In Module 2, we learned some fundamentals of how humans are impacting the environment and the environment is impacting humans. These are key components of this course, but equally important to our work this semester is assessing whether these human-environment relations are sustainable. We will explore more about the concept of sustainability in this module, but as with the neomalthusian debates from Module 2, there are many competing ideas about what is (and is not) sustainable. At the heart of many of these sustainability debates (as well as many others in life) are competing ethical positions.
Ethics is a common word, and you probably associate it with intuition, concepts of right and wrong, or more formal discussions of morality. This is true. But why you feel that something is right or wrong, moral or immoral, is much more complex than intuition.
This module introduces the concepts of ethics and democracy as part of our thinking on how we should make decisions about the environment. It provides an overview of fundamental ethical views, understandings of the concept of sustainability, and the nature and role of democracy. Key concepts are introduced through readings, discussions, and activities based on important environmental topics.
By the end of Module 3, you should be able to:
For due dates for Module 3, please see Canvas.
There are a number of required activities associated with this module, including your first Written Assignment. The chart below provides an overview of the activities for Module 3. For assignment details, refer to the location noted.
Requirement | Location | Submitting Your Work |
---|---|---|
Reading Assignment: Muir and Pinchot | Fundamentals of Normative Ethics | No Submission |
Reading Assignments: Warner & DeCosse, Sibole, Davis | Sustainability | No Submission |
Written Assignment 1: Arguing Environmental Ethics | Written Assignments [1] | Submit in Canvas |
If you have any questions, please post them to our Course Q & A discussion forum in Canvas. I will check that discussion forum often to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate. If you have a more specific concern, please send me a message through Inbox in Canvas.
As mentioned in the introduction to this module, ethics is probably a familiar idea - things that are good or bad, right or wrong. We encounter situations every day that requires ethical thinking in this general sense. But ethics can also be defined more specifically as a framework for assigning value to things and making decisions about how to act in response to these values. As you will learn throughout this module, the general definition of ethics is very much based on the specific definition, and it is this more specific definition that we are primarily concerned with in this lesson.
Your first response to the question 'what is ethics?' might be that ethics are your moral standards that come from your religion or cultural values. And that's true. Ethics is also one of the major fields of philosophy - frequently called moral philosophy. Over the centuries, the line between categories such as 'cleric,' 'religious thinker,' and 'philosopher' have not been easily drawn, and you might be surprised to know that many of the ethical positions that you intuitively hold are based on the work of philosophers that produced their theories centuries ago. Your notions of right and wrong behavior can likely be traced to Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant; your ideas of fairness, justice, and rights are at least partially formed by David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke; even your beliefs about the qualities that constitute a 'good person' are heavily influenced by the work of Aristotle. And that list only includes Western philosophical influences!
There are three major areas within the field of ethics: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. For this course, we are primarily concerned with normative ethics, which is the branch of moral philosophy that is concerned with identifying and justifying ethical actions. Philosophers working on normative ethics focus on identifying and defining what constitutes right behavior for humans. This includes not only discussing the behaviors themselves, but also the justification for what makes the behavior right - the foundation of ethics. We will focus in on more of the specifics of normative ethics in the next section of this module, but for now let's move on to discuss value, which is at the heart of ethical foundations.
Formal ethical viewpoints are based on logical arguments in support of certain actions. These are essentially rules for right behavior. Like all good rules, moral philosophers support their arguments with some type of evidence that serves as the foundation of their position. Ethical arguments weigh the merits of moral decisions based on the relative value of parties involved in the decision. In ethics, there are two types of value: intrinsic value and instrumental value.
