What is the role of environmental ethics?

Answer 1

Environmental ethics makes us aware of the indiscriminate and nefarious human activities. We inculcate moral values towards nature and learn to respect various life forms through environmental ethics Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world. It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including law, sociology, theology, economics, ecology and geography. Environmental ethics is concerned with the issue of responsible personal conduct with respect to natural landscapes, resources, species, and non-human organisms. Conduct with respect to persons is, of course, the direct concern of moral philosophy as such. (Strictly speaking, "environmental ethics" could be interpreted more broadly to include questions of responsibility toward artificial environments, but such an interpretation is not directly our concern, and we will thus confine our attention to matters of moral significance regarding natural environments).

MORE INFO: There are many ethical decisions that human beings make with respect to the environment. For example: Should we continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption? Should we continue to propagate? Should we continue to make gasoline powered vehicles? What environmental obligations do we need to keep for future generations? Is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the convenience of humanity? The academic field of environmental ethics grew up in response to the work of scientists such as Rachel Carson and events such as the first Earth Day in 1970, when environmentalists started urging philosophers to consider the philosophical aspects of environmental problems. Two papers published in Science had a crucial impact: Lynn White's "The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis" (March 1967)and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" (December 1968).Also influential was Garett Hardin's later essay called "Exploring New Ethics for Survival", as well as an essay by Aldo Leopold in his A Sand County Almanac, called "The Land Ethic," in which Leopold explicitly claimed that the roots of the ecological crisis were philosophical (1949).

ANOTHER VIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Environmental ethics is the discipline that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. This entry covers: (1) The challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., human-centeredness) embedded in traditional western ethical thinking; (2) The early development of the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s; (3) The connection of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics; (4) The attempt to apply traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; (5) The focus of environmental literature on wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline.