What Environmental Ethics has to says about the Via Verde Project What is Environmental Ethics A systematic and critical study of different moral approaches to the environment such as Extensionism ID: 210488
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Slide1
Environmental Ethics and the Via Verde
What Environmental Ethics has to says about the Via Verde ProjectSlide2
What is Environmental Ethics?
A systematic and critical study of different moral approaches to the environment such as…
Extensionism
Agrarianism
Biocentrism
Ecocentrism
Environmental Virtue EthicsSlide3
Today’s Agenda
Use these approaches as lenses through which to examine three cases in environmental ethics
Give a brief account of each approach
Raise questions from each approach to help structure an inquiry into the project’s ethical implicationsSlide4
Environmental Ethics Rectangle
Anthropocentric
Non-anthropocentric
Holistic
Agrarianism
: Humans transform nature by agriculture
but understand the farm as ecosystem (Berry, Jefferson, Jackson)
Ecocentrism
: “A thing is good if it promotes the integrity,
beauty, and stability of the biotic community.”
Focus on biotic community conceived holistically
Individualistic
Extensionism
: Individualistic ethical approaches such as Utilitarianism and Deontology are extended to cover non-humans. (Singer for Utilitarianism
and Regan for Deontology)
Biocentrism
: obligations not
to interfere with teleological centers of a life. Basic , non-human
telos
can trump non-basic and even basic human interests.Slide5
Classify according to method
Individualistic
Humans are atomic individuals (See Hobbes, Locke, and economic theories of rational self interest)
Complex wholes (like ecosystems) can be reduced to sum of their parts
Reductionistic
(Methodological individualism)
Holisitic
Humans are social (See communitarians like Taylor, J. Dewey or go back to Aristotle)
Whole cannot be reduced to parts.
Wholes are greater than the sum of their partsSlide6
Classified according to perspective
Anthropocentric
Anthropocentric: Centered around humans. (Comes from Greek word
anthropo
which means human)
Environmental ethics formulated from a point of view centered around human beings
Non-anthropocentric
Non-anthropocentric: Not centered around humans
Moral community not centered around humans. Animals, plants, small organisms all count in the moral scheme of things. Attempt made to formulate a point of view that is non-human.Slide7
Polar Bear Gate
Gore
uses study to reinforce argument for global warming. Oil interests push to discredit via charge of research misconduct
Spotted four dead polar bears
More distance between ice floes
Waves
increase when ice disappears
Evidence that PBs should be treated as endangered species
Used by others as evidence of GW
Conflict of Interest—Diverting research funds to sympathetic proposals
Environmental Ethics Frameworks
What human and non-human rights are at stake in this project?
What are the harms and benefits this technology will bring about?
How are these harms and benefits distributed among human and non-human stakeholders?
How does this technology stand with Environmental
Virtues?
Position
Care
Attunement
Endurance
Slide8
Solyndra
Gore and Obama argue that environmental protection is also good business. (It is a way of keeping
appropriate technology in the US)
Solyndra
asks for government guaranteed loan to start-up business making solar panels
Secures ½ billion loan
Goes bankrupt in 2011
Investigation ensues to discredit government support of environmentally appropriate technology and business
Critics claim that government should not “play venture capitalist.”
Conflict of interest: Obama
administration fast-tracked project & ignored cash-flow problems because of
Solyndra
campaign contributions
Globalism—Obama administration urge US businesses to hold on to green technology
Environmental Ethics Frameworks
What human and non-human rights are at stake in this project?
What are the harms and benefits this technology will bring about?
How are these harms and benefits distributed among human and non-human stakeholders?
How does this technology stand with Environmental
Virtues?
Position
Care
Attunement
Endurance
Slide9
Keystone XL Pipeline
Trans
Canade
wants to build an oil pipeline across central US
to ship crude oil from Canada to Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River oil refineries
Oil or Tar Sands technology (Controversial because production of oil using this technology is energy intensive and has strong impact on environment)
Strong impact on wetlands and peat lands
Technology appears bad until compared with existing method of oil production and transport
Two methods of extraction (open pit mines versus steam assisted gravity drainage
Produces jobs in Central Indiana (BP jobs with pipeline parts manufacture)
41/2 barrels of water for one barrel of oil
Oil pipeline to pass through Ogallala Aquifer
Environmental Ethics Frameworks
What human and non-human rights are at stake in this project?
What are the harms and benefits this technology will bring about?
How are these harms and benefits distributed among human and non-human stakeholders?
How does this technology stand with Environmental
Virtues?
Position
Care
Attunement
Endurance
Slide10
1a. Extending the umbrella of utilitarianism to cover animals (Peter Singer)
Individualistic and AnthropocentricSlide11
Singer: Animal Liberation
Utilitarianism
Actions and policies derive their moral worth from their consequences
Maximize good results and minimize bad results
All sentient beings have moral worth
Sentiency includes consciousness and ability to feel pleasure and pain
The umbrella of moral consideration is extended to animals because they have sentiency
Their pleasures and pains countSlide12
1b.
