Introduction to Environmental Ethics

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World Population Growth
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Statistics

• Quality of Life in 1996
• 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking
  water
• 2.9 billion lack sanitation services
• 841 million malnourished
• Resource Use
• 5-7 million hectares of agricultural land is lost
  each year to erosion
• World-wide oil consumption
• 1900 few thousand barrels per day
• 1997 72 million
• 2003 75 million
• Metal Consumption
• 1900 20 million tons annually
• 1997 1.2 billion tons
• US Consumption
• consumes 30 of worlds resources
• Wealthiest 1 billion consume 80 percent of the
  world's resources

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IPAT

• Environmental Impact (I) depends on
• Population (P)
• Consumption (A)
• Technology (T)
• People Overpopulation
• Affluence Overpopulation

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Population PolicyKey Questions

• Does the idea of having responsibilities to
  people who may or may not exist make sense?
• What responsibilities do we have to produce or
  not produce future generations?
• Is there some ethically preferable population
  goal?
• What policies should be promoted to attain it?

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Arguments against Responsibilities to Future
Generations
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Argument from IgnoranceRebuttals

• Premise is false
• People are responsible for negligence in civil law

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Arguments against Responsibilities to Future
Generations
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Disappearing Beneficiaries ArgumentRebuttals
(from Annette Baier)

• It IS meaningful to talk of future generations
• We violate future generations moral rights

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Arguments against Responsibilities to Future
Generations

• Rebuttal
• DesJardins pp. 77-78

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Future Generations Require Ethical Consideration
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Duty to Posterity

• Key Questions
• What, if anything, do we owe to future
  generations?
• What is the ethical basis of these
  responsibilities?

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Ethical Basis of ResponsibilityUtilitarianism

• Basic Idea
• Focus on minimizing unnecessary suffering and
  maximizing their well-being of future generations
• Challenges
• Adjudicating interests of living future people
• Basic interests vs. peripheral interests
• Total overall happiness or average happiness?

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Ethical Basis of ResponsibilityRights

• Basic Idea
• Fundamental rights cannot be trumped
• Duties
• develop alternative energy
• conserve resources
• a reasonable chance for happiness
• Rights to
• Essential resources
• Nonessential resources
• Challenges
• If present generations have a duty to respect
  rights of near future generations, what about
  more distant generations?
• If the near future has the right to use these
  resources, why do not we?

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Ethical Basis of ResponsibilityVirtue
Ethics/Ethics of Care

• The Basic Idea
• Preserve resources because we CARE about future
  people

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Ethical Basis of ResponsibilityVirtue
Ethics/Ethics of Care

• Challenge
• Can we care about people who do not exist?
• No (psychological egoism)
• Yes (altruism exists)

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Sustainable Development

• Development that meets the needs of the present
  without compromising the abilities of future
  generations to meet their own needs.

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An Ethic of Sustainability

• Goals
• Establish optimal level of population economic
  activity
• Create a stable population size
• Search for the most productive and efficient use
  of resources compatible with earth's ability to
  replace resources

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Sustainable Economics

• Definition
• Traditional market economics
• allocation of resources (the production question
  and price answer)
• distribution of goods and services (the
  distribution question the market answer)
• Ability of the earth to adjust to our actions
• The rate at which resources flow through economy
• Unstable System
• Resources move at a rate outpacing the productive
  capacity of the resource base
• Stable System
• Resources used at a rate that can be sustained
  over the long term

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Practical Ramifications

• Public Policy
• Consumer demand not overriding factor in
  production decisions
• Production involving renewable resources limited
  by rate at which resources could be replenished
• Nonrenewable resources limited by rate at which
  alternatives developed
• Responsibility extends beyond life of the product
• Optimal level" of wastes and pollution
  determined by earth's capacity to assimilate them
• Questions of Personal Morality
• Does the consumer class of developed economies
  consume too much?
• Do present consumption and population patterns
  leave future generations worse off world?

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Challenges to Sustainability

• What is being sustained?
• Justification for Concern
• Economic self-interested arguments should not
  be the only support
• Also rely on spiritual, aesthetic, and ethical
  values
• Sustainable Development is too Anthropocentric