Ethical Enviromental Issues
Ethical Environmental Issues
SOC 120: Introduction To Ethics & Social Responsibility
01/18/10
“Ethics is the study of the choices people make regarding right and wrong” (Ruggiero, 2008). Environmental ethics, it is more of a study about moral relationships of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. Humans have been sharing our lives with nature for many of years; we have to make many ethical decisions with respect to the environment everyday. We have been concentrating on finding ways and ideas to make our lives easier. Over time we have forgotten to take in the immoral consideration of what we might be doing to our environment itself. In the past, future and even present, there have been many controversial issues on environmental ethics that need to be answered. There are environmental issues affecting our world today such as deforestation and pollution. These problems have even begun to affect us at a global scale and not only have we put ourselves in grave peril but we have also managed to endanger every other species that exist on earth. As noted by Yamamoto (2001), “In Buddhism, human life, and other forms of life are regarded as being of the same matter. Therefore, since they are always related to living things, Buddhism regards environmental problems as essentially an issue of ethics.”
There are many environmental issues that need to be taken care of as soon as possible. One issue would have to be deforestation. For years we as humans have depended on trees as a resource to our everyday life. We have built homes, paper, and many other products from this precious resource. If the forest provided us with low cost homes and so many good resources, why is it an ethical issue or problem? “ This is a problem because deforestation destroys not only forests but also reduces the biodiversity, which means a reduction in the amount, as well as variation of, living things which can cause havoc
SOC 120: Introduction To Ethics & Social Responsibility
01/18/10
“Ethics is the study of the choices people make regarding right and wrong” (Ruggiero, 2008). Environmental ethics, it is more of a study about moral relationships of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. Humans have been sharing our lives with nature for many of years; we have to make many ethical decisions with respect to the environment everyday. We have been concentrating on finding ways and ideas to make our lives easier. Over time we have forgotten to take in the immoral consideration of what we might be doing to our environment itself. In the past, future and even present, there have been many controversial issues on environmental ethics that need to be answered. There are environmental issues affecting our world today such as deforestation and pollution. These problems have even begun to affect us at a global scale and not only have we put ourselves in grave peril but we have also managed to endanger every other species that exist on earth. As noted by Yamamoto (2001), “In Buddhism, human life, and other forms of life are regarded as being of the same matter. Therefore, since they are always related to living things, Buddhism regards environmental problems as essentially an issue of ethics.”
There are many environmental issues that need to be taken care of as soon as possible. One issue would have to be deforestation. For years we as humans have depended on trees as a resource to our everyday life. We have built homes, paper, and many other products from this precious resource. If the forest provided us with low cost homes and so many good resources, why is it an ethical issue or problem? “ This is a problem because deforestation destroys not only forests but also reduces the biodiversity, which means a reduction in the amount, as well as variation of, living things which can cause havoc