.

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against violators were lower in areas where residents were made up of poor minorities. By the early 1990s, environmental justice (EJ) was recognized throughout the environmental movement as being a critical component of environmental protection. In 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States characterized environmental justice as a simple matter of fair treatment. The EPA outlined the federal government’s commitment to the principle that “no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups, 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.” The EPA’s website on environmental justice (http://www.epa.gov/compliance/ environmentaljustice) states that environmental justice also involves “the meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” Environmental justice is therefore closely related to civil rights. According to the EPA’s definition, deliberate discrimination need not be involved. Any action that affects one social group disproportionately is in violation of EPA rules. The difficulty arises in defining what to measure and what should be the standard of comparison. As a first step in evaluating whether a group is unduly disadvantaged, a policymaker must consider who is affected. Most ethnic data relate to census tracts, zip codes, city boundaries, and counties. If the facility is to be located in a wealthy county but near the county border close to a poor community, how does the policymaker draw the line? Should prevailing winds be considered? Many industrial sites are located where land is cheap; people of low income may choose to live in those areas to minimize living expenses. How are these decisions weighed? Another difficulty arises in determining whether and how particular groups will be disadvantaged. Landfills, chemical plants, and other industrial works bring benefits to some, although they may harm others. They create jobs, change land values, and generate revenues that are spent in the community. How do officials compare the benefits with the losses? How should potential health risks from a facility be compared with the overall health benefits that jobs and higher incomes bring? Despite the complications, there are clearly many ways in which governments can act to ensure fairness in how environmental costs and benefits affect their citizens. Governments have established laws and directives to eliminate discrimination in housing, education, and employment, but until the rise of the environmental justice movement they had done very little to address discrimination in environmental practices. One factor that makes environmental justice issues especially troubling is the inverse relationship between who generates the problem and who bears the burden. 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. Environmental justice encompasses a wide range of issues. In addition to the question of where to place hazardous and polluting facilities, environmental justice questions arise in relation to transportation, safe housing, lead poisoning, water quality, access to recreation, exposure to noise pollution, the viability of subsistence fisheries, access to environmental information, hazardous waste cleanup, and exposure to natural disasters such as Hurricane

Katrina (see p. 33). In the United States, environmental justice issues also arise in relation to pollution on Native American Indian reservations. Further questions of environmental justice result from international trade policies that tend to congregate polluting factories in particular countries and their border regions. The environmental movement in America began as the concern of middle-class and affluent white people. Environmental justice has broadened the demographic of the movement and has raised the profile of many important environmental issues that were simply being ignored. Minorities, indigenous people, and people of color have forced a dialogue about race, class, discrimination, and equity in relation to the environment. They have established beyond doubt that patterns of environmental destruction have important social dimensions. Environmental Justice Highlights 1982 National attention focused on a series of protests in the low-income, minority community of Warren County, North Carolina, over a landfill filled with PCB-contaminated soil from 14 other counties throughout the state. Over 500 people were arrested. The protest prompted the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) to initiate a study of hazardous waste landfills in eight southern states. The GAO study concluded that three out of every four landfills were located in minority communities. 1987 The United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justice published a report showing that race was the most significant factor in the siting of toxic waste facilities throughout the nation. More than 60 percent of African-American and Hispanic people lived in a neighborhood near a hazardous waste site. A similar study by the National Law Journal found that polluters in minority communities paid 54 percent lower fines and the EPA took 20 percent longer to place toxic sites on the national priority action list. 1992 EPA created the Office of Environmental Justice to examine the issue of environmental justice in all agency policies and programs. EPA reported that low-income and minority communities were more likely to be exposed to lead, contaminated fish, air pollution, hazardous waste, and agricultural pesticides. 1993 Environmental justice became one of EPA’s top priorities, and an independent advisory group, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, was formed from industry experts, activists, and officials. 1994 President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, a directive requiring all federal agencies to begin taking environmental justice into account. The order specified that “Each Federal agency shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations.” Environmental Ethics

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2003 The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent group charged with monitoring federal civil rights enforcement, issued to Congress its report titled “Not in My Backyard,” which found that several federal agencies (EPA, DOT, HUD, and DOI) have failed to fully implement the 1994 Environmental Justice Executive Order. 2004 The American Bar Association Special Committee on Environmental Justice published Environmental Justice For All: A Fifty State Survey Of Legislation, Policies, and Initiatives (2004). The report identifies the statutes, policies, initiatives, or other commitments that states have undertaken to give force of law and/or tangible meaning to the goal of environmental justice. A March 2004 Office of Inspector General (OIG) report, EPA Needs to Consistently Implement the Intent of the Executive Order on Environmental Justice, summed up the treatment of environmental justice under the Bush administration. After a decade, EPA “has not developed a clear vision or a comprehensive strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, and performance measurements” for integrating environmental justice into its day-to-day operations. 2005 A July 2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, Environmental Justice: EPA Should Devote More Attention to Environmental Justice When Developing Clean Air Rules, criticized EPA for its handling of environmental justice issues when drafting clean air rules. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. In the wake of the storm, authorities received reports of 575 oil and toxic chemical spills. Of these, ten major oil spills resulted in a total volume approaching 8 million gallons. The hurricane also generated more than 100 million cubic yards of debris—enough to cover 1,000 football fields with a six-story-high mountain of trash. The massive amounts of debris resulted in hastily permitted urban landfills being established near residential areas of people of color. 2006 On September 18, 2006, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General issued a study, EPA Needs to Conduct Environmental Reviews of its Program, Policies, and Activities, chastising the agency for falling down on the job when it comes to implementing environmental justice. 2007 The United Church of Christ released Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, an update of the landmark study in 1987. Using new methods, this report found “that racial disparities in the distribution of hazardous wastes are greater than previously reported. In fact, these methods show that people of color make up the majority of those living in host neighborhoods within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of the nation’s hazardous waste facilities.”

