Environmental Ethics and Economics: Values and Choices

Culture and worldviewassessments of costs and benefits - Culture = knowledge, beliefs, values, and learned ways of life shared by a group of people - Worldview = a person’s or group’s b

PowerPoint ® Slides prepared by Jay Withgott and Heidi Marcum

Jay Withgott and Heidi Marcum

This lecture will help you understand:

• Uranium deposits in Australia often occur on sacred Aboriginal

land

- The Mirrar oppose the mine for cultural, religious, ethical,

health, and economic reasons

The mine will not be developed unless the Mirrar agree

Central Case: The Mirrar Clan Confronts the Jabiluka Uranium Mine

Ethics and economics

what we value

environmental decisions and actions

Culture and worldview

assessments of costs and benefits

- Culture = knowledge, beliefs, values, and learned

ways of life shared by a group of people

- Worldview = a person’s or group’s beliefs about the

meaning, purpose, operation, and essence of the world

Culture and worldview affect our perception of the

environment and environmental problems

and energy from the mine

Worldviews differ among people

Many factors shape worldviews

- Vested interest = an individual with strong

interests in the outcome of a decision that results

in gain or loss for that individual

• Ethics = the study of good and bad, right and wrong

- Relativists = ethics varies with social context

- Universalists = right and wrong remains the same

across cultures and situations

• Ethical standards = criteria that help differentiate right

from wrong

- Utility = something right produces the most benefits

for the most people

Environmental ethics

• Environmental ethics = application of ethical standards

to relationships between human and non-human entities

We have expanded our ethical consideration

• To include animals, communities, nature

Expanding ethical concern

- Anthropocentrism = only humans have rights

- Biocentrism = certain living things also have value

- Ecocentrism = whole ecological systems have value

connections

Western ethical expansion

History of environmental ethics

• People have questioned our relationship with the environment for

centuries

• Christianity’s attitude towards the environment

• Anthropocentric hostility, or

• Stewardship?

• The Industrial Revolution increased consumption and pollution

• People no longer appreciated nature

• Transcendentalism = nature is a manifestation of the divine

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

The preservation ethic

• Unspoiled nature should be protected for its own inherent value

• John Muir (right, with President Roosevelt at Yosemite National

Park) had an ecocentric viewpoint

The conservation ethic

• Use natural resources wisely for the greatest good for the most people

• Gifford Pinchot had an anthropocentric viewpoint

The land ethic

• Healthy ecological systems depend on protecting all parts

• Aldo Leopold believed the land ethic changes the role of people from conquerors of the land to citizens of it

Deep ecology, ecofeminism, and justice

• Deep ecology = humans are inseparable from nature

protected

• Ecofeminism = male-dominated societies have degraded

women and the environment through fear and hate

• Environmental justice = the fair and equitable treatment

of all people regarding environmental issues

nations with uninformed residents

Environmental justice (EJ)

hazards, and environmental degradation

75% of toxic waste landfills in the southeastern U.S are in

communities with higher racial minorities

Environmental justice and Native Americans

From 1948 to the 1960s, Navajo miners were not warned

of radiation risks, nor provided protection by the industry

or the U.S government

• Economics studies how people use resources to provide

goods and services in the face of demand

Types of modern economies

• Economy = a social system that converts resources into

• Subsistence economy = people get their daily needs

directly from nature; they do not purchase or trade

• Capitalist market economy = buyers and sellers interact

to determine prices and production of goods and services

• Centrally planned economy = the government

determines how to allocate resources

• Mixed economy = governments intervene to some extent

Government intervenes in a market

economy

intervene to:

• Mitigate pollution

Conventional view of economics

Environmental view of economics

exist within, and

depend on, the

Environmental systems support economies

• Ecosystem services = essential services support the life

that makes economic activities possible

Classical economics

own economic self-interest will benefit society as a whole (Adam Smith, 1723-1790)

restricted by government

product are produced

The market favors equilibrium between supply and demand

Marginal benefit and cost curves

• Cost-benefit analysis =

the costs of a proposed

action are compared to

the benefits that result

from the action

• If benefits > costs:

pursue the action

• Not all costs and benefits

can be identified

Marginal benefit and cost curves determine an “optimal” level

of resource use or pollution mitigation

Neoclassical economics

Assumption: Resources are infinite

and interchangeable

their forests

• Costs and benefits are experienced by the buyer and seller alone

- Do not affect other members of the society

- Pricing ignores social, environmental or economic costs

• Externalities = costs or benefits involving people other than the buyer or seller

• External costs = borne by someone not involved in a transaction

- Human health problems

- Resource depletion

- Hard to account for and eliminate

- How do you assign monetary value to illness?