A thing (a human, an animal, a tree, an ecosystem, etc.) has intrinsic value simply because it exists. If a thing has intrinsic value, ethicists argue that it has moral standing, and therefore its well-being must be taken into account in moral decision making. Nearly all ethical viewpoints consider a human life to have intrinsic value, for instance. That is why taking a human life is almost always considered unethical because there are very few situations in which the outcome outweighs the intrinsic value of that human life. Moral philosophers argue over how one comes to the conclusion that it is unethical to take a human life, but they almost all base their arguments ultimately on the fact that human life has intrinsic value. It is important to note that in ethical terms, not all things have intrinsic value. As you will hopefully see as this course continues, many of the debates about human-environment interactions and sustainability boil down to disagreements over what things have intrinsic value, and therefore moral standing.
Instrumental value is the value a thing possesses because of its usefulness to humans (or some other thing with moral standing). This is sometimes also called use value. A forest, for instance, has instrumental value to humans because it provides raw materials, a place for recreation, or perhaps some ecosystem service like carbon cycling and storage. This usefulness can and is considered in moral decision making, but it does not warrant moral standing. The intrinsic value of non-human things like forests can be a powerful motivator for conservation. However, it is also often used as justification for resource extraction that can degrade the environment. And the lack of moral standing also leads to the justification of environmental degradation because the value of human life and well-being is said to outweigh the negative impact.
Earlier we noted that the lines between religion and philosophy are not always clear, and there are some ethical theories that are justified by religion or appealing to a higher power (Natural Law theory, for instance). These are fascinating theories, but in this course, we will focus on ethical theories that base their argument on other lines of reasoning. This does not discount those theologically influenced positions. Rather, it is based on the fact that secular ethical frameworks are much more prevalent in modern thought. And in this course, we are less concerned with the ultimate source of moral authority, and more focused on understanding how differing ethical positions influence human-environment relations and cause conflict over sustainability planning.
Remember in Module 1 when we discussed the value of social science perspectives in a course on sustainability? About now you might be asking the same question about ethics: why are studying ethics in a class about sustainability? Isn't that about science? The simple answer is that sustainability is about science. But let's ask another question: what is science, anyway? Another simple answer is that science is the study of the world around us through observation and analysis.
Often when we use the word 'science' we are referring to the physical sciences that focus on the non-human world. And we assume that science is objective - just the facts based on observations. The truth, though, is that how, where, and when we make our observations greatly influences what we find. And those decisions are made by humans that instinctively make value judgments that are informed by their personal experiences and ethical viewpoints. Likewise, analyzing scientific observations and making sustainability policy based on that analysis is inherently influenced by ethical viewpoints.
Sustainability is about science, but it is also about people, and wolves, and trees, and ecosystems. That makes it very much about ethics, too. In the next section, you will learn more about normative ethics, and how they can and do influence debates about sustainability.
The scientific method that is considered the bedrock of modern science and knowledge was actually developed by late 16th Century empiricist philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon.
Examining the study of normative ethics in more detail will better help us recognize different ethical viewpoints, and their impact on sustainability, as we move through the course.
Normative ethics has three major subfields: virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism. We will focus on deontology and consequentialism because these two subfields are concerned with how to determine what makes ethical actions. Deontology and Consequentialism are two different approaches for determining the moral correctness of an action. Deontology considers the action in and of itself, regardless of the outcome. In many ways, deontological ethics focus on rules for right behavior. Consequentialism is an ethical framework that focuses on the end result of behavior and can justify acts such as lying, stealing, or even violence if the end result brings the most benefit to all those with moral standing.
Look back at the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from the previous section. It's a funny illustration of the fundamental debate between deontology and consequentialism. Let's consider an example that falls within the scope of this course. Is the act of clearing forest cover fundamentally unethical? Is it acceptable to do so if the end result is more beneficial, such as preventing the spread of forest fire, or providing needed resources to humans? It is not an easy question to answer. And you've hopefully noticed that it raises an equally important ethical question: do trees (or forests) have intrinsic value? We will consider this last question in more detail in a moment.
Justice is a core concept for the study of sustainability and human-environment relations. Justice is essentially a concept of fairness, but in ethical terms, it refers to the fair treatment due to all things that have intrinsic value (and thus moral standing). In many cases, justice is defined by legal systems, but regardless of how just treatment is defined, the concept is closely related to ethics. For this course, we will focus on two particular forms of justice: distributive and procedural.
