How does a manager, whether situated within a government agency, a nonprofit organization, or a private corporation, think in ethical terms, in making decisions intended to be environmentally sound? The set of articles included here aims to demonstrate such thinking in a range of its diverse pathways and in connection with a sampling of cases[1].
Environmental ethics are grouped into six major varieties, which the six articles included here are intended to illustrate. None of the varieties are exclusive; each is simply centered somewhat differently from the others, yet is nonetheless linked to them. Three are non-human-centered (nonanthropocentric), and three are human-centered (anthropocentric); and they can be viewed, looking from one side to the other, as engaged in a mutual discourse or dialectic, each seeking to frame or reframe the ethics of environmental concern. Additionally, the three nonanthropocentric ethics can be loosely associated with three gradations of remedial human interventionism in the environment; and the three anthropocentric ethics with three distinguishable environmental policy types. The articles also serve to illustrate these several further dimensions of environmental decision making.
The first variety of environmental ethics, derived from a nonanthropocentric outlook, is wilderness ethics, which center upon wilderness and its preservation, a matter sufficiently contested to engender what has come to be called the great wilderness debate. Does wilderness even exist? John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club (1892), and vehemently opposed the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in the Yosemite National Park, exemplifies the standpoint of wilderness ethics. What can be styled minimalist (very spare) human interventionism is associated with this standpoint. In his article, Balancing Renewable Energy with Non-Renewable Wilderness, David Berliner addresses such concerns in the case of wind turbines in the Nantucket Sound, paired with the case of solar panels in the Mojave Desert.
In immediate counterpoint, the next variety of environmental ethics, derived from an anthropocentric outlook, is conservation ethics, which center upon resource utilization by humans. Wilderness is challenged, as evidenced by the governmental decision to inundate the Hetch Hetchy Valley to create in its place the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the United States Forest Service (1905-1910), who insisted upon the public, professional and scientific management of natural resources, was a formulator of conservation ethics. Development policy can be associated with this standpoint, since natural resources are often intended for conversion into built environments. Tobias Shepherd addresses the ensuing problems in his article, Sprawl and Thirst in the Desert: The Growth of Las Vegas.
The third variety of environmental ethics, nonanthropocentric in its derivation, is ecosystem ethics, which center upon the ecosystem and its adaptations, the conditions and preconditions of which are so complex as to have engendered the ecological integrity debate. Is this dynamic – and deep – ecological entity recognizable from moment to moment? Aldo Leopold, the profound ecologist who construed the land ethic (in the 1940s, when the term ecosystem came into use), and suggested thinking like a mountain, exemplifies the standpoint of ecosystem ethics. What can be called reformist (progressively corrected) human interventionism is associated with this position. In his article, The Myth of Malawi's Maize Miracle: A Green Revolution for Africa, Tobiah Gaster addresses the resulting conflict of short- and long-term dynamics.
Responding to a perceived prevalent focus upon nonhuman conditions, an anthropocentric demand arises once again for refocus on human conditions, with the aim of achieving environmental justice, another variation of environmental ethics. The ecosystem is challenged – or at least reconstructed more as a people pyramid than as a land pyramid. Leveled against ignorance of environmental issues afflicting particularly communities of color, an insistence on fair utilization arises with African-American protests in Warren County, North Carolina, against the local disposal of PCBs (1982). Clean-up policy is heavily involved with this standpoint, as the vulnerable are burdened disproportionately with everyone's waste and pollution. Barbara Bendandi examines such a case in her article, Waste Profiteering and the Perennial Crisis in Campania.
The fifth variety of environmental ethics, again nonanthropocentric in outlook, might be called nonhuman ethics, which center upon particular living and nonliving beings and their distinctive well-beings, to the extent of fanning an animal (and plant) rights debate. Are human beings morally bound to give moral consideration to nonhuman beings? The founding (1824) of the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals", the first animal welfare charity in the world, was much later (1975) punctuated by the philosopher Peter Singer's delineation of animal liberation. What might be called revisionist (critically reframed) human interventionism can be associated with this standpoint. In his article, Burning with Malice: Iraq's 1991 Unleashing of the Kuwaiti Oil Fields, Joe Katz ponders the inundation of desert sands and gulf waters with oil.
In view of this concern and all the others, a sixth variety of environmental ethics, anthropocentric in derivation, has emerged, which can be called sustainability ethics. All particulars of life, including habitat, inhabitation, and habituation, are subject to review for the sake of future utilization. The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (1987), of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development, offers the perception that present human generations, in meeting their needs, ought not to compromise the ability of future human generations to do so. Remediating harm done to nature, and thereby to humans, restoration policy is vital to this standpoint and coheres with sustainable development policy. Asaf Selinger discusses this interrelationship in his article, Israeli Land on Fire and the Restoration of Community: The Forest of Mt. Carmel.
Within the articles presented here, not only do the various environmental ethics appear, but also specific types of ethical quandaries can be found, which arise in the context of human ethics, too. Among these quandaries are the applicability of the lesser-of-two-evils argument; the trade-off between conflicting desired ends; the limitations of justificatory efforts; the weightiness of history and custom; the unexpectedness of events and their effects; and the inapplicability of established practices. There are no quantitative answers to the qualitative difficulties. The irreducibility of ethical analysis of harms and benefits to economic analysis of costs and benefits is apparent throughout the articles. The manager who thinks in ethical terms in seeking to make sound environmental decisions sees in economics a partial indicator of harms and benefits, but also wonders whether a counterpart who thinks in economic terms sees in ethics even a partial indicator of costs and benefits.
Often in the field of environmental ethics, economic considerations are presented as antithetical to both non-human-centered and human-centered good. Whether framed as the profit motive or the bottom line, economic growth or economic development, hedonistic utilitarianism, consumerism or overconsumption, the modern Western lifestyle, materialism, capitalism, colonialism or neocolonialism, the hegemonic North, globalization or human domination, the unethical is apt to be perceived as inextricable from economic wealth, insofar as this is clearly not universal and is evidently parasitically and predatorily engaged with economic poverty, or simply negligently and acquiescently coexists with it. Nonetheless, the unethical is motivationally more complex. Many human motivations different from but often connected to economic motivation yield environmental together with human degradation. An undue sense of aesthetic entitlement, an unabated passion for high-risk gambling, a mistaken public-minded impulse, a familial lineage of laundered criminality, an infuriated surge of vengefulness, and a misdirected deterministic territoriality, all appear in the articles presented here.
Any such human motivations may be sufficiently powerful to prove wilderness ephemeral, the ecosystem vulnerable and particular nonhumans defenseless – while also impeding and subverting the good of many humans. Thinking of environmental ethics, and aiming at their realization in the field of human action, a manager considers their contingency on human ethics, framing and implementing policies with consideration given to the variability both of all nature and of human nature.
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