3. Chapter 5. Environmental Ethics: Further Case-Studies Environmental ethics is something with which everyone is involved, both as individuals and as citizens.
4. Chapter 5. Environmental Ethics: Further Case-Studies However, ethical decision-making is not easy, especially in relation to wide-ranging environmental policies.
5. Chapter 5. Environmental Ethics: Further Case-Studies Two examples – the banning of DDT and the use of nuclear power – involve dilemmas which go beyond personal reactions and into a complex matrix of factors.
6. Chapter 5. Environmental Ethics: Further Case-Studies In both cases ethics is not abstract decision-making about matters of purely theoretical interest but is the key to making a decision which must be taken wisely, for the sake of the well-being of hundreds of millions of humans, and countless members of other species as well.
7. Chapter 5. Environmental Ethics: Further Case-Studies As so often in contemporary ethical dilemmas, different ethical principles, each laudable on its own, conflict with each other.
8. Chapter 5. Environmental Ethics: Further Case-Studies Ethics requires a balanced judgement to be made now but with a recognition that the balanced judgement may change in the light of future scientific discoveries and technological developments.
Editor's Notes
Keywords: climate change; DDT; energy; fossil fuels; malaria; mosquito; nuclear power; pollution; renewable; WHO Summary Environmental ethics is something with which everyone is involved, both as individuals and as citizens. However, ethical decision-making is not easy, especially in relation to wide-ranging environmental policies. Two examples – the banning of DDT and the use of nuclear power – involve dilemmas which go beyond personal reactions and into a complex matrix of factors. In both cases ethics is not abstract decision-making about matters of purely theoretical interest but is the key to making a decision which must be taken wisely, for the sake of the well-being of hundreds of millions of humans, and countless members of other species as well. As so often in contemporary ethical dilemmas, different ethical principles, each laudable on its own, conflict with each other. Ethics requires a balanced judgement to be made now but with a recognition that the balanced judgement may change in the light of future scientific discoveries and technological developments.