Assumption: Costs and benefits are internal

• A future event counts less than a present one

- Discounting = short-term costs and benefits are more important

than long-term costs and benefits

- Policymakers ignore long term consequences of our actions

- Discourages attention to resource depletion and pollution

• Economic growth is necessary to maintain employment and social order

- Promoting economic growth creates opportunities for poor to become wealthier

- Progress is measured by economic growth

Assumptions: Long-term effects are

discounted and growth is good

Copyright © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

• “More and bigger is better”

• The dramatic rise in per-person consumption has severe

Is the growth paradigm good for us?

Is economic growth sustainable?

• Affluenza = material goods do not always bring

contentment

production perpetuates the illusion that resources are unlimited

everything

Other types of economists

• Ecological economists = civilizations cannot overcome

environmental limitations

ecological systems

• Environmental economists = unsustainable economies

have high population growth and inefficient resource use

A steady state economy

• As resources became harder to find, economic growth slows and stabilizes (John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873)

• We must rethink our assumptions and change our way of economic transactions

• This does not mean a lower quality of life

• Economies are measured in various ways

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) = total monetary

value of final goods and services produced

• Does not account for nonmarket values

• Pollution increases GDP

GPI: An alternative to the GDP

• Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) = differentiates between desirable and undesirable economic activity

- Positive contributions (i.e volunteer work) not paid for with money are added to economic activity

- Negative impacts (crime, pollution) are subtracted

In the U.S., GDP has risen greatly, but not GPI

More “green accounting” indicators

• Net Economic Welfare (NEW) = adjusts GDP by adding

the value of leisure time, while deducting environmental degradation

• Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) = based on

income, wealth distribution, resource depletion

nation’s welfare

Valuing ecosystems goods and services

• Nonmarket values = values not included in the price of a

good or service

Assigning value to ecosystem services

• Contingent valuation = uses surveys to determine how

much people are willing to pay to protect or restore a

resource

overinflate values

• Revealed preferences = revealed by actual behavior

The global value of all ecosystem services = $42 trillion!

Markets can fail

• Market failure = markets do not account for the

environment’s positive impacts

on the environment or people (external costs)

- Green taxes = penalize harmful activities

sustainability

Ecolabeling addresses market failures

market failure

- Ecolabeling = tells consumers

which brands use sustainable

processes

businesses to switch to better processes

sustainable companies

Corporations are responding to concerns

by “greening” their operations

consumer preference for sustainable products

into thinking companies are acting sustainably

to bear on environmental protection and conservation

considerations

resulting in economic health and environmental quality

d) All living things

e) All nonliving things

QUESTION: Review

Which of the following is an ecosystem service? a) Water purification in wetlands

b) Climate regulation in the atmosphere

d) Waste treatment by bacteria

QUESTION: Review

Which is NOT an assumption of neoclassical economics that can lead to environmental degradation?

a) Resources are limited

b) Long-term effects are downplayed

c) All costs and benefits are experienced by the buyer

and seller alone

d) Growth is good

QUESTION: Review

Which of the following statements would be spoken by an ecological economist?

a) The current economic system is working fine

b) The current economic system simply needs to be

fine-tuned

c) The current economic system is broken and a new

one needs to be developedd) Economic systems never work

QUESTION: Interpreting Graphs and Data

Market equilibrium, which sets the price of a product, is reached …

a) When supply exceeds

d) When supply equals

demand

QUESTION: Interpreting Graphs and Data

Which conclusion can you draw from this graph?

a) GDP has not really increased since 1950

b) Although we are spending more money, our lives are not much better

c) We are spending less money, and our lives are much better

d) The GPI is not as accurate as GDP

QUESTION: Viewpoints

Think of an issue in your community that could pit

environmentalists against economic development What

do you think should prevail: environmental protection or economic development?

a) Economic growth; we need the jobs

b) Environmental protection; we need the

environmentc) Both; a compromise must be reached

d) Whatever costs the taxpayers the least

QUESTION: Viewpoints

What entities do you include in your domain of ethical concern?

a) Humans only

b) Humans and pets

c) Humans, pets, and other animals

d) Humans, pets, other animals, and nature