Environmental Ethical Issues
Environmental issues are fairly regarded as the most controversial and the most important issues in present day society. Environmental issues are everywhere in business, in politics, and in corporate policies. Environment has already turned into a matter and the determining factor of political and business success only businesses that are considered sustainable and ecological and only politicians who display respect to environment and environmental issues have a solid chance to succeed in their professional endeavors. Although the history of environmental issues is relatively new and although environmental issues are surrounded by much controversy today, it is clear that the future of environmental issues in the world will be governed and guided by the intergenerational principles in other words, the need for environmental protection and conservation will be integrally linked to the societal obligation to preserve the environment for the future generations.
History and development of environmental issues
The history of environmental ethics goes back to the times, when the first environmental drawbacks of industrialization became obvious. However, it was not before the middle of the 1960s that environmental ethics was consolidated to become an academic science (Schmidtz Willott, 2002). Although with time, environmental ethics came to dominate the current state of environmental thinking, it took several decades to recognize the real impact of humanity on the environment.
It would be correct to say that the middle of the 20th century became a turning point in the process of reconsidering the state of relationships between human beings and the nature around them, and the questioning and rethinking of the relationship between humans with the natural environment over the last thirty years reflected the already widespread perception in the 1960s that the late twentieth century faced a population time bomb and a serious environmental crisis (Schmidtz Willott 2002, p. 23). As it often happens with society, crises become a serious driver in reconsidering the principles and standards of human relations with technology, science, politics, economics, international relations, and finally, environment, but nowhere else are the effects of these crises as long and durable as they are in the environmental issues. In many aspects, what has been written and said about environmental issues since the middle of the 20th century reflected and re-evaluated what had been told about environment in ancient times and in the middle ages (Lomborg, 2001), but the emerging environmental crisis became a good justification of the growing attention toward environment as the place in which humans are bound to live.
In 1967, Lynn White Jr. published her book about the roots and causes of the emerging environmental crisis she was the first to see environmental ethical issues as the by-product of the human over-exploitation of the environment (Schmidtz Willott, 2002). According to White, because humans historically viewed themselves as superior over other species on earth, they were not able to withstand the pressures of the environmental speculation and to stop the expansion of the environmental crisis on time (Schmidtz Willott, 2002). In 1972, Dennis Meadows in his study of environmental ethics was the first to claim the need for changing the system of beliefs and values with respect to the environment at personal, national, and international levels (Schmidtz Willott, 2002). At that time, environmental issues were gradually turning into the issues of the major societal concern and when, by the middle of the 1980s, international community was no longer concerned about the prospects of the third world war and the nuclear conflict between the USSR and the U.S., environmental ethics came to dominate the human thinking.
Environmental issues and the current state of world
In their current state, environmental issues often cross the reasonable boundaries and resemble a convenient tool of mass manipulation. Although the state of environment leaves much to be desired, individuals and whole societies face serious difficulties while trying to understand what is going on with the environment. The topic of global warming is the brightest example of how environmental ethical issues work in the present day world while no reliable statistical or scientific information ever proved or denied the presence of the real environmental threat, global warming continues to be the source of the major societal fear. In one of its recent works, Greenpeace recognized that the truth is that many environmental issues we fought for ten years back are as good as solved. Even so, the strategy continues to focus on the assumption that everything is going to hell (Lomborg 2001, p. 18). In its current state, environmental ethics reveals both negative and positive aspects in our attitudes toward environment. On the one hand, that environmental ethics exists and seems to work effectively through the development of sustainable technologies and by changing the system of societal values signifies the shift in human consciousness toward better environment. On the other hand, environmental ethics often becomes a convenient tool of manipulation, which rejects the relevance of scientific and statistical figures and argues on faith that some technologies and values are better than the other ones to preserve the environment (Lomborg, 2001). Nevertheless, it is clear that environmental ethics will continue to dominate human thinking for years ahead.
Environmental ethics and the rights of the future generations
Despite the existing controversies, environmental ethics is likely to remain the major social trend in the coming decade, and the rights of the future generations are likely to become its determining feature. These intergenerational principles were first expressed by John Rawls, who was confident that we should choose principles the consequences of which they are prepared to live with whatever generation they turn out to belong to (Gillespie 2000, p. 114). That means that whatever the changes in environmental ethics are, they will seek to preserve environment for the future generations. As such, environmental ethics will work to leave sustainable environmental heritage and to lay the foundation for successful sustainable existence for the young descendants. I personally believe that much time will pass before we are able to define the boundary between real environmentalism and commercialism in our society, these two elements are closely mixed and leave us no chance to identify the real state of art in the environmental ethics. As a result, the main task of environmental ethics is to distinguish between the real and the imagined state of the environment, because the latter often works for the benefit of the narrow financial and political interests of different societal players.
The history of environmental ethical issues is relatively new. It was not before the 1960s that environmental ethics became an academic science. In its present state, the impact and vision of the environmental ethical issues are two-fold on the one hand, the existence of environmental ethics as a science signifies a dramatic shift in the human consciousness. On the other hand, environmental ethics often becomes a convenient tool of mass manipulation. The future of the environmental ethical issues will be governed by the intergenerational principles, and much time will pass before we are able to distinguish between the real and the imagined state of the environment.
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