8.
2 ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS
MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT
OBJECTIVE
• At the end of the discussion, learners are expected to:
• Analyze the different philosophical perspectives on how to
protect the environment
BUSINESS,
GOVERNMENT,
AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
What are the different environmental
issues that we are facing and experiencing
in our society?
ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
1. What obligation does business have to help with our
environmental crisis?
2. What is the proper relationship between business and government,
especially when faced with a social problem of the magnitude of the
environmental crisis?
3. What rationale should be used for making and justifying
decisions to protect the environment?
1. What obligation does business have to help with our
environmental crisis?
2. What is the proper relationship between business and government,
especially when faced with a social problem of the magnitude of the
environmental crisis?
Business does not have an obligation to protect the
environment over and above what is required by law;
however, it does have a moral obligation to avoid
intervening in the political arena in order to defeat or
weaken environmental legislation.
-Norman Bowie
1
PROFIT MAXIMIZATION Enact laws to control
Within the prescribed law corporations’ greediness
2
MORAL OBLIGATION TO AVOID
PROFIT MAKING WITHIN THE
INTERVENING IN THE POLITICAL
FRAMEWORK OF THE LAW
ARENA
If consumers are not willing to respond It is the job of the government to correct
to the cost and use of environmentally for market failure and then they use their
friendly products and actions, then it is influence and money to defeat or water
not the responsibility of business to down regulations designed to conserve
respond or correct such market failure. and protect the environment.
• At the Center’s First National
Conference on Business Ethics,
Harvard Business School Professor
George Cabot Lodge told a friend
who owned a paper company on the
banks of a New England stream. On
the first Earth Day of 1970, his friend
was converted to the cause of
environmental protection. He
became determined to stop his
company’s pollution of the stream,
and marched off to put his new-found
religion into action.
• Later, Lodge learned his friend went
broke, so he went to investigate.
Radiating a kind of ethical purity, the
friend told Lodge that he spent
millions to stop the pollution and thus
could no longer compete with other
firms that did not follow his example.
So the company went under, 500
people lost their jobs, and the stream
remained polluted.
MORAL OBLIGATION TO AVOID
PROFIT MAKING WITHIN THE
INTERVENING IN THE POLITICAL
FRAMEWORK OF THE LAW
ARENA
If consumers are not willing to respond It is the job of the government to correct
to the cost and use of environmentally for market failure and then they use their
friendly products and actions, then it is influence and money to defeat or water
not the responsibility of business to down regulations designed to conserve
respond or correct such market failure. and protect the environment.
• A few years ago “Sixty Minutes”
interviewed a manager of a chemical
company that was discharging waste
into a river in upstate New York. At that
time, the dumping was legal, though a
bill to prevent it was pending in
Congress. The manager remarked that
he hoped the bill would pass, and that he
certainly would support it as a
responsible citizen. However, he also
said he approved of his company’s
efforts to defeat the bill to prevent it as it
was pending in Congress.
• After all, isn’t the proper role of
business to make as much profit
as possible within the bounds of
law? Making the laws--- setting
the rules of the game ---- is the
role of government, not
business. While wearing his
business hat the manager had a
job to do, even if it meant doing
something that he strongly
opposed as a private citizen.
PROFIT MAXIMIZATION Enact laws to control
Within the prescribed law corporations’ greediness
DuPont’s discontinuing its Freon Proctor and Gamble’s manufacture
products, a $ 750-million-a-year- of concentrated fabric softener
business, because of the negative and detergents which require less
effects on the ozone layer packaging.
As citizen, we take on a broader
AS consumers, we act more often than
vision and do what is in the best
not for ourselves.
interests of the community
3. What rationale should be used for making and justifying
decisions to protect the environment?
DOING WELL BY DOING GOOD
NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM- induces corporations to
do things for the environment by appealing to their
self-interest
The Environmental Defense Fund is shown encouraging
agribusiness in Southern California to irrigate more efficiently
and profit by selling the water save to the city of Los Angeles.
This will turn save the MONO LAKE.
The Environmental Defense Fund is shown encouraging business
to lessen pollution by rewarding them. This help to avoid acid
rain
• Is the rationale that good ethics
is good business a proper one
for business ethics?
• Many ethical actions are
not necessarily good for
business.
• One should promote business ethics, not because good ethics
is good business, but because we are morally required to
adopt the moral point of view in all our dealings.
3. What rationale should be used for making and
justifying decisions to protect the environment?
GOOD ENVIRONMENTALISM
MEANS GOOD BUSINESS
HARM PRINCIPLE
It is largely cast in terms of harm
caused to human beings and the
violation of rights of human
beings
Nonhuman things are valuable only if
valued by human beings. They do not
have intrinsic value if not derived by
man’s value.
“LAST MAN EXAMPLE”
• Suppose you were the last surviving
human being and were soon to die from
nuclear poisoning, as all other human
and sentient animals have died before
you. Suppose also that it is within your
power to destroy all remaining life, or to
make it simpler, the last tree which could
continue to flourish and propagate if left
alone. Furthermore you will not suffer if
you do not destroy it. Would you do
anything by cutting it down? The deeper
ecological view in and of itself, thus
making the world a poorer place?
BIOCENTRIC ETHICS
Holds that when we find something
wrong with destroying the tree, as
we should, we do so because we
are responding to an intrinsic value
in the natural object, not to a value
we give to it.
Environmental Compliance Certificate
HOMOCENTRIC ETHICS
Suppose a stream has been polluted by
a business. From a homocentric point
of view, which serves as the basis for
our legal system, we can only correct
the problem through finding some harm
done to human beings who use the
stream. Reparation can be done for the
human beings by paying them but not to
restore the stream.
BIOCENTRIC ETHICS
Environmental Compliance Certificate
HOMOCENTRIC ETHICS
1. Michael W. Hoffman’s argument for approaching ethical
dilemmas with biocentric, rather than homocentric.
2. The environmental movement must find ways to incorporate
and protect the intrinsic value of natural objects that are
integral parts of ecosystems. This must be done without
constantly reducing such values to human nature.
• Hoffman, Michael W. 1991. Business and Environmental
Ethics. Business Quartely 1. pp. 169-184. [Online Access:
https://philpapers.org/rec/HOFBAE-2].
• Mahaguay, Jerwin. 2011. Philosophy of Man: Learn the
Basics: Tarlac: HistGoPhil Publication.
• Stumpf, Samuel Enoch. 1994. The History of Philosophy.
United States of America: McGraw Hill, Inc.
