The choice that people make can influence environmental quality in many ways – by affecting the availability of resources, causing pollution, and causing species and natural ecosystems to become endangered. Decisions influencing environmental quality are influenced by two types of considerations: knowledge and ethics.
In the present context book, knowledge refers to information and understanding about the natural world, and ethics refers to the perception of right and wrong and the appropriate behaviour of people toward each other, other species, and nature. Of course, people may choose to interact with the environment and ecosystems in various ways. On the one hand, knowledge provides guidance about the consequences of alternative choices, including damage that might be caused and actions that could be taken to avoid that effect. On the other hand, ethics provides guidance about which alternative actions should be favoured or even allowed to occur.
Because modern humans have enormous power to utilize and damage the environment, the influence of knowledge and ethics on choices is a vital consideration. And we can choose among various alternatives. For example, individual people can decide whether to have children, purchase an automobile, or eat meat, while society can choose whether to allow the hunting of whales, clear-cutting of forests, or construction of nuclear-power plants. All of these options have implications for environmental quality.
Perceptions of value (of merit or importance) also profoundly influence how the consequences of human actions are interpreted. Environmental values can be divided into two broad classes: utilitarian and intrinsic.
1. Utilitarian value (also known as instrumental value) is based on the known importance of something to the welfare of people (see also the discussion of the anthropocentric world view, below). Accordingly, components of the environment and ecosystems are considered important only if they are resources necessary to sustain humans—that is, if they bestow economic benefits, provide livelihoods, and contribute to the life-support system. In effect, people harvest materials from nature because they have utilitarian value. These necessities include water, timber, fish and animals hunted in wild places, and agricultural crops grown in managed ecosystems.
Ecological values are somewhat broader utilitarian values—they are based on the needs of humans, but also on those of other species and natural ecosystems. Ecological values often take a longer-term view. Aesthetic values are also utilitarian but are based on an appreciation of beauty, but they are subjective and influenced by cultural perspectives. For instance, environmental aesthetics might value natural wilderness over human-dominated ecosystems, free-living whales over whale meat, and large standing trees over toilet paper. On the other hand, aesthetics that are heavily influenced by more anthropogenic considerations might result in the opposite preferences. Maintaining aesthetic values can provide substantial cultural, social, psychological, and economic benefits.
2. Intrinsic value is based on the belief that components of the natural environment (such as species and natural ecosystems) have inherent value and a right to exist, regardless of any positive, negative, or neutral relationships with humans. Under this system, it would be wrong for people to treat other creatures cruelly, to take actions that cause natural entities to become endangered or extinct, or to fail to prevent such occurrences.
As was noted previously, ethics concerns the perception of right and wrong and the values and rules that should govern human conduct. Clearly, ethics of all kinds depend upon the values that people believe are important. Environmental ethics deal with the responsibilities of present humans to both future generations and other species to ensure that the world will continue to function in an ecologically healthy way, and to provide adequate resources and livelihoods (this is also a key aspect of sustainable development; see the last section of this chapter). The environmental values described above underlie this system of ethics. Applying environmental ethics often means analyzing and balancing standards that may conflict, because aesthetic, ecological, intrinsic, and utilitarian values rarely all coincide.
There is also tension between ethical considerations that are individualistic and those that are holistic. For example, animal-rights activists are highly concerned with issues involving the treatment of individual organisms. Ecologists, however, are typically more concerned with holistic values, such as a population, species, or ecosystem. As such, an ecologist might advocate a cull of overabundant deer in a park in order to favour the survival of populations of endangered plants, whereas that action might be resisted by an animal-rights activist.
Values and ethics, in turn, support larger systems known as world views. A world view is a comprehensive philosophy of human life and the universe, and of the relationship between people and the natural world. World views include traditional religions, philosophies, and science, as well as other belief systems. In an environmental context, generally important world views are known as anthropocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric, while the frontier and sustainability world views are more related to the use of resources. The anthropocentric world view considers humans as being at the centre of moral consideration. People are viewed as being more worthy than any other species and as uniquely disconnected from the rest of nature. Therefore, the anthropocentric world view judges the importance and worthiness of everything, including other species and ecosystems, in terms of the implications for human welfare.
The biocentric world view focuses on living entities and considers all species (and individuals) as having intrinsic value. Humans are considered a unique and special species, but not as being more worthy than other species. As such, the biocentric world view rejects discrimination against other species, or speciesism (a term similar to racism or sexism).
The ecocentric world view considers the direct and indirect connections among species within ecosystems to be invaluable. It also includes consideration for non-living entities, such as rocks, soil, and water. It incorporates the biocentric world view but goes well beyond it by stressing the importance of interdependent ecological functions, such as productivity and nutrient cycling.
The frontier world view asserts that humans have a right to exploit nature by consuming natural resources in boundless quantities. This world view claims that people are superior and have a right to exploit nature. Moreover, the supply of resources to sustain humans is considered to be limitless, because new stocks can always be found, or substitutes discovered. The consumption of resources is considered to be good because it enables economies to grow. Nations and individuals should be allowed to consume resources aggressively, as long as no people are hurt in the process.
The sustainability world view acknowledges that humans must have access to vital resources, but the exploitation of those necessities should be governed by appropriate ecological, intrinsic, and aesthetic values. The sustainability world view can assume various forms. The spaceship world view is quite anthropocentric. It focuses only on sustaining resources needed by people, and it assumes that humans can exert a great degree of control over natural processes and can safely pilot “spaceship Earth.” In contrast, ecological sustainability is more ecocentric. It considers people within an ecological context and focuses on sustaining all components of Earth’s life-support system by preventing human actions that would degrade them. In an ecologically sustainable economy, natural goods and services should be utilized only in ways that do not compromise their future availability and do not endanger the survival of species or natural ecosystems.
The attitudes of people and their societies toward other species, natural ecosystems, and resources have enormous implications for environmental quality. Extraordinary damages have been legitimized by attitudes based on a belief in the inalienable right of humans to harvest whatever they desire from nature, without consideration of pollution, threats to species, or the availability of resources for future generations. Clearly, one of the keys to resolving the environmental crisis is to achieve a widespread adoption of ecocentric and ecological sustainability world views.
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