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2009 EPA launched The State Environmental Justice Cooperative Agreement program awarding Alaska, California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina a total of $800,000. EPA sponsored Strengthening Environmental Justice Research and Decision Making: A Symposium on the Science of Disproportionate Environmental Health Impacts. The symposium was designed to lay the groundwork for developing a systematic and scientifically defensible approach for incorporating environmental justice concerns into EPA’s decision-making process. 2010 EPA sponsored the Conference on Environmental Justice, Air Quality, Goods Movement, and Green Jobs in New Orleans.

2.5 SOCIETAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS The environmental ethic expressed by a society is a product of the decisions and choices made by a diverse range of social actors that includes individuals, businesses, and national leaders. Western, developed societies have long acted as if the Earth has unlimited reserves of natural resources, an unlimited ability to assimilate wastes, and a limitless ability to accommodate unchecked growth. The economies of developed nations have been based on a rationale that favors continual growth. Unfortunately, this growth has not always been carefully planned or even desired. This “growth mania” has resulted in the unsustainable use of nonrenewable resources for comfortable homes, well-equipped hospitals, convenient transportation, fast-food outlets, VCRs, home computers, and battery-operated toys, among other things. In economic terms, such “growth” measures out as “productivity.” But the question arises, “What is enough?” Poor societies have too little, but rich societies never say, “Halt! We have enough.” The Indian philosopher and statesman Mahatma Gandhi said, “The Earth provides enough to satisfy every person’s need, but not every person’s greed.” Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, economic growth and resource exploitation were by far the dominant orientations toward the natural environment in industrialized societies. Developing countries were encouraged to follow similar anthropocentric paths. Since the rise of the modern environmental movement in the last 40 years, things have started to change. Some of the most dramatic changes have occurred in corporate business practices.

2.6 CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS The enormous effects of business on the state of the environment highlight the important need for corporate environmental ethics.

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Employees

Executives profit administrative costs salaries Corporation

Products and Services

waste disposal and pollution control manufacturing costs raw material costs advertising costs

Shareholders

research and development

Figure 2.6—Corporate Obligations

Corporate obligations do not involve the environment unless the shareholders, employees, or executives demand it. Chemical industry

The Legal Status of Corporations

Figure 2.7—Corporate Decision Making

Corporations are legal entities designed to operate at a profit. They possess certain rights and privileges, such as the right to own property and the limited liability of their shareholders. Though in some legal senses corporations operate as “artificial persons,” a corporation’s primary purpose is neither to benefit the public nor to protect the environment but to generate a financial return for its shareholders. This does not, however, mean that a corporation has no ethical obligations to the public or to the environment. Shareholders can demand that their directors run the corporation ethically. (See figure 2.6.) In business, incorporation allows for the organization and concentration of wealth and power far surpassing that of individuals or partnerships. Some of the most important decisions affecting our environment are made not by governments or the public but by executives who wield massive corporate power.

without regard for public or environmental well-being. Often it is cheaper in the short run to dump wastes into a river than to install a wastewater treatment facility, and it is cheaper to release wastes into the air than it is to trap them in filters. Actions such as these are known as external costs, since the public or the environment, rather than the corporation, pays these costs. Many people consider such pollution unethical and immoral, but on a corporate balance sheet it can look like just another of the factors that determine profitability. (See figure 2.7.) Because stockholders expect a return on an investment, corporations are often drawn toward making decisions based on short-term profitability rather than long-term benefit to the environment or society.

Waste and Pollution The daily tasks of industry, such as procuring raw materials, manufacturing and marketing products, and disposing of wastes, cause large amounts of pollution. This is not because any industry or company has adopted pollution as a corporate policy. It is simply a fact that industries consume energy and resources to make their products and that they must sell those products profitably to exist. When raw materials are processed, some waste is usually inevitable. It is often hard to completely control all the by-products of a manufacturing process. Some of the waste material may simply be useless. For example, the food-service industry uses energy to prepare meals. Much of the energy is lost as waste heat. Smoke and odors are released into the atmosphere and spoiled food items must be discarded. Heat, smoke, and food wastes appear to be part of the cost of doing business in the food industry. The cost of controlling this waste can be very important in determining a company’s profit margin. The cheaper it is to produce an item, the greater the possible profit. Ethics are clearly involved when a corporation cuts corners in production quality or waste disposal to maximize profit

Corporations must make a profit. When they look at pollution control and waste disposal they view its cost like any other cost: and reductions in cost increase profits.

