1 ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS Article (2000 words): A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, Blackwell 2007. By Thomas Søbirk Petersen: thomassp@ruc.dk Word-count: 2133 (without footnotes) Version: New 28/11 2006 1. Introduction Our use of technology has changed and continues to change the natural environment. While technology – medicine, transportation technologies and information technology and so on – can help us to prosper, there is also no doubt that the production and use of technology can have a negative impact on the environment and therefore on us. The pollution of rivers, oceans and the air poses an immediate threat to the health of humans; and the build-up of greenhouse gases, depletion of the ozone layer, and deforestation may each pose a threat, not only to the health of humans, but also to the survival of the human species. On the other hand, innovation within technology can also be used to remove or mitigate some of these man-made threats, and to minimise the impact of some non-man-made threats such as huge meteors, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and diseases. Our impact on the natural environment, and the way in which this affects humans, other animals and plants, raises important ethical questions. These questions, which are often dealt with under the heading of environmental ethics, include: Is human welfare all that matters morally when we evaluate, say, deforestation or the elimination of a species? Should we aim to decrease the number of humans on our planet in order to make other species flourish? Should a company be allowed to open a mine in a national park? What ought we to do about global warming? The relevance of environmental ethics is obvious. Since the 1960s such ethics have had a more or less strong foothold in most societies. They are now part of the international political agenda, the Kyoto treaty being a clear example here. 1 Almost every political party and large company has formulated policies on treatment of the natural environment. 2 Furthermore, journals dedicated to environmental ethics have emerged, 3 as have NGOs like Greenpeace and Earth First. Environmental ethics is a multidisciplinary activity. It draws on expertise in physics, biology, economics, law, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Roughly speaking, we can distinguish between descriptive and normative environmental ethics. The descriptive aim is to describe and explain what attitudes people have to questions like those mentioned above. This part is usually 1 The Kyoto Treaty is an agreement reached under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 164 countries (as of July 2006) which have ratified the Kyoto Protocol are, among other things, committed to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or to engage in emission trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. For details of the protocol see: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol 2 Consult e.g. the UK Labour Party official website http://www.labour.org.uk/environment04 . See e.g. www.shell.com (Shell’s official website) for examples of their views on environmental issues. 3 E.g. Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values and Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics.