CHAPTER 2 ENV 11: Ethics, Economics, and Policy: Who or What Do We Value? QUIZLET

Jevons paradox

("efficiency gains can inspire increased consumption"): A finding that efficiency gain in the use of a resource can lower the cost of that resource, which can consumption of the resource to rise. In 1865, Jevons noticed a historical trend affecting coal consumption. He recognized that in the mid-1700s, coal was scarce in England and its price was rising. By 1775, James Watt had developed the steam engine, a machine that enabled coal-mining operations to extract far more coal with less page 38 energy. This dramatically increased the supply of coal and lowered the price of the fuel to the point where coal (and steam engines) could be used for all sorts of new industrial applications.

Superfund

(aka Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act) A fund created by Congress in 1980 to clean up hazardous waste sites. Money for the fund comes from taxing chemical products. The EPA identifies and prioritizes hazardous waste sites for cleanup

Earth Charter

A United Nations initiative completed in 2000 that outlines duties for the people of Earth, including protecting and restoring Earth's ecological systems. The Earth Charter declares that "every form of life has value regardless of its worth to human beings," which is a form of intrinsic value.

Economic system

A chain of exchange that helps shape the production, distribution, and consumption of things we use. You aren't just buying something but are engaging in an economic system, and your participation helps shape the production, distribution, and consumption of things we use. Choices made in economic systems can have significant effects on the environment, and while we often hear more about negative effects, positive outcomes can happen too.

Endangered Species Act of 1973

A law requiring the federal government to protect all species listed as endangered. It extends federal protection over species deemed to be in danger of extinction.

Cap and trade

A system where a government sets an overall maximum allowable emissions standard (cap) and then creates a market that enables pollution allowances to be bought, sold, traded, or saved for the future. Governments often take action to address negative externalities, using a variety of policies including regulations, taxes, and exchanges. For example, in the 1990s, US regulations were put in place that required new coal-fired power plants to install pollution-control devices to reduce harmful emissions into our common air. Other policies tried to price externalities by creating a market for pollution, including a policy known as cap and trade. In a cap-and-trade exchange system, a government sets an overall maximum amount for allowable emissions (a cap), and then the right to produce emissions up to this cap is given to firms in polluting industries in the form of allowances. While the total number of allowances won't change, they can be bought, sold, traded, or banked for the future. If firms pollute less than their allowance, they can sell the remainder to firms that pollute more and pocket the money they make as profit. This market creates an incentive for firms to reduce pollution and allows firms that pollute more to maintain their operations, though at a higher cost.

Public good

A thing that can't be profitably produced because it's difficult to exclude nonpaying customers from receiving the benefits. These include many things we take for granted in our everyday lives, such as roads and parks. Governments often step in to ensure the provision of public goods. For example, in the early 19th century, coal gas was a new technology that could be piped to streetlights and light up the dark. Later, other ________ such as government-supported electrical infrastructure, natural gas and oil pipelines, and modern highways helped kickstart fossil fuel use for electric power, home heating, and transportation. Some governments are taking similar approaches to stimulate alternative energy industries by providing infrastructure that accommodates charging stations for electric vehicles along major roads.

Ecocentrism

An approach to ethics concerned with all the living and nonliving components of ecosystems. Wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold popularized this idea in the 1940s by proposing a "land ethic" that would extend our sphere of concern to include soils and water bodies as well as plants and animals. He was not arguing against human management of these aspects of the world, but for their right to continued existence in a natural state.

Deontological Ethics

An approach to ethics that establishes duties that ought to be upheld and rights that ought to be protected. It assesses whether actions are right or wrong by establishing general rules in the form of duties that ought to be upheld and rights that ought to be protected. We can see this approach in laws and agreements. For example, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 established a duty for the federal government to "assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings."

Anthropocentrism

An approach to ethics where moral concerns are focused with humans. When the boundary is drawn in this way, there are no moral aspects to environmental decisions apart from how actions that affect the environment will affect people. The smallest sphere of concern would be drawn around those closest to us, such as family and friends. Consumers are warned of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other effects that unhealthy food choices could have on themselves and those closest to them.

Biocentrism

An approach to ethics where the interests of all living things are considered. This approach holds that we have a duty to protect all species of life and that we ought not to take actions that jeopardize species survival because each life-form has intrinsic value. It is at the heart of many arguments to protect endangered species and can include the entire living world, part of which is plants.

Policy

Authoritative decisions such as laws, regulations, and court rulings guiding the behavior of people and organizations subject to a government. Governments are particularly influential because they create and use __________ to direct the behavior of those they govern toward particular goals. Think of the range of goals influencing transportation policies. They might include developing the local economy, adding manufacturing jobs in the automotive sector, reducing pollution, promoting public health and safety, and preserving open spaces. Policy changes can also have a major effect on the environment! · In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States developed a series of environmental laws (e.g., the Wilderness Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act) that established new national goals, rules, and standards for environmental protection to influence actions. · These policy changes have led to improved air and water quality in many parts of the country, the protection of millions of acres of federal lands, and recovery plans for hundreds of threatened and endangered species. Nevertheless, human environmental impact still presents serious challenges, and policy making is a powerful way to continue confronting it. · Policy making involves political struggles among competing interests, and there are contentious processes under way right now—from local town land-use planning commissions to international treaty negotiations—that will influence our impact on the environment.

Wilderness Act of 1964

Established the highest level of environmental protection for federal lands designated as wilderness areas, "where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Clean Water Act of 1972

Establishes and maintains goals and standards for U.S. water quality and purity. It has been amended several times, most prominently in 1987 to increase controls on toxic pollutants, and in 1990, to more effectively address the hazard of oil spills. It governs water pollution.

Externality

Failure of markets to account for all the costs and benefits of goods and services. Negative externalities: Consider the negative externalities associated with coal-fired power plants. Relative to other forms of available energy, especially in the United States, coal is inexpensive to obtain, and it is used to power a large share of US energy needs. · The prices for energy that most of us pay reflect the relatively low costs associated with coal's mining, production, transportation, and burning. · But these prices do not reflect other costs of coal use, including the health harms to the people who mine it, carbon emissions from burning of coal, diminished land value of abandoned mines, pollution from mining operations, and accidents caused by rail transportation of coal. · A 2011 study by the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment estimated that the costs of negative externalities for coal amount to as much as $500 billion per year. Because the market price does not reflect these costs, it is failing to supply coal at what economists would consider the right price. · In fact, goods associated with negative externalities are overproduced because the buyers and sellers of these goods aren't forced to take their full costs into consideration. · The artificially low prices of such goods help them outcompete alternative goods that could otherwise replace them. Positive Externalities: In the earlier example, listening to a concert for free was a positive externality. Education is often seen as having many positive externalities. While it benefits the person who received it, the broader community tends to benefit from the improved productivity of a more educated population. In a similar way, most people recognize the positive externalities of functioning ecosystems, including clean water and air, fertile soils for growing crops, and better opportunities for outdoor recreation and aesthetic appreciation. Even just the satisfaction individuals get from knowing that a natural ecosystem exists and preserving the option for themselves or others to enjoy it provides some societal benefit. But economists have observed that markets normally underproduce things that have positive externalities. This is because the would-be producers of these goods and services are not being fully compensated for all of the benefits that flow from them. Positive externalities are often not economically valued accurately (if at all).

Demand

In economics, a concept reflecting how much someone (the consumer) desires and is willing to pay for a good.

Market

In economics, a system that brings buyers and sellers together to exchange goods. Scarcity inspires innovation: Another