Is There a Corporate Environmental Ethic? Corporations have certainly made more frequent references to environmental issues over the past several years. Is such concern only rhetoric and social marketing, (also called “greenwashing”) or is it the beginning of a new corporate environmental ethic? Greenwashing is a form of corporate misrepresentation whereby a company presents a green public image and publicize green initiatives while privately engaging in environmentally damaging practices. Companies are trying to take advantage of the growing public concern and awareness about environmental issues by creating an environmentally responsible image. Greenwashing can help companies win over investors, create competitive advantage in the marketplace, and convince critics that the company is well intentioned. Examples of greenwashing could include: European McDonald’s changing the color of their logos from yellow and red to yellow and green; food products that have packaging that evokes an environmentally friendly image even though there has been no attempt made at lowering the environmental impact of its production, and; BP, the world’s second

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largest oil company rebranding its slogan to “beyond petroleum” with a green and yellow sunburst design for their logo. Although some corporations only want to appear green, others have taken a more ethical approach. Corporations face real choices between using environmentally friendly or harmful production processes. As the idea of an environmental ethic has become more firmly established within society, corporations are being increasingly pressured to adopt more environmentally and socially responsible practices. Real improvements have been made. For example, Ray Anderson of Interface Incorporated led the way in greening the carpet industry by reducing the amount of waste produced by his company by 75 percent. The International Organization for Standardization (www.iso.org) has developed a program it calls ISO 14000 to encourage industries to adopt the most environmentally sensitive production practices. Reaction by the business community to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska is a good example of the mixed responses of corporations to the ethical challenges. (See figure 2.8.) The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was passed in 1990 to reduce the environmental impact of future oil spills and has resulted in a 94 percent reduction in spills. One of the new regulations in OPA was that all large tankers must have double hulls or be phased out of service by 2010. To get around the law, however, many oil carriers shifted their oil transport operations to lightly regulated oil barges. This reduction in oil spill safety led to several barge oil spills including an oil barge that hit a tanker in July 2008 on the Mississippi River near New Orleans. About 1.6 million liters of oil were released. A group of environmentalists, investors, and companies formed the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics (CERES) group in 1989 and created a set of 10 environmental standards by which their business practices could be measured called

(a)

the CERES Principles (they were first called the Valdez Principles). CERES companies pledge to voluntarily go beyond the requirements set by the law to strive for environmental excellence through business practices that: (1) protect the biosphere, (2) sustainably use natural resources, (3) reduce and dispose of waste safely, (4) conserve energy, (5) minimize environmental risks through safe technologies, (6) reduce the use, manufacture, and sale of products and services that cause environmental damage, (7) restore environmental damage, (8) inform the public of any health, safety, or environmental conditions, (9) consider environmental policy in management decisions, and (10) report the results of an annual environmental audit to the public. Today, over 80 companies have publicly endorsed the CERES Principles, including many Fortune 500 firms. In addition, CERES coordinates an investor network and worldwide, CERES firms have won environmental awards from many organizations in recognition of their approach. In 1997, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was established. Convened by CERES in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, the GRI encourages the active participation of corporations, nongovernmental organizations, accountancy organizations, business associations, and other stakeholders from around the world. The mission of the GRI is to develop globally applicable guidelines for reporting on economic, environmental, and social performance, initially for corporations and eventually for any business, governmental, or nongovernmental organization. The GRI’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines were released in draft form in 1999. The GRI guidelines represent the first global framework for comprehensive sustainability reporting, encompassing the “triple bottom line” of economic, environmental, and social issues.

(b)

Figure 2.8

Oil Spill Response The 1989 oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, led to the development of the CERES Principles. (a) The otter is a victim of the spill. (b) The Exxon Valdez aground on Bligh Reef.

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Improved disclosure of sustainability information is an essential ingredient in the mix of approaches needed to meet the governance challenges in the globalizing economy. Today, at least 2,000 companies around the world voluntarily report information on their economic, environmental, and social policies, practices, and performance. Unfortunately, this information can sometimes be inconsistent and incomplete. Measurement and reporting practices vary widely according to industry, location, and regulatory requirements. The GRI’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines are designed to address some of these challenges. Currently, 392 organizations in 33 countries follow GRI’s guidelines.

Green Business Concepts There will be little political enthusiasm for preserving the environment if preservation results in national economic collapse. Neither does it make sense to maintain industrial productivity at the cost of breathable air, drinkable water, wildlife species, parks, and wildernesses. Environmental advocates should consider the corporation’s need to make a profit when they demand that businesses take more account of the environmental consequences of their actions. Corporations should recognize that profits must come neither at the cost of the health of current and future generations nor at the cost of species extinctions. Natural capitalism is the idea that businesses can both expand their profits and take good care of the environment. Natural capitalism works. The 3M Company is estimated to have saved US $500 million over the last 20 years through its Pollution Prevention Pays (3P) program. Innovations in ecological and environmental economics promote accounting techniques that make visible all of the social and environmental costs of doing business so that these costs can no longer be externalized by corporate decision makers. In the mid-1990s, a concept called industrial ecology emerged that links industrial production and environmental quality. One of the most important elements of industrial ecology is that it models industrial production on biological production. Industrial ecology forces industry to account for where waste is going. Dictionaries define waste as useless or worthless material. In nature, however, nothing is discarded. All materials ultimately get re-used. Industrial ecology makes it clear that discarding or wasting materials taken from the Earth at great cost is a shortsighted view. Materials and products that are no longer in use could be termed residues rather than wastes. Residues are materials that our economy has not yet learned to use efficiently. In this view, a pollutant is a resource out of place. In industrial ecology, good environmental practices are good economics. It forces us to view pollution and waste in a new way. Another green business concept is the triple bottom line. The triple bottom line has been referred to as the ethical criteria for business success. The traditional measure of success for business has always been profit. The bottom line has typically been a purely financial one. The triple bottom line concept, which is growing in popularity, is about gauging corporate success on three fronts: financial, social, and environmental (also sometimes called people, planet, and profit). In other words, executives are concerned not only about money but also about the impact their business actions

have on people and the planet. Proponents of the triple bottom line say that only by making these values part of the core of business operations can companies survive in our changing world. Some businesses have voluntarily adopted a triple bottom line as part of their articles of incorporation or bylaws, and some have advocated for state laws creating a “sustainable corporation” that would grant triple bottom line businesses benefits such as tax breaks. The environmental movement has effectively influenced public opinion and started to move the business community toward greater environmental responsibility. More complex and stringent environmental and public safety demands will increasingly influence corporate decisions throughout this century. Business itself will expand its horizons and find new ways to make profits while promoting environmental benefits and minimizing environmental costs. However, as population increases and as consumption levels rise around the globe, the environmental burden on the planet will inevitably continue to rise. Changes in business practices alone will not be enough.