Extended moral rights to animal (
Tom Regan)
Anthropocentric and IndividualisticSlide13
Regan: The Case for Animal Rights
Animals are moral patients and have “preference autonomy”
= preferences along with the ability to act on them
Humans have duties to recognize and respect preference autonomy of moral patients including animals
Rights would include right to life, right to a livable environment (=environment in which they can pursue their preferences)Slide14
Regan Quotes
“The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us—to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or put in our cross hairs for sport or money.”
Joseph R. Des
Jardins
. (1993).
Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy
. Wadsworth, 126
“To be the subject –of-a-life…involves more than merely being alive and more than merely being conscious. To be the subject-of-a-life is to…have beliefs and desires; perceptions, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future…their experiential life fares well or ill for them, independently of their utility for others” (Des
Jardins
128)Slide15
2
. Agrarianism:
Living in small farms and practicing traditional agriculture fosters key civic and moral virtues (
Paul Thompson,
Spirit of the Soil
, and Wendell Berry,
The Unsettling of America
,
A Place on the Earth
Holistic and AnthropocentricSlide16
Wendell Berry
Unsettling of America
Adverse consequences of industrialization of agriculture
Small farms give way to industrialized agriculture
Had small farm in Kentucky; treated it as an ecosystem
Accords Jefferson’s view that small farms were essential to democracy
Fostered development of moral and civic virtues
Dispersed power (Decentralized)
A Place on Earth
: main character of novel is a farm
Personification of the landSlide17
3. Biocentrism:
Each living thing is a “teleological center of a life”.
There are moral obligations to recognize and respect these “centers”
Non-anthropocentric and individualisticSlide18
Paul Taylor: Biocentrism
Hursthouse
summarizes:
“Environmental Virtue Ethics” in Working Virtue edited by R. Walker and P. Ivanhoe. Oxford: 163.
Every living thing has a
telos
= a good of its own.
Fish swim, birds fly
Its nature or being is fulfilled by exercising its proper
telos
Positive duties to promote the
telos
Negative duties not to interfere with
telosSlide19
Human Goods / Non-Human Goods
Basic Non-Human Good
Non-Basic, Non-Human Good
Basic Human Good
Basic human good has priority
(Right of Self-Defense)
Do humans have a basic need for energy? Do the cases under consideration violate basic non-human needs? Are there alternatives?
Basic human
good has priority because a basic good trumps a non-basic good.
Humans need for energy would trump if project did not violate basic, non-human needs
Non-Basic Human Good
The basic,
non-human good has priority because a basic good trumps a non-basic good.
Humans need energy for recreational activities. Do these interfere with basic, non-human needs?
Toss up. Some non-basic goods have priority over others.
If non-basic human
needs conflict with non-basic non-human needs in the cases under consideration, this is a toss up.Slide20
4. Ecocentrism
: Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic
Non-anthropocentric (under most interpretations) and HolisticSlide21
Ecocentrism
Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic” in
A Sand County Almanac.
“There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus’ slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.”
“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”
“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.”Slide22
A Virtue Approach to Environmental Ethics
Wensveen
, “Cardinal Environmental Virtues: A Neurobiological Perspective,” in Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by R. Sandler and P.
Cafaro
.
Rowman
& Littlefield: 176-177Slide23
Definitions of Virtue and Virtue Ethics
“
Las
virtudes son disposiciones y rasgos del carácter del agente moral a la hora de ejecutar las acciones inherentes al ser persona.
se trata de un
punto intermedio entre dos extremos
, ninguno de los cuales representa un valor moral, sino que más bien puede constituir un vicio o al menos carecer de
excelencia
no son meros rasgos del carácter que se operan automáticamente, sino
respuestas deliberadas
ante las situaciones
concretas
existe un cierto
grado de influencia cultural
que puede hacer que la manifestación de la virtud varíe según el contexto
se puede distinguir la “virtud” de las virtudes, en cuanto que la primera se refiere a la
integridad o coherencia de la personalidad ante la vida
, mientras que las segundas son reacciones a situaciones
especificas”Slide24
Lugo,E
. (2002)
Relación Medico/paciente: encuentro interpersonal ética y espiritualidad.
Pontificia Universidad
Católica
de Puerto Rico:
88Slide25
Definition of Virtue and Virtue Ethics
“A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what is honest or generous, nor is it to be helpfully specified as a “desirable” or “morally valuable” character trait.
It is, indeed a character trait—that is, a disposition which is well entrenched in its possessor, something that, as we say
“goes all the way down”,
unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker—but the disposition in question…is multi-track.
It is concerned with many other actions as well, with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests expectations and sensibilities.
To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset.”Slide26
Hursthouse
, R. (2007) “Virtue Ethics” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
Accessed 11/11/2008Slide27
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics does focus on individual actions but in a different way than other theories
It assesses the moral worth of an action by “fitting” into different contexts:
Narrative of a morally exemplary career
Practice or community
So, an environmental virtue = that which, together with other actions, sustains the “beauty, stability, and integrity of the biotic community” Slide28
Context 1: Moral Exemplar
Would this action fit into the career of a morally exemplary …
Engineer
Business practitioner
Community leader
This action instantiates certain values. Would I want these values to become central parts of my core self identity?
