Environmental Ethical Issues

Environmental Ethical Issues

Environmental Ethical Issues

Introduction

"Ethics" is a word which doesn't typically get the blood flowing. It calls up images of Aristotle, schoolteachers, hearings where political leaders feebly protect their honor after having done something unwise that everyone else realizes to be wrong (Berger, 2000). "Ethical issues," as a phrase, is even worse. Ethical issues are frequently exactly the ones we prefer to avoid, because they force us to tackle the sometimes muddy difference between doing right as well as doing wrong or because we know that in confronting ethical issues normally, we should sometimes tackle the ethical deficiencies in our own behavior. But global warming is unquestionably an ethical issue, and we must face it as such.

Discussion

That means asking hard questions about accountability, accountability, and the differences between actions whether political, economic, or completely personal that is right against those that are wrong. I say "ethical" instead of than "moral," a word employed frequently lately in connection with global warming, because the definitions of "moral" involve reference to what we feel about something independently, instead of what we agree to normally.

Some people conceive that global warming plus the greenhouse outcome is real and humans cause part of it. They conceive this for numerous reasons. Carbon dioxide plus other greenhouse gases, which are produced by humans, have been rising, causing the earth's temperature to rise. Scientists say that there is a less then a two-percent likelihood that the melting of polar ice is caused by natural climate (Melvin , 1992). Changes in cities also affect local climates, which are caused by population growth (Eblen). As well, the earth is warmer then any time in history.

I recall watching a recent hearing before the US Senate where a retiring General opposed his public statements that homosexuality was immoral, because that was what he had been taught, "according to my upbringing."

By that standard, the beliefs and reactions learned by anyone at their parents' knee would hold equal moral standing. Appropriating global warming to carry on might well be immoral, in the sense of indecent, particularly with regard to future generations. It feels indecent to be leaving our grandchildren a world without polar bears or the Maldive Islands, a world of greater geopolitical instability caused by climate instability.

But the issue of climate change is too significant to be reduced to a mere question of independently judged decency. Ethical ...