2.7 INDIVIDUAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Ethical changes in society and business must start with individuals. We have to recognize that our individual actions have a bearing on environmental quality and that each of us bears some personal responsibility for the quality of the environment in which we live. In other words, environmental ethics must express themselves not only in new national laws and in better business practices but also in significant changes in the ways in which we all live. Various public opinion polls conducted over the past decade have indicated that Americans think environmental problems can often be given a quick technological fix. The Roper polling organization found that the public believes that “cars, not drivers, pollute, so business should invent pollution-free autos. Coal utilities, not electricity consumers, pollute, so less environmentally dangerous generation methods should be found.” It appears that many individuals want the environment cleaned up, but they do not want to make major lifestyle changes to make that happen. While new technologies will certainly play a major role in the future in lessening the environmental impact of our lifestyles, individual behavioral choices today can also make a significant difference to the health of ecological systems. Environmental ethics must therefore take hold not only at the level of government and business but also at the level of personal choices about consumption.

2.8 THE ETHICS OF CONSUMPTION In 1994, when delegates from around the world gathered in Cairo for the International Conference on Population and Development, representatives from developing countries protested that a baby

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born in the United States will consume during its lifetime at least 20 times as much of the world’s resources as an African or Indian baby. The problem for the world’s environment, they argued, is over consumption in the Northern Hemisphere, not just overpopulation in the Southern Hemisphere, China, or India. Do we in the Northern Hemisphere consume too much? North Americans, only 5 percent of the world’s population, consume one-fourth of the world’s oil. They use more water and own more cars than anybody else. They waste more food than most people in sub-Saharan Africa eat. It has been estimated that if the rest of the world consumed at the rate at which people in the United States consume, we would need five more Planet Earths to supply the resources. Ever since he wrote a book called The Population Bomb in 1968, ecologist Paul Ehrlich has argued that the American lifestyle is driving the global ecosystem to the brink of collapse. But others, including the economist Julian Simon, have argued that Ehrlich couldn’t be more wrong. It is not resources that limit economic growth and lifestyles, Simon has insisted, but human ingenuity. In 1980, the two wagered money on their competing worldviews. They picked something easily measurable—the value of metals—to put their theories to the test. Ehrlich predicted that world economic growth would make copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten scarcer and thus drive the prices up. Simon argued that human ingenuity is always capable of finding technological fixes for scarcity and that the price would go down. By 1990 all five metals had decreased in value. Simon had won the bet. Ehrlich claimed the decrease in price was partly the result of a global recession. He also claimed that many of the costs of producing these metals were still being externalized, with the result that their market price was lower than it should be. But Simon argued that the metals decreased in price because superior materials such as plastics, fiber optics, and ceramics had been developed to replace them. The Ehrlich-Simon argument is actually an old one, and, despite the outcome of their bet, it remains unsettled. What do you think? With the question of consumption in mind, let’s look at how consumption could affect several areas in the future—food, energy, water, and wild nature.

Food Two centuries ago, Thomas Malthus declared that worldwide famine was inevitable as human population growth outpaced food production. In 1972, a group of scholars known as the Club of Rome predicted much the same thing for the waning years of the twentieth century. It did not happen because—so far, at least— human ingenuity has outpaced population growth. Fertilizers, pesticides, and high-yield crops have more than doubled world food production in the past 40 years. The reason 850 million people go hungry today and 6 million children under the age of 5 die each year from hunger-related causes is not that there is not enough food in the world but that social, economic, and political conditions make it impossible for those who need the food to get it. This tragedy is made more troubling by the fact that in 2000 the world reached the historic landmark of there

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being the same number of overweight people as those that were malnourished. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his role in developing high-yield crops, predicts that genetic engineering and other new technologies will keep food production ahead of population increases over the next half century. New technologies, however, are not free from controversy. The Mexican government recently confirmed that genetically modified corn has escaped into native corn populations, and the European Union ended a five-year ban on U.S. imports by requiring labeling of all foods containing more than 0.9 percent materials from genetically modified organisms. Adding to the uncertainty about future food production are factors that include decreasing soil fertility caused by repeated chemical applications, desertification and erosion caused by poor farming techniques, and the loss of available cropland as a result of urbanization. The increasing evidence of rapid global climate change also makes extrapolations from past harvests increasingly unreliable indicators of the future. With global population set to peak at around 9 billion people in the middle of the twenty-first century, it remains unclear whether there will be enough food to go around. Even if it turns out that enough food can be produced for the world in the twenty-first century, whether everybody will get a fair share is much less certain.