Distributive justice emphasizes the fair distribution of gains and losses across populations. Distributive justice is thus closely related to consequentialist ethics, and particularly utilitarianism. Sustainability and other environmental policies often impact different segments of a population differently. The decision to locate a mine, for instance, will have a very different (and often negative) impact on the people living and working at the selected location than those living farther away. All the people in this situation may equally benefit from the copper produced by the mine, but only those that live nearby will have to deal with pollution, or degraded drinking water often associated with mineral extraction. Often, the distribution of these positive and negative impacts closely mirrors divisions of race and class, which adds a complex but important layer to discussions of ethics and justice. The field of research and activism that focuses on the unequal impact of environmental pollution and degradation on the poor and people of color is known as environmental justice. This is an important area of distributive justice research in the field of geography.
Procedural justice is closely related to distributive justice but emphasizes how decisions are made. Procedural justice is thus mainly interested in the process of deciding which actions to take and has some overlap with deontological ethics. A core procedural justice principle is that everyone who is affected by a decision should have some say in how the decision is made. There are many ways to implement procedural justice. Democracy is one of them and we'll explore the concept in depth later in this module.
Environmental change is very challenging for procedural justice because it is very difficult to include everyone's opinions in a decision. The following reading develops this challenge further.
John O'Neill [2] is a contemporary scholar in the field of environmental politics. One topic he studies is the challenge to procedural justice posed by environmental issues. Please read the following paragraph from his 2001 article "Representing people, representing nature, representing the world":
The problems raised thus far are general problems for deliberative institutions that arise in any domain of choice, not problems peculiar to the environment. However, environmental decisions raise very particular problems for democratic theory concerning the nature and possibility of representation over and above those discussed so far. The central problem is that for many of those affected by decisions, two central features of legitimization – authorization and presence – are absent. Indeed for non-humans and future generations there is no possibility of those conditions being met. Neither non-humans nor future generations can be directly present in decision making. Clearly, representation can neither be authorized by non-humans or future generations nor can it be rendered accountable to them. The politics of presence which underlies much of recent literature in deliberative democracy is ill suited to include future generations and non-humans. In the case of current non-humans this might be regarded as untrue. Something like an Alejandro solution is possible. Consider the success of Muir’s strategy of taking Roosevelt out into the landscapes he aimed to preserve. There is a sense in which one might say that the strategy consisted in nature being represented by itself. However, while there is certainly a case more generally for taking deliberation into the places which are the object of deliberation, the articulation of any non-human interests or values here remains a human affair. The presence of non-human nature in deliberation about environmental choices requires human representation.
Authorization here means that representatives are authorized to speak or act on behalf of those they represent. For example, our elected representatives in Congress are authorized to speak or act on behalf of us. Presence here means that each group affected by a decision is in some way present in that decision. For example, our Congressional representatives are always from the district that we live in, meaning that each geographic district has some presence in the decisions made in Congress.
Given the paragraph and these definitions, what would you say is the core challenge to procedural justice posed by environmental issues?
Note that O'Neill's paper is an academic journal on environmental politics and thus may be challenging to read - except for scholars in the field of environmental politics. In general, academic journal articles are often challenging to read because they are written for experts in specific subject areas. But if you can read academic journal articles, then you have access to a very powerful and state-of-the-art portion of human knowledge.
For your reference, "Representing people, representing nature, representing the world" [3] was published in the academic journal Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Volume 19, pages 483-500. You can read this journal and many others via Penn State's e-Journal system [4].
The excerpt from O'Neil's paper raises an important question for considerations of justice, and ethics in general: what would it mean to have justice for environments? Thus far, our discussion of ethics has focused on humans, particularly human individuals. What would it mean, in ethical terms, to extend moral consideration to non-humans and ecosystems? That is one of the primary concerns of the field of environmental ethics.
