Environmental Ethics

Ethics are behaviors and rules that help people conduct themselves in a civilized manner. Defining the world civilized can be a bit more complex as one moves from the various regions throughout the world. Environmental studies deal with the environment and the people who move within this environment. The way in which people treat the environment and how they should treat the environment would be called environmental ethics.

Some of the academic classes, some of the industries and professions, and some of the different fields of environmental ethics’ studies are environmental law and legalities, ecotheology, environmental sociology, ecological economics, environmental geography, and ecology. Some of the experts in the field are Rachel Carson, Lynn White, Garrett Hardin, and Aldo Leopald. Because of the focus on the earth, events like Earth Day have come to fruition. A person who has one of these degrees could work in industry, education, medicine, animal fields, the government, or an endless of amount of places.

Some concerns in the field might be clear cutting, drilling for oil (offshore and onshore), going green and the effects, gasoline powered automobiles, electric powered automobiles, battery powered a automobiles, animal endangerment and extinction, animal rights, animal testing, and the various obligations to the environment. Anything that touches, harms, helps, or impacts our environment would fall under the category of dealing with environmental ethics.

Another concern might be the various penalties, legal and civil, that could be incurred due to harming our environment. There could also be a discussion on recycling and whether a community, neighborhood, or state could impose recycling on the people of the region. And one must consider how green is it necessary to be green, and what green really means to the average consumer. Then if different countries with different focuses start defining what environmental ethics is, is this a good or a bad thing.

With pollution at an all time high, environmental ethics is important for everyone. There are changes in the earth that cannot be corrected and repaired because of humans. The defining of it may be difficult, but the idea that humans moving through the environment should leave as small a footprint as possible is important. How and who decides what should be done should be left up to the experts in the filed, but it is important that all ethics concerning the environment are given the greatest platform possible.