Energy If everybody on Earth consumed as much oil as the average American, the world’s known reserves would be gone in about 40 years. Even at current rates of consumption, known reserves will not last through the current century. Technological optimists, however, tell us not to worry. New technologies, they say, will avert a global energy crisis. Already oil companies have developed cheaper and more efficient ways to find oil and extract it from the ground, possibly extending the supply into the twenty-second century. In many regions of the world, natural gas is replacing oil as the primary source of domestic and industrial power. New coal gasification technologies also hold promise for cleaner and extended fossil fuel power. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that there is a finite amount of fossil fuel on the planet. These fuels cannot be the world’s primary power source forever. Even before fossil fuels run out, concerns about global warming may compel the world to stop burning them. Furthermore, since fossil fuels are found in abundance only in particular parts of the world, geopolitical events can suddenly cause fuel prices to spike in ways that can be disastrous for national economies. Natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina can also destroy infrastructure and add to the uncertainty surrounding fossil fuel supply. The more foresighted energy companies are already looking ahead by investing in the technologies that will replace fossil fuels. In some countries, the winds of political change have brought nuclear power back onto the table. In others, solar, wind, wave, and biomass technologies are already meeting increasing proportions of national energy needs. A great deal of optimism is placed on the development of fuel cell technologies. A fuel cell is

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SCIENCE, POLITICS, & POLICY Should Environmental Scientists Be Advocates for Environmental Policy? Should environmental scientists be advocates for environmental policy? This question has been at the heart of policy debates since the environment became a major policy agenda item. A growing number of environmental scientists are now answering “yes.” They argue that scientists, by virtue of being citizens first and scientists second, have a responsibility to advocate to the best of their abilities and in a justified and transparent manner. Much of what has been written about advocacy looks at its appropriateness without adequately assessing its nature. For example, most of the arguments, whether they are for or against advocacy, often look at only one side of the debate. The question of scientific credibility is often raised. Those who oppose scientists acting as advocates often say that advocacy undermines a scientist’s credibility. The counter argument could say that as long as a scientist’s work is transparently honest, the scientific community is obligated to support it. Scientific credibility, however, is not the same thing as effectiveness. One may have scientific credibility and be effective or ineffective at advocacy. There is one area about which many scientists do agree: that as citizens first and scientists second, scientists have a responsibility to use their scientific data and insights to guide policy decisions. The ethicist and the scientist call it an ideal blend of philosophical ethics and scientific commitment to data collection and analysis. A growing number of scientists are calling for more active participation of their profession in matters of policy. They argue that broad participation of scientists in policy issues will undoubtedly result in disagreement among good scientists and will complicate the policy-making process. It is further argued, however, that the

essentially a refillable, hydrogen-powered battery that produces zero pollution. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, there is no shortage of supply. The problem is that most of this hydrogen exists in unusable forms, already combined with other elements in more stable molecules. Separating the usable hydrogen is not technically difficult, but the process takes energy itself, raising questions about whether it might take more energy to make the hydrogen available than the fuel cell will end up producing. With accelerating global demand, it remains unclear whether there will be enough clean energy supply to meet the world’s needs in the years ahead.

Water The world of the future may not need oil, but without water, humanity could not last more than a few days. Right now, humans use about half the planet’s accessible supply of renewable freshwater—the supply regenerated each year and available for human use. A simple doubling of agricultural production with no efficiency improvements would push that fraction to about 85 percent. Unlike fossil fuels, which could eventually be replaced by other energy sources, there is no substitute for water.

ultimate goal should not be simplicity in the process but rather the betterment of society. Many scientists state that the risk of not participating in policy debates on environmental issues is greater than the risk of participating. What are your thoughts? Should environmental scientists be policy advocates? Does involvement in policy issues compromise the role of a scientist or enhance it?

Given its fundamental role for all human survival and the antiquity of our cultural reflection on its importance, one might have expected humans to have developed a broad consensus of thought or a measure of cumulative wisdom about water usage in the ecosystem. But what we might call a water ethic—a set of common understandings, shared values, and widely accepted norms governing how humans ought to behave with reference to water—does not appear to be widely thought of in contemporary human affairs. Water itself is far from uniformly appreciated. Some cultures extol its value as priceless, while others behave as if it were worthless. We live on what has been called the “water planet,” yet over 99 percent of Earth’s water is either saline or frozen. Humankind depends upon the remaining 1 percent for its survival. Competition for that 1 percent has already become intense in many parts of the world, and even those who live in water-abundant regions are becoming conscious of water as a precious asset. Beyond valuing water sources, however, we are only just beginning to become aware of the downstream impact that our water habits are having upon whole communities of life-forms that inhabit lake, river, estuary, and marine environments, some of which may prove vital for our own survival.

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GOING GREEN Do We Consume Too Much? The desire to consume is nothing new. It has been around for millennia. People need to consume to survive. However, consumption has evolved as people have found new ways to help make their lives simpler and/or to use their resources more efficiently. We consume a variety of resources and products today as we move beyond meeting basic needs to include luxury items and technological innovations to improve efficiency. Such consumption beyond minimal and basic needs is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself—throughout history we have always sought to find ways to make our lives a bit easier to live. However, increasing, there are important issues around consumerism that need to be understood. For example: • How are the products and resources we consume actually produced? • What are the impacts of that process of production on the environment, on society, and on individuals?

Regarding the world’s major rivers, the world atlas no longer tells the truth. Today, dozens of the greatest rivers are dry long before they reach the sea. They include the Nile in Egypt, the Yellow River in China, the Indus in Pakistan, the Rio Grande and the Colorado in the United States, the Murray in Australia, and the Jordan, which is emptied before it can even reach the country that bears its name. Recent droughts in parts of the United States have focused interest on allocation of water resources for basic needs. During the California drought, when many cities were passing emergency water rationing and increasing basic costs to consumers, other cities were permitting potable water to irrigate golf courses and allowing new swimming pools to be built. Who makes the decisions on how water is allocated? How can a state as diverse as California make ethical decisions about water that treat everyone equally and fairly? In addition to its role as the substance and medium for all life-forms, water needs to be respected as a geologic force. In the face of recent extreme weather events, cultures around the world are realizing that as humans we did not create, nor can we control, the hydrologic cycle. This can be difficult for technological cultures accustomed to the illusion of dominance over nature. The multiple roles that water plays in the evolving climate system are being investigated with an eye to the future. Any shift in climate is likely to involve new patterns of global water distribution, and these new circumstances will in turn require humankind to devise new habits, policies, and ethical norms to govern water usage. Perhaps now is the time that we begin to discuss a new global water ethic. More than any other resource, water may limit consumerism during the next century. “In the next century,” World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin predicted a few years ago, “wars will be fought over water.”