As you can imagine, there is much debate among environmental ethicists as to incorporate non-humans and environments into normative ethical considerations. Many of these debates contrast several ethical viewpoints that differ in regard to what things possess intrinsic value. In this course, an important contrast is between ethical viewpoints known as anthropocentrism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism.
Anthropocentrism is an ethical perspective that holds that only humans - particularly individual humans - possess intrinsic value. And anthropocentric ethical argument considers all non-human individuals (wolves, chickens, trees, etc.), as well as collective entities like ecosystems, possess only instrumental value in so far as they are a benefit to humans. This is not to say that anthropocentrists do not advocate for conservation or environmental sustainability. Quite the contrary. But they pursue environmental protection because it maintains or expands those instrumental values for humans.
Biocentrism and ecocentrism are ethical perspectives that also afford intrinsic value to non-human things. Biocentrism, as the name implies, expands intrinsic value and moral consideration to non-human living things (animals, and sometimes plants). Like anthropocentrism, biocentrism in most cases only gives moral consideration to human and non-human individuals, and it is sometimes called moral extensionalism because it simply extends traditional anthropocentric ethics to non-humans. Ecocentrism also affords intrinsic value to non-humans, but as a collectivist ethic, it also extends moral standing to holistic entities like ecosystems or species. From an ecocentric perspective, then, both the living and non-living members of ecosystems have intrinsic value.
Keep in mind that in both of these perspectives humans also have intrinsic value, and in most cases, biocentric and ecocentric ethical perspectives do not place non-humans of ecosystems above humans. But humans are no longer morally exceptional. That means that when considering issues of distributive or procedural justice from a biocentric or ecocentric viewpoint, non-humans and ecosystems must also receive fair treatment in the decision-making process and the distribution of positive and negative environmental impacts. This brief exploration of ethics makes it clear why environmental issues that bring groups of people with anthropocentric and ecocentric ethical viewpoints into conflict can produce seemingly intractable disagreements. These ethical issues are a critical component of effective sustainability policy and action.
John Muir (bio) [5] and Gifford Pinchot (bio) [6] are major figures in the history of conservation and environmentalism in the United States. While their words are old, their classic ideas remain very relevant today. Please read:
Pay particular attention to the highlighted sections of these readings. One of these readings is considered to hold an anthropocentric perspective and the other an ecocentric perspective. Which do you think is which, and why?
The expansion of moral standing and consideration that comes with biocentrism and ecocentrism often introduces the concept of speciesism: the practice of giving greater moral consideration to one species over others. Speciesism is similar to racism, or sexism, but it is often much more difficult to detect. This is partly because what many call speciesism is usually humans giving greater moral consideration to other humans over non-humans. This is classic anthropocentrism, and it is very common - even instinctive. But there are many people that consider the practice of putting humans first as unethical as racial discrimination.
The concept of speciesism raises major questions. Should any species – human or otherwise – be given greater intrinsic value than any other species? On what grounds could this be? People have argued that humans are exceptional because of language and human reasoning (a position made famous by the philosopher René Descartes), emotional capacity, and other abilities. But biologists consistently find that, while humans are relatively strong in these ways, they are not unique: other animals can use language and reason or feel emotions. Thus many people argue that we should care about non-human animals similarly to how we care about humans. (We say "other animals" and "non-human animals" because (obviously) humans are classified as animals, too.)
For example, if we care about human welfare – about human happiness and suffering and life flourishing – then perhaps we should care about the welfare of non-human animals as well. Such considerations are especially important in discussions about food and agriculture, given the vast numbers of livestock animals that are alive in our food system.
You might feel like the notion of speciesism creates some intractable problems. Would a rejection of speciesism require equal legal rights and protections for all non-human animals? For trees? Must we all become vegetarians? Some ethicists and activists say yes. Others argue that there are distinctions. Philosopher Paul Taylor, for example, argues that it is immoral for a human to kill a wild animal when it is not necessary for subsistence, but in cases where the human would otherwise starve, it is permissible. He also argues that so long as livestock animals do not suffer while alive, there is no moral difference between eating that animal and eating a plant (since both possess intrinsic value). Taylor does argue for vegetarianism in most cases, however, because plant based diets allow more land to be devoted to nature (a point that is debatable). What moral consideration do we owe, then, to a living animal that is destined to be our food?
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
From Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, second edition, 1823, chapter 17.
Is the argument here anthropocentric, biocentric, ecocentric, or something different? Do you agree with the argument? Why or why not? If we accept the argument, then what might some implications be for the human-environment issues we discuss in this course?
These last few sections offer up quite a few profound ideas to ponder. As we move through the course, keep a critical eye open for the ways that differing ethical perspectives, even unconscious positions, influence debates about human uses of the environment.
There are several great resources online that explain these basic ethics concepts in much more detail. The two most comprehensive resources are Wikipedia [11] and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [12] (SEP). The SEP is particularly valuable because it contains high-quality content written by experts. If you read and understand these, then you will have a strong understanding of ethics as it is relevant both to this course and much more.
Utilitarian Ethics: Watch this short video from the producers of the TV Series "The Good Place" titled "Mother Forkin' Morals with Dr. Todd May" (4:34 minutes). Utilitarian ethics is an example of consequentialism.
Virtue ethics: See Wikipedia's page on Virtue Ethics [13] and SEP's page on Virtue Ethics [14].
Consequentialism: See Wikipedia's page on Consequentialism [15] and SEP's page on Consequentialism. [16]
Deontology: See Wikipedia's page on Deontological Ethics [17] and SEP's page on Deontological Ethics [18].
Environmental Ethics: See SEP's page on Environmental Ethics [19]. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics [20] at Santa Clara University has numerous excellent resources on environmental ethic, and much more.
At this point, you might be wondering why we would wait until the third week of class to begin defining sustainability as a concept, and why we are doing so in a module on ethics. The biggest reason is that sustainability is an incredibly complex concept in today's globalized society. The first two modules are aimed to introduce you to some of this complexity and to introduce you to some important concepts and tools to help you think critically and geographically about sustainability.
We introduce the concept of sustainability in this module on ethics because, as you have hopefully gathered, sustainability issues are inherently ethical issues. This is not to say that 'sustainable uses' of the environment are morally good and all others are bad. Consider a hydroelectric project. Its implementation would decrease the carbon footprint of electricity generation in that region (positive), but it would also have a profound impact on the environment, not to mention the people displaced by the new reservoir (negative). Sustainability policy and decision making have a profound impact on people's lives, as well as on the lives of non-humans and ecosystems. These are ethical issues. And the debates that we humans have about sustainability are shaped by our ethical perspectives.
There are many, many definitions of sustainability. The most prominent is from the Brundtland Commission Report Our Common Future [21]. The Brundtland Commission was organized by the United Nations in 1983, and published their report in 1987:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Pretty vague, right? Yet this remains the most commonly used definition of sustainability. One of the problems with this definition is that it leaves significant room for ethical interpretations. Whose needs must be met now and in the future? Should sustainability be pursued by any means (i.e., consequentialism)? Below, you will read several pieces written by current philosophers on the ethical dimensions of sustainability. Keep in mind the ethics concepts that you have just learned as you read.
Read "The Ethical Dimension of Sustainability [22]," by Keith Warner Douglas and David DeCosse. As you read, consider what ethical perspective the authors take in their arguments.
What do you think of their "three E's" of sustainability? Do they address all three in this article?
Warner and DeCosse do an excellent job of communicating the human dimensions of sustainability, particularly our ethical obligation to future generations. Their argument is also strikingly anthropocentric. You might have noticed that non-human nature is considered only as a resource for human use. The authors may not consider non-human nature to only have instrumental value, but that is the implication in this short article. Are there other ways to think about sustainability that avoid the anthropocentric position?
Read "The Ethics of Sustainability: Why Should we Care? [23]" by Allie Sibole.
Does Sibole take an ethical viewpoint that clearly falls within the categories that we have discussed? Why or why not?
Sibole is an eloquent writer, and she paints a compelling picture of the symbiotic relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Sibole argues for care and moral considerations of nature based on reciprocity. The Earth cares for us and we must also care for it, not just because it is in our best interests, but because it is morally right. This argument has a strong ecocentric justice current. She also calls for a displacement of ethical focus from the individual to the global community. Does this include non-humans as well? How would this collectivist ethic work for sustainability decision-making?
Read "Nature in Other Cultures [24]" by Bret W. Davis that was originally published on the Everyday Ethics blog at the Rock Ethics Institute [25] at Penn State.
Davis explains why it is so important to understand cultural differences and ethical perspectives when considering sustainability issues. Studying the intersections of these cultural and ethical differences across space, time, and scale is a central part of a geographic approach to human-environment relations. Davis is very optimistic about the benefit of exploring difference, and its ability to break down barriers to conflict and improve sustainability for the future. But he does not address how such decisions should be made. In the next section, we consider democracy as an ethical approach to decision-making.
Our discussion of sustainability thus far has made it clear that many people, or groups of people, disagree about what constitutes sustainability, and how to achieve it. This sort of disagreement is very commonplace in our society, about a wide range of issues related to the environment and just about everything else. This makes decision making much more difficult. If we all agreed, then we could just do what we all thought was right! But when we disagree, what should we do? That's what we're considering in this last section of Lesson 3.
Let's first note that we're working within the realm of procedural justice because we're considering how decisions are made, not what decisions are made. There are many different ways of making decisions. Here we're going to discuss one of the ways, which is very common in our society: democracy.
(To clarify what democracy means, we can look at where decisions are made not in a democratic way. For example, soldiers take orders from their superiors and their superiors do not need to consult with their subordinates.)
We are probably all familiar with democracy, given its prominence in our lives. We have probably voted, or at least followed elections. We have probably also seen many discussions of the civic issues that our elected officials work on. Perhaps we have contributed to these discussions ourselves, via contacting our representatives, writing to newspapers, talking with our friends, or via some other means. Contributing to these discussions is known as using our voice. Voice and vote are two core ways of participating in democracy. They are also important aspects of human-environment geography.
When we speak out on civic issues, we are exercising our voice. We do this for several reasons. We can be letting the government know what our views are so that it can take our views into consideration. We can be arguing for our views so as to persuade our fellow citizens to agree with us. Or we can be providing information that we think is relevant to an understanding of the issue.
Voice can be a powerful factor in environmental issues. These issues are often highly complex and full of many different views. Without people speaking out, all these different facets of the issues could not be untangled and understood. Many organizations are dedicated to exercising voice on environmental issues. One of these is the Sierra Club, which is the oldest environmental non-profit organization in the United States. It was founded in 1892 by John Muir, whose ideas we read earlier in this module. The Sierra Club is very active in helping people speak out on environmental issues, as seen on the Actions page of the Sierra Club website [26]. Another organization that is active in exercising voice on environmental issues is the American Petroleum Institute (API), which is a major trade organization for the oil industry. API funds several lobbyists whose job is to argue in favor of certain government actions. An overview of policies and issues that API is interested in can be found on API's Policy and Issues page. [27]
As a citizen, and in particular as a Geography 30 student, you have an important voice to add to civic discussions of environmental issues. The topics that we're learning about in this course are very central to many issues, and it is important for them to be considered in discussions of the topics. Your own interpretations, ideas, and opinions on these and other topics are especially important. As you formulate your views on the issues, you should think through the ethics underlying your views, and then argue for them.
The process of discussing civic issues is ongoing, but, periodically, decisions must be made. In a democracy, the decisions are typically made through voting. Voting raises two major ethical questions. First, how should we vote? Second, who should vote, and how should the votes be counted? The first question, how we should vote, will, of course, vary from issue to issue. The second question raises some important and fundamental procedural and geographic questions worth considering in more detail.