How does this action and the values it instantiates fit into my own self-narrative?Slide29
Context 2: Practice
Does this action resonates with the values professed (and actually constitutive of) my practice or profession?
Doctor: Does this resonate with a practice devoted to health?
Lawyer: Does this action resonate with a practice devoted to an adversarial approach to justice and truth?
Engineer: Does this action resonate with a practice devoted to public wellbeing (health and welfare), client fidelity, peer collegiality, and professional integrity
Business practitioner: Does this practice resonate with the prosperity and sustainability (taken in its widest sense) of the community?Slide30
Context 3: Biotic Community
To paraphrase Leopold, does this action resonate with the beauty, stability, and integrity of the biotic community (which includes inanimate as well as animate matter).
This involves four virtues (reconfigured from a human context to a trans-human context)
Virtues of position
Virtues of care
Virtues of attunement
Virtues of endurance
Louke
Van
Wensveen
: “Cardinal Environmental Virtues”Slide31
Environmental Virtues from
Wensveen
Virtues of Position
: "Constructive habits of seeing ourselves in a particular place in a relational structure and interacting accordingly.”
Can we integrate energy production technologies
with the surrounding natural environment?
Examples:
Humility, self-acceptance, gratitude, appreciation of good in others, prudence, and practical judgment
Question
:
Do the technologies in our cases resonate with virtues such as
humility
? Or do they express corresponding vices such as greed, arrogance, and imprudence?Slide32
Environmental Virtues from
Wensveen
Virtues of Care
: "habits of constructive involvement within the relational structure where we have found our place. How widely do we cast our sensors in order to learn what is needed around us?“
Honing in on weak points in the ecosystem and calibrating action to address these vulnerabilities
Examples:
Attentiveness, benevolence, loving nature, friendship
Question
:
Do the technologies under consideration in design and execution resonate with
attentiveness
and
benevolence
? Do they fall into vices such as insensitivity and malevolence (or indifference)?Slide33
More Environmental Virtues
Virtues of Attunement
: "habits of handling temptations by adjusting our positive, outgoing drives and emotions to match our chosen place and degree of constructive,
ecosocial
engagement."
Can energy conservation be a source of solidarity and also defuse the current energy crisis in PR? (reconfigures temperance)
Examples:
Frugality and simplicity
Question
:
Do the technologies under consideration express virtues or values like
frugality
and
simplicity
? Do they express the vices of manifest and concealed complexity? (Winner) Slide34
More Environmental Virtues
Virtues of Endurance
:
"habits of facing dangers and difficulties by handling our negative, protective drives and emotions in such a way that we can sustain our chosen sense of place and degree of constructive
ecosocial
engagement."
Can Puerto Ricans act resolutely and ethically in the face of environmental and economic crises? (Integration, compromise, and ethical trade-offs
Examples
:
Tenacity (mean between apathy and obsession), loyalty, perseverance
Question
:
Does the Via Verde express tenacity, loyalty, and perseverance especially in relation to the natural environment? Does it target the corresponding vices?Slide35
Framing Solutions
Two Paradigms
Follow the current paradigm
Energy growth
Reduce immediate costs
Diversify sources (using non-renewable resources)
Keep energy production centralized and technologically sophisticated (complicated)
New paradigm (new goal)
Energy Independence
Reduce usage through conservation and technology (smart grids and IPRs)
Decentralization and simplification of energy production
Diversify sources
Make use of renewable resources
Use of “paradigm” is appropriate here—represent two different ways of approaching the PR energy “crises”Slide36
Virtue Perspective on Paradigm Choice
These paradigms also represent two fundamentally different paths for PR
Choice not only expresses who we are (our collective identity or character) but will, partially, constitute who we will become
So, seeing these two paradigms and their associated virtues and vices, virtue ethics has us ask what kind of people we wish to become
Each choice expresses fundamental dispositionsSlide37
Values Expressed by Participants
Values Sensitive to Context
:
Values Expressed by Signal Events (
Cogentrix
, Copper Mining, CAPECO explosion, Zoe
Colocotroni
Oil Spill)
Values telescoped into the image of
Jibaro
Environmental and social justice
Health and SafetyAutonomyIdentification with Land, History, Tradition.
These values, in their thick sense, depend on the quality of the discourse generated within the community.Slide38
Conclusion
Examined four approaches to environmental ethics
Interpreted approaches as lenses that highlighted certain aspects and de-emphasized others
Each approach generated questions pertinent to the ethics of the Via Verde Project
Choice between energy paradigms expresses our character as a community, as a nation, as a society
Choice and action reflect existing character
But they also inaugurate a future that constitutes who we are to becomeSlide39
William J. Frey
College of Business Administration
UPRM
freyuprm@yahoo.com
williamjoseph.frey@upr.edu
http://cnx.org/content/m32584/latest/