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• What are the impacts of certain forms of consumption on the environment, on society, and on individuals? • What is a necessity and what is a luxury? • Businesses and advertising are major engines in promoting the consumption of products so that they may survive. How much of what we consume is influenced by their needs versus our needs? • How do material values influence our relationships with other people? • How does the way we value material posessions influence our relationships with other people? We can likely think of numerous other questions as well. We can, additionally, see that consumerism and consumption are at the core of many, if not most, societies. The impacts of consumerism—positive and negative— are very significant in all aspects of our lives, as well as on our planet.

Wild Nature Every day in the United States, somewhere from 1,000 to 2000 hectares of farmland and natural areas are permanently lost to development. As more and more people around the world achieve modern standards of living, the land area converted to houses, shopping malls, roads, and industrial parks will continue to increase. The planet will labor under rising levels of resource extraction and pollution. Tropical rainforests will be cut and wild lands will become entombed under pavement. Mighty rivers like the Yangtze and Nile, already dammed and diverted, will become even more canal-like. As the new century progresses more and more of us will live urbanized lives. The few pockets of wild nature that remain will be biologically isolated from each other by development. We will increasingly live in a world of our own making.

2.9 PERSONAL CHOICES Threats to supplies of food, energy, water, and wild nature certainly require action on national and international levels. However, in each of these cases ethically responsible action can also begin with the individual. Individuals committed to a strong environmental ethic can make many lifestyle changes to significantly reduce their personal impact on the planet. Food choice is one place to start. Eating food that is produced locally, is low on the food chain, and is grown with a minimum of chemical fertilizers and pesticides not only reduces the environmental impact of food production; it might also lead to better health. Heart disease and certain cancers are increasingly being linked to diets high in animal fats. Buying durable consumer products and reusing or repairing products that still have useful life in them reduces the amount of raw materials that have to be extracted from the ground to meet your needs. Conserving

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energy at home and on the road can help lessen the amount of fossil fuels you use to support your lifestyle. Living in town rather than out in the suburbs, lobbying for the protection of wild areas, and voting for officials who take environmental issues seriously are all ways that your own environmental ethic can directly contribute to a reduced environmental impact. Consumer behavior is a vote for things you believe in. Lifestyle choices are an expression of your ethical commitments. The concept of an ecological footprint has been developed to help individuals measure their environmental impact on the Earth. One’s ecological footprint is defined as “the area of Earth’s productive land and water required to supply the resources that an individual demands, as well as to absorb the wastes that the individual produces.” Websites exist that allow you to estimate your ecological footprint and to compare it to the footprint of others by answering a few questions about your lifestyle. Running through one of these exercises is a good way to gain a sense of personal responsibility for your own environmental impact. To learn more about ecological footprints visit: http://www.earthday.org/Footprint/info.asp http://www.rprogress.org/newprojects/ecolFoot Finally, think about the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead, who vividly drew attention to the importance of individual action when she stated, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

2.10 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS As human stresses on the environment increase, the stability of the planet’s ecological systems becomes more and more uncertain. Small environmental changes can create large-scale and unpredictable disruptions. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, whether caused by humans or not, are leading to changes in surface temperatures that will result in major ecological effects. Feedback loops add to the urgency. For example, just a small reduction in seasonal snow and ice coverage in Arctic regions due to global warming can greatly increase the amount of solar energy the Earth absorbs. This additional energy itself raises atmospheric temperature, leading to a further reduction in snow coverage. Once established, this feedback loop continually reinforces itself. Some models predict that ocean currents, nutrient flows, and hydrologic cycles could make radical shifts from historic patterns in a matter of months. Such disruptions would cause catastrophic environmental change by shifting agricultural regions, threatening species with extinction, decimating crop harvests, and pushing tropical diseases into areas where they are currently unknown. Glaciers will continue to melt and ocean waters will rise, flooding heavily populated low-lying places like Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and even parts of Florida and the U.S. Gulf Coast. Millions of people would be displaced by famine, flood, and drought. As environmental justice advocates point out, these changes will hit the poor and those least able to respond to them first.

