Environmental Ethics - Essay Example

Environmental Ethics Question The ideas of Freeman and Kelman about cost-benefit analysis are largely similar, except for a few differences that will be discussed next. In general, Freeman argues that the objectives of environmental policy can be founded on economic productivity or appropriate cost-benefit analysis, or on several other objectives, like attainment of technologically viable extent of emissions regulation, human health protection, and security. Both Freeman and Kelman state that, unless an environmental development can be linked to quantifiable cost and benefit, it could not be considered as an economic representation of an ethical cost-benefit analysis. Both Freeman and Kelman believe that economic productivity in the field of environmental regulation necessitates that the minor benefit of environmental development in each aspect be evaluated against its minor cost. Both authors have provided different categories of costs and benefits obtained from ecosystems, and more universal environmental principles. However, Steve Kelman does not agree with Freeman’s argument that cost-benefit analysis can be related to objectives mentioned above (e.g. human health protection, security, etc.). According to Kelman, regulatory judgments concerning the environment, security, and health are moral issues, and hence analysis of cost and benefit is improper since it necessitates the implementation of a poor moral mechanism. Kelman strengthens his position with several illustrations, majority of which concern individual or private judgments. He claims, in these circumstances, supporters of cost-benefit analysis, like Freeman, should abandon any moral doubts about human rights violation, deception, and corruption. These arguments about cost-benefit analysis can be used in addressing the poor food manufacturing process of fast-food companies, as discussed by Eric Schlosser. In his article, Schlosser gives a series of accusations against the unethical practices and processes of fast-food companies, such as refusal to give medical privileges, creating modern-day slavery, aggressive marketing to gullible children; these are the strategies employed by fast-food companies to maintain high profitability. Given this, and an idea of the arguments of Freeman and Kelman, cost-benefit analysis in this case may or may not be appropriate. Using the similar premises of Freeman and Kelman, cost-benefit analysis may be appropriate in determining how fast-food companies have powerfully changed the agricultural sector of industrialized nations, such as the United States. These fast-food companies, like McDonald’s, have generated marginal benefits to agriculture by centralizing production. However, because of this production consolidation, farmers and small enterprises are vanishing. There are also drastic alterations in animal domestication and food production which caused spates of food-related diseases, like the foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow, bird flu, and others. This situation, according to the arguments of Freeman and Kelman, may be subjected to cost-benefit analysis because of the nature of its effect to environmental policy. However, in terms of actual threats to human health, in accordance to Kelman’s arguments against the moral deficit of cost-benefit analysis, the case of poor food production practices is unviable. The unethical way fast-food companies conceal to the public the actual health perils of their products substantiate Kelman’s argument. Furthermore, the industry of meat packing even benefits more from government protection or immunity. Question 2 According to Christopher Stone, corporations should not be socially responsible because they are inherently irresponsible. The primary justification Stone provided is that nobody, from the ordinary citizen to large organizations, has a basic idea of the nature and requirement of corporate responsibility. In order to develop a model of his argument, Stone raises fundamental issues and thoroughly strives to address these issues himself. Some of the issues are the identification of the corporate problem, the nature of big businesses, and the needed regulations to have power over corporate behavior and reduce unfavorable impacts of the absence of corporate responsibility. Stone presents indefinite explanations of these issues. Stone, in trying to come up with feasible values and ideals, vigilantly balances objectives, operations, and nature of organizations with the norms, principles, and demands of society. Although he recognizes that the law serves an important and somewhat powerful function in stirring up corporate responsibility, he refers to the more significant argument that the law single-handedly can by no means build the basic foundation of corporate responsibility. The primary explanation for this point is that the law is largely imprudent. In the trade and commerce sector, policymakers are constantly formulating new regulations with regard to new circumstances or state of affairs which take place. Government bureaus are constantly amending their policies. Even the market cannot guarantee corporate responsibility by supporting businesses which are observed to operate conscientiously. Stone’s argument about corporate social responsibility can be used to strengthen Freeman’s economic approach to environmental ethics. According to Freeman, in the point of view an economist, the ecological system is a limited asset which improves human wellbeing. The environment’s economic difficulty is a minor portion of the general economic crisis, that is, how to organize or handle human affairs in order to satisfy people’s physical or material requirements and demands even with paucity. Every resource that is important to human beings should have the capacity to be traded and purchased in markets. Hence, for instance, if the food chain is regarded as an input to a mechanism of production, it evidently requires abandonment of social responsibility, necessitating even more thorough knowledge of underlying components in intricate ecological processes. Stone’s argument could also strengthen Shrader-Frechette’s statement about academics’ environmental advocacy. It is primarily the issue of objectivity that has to be evaluated against Stone’s account of social responsibility. Shrader-Frechette talks about the notion that objectivity is not attained by a neutral stance, or in Stone’s terms, ‘acting responsibly’. It is neutrality, according to Shrader-Frechette (1994), that has to be evaluated against the idea of advocacy. She states that environmental advocacy is “taking a stand on a specific, practical issue and defending that stance as rational and ethical rather than merely pointing out the assets and liabilities of alternative positions, rather than merely maintaining a stance of informed neutrality” (p. 179-180). Hence, objectivity stipulates that, as academics, they should refrain from ‘acting responsibly’ and allow the essentials or information to reveal themselves. This implies that the academic should, with the purpose of being objective, “represent indefensible positions as indefensible and less defensible positions as less defensible” (Shrader-Frechette 1994, 182). Question 3 Biological patents, as discussed by Claudia Mills, are ethically wrong in the point of view of Freeman and Solow. Patenting biological species, according to Mills, is chronically controversial. Based on Freeman’s arguments about environmental ethics, the repercussions of remarkable technologies, such as biological patenting, are tremendous, if subjected to a thorough cost-benefit analysis. First, this technology could put in peril the food security of billions of farmers all over the world, specifically those in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, who rely on their personal breeding abilities and hoarded seeds to use other variants on their farms. Using Freeman’s argument, it can be assumed that biological patents are destined to expand from genetically modified agricultural produce and really deplete or abolish humans’ food supply. As Mills underlines, biological patenting requires genes from genetic parasites that have the ability to jostle genomes, and thus it is possibly very dangerous to the health and wellbeing of all living things. This then supports Freeman’s contention that what is at stake with ecological modification is not simply whether people should allow genetically modified foods. Biological patenting is ethically wrong in the basic sense that our value system and our life are being situated under irresponsible commercial domination. Similarly, biological patenting is ethically wrong for Solow. He compellingly stated that a sustainable economy improves and sustains the wellbeing or functionality of an ordinary citizen over different periods of time. The wellbeing attained by a person apparently relies significant on the chances s/he was given. But too much tampering of the environment becomes unethically wrong. In the case of biological patenting, it is ethically wrong to use up reserves of a nonrenewable resource to acquire quick-fix economic advantages, and to focus on biological patenting and other substitute technologies. Genetic modification, as discussed by Palumbia, is also ethically wrong in the point of view of Freeman and Kelman. Certainly, according to Freeman, even advocates of economic assessment have revealed that their methods are not able to assess systemic principles such as ecosystem conditions and purposes. Arguing that, although people have numerous short-term and opposing whims and demands, real choices embody, to a certain extent, the actual dedication of a person as suggested by whatsoever other wants they are eager to surrender in quest for a specific value. Hence, it is ethically wrong to, in Freeman’s view, to alter the ‘intrinsic value’ of organisms through genetic modification. For Kelman, different rights or obligations are not unqualified. Still, each has a natural moral force in order that, if rights or obligations do not oppose each other, the morally appropriate action is the action that mirrors an obligation or values a right. If rights or obligations are opposed, a moral decision, on the basis of rational consideration, should be reached. But in the case of genetically modified foods, the rights and obligations of biotechnologists and individuals who are the main preservers of genetic materials and possessors of conventional knowledge, conflict with each other. Genetic modification becomes ethically wrong in this case since the main protectors of the environment remain impoverished, whereas those who exploit their intellect and resources become affluent. References Freeman, A. Myrick. “The Ethical Basis of the Economic View of the Environment,” The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994. Kelman, Steven. “Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Ethical Critique,” AEI Journal on Government and Society Regulation, pp. 33-40. Mills, Claudia. “Patenting Life”, (n.d.) Palumbia, Stephen. “The High-Stakes Battle Over Brute-Force Genetic Engineering” American Scientist, 2001. Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001. Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. “An Apologia for Activism: Global Responsibility, Ethical Advocacy, and Environmental Problems”. In Ethics and Environmental Policy: Theory Meets Practice, edited by Frederick Ferre and Peter Hartel. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1994. Solow, Robert. Sustainability: An Economist’s Perspective. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991. Stone, Christopher. “Why Shouldn’t Corporations be Socially Responsible?” (n.d.) Read More