IB Environmental systems and societies Hl.ca Environmental Ethics Notes

Environmental Ethics: Extending Morality Beyond Humans

1. Ethics is the study of what is right and wrong, and environmental ethics applies that question to how humans should treat the natural world.
2. Its central question: does nature have value only as a resource for people, or value in its own right?

1. Environmental ethics emerged as a distinct field in the 1960s and 1970s, as pollution, resource depletion and biodiversity loss exposed the limits of older ethics.
2. Traditional Western ethics dealt mainly with duties between humans, and gave no clear moral status to non-human or non-living nature.

Worldviews Shape Environmental Ethics: From Technocentric to Ecocentric

A person's ethical stance toward nature flows from their worldview, which sits on a spectrum from technocentric to ecocentric.

1. Technocentric
   1. Values nature mainly for human use and trusts technology to solve environmental problems.
   2. A technocentric response to climate change backs carbon capture or geoengineering over strict limits on growth.
2. Anthropocentric
   1. Puts human welfare first and treats nature as mostly having instrumental value.
   2. It ranges from strong anthropocentrism (immediate economic gain) to weak anthropocentrism (protecting nature for long-term human benefit).
3. Ecocentric
   1. Sees nature as having intrinsic value and humans as part of the biotic community, not above it.
   2. Biocentrism (all living things have inherent worth) and deep ecology (radical lifestyle change) sit at this end of the spectrum.

Ethical Tensions Run Through Environmental Choices

1. Conservation versus economic growth
   1. Protecting a forest can mean forgoing the jobs and income that clearing it would bring.
2. Present needs versus future generations
   1. Using a resource now can leave less for people not yet born.
3. Human benefit versus the worth of other species
   1. A dam may deliver water and power while drowning habitats that have value in themselves.

How the Rest of HL Ethics Builds on This

1. The value of nature (intrinsic versus instrumental) is developed in HL.cB, and how far moral standing extends in HL.cC.
2. These worldviews reappear as named ethical frameworks (virtue, consequentialist, rights-based) in HL.cD and HL.cE, while who bears environmental harm is examined in HL.cG.