However, the changes predicted are of such magnitude that even the very wealthy countries will suffer environmental consequences that they cannot hope to avoid. These scenarios are not distant, future worries. They are here now. The year 2005 was one of the top two hottest years on record. The record hurricane season of 2005 in the United States may be just a small indication of what lies in store. Many of these problems require global solutions. In 1990, Noel Brown, the director of the United Nations North American Environmental Programme, stated: Suddenly and rather uniquely the world appears to be saying the same thing. We are approaching what I have termed a consensual moment in history, where suddenly from most quarters we get a sense that the world community is now agreeing that the environment has become a matter of global priority and action. This new sense of urgency and common cause about the environment is leading to unprecedented cooperation in some areas. Despite their political differences, Arab, Israeli, Russian, and American environmental professionals have been working together for several years. Ecological degradation in any nation almost inevitably impinges on the quality of life in others. For years, acid rain has been a major irritant in relations between the United States and Canada. Drought in Africa and deforestation in Haiti have resulted in waves of refugees. From the Nile to the Rio Grande, conflicts flare over water rights. The growing megacities of the Third World are time bombs of civil unrest. Much of the current environmental crisis is rooted in and exacerbated by the widening gap between rich and poor nations. Industrialized countries contain only 20 percent of the world’s population, yet they control 80 percent of the world’s goods and create most of its pollution. (See figure 2.9.) The developing countries are hardest hit by overpopulation, malnutrition, and disease. As these nations struggle to catch up with the developed world and improve the quality of life for their people, a vicious circle begins: Their efforts at rapid industrialization poison their cities, while their attempts to boost agricultural production often result in the destruction of their forests and the depletion of their soils, which lead to greater poverty. Perhaps one of the most important questions for the future is, “Will the nations of the world be able to set aside their political differences to work toward a global environmental course of action?” The United Nations Conference on Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972 was a step in the right direction. Out of that international conference was born the UN Environment Programme, a separate department of the United Nations that deals with environmental issues. A second world environmental conference was held in 1992 in Brazil and a third in 2002 in South Africa. Each followed up the Stockholm conference with many new international initiatives. A major world conference on climate change was held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. (See Global Perspective: The Kyoto Protocol in chapter 16.) Through organizations and conferences such as these, nations can work together to solve common environmental problems. Even those who doubt the accuracy of the gloomiest predictions about our environmental future can hardly deny that we live

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Less developed

More developed

Approximate relative ecological footprint of one person in the developing world.

Approximate relative ecological footprint of one person in the developed world.

Figure 2.9

Lifestyle and Environmental Impact Significant differences in lifestyles and their environmental impact exist between the rich and poor nations of the world. The ecological footprint of those in the industrialized world can be 20 to 40 times higher than the footprint of those in the developing world. What would be the environmental impact on the Earth if the citizens of China and India and other less-developed countries enjoyed the standard of living in North America? Can we deny them that opportunity?

on a changing planet. Uncertainty about the ecological baseline that we will be dealing with 50—or even five—years from now means that it would be wise to think hard about the environmental consequences of our actions. As John Muir and Lewis Thomas expressed in their remarks quoted at the beginning of this chapter,

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humans should expect that many of their actions on planet Earth will in time affect something or somebody else. Anytime our actions may harm another, we face serious ethical questions. Environmental ethics suggests that we may have an obligation beyond simply minimizing the harm that we cause to our families,

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ISSUES & ANALYSIS Environmental Wolves and Disasters Moose and on Poverty Isle Royale On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina came ashore on the U.S. Gulf Coast between Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Katrina was an enormous hurricane, just one of the 26 named storms that hit the Americas in the worst Atlantic hurricane season in history. A few hours after the hurricane made landfall, the combination of the storm surge and the torrential rain falling inland overwhelmed the levees that were supposed to protect New Orleans. Up to 80 percent of the city flooded. Close to 1000 people died in Louisiana alone, with most of those deaths occurring in New Orleans. Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for New Orleans’ 500,000 residents in the days that followed the storm. The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina starkly illustrated the way in which environmental destruction can cause particular hardship for the poor. Twenty-eight percent of New Orleans residents lived below the poverty line. Information about the hurricane and about evacuation options was harder for the city’s poorer residents to access. Compounding the problem, a large number of these poorer households did not own cars. As environmental justice advocate Robert Bullard pointed out, without a car, a driver’s license, or a credit card even a timely evacuation order can be extremely hard to obey. As Hurricane Katrina battered the city, poor and minority residents were generally left behind, forced to flee to crowded and unsanitary temporary shelters like the New Orleans Superdome.

Outside of the New Orleans city center, some of the areas hardest hit by the hurricane were home to many chemical and petrochemical plants. The location of those plants on the Mississippi River close to African-American communities is a legacy of the area’s social and economic history that raises its own environmental justice concerns. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, damage to the industrial infrastructure threatened homes with floodwaters that were laced with a toxic stew of chemicals. Those people left behind were often forced to wade through the contaminated waters to safety. Their saturated homes required demolition. The images of hardship, suffering, and death in Louisiana that were broadcast worldwide after the disaster illustrated how, even in wealthy countries, the burden of environmental disasters falls particularly hard on the poor, the sick, and the elderly. By 2011 the effects of Katrina were still being felt. While there has been considerable rebuilding of communities there is still much to be done especially in the poorer sections of New Orleans. The lasting effects of Katrina also have been seen in physical health problems. Beyond the short-term concerns over contaminated water, some of the problems that continue to show up in Gulf Coast hospitals include certain skin infections and respiratory problems. In addition, elevated concentrations of lead, arsenic, and other toxic chemicals are present throughout New Orleans, particularly in the poorer areas of the city. It is suggested that widespread cleanup efforts and demolition stirred up airborne toxins known to cause adverse health effects. Do you feel there is a direct link between environmental disasters and poverty? If you feel there is can you suggest ways to minimize that effect?

Hurricane Katrina heading toward New Orleans on August 28, 2005. Flooding in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina.

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WHAT’S YOUR TAKE? The grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) has been receiving federal protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act for over 30 years. The federal government has now proposed removing that protection on the basis of increasing numbers of bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and elsewhere. There is considerable disagreement among conservation biologists about how many bears are needed for the species to be

our neighbors, our fellow human citizens, and future generations of people that will live on Planet Earth. It suggests that we may also have an obligation to minimize the harm we cause to the ecological systems and the biodiversity of the Earth itself. The ecological systems, many now believe, deserve moral consideration for what they are in themselves, quite apart from their undeniable importance to human beings. Recognizing that our treatment of the natural environment is an ethical issue is a good start on the challenges that lie ahead. Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai captured these sentiments about ethics in the speech that she gave shortly after receiving her prize:

“recovered.” When a species is delisted, management is handed over to individual states. If it proposes an acceptable plan, a state may introduce a management plan that includes the hunting of the previously listed species. What kind of ethic underlies the Endangered Species Act? What kind of ethic underlies a management plan that includes hunting? Develop an ethical argument for or against the delisting of the grizzly bear.

Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its lifesupport system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty, and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process. In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.

Summary People of different cultures view their place in the world from different perspectives. Among the things that shape their views are religious understandings, economic pressures, geographic location, and fundamental knowledge of nature. Because of this diversity of backgrounds, different cultures put different values on the natural world and the individual organisms that compose it. Environmental ethics investigates the justifications for these different positions. Three common attitudes toward nature are the development approach, which assumes that nature is for people to use for their own purposes; the preservationist approach, which assumes that nature has value in itself and should be preserved intact; and the conservationist approach, which recognizes that we must use nature to meet human needs but encourages us to do so in a sustainable manner. The conservationist approach is generally known today as “sustainable development.” Ethical obligations to the environment are usually closely connected to ethical obligations toward people, particularly poor people and minority groups. Environmental justice is about ensuring that no group is made to bear a disproportionate burden of environmental harm. Environmental justice is also about ensuring that governments

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develop and enforce environmental regulations fairly across different segments of society. The environmental justice movement has forced environmentalists to recognize that you cannot think about protecting nature without also thinking about people. Recognition that there is an ethical obligation to protect the environment can be made by corporations, by individuals, by nations, and by international bodies. Corporate environmental ethics are complicated by the existence of a corporate obligation to its shareholders to make a profit. Corporations often wield tremendous economic power that can be used to influence public opinion and political will. Many corporations are now being driven to include environmental ethics in their business practices by their shareholders. Natural capitalism and industrial ecology are ideas that promote ways of doing profitable business while also protecting the environment. Corporations are composed of individuals. An increasing sensitivity of individual citizens to environmental concerns can change the political and economic climate for the whole of society. Individuals must demonstrate strong commitments to environmental ethics in their personal choices and behaviors. The concept of an ecological footprint has been developed to help individuals gauge their personal environmental impact.

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Global commitments to the protection of the environment are enormously important. Accelerating international trade and communication technologies mean that the world is getting smaller while the potential impact of humanity on the planet is getting larger and more uncertain. Tens of millions of people are added to the world’s population each year while economic develop-

ment increases the environmental impact of those already here. Opportunities for global cooperation and agreement are of critical importance in facing these real and increasing challenges. Environmental ethics has a role to play in shaping human attitudes toward the environment from the smallest personal choice to the largest international treaty.

thinking green 1. Calculate your ecological footprint. 2. Participate in sustainability activities in your community or university. 3. Give up the use of your car for part of each week. Walk, bicycle, or take public transportation.

4. Read Silent Spring, A Sand County Almanac, and Walden. 5. Work with a local business in helping it apply green business concepts.

review questions 1. 2. 3. 4.

Why does the environmental crisis demand a new ethic? What is the relationship between ethics and law? Describe three types of environmental ethics developed by philosophers. Describe three common attitudes toward the environment found in modern society. 5. Why is environmental justice part of the environmental movement? 6. What are the conflicts between corporate behavior and environmental ethics?

7. How can individuals direct business toward better environmental practices? 8. How can individuals implement environmental ethics in their own lives? 9. Where does global environmental ethics fit in the broad scheme of environmental protection? 10. Is the triple bottom line a realistic concept in the corporate world?

critical thinking questions 1. Give three different ethical justifications for protecting a forest using an anthropocentric, a biocentric, and an ecocentric viewpoint. 2. Which approach to the environment—development, preservation, or conservation—do you think you adopt in your own life? Do you think it appropriate for everybody in the world to share the same attitude you hold? 3. What ethical obligations do you personally feel toward wolves and whales? What ethical obligations do you feel toward future generations of people? What ethical obligations do you feel toward future generations of wolves and whales? 4. Until recently, it was generally believed that growth and development were unquestionably good. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, some are beginning to question that belief. Are those questions appropriate ones to address to a citizen of the developing world? Would you ever make the argument that development has gone far enough? 5. Imagine you are a business executive who wants to pursue an environmental policy for your company that limits pollution and uses fewer raw materials but would cost more. What might be the discussion at your next board of directors meeting? How would you make your case to your directors and your shareholders?

6. In 1997 Ojibwa Indians in northern Wisconsin sat on the railroad tracks to block a shipment of sulfuric acid from crossing their reservation on its way to a controversial copper mine in Michigan. Try to put yourself in their position. What values, beliefs, and perspectives might have contributed to their actions? Was it the right thing to do? How would you try and mediate a heated conversation between an Ojibwa protestor and a Michigan copper miner? 7. Wangari Maathai led a protest movement against the stripping of African forests. Are environmental issues important enough for citizens to become activists and perhaps break the law? How could an environmental activist respond to the pro-development position that it is more important to feed people and lift them out of poverty than it is to save a few trees? Are there any ethical principles that you think an environmental activist and a prodevelopment advocate share? 8. Reread Focus On Early Philosophers of Nature. Is the environmental crisis in certain respects a problem in ethics? Does philosophy have a role to play in helping to solve the problem? Should scientists, business leaders, and politicians study environmental ethics? What role is environmental ethics going to play in your own life from this point on?

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