Quiz 3 Flashcards
Animal Liberation
Peter Singer
- 2002
- Focuses on sentience and the ability to suffer; animals have rights; utilitarian view; raising or hunting for food is ethical but having the animals suffer on farms is unethical. Fundamental duty to avoid taking actions that bring about harm -> pain+harm that comes from unneccessarily violating the interests of beings who are capable of experiencing such violations . i.e spp who are capable of sentience
we all qualify and want to to reduce suffering while promoting happiness
But this pov is limited by anthropocentrism
Last Person on Earth thought experiment
- Richard Routley
- 2013
- Examines how living things outside of humans and abiotic factors of the environment are not really included in ethics. Asks if you were the last person on earth, would you push a button that makes everything else extinct. Instrumental in deciding if things outside of humans have value. Instrumental vs Intrinsic value; anthropocentrism; deep ecology
Insecticide-treated bed nets
- issue in multiple places in Africa
- modern day ish
- In Africa they hand out treated nets to prevent people from getting malaria but now the people are using nets to fish > these people are overfishing due to food shortage but say they wont stop using the nets for fish bc they would starve otherwise; nets coated in chemicals which isnt helping water quality; millions of nets passed out and is making some people a lot of money > debate on whether or not to still give these people nets bc if not they get malaria and die or they get nets but overfish.
Animal welfare vs human welfare; kantianism; utilitarianism
Deep ecology
- Paul Taylor, Murray Bookchin - original by Arne Naess
- 1972
- Thinks of world as a whole, not just about humans; part of a community; we dont run everything; we are our relationships; individuals have little value in global context but we all require interactions in order for the ecosystem to work
Opposite of shallow ecology > which is anthropocentric and utilitarian based
Intrinsic value, not just instrumental
No right to dec diversity except to satisfy fundamental needs
Reduce population
importance of env over humans
Nicomachean ethics
- Aristotle
- 384-322 BC
- good human life = moral virtue -> realize your purpose, develop virtues, have moral perception; science of the good for human life.
Based more on the character and patterns of behaviour of the “virtuous person” than with a criterion of right actions. weakness(unless one is virtuous we don’t know what the right thing to do is), strength(Each person has their own function) -> but this idea flawed bc it doesn’t consider lowered class organisms (anthropocentric) -> virtue ethics
The Population Bomb (1968)
paul ehrlich
builds on malthus
very pessimistic view that millions will starve
describes mess of humans, overpop issues > says this about delhi but not about paris (same pop at the time)
also racist
his predictions were wrong
Africville
- Distributive, Procedural, Recognition Justice
- Shelagh Mackenzie
- 1991
They relocated afrcicville from halifax, nova scotia in 1964 (400 people) after 100 years - black settlement
- Africville denied basic utilities, and got the sewage waste from halifax, was also next to the dump
- Dump was used as a salvaging site for the citizens of africville, t get things they couldnt afford or sold back to the city to get money
- City hall said they had to relocate africville bc of above issues
There was a housing crisis at the time, but these people had their land take
Many nonblack people called africville a slum
People removed from the land bc it was deemed “important” by the city> they believe city moved them bc they didnt want black peopl
Their “poor” living cond was reasoning to get moved even though the city couldve upgraded their living vond (i.e provide services)
City gave people $500 for the land and then bulldozed houses immediately putting pressures on those remaining to move
City tore the church down before everyone left
Last resident left 1970
Moved the africville people to the slums in halifax
2003 Mother Earth Water Walk
group walked around lake superior about pollution in the lake
we need to respect the lake
spring of 2003, a group of Anishinaabe grandmothers and other community members gathered and began walking around the Great Lakes in response to pollution and water misuse.
Now an annual movement throughout the North American continent, the Water Walk includes women and men of different heritages and nations
Showcases care ethics “approaches to moral life and community that are grounded in virtues, practices, and knowledges associated with appropriate caring and caretaking of self and other” > somewhat related to deep ecology
1970s Chipko Andolan movement
women opposed to forest clear cutting of an area they used for food -> chained themselves to trees
Grassroots environmental movement
surrounded and hugged trees to protect local forests from state approved logging companies
- ethics of caring for trees, 2 forests, women, and communities as valuable interdependent beings, and it initiated a national movement that embraced and publicized the potent symbol of tree-hugging as an expression of resistance to environmental exploitation
environmental protection can be enlivened by women’s local knowledge about communal well-being and the intermingled interests of human and nonhuman life. Public performances of care ethics helped revolutionize understandings of conservation and women’s unique stakes in environmental protection, especially where basic rights and needs are threatened by destructive projects that generate profits for outsiders
The Tragedy of the Commons
garrett hardin (1968)
cows eating as much as possible -> dont care about env -> we just focus on ourselves
- hardin sux -> criticized and his views sometimes seen as wrong (mildenberger 2019) -> Some common areas have worked in the past
Follows beliefs of eco-facism (An ideology “which blames the demise of the environment on overpopulation, immigration, and over-industrialization….” )
Everybody contributes to the degradation of a shared resources due to their own “selfish interests”
Navajo Generating Station
Coal powered electrical plant in arizona -> closure
Dumping cleanup costs on the local first nations
Supporting the Navajo Nation’s pursuit of water rights in the San Juan River for water used today to cool the Four Corners Power Plant and San Juan Generating Station
Water a scarcity, used to pressure tribes
Distributive justice:
Addresses the unequal allocation of environmental benefits, harms, and responsibilities
Procedural justice:
In an energy context is most often associated with locals’ involvement in energy planning and the conditions of that participation
Recognition justice:
Kyle Powys Whyte argues that recognition justice “must meet the standard of fairly considering and representing the cultures, values, and situations of all affected parties.”
Williams and Doyon (2019) also address the concept’s complexity, noting that existing inequalities within colonial arrangements are also issues of power and sovereignty
Indig rights/E transition: “Attempting an energy transition without asserting Indigenous rights is simply greening theft, and it is also doomed to fail.”
Most for agreement, but it never passed
Arguments Opposed to Funding:
Acknowledges harm from coal mining and closure but states ratepayers are not liable
Procedural:
Question whether the Commission has the legal jurisdiction to enforce payments. Criticize Arizona Public Service for drafting agreement with Navajo Nation unilaterally without consulting the commission or the Residential Utility Consumer Office (RUCO)
Arguments in Favor of Funding
Disruptive:
Arizona’s economic growth fueled by cheap water and electricity provided by Navajo and Hopi resources while Indigenous communities absorb the env harm and now job losses
Procedural:
commission already has the framework and authority to proceed with the agreed upon payment
Recognition:
Highlight current-day power asymmetries by invoking longstanding injustice linked to resource colonialism
1923 flooding Hetch Hetchy Valley
john muir (1838–1914)
Damming the toulumne river in yosemite ntl park
Flooded to provide water to sf
the valley is holier than temples (sublime & frontier -> introduced by Cronan)
people attach religiousness to wilderness
Destroying nature is like destroying the garden of Eden
first instance of people trying to save nature (protests etc)
Pyrenean ibex
- 2009
- The first example of de-extinction
- Died 7 mins after its birth due to birth defects in its lungs
- Precautionary principle
– When it is scientifically reasonable to suspect a risk to health or the environment, but the evidence is not strong enough to show conclusively that the risk exists, we should avoid the potential danger
– It emphasizes caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous
– Critics argue that it is vague, self-cancelling, unscientific and an obstacle to progress
– The burden of proof would fall to the innovators to prove that it is safe
Brent Spar Oil Rig
- 1990s
- Location > northern sea next to the uk, northern germany and scandinavian countries
- Shell wanted to sink oil rig and put sludge in the sea > german greenpeace snuck in and hid on it to prevent it from being sunk
- successful boycott/campaign, and brought it to a fjord in norway
- led to boycott of shell as well
- protested this one specifically bc it was first one slotted to be sunk out of over a dozen
- Would have set a precedent
- Was sign of protest success > stopped around a dozen other wells from being sunk
- Some studies have concluded that dumping the rig in the ocean may have been the best solution
- Environmental governance requires regulation
– A rule or principle governing behavior or practice; esp. such a directive established and maintained by an authority
– Ineffective because future generations and the env can’t vote - Consumers acting as quasi-env regulators
– “Vote with your wallets”
– Problem: consumers are generalists, not specialists
Whanganui River
- River in New Zealand
- River was granted legal personhood on May 20, 2017
– henceforth possesses “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities” of a legal person.” - Led by the indig ppl - Maori
- Any harm done to the river is like harm done to a person
- Huge win in environmental law
- Developments etc must be approved by guardians