Since who votes and how votes are counted is often determined by very well-established procedures, we often take these procedures for granted without questioning them. However, none of the procedures in use today have been around forever. At some time, decisions were made on these matters. In some places today, the decisions are still being made. These decisions are quite often very contentious and controversial, and thus should not be taken for granted.
In the United States, one of the contentious decisions concerned how members of the House of Representatives and the Senate were to be allocated. The large states wanted members allocated by population, whereas the small states wanted a fixed number of members per state. In what's now known as the Connecticut Compromise of 1787, the states decided that the House would allocate by population and the Senate would allocate by state. This means that one citizen's vote has different meaning depending on which branch the vote is for. Also, for senators, the vote will have different meaning depending on whether the citizen is in a small state or a large state.
Voting procedures often have a very strong geographic component. This is perhaps seen most visibly in the practice of gerrymandering. To gerrymander is to create an electoral district that is in a strange geographic shape so as to achieve some desired result. Often the result is to keep incumbents in office or to diminish the power of certain segments of the population. It is named after a districting scheme devised by former Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry; the scheme included a district which looked like a salamander:
Voting procedures are very important in many environmental issues. Within the United States, views on environmental issues often vary from region to region around the country. Midwestern and Appalachian states have a lot of coal and often favor pro-coal environmental policies. Southeastern states are exposed to hurricanes and favor policies that offer protection from or insurance for hurricanes. How votes are allocated across regions can have a large effect on which policies are produced.
Internationally, the effect of voting procedures can be even stronger. Many international or global environmental issues are products of decisions made at the national scale in which the foreigners affected by the decisions have no vote (and often also no voice). This violates a basic principle of procedural justice, but it occurs nonetheless quite often. Meanwhile, when international agreements are made, there is no established procedure for aggregating votes from different countries. International agreements are often formed mainly by certain more powerful countries, though recently many other countries have been more successful at shaping the agenda. The situation is further complicated by the fact that some countries do not have democracies, or have democracies that disenfranchise large portions of their populations. How should the world's disenfranchised citizens be represented in global environmental policies? This is an important question, but it has no easy answer. At least, we can be aware of it as we approach the environmental policy process.
This module was designed to introduce you to some fundamentals of ethics and democracy. Ethics is the study of value, and how we reason and make decisions about how to act according to those values. Important issues include how decisions should be made; what the consequences of our decisions should be; and to what extent humans, ecosystems, and nonhuman animal welfare should be considered as we make these decisions.
Sustainability is ultimately grounded in some notion of ethics because sustainability decisions have a profound effect on humans and non-humans alike. Given disagreements over ethics, we need the knowledge to constructively engage with others and a procedure for making collective decisions about human-environment issues. Democracy is often the system we use. Democracy involves both voices - speaking up with our knowledge and views - and vote. Both of these facets of democracy have strong geographic features and are quite important to human-environment systems, as is ethics in general.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog30/node/466
[2] http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/john.f.o%27neill/personaldetails
[3] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1068/c12s
[4] http://sk8es4mc2l.search.serialssolutions.com/
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot
[7] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog30/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog30/files/ethics/Hetch_Hetchy_Valley_Chapter16.pdf
[8] https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/
[9] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog30/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog30/files/ethics/Pinchot_TheFightForConservation.pdf
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[12] http://plato.stanford.edu/
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics
[14] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
[16] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/
[17] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics
[18] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
[19] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/
[20] https://www.scu.edu/ethics/
[21] http://www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm
[22] https://www.scu.edu/environmental-ethics/short-course-in-environmental-ethics/lesson-four/
[23] https://www.scu.edu/environmental-ethics/resources/the-ethics-of-sustainability/
[24] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog30/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.geog30/files/module3/Davis_Nature%20in%20Other%20Cultures.pdf
[25] http://rockethics.psu.edu/
[26] http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageServer?pagename=TakeActionAll
[27] https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues
[28] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Gerry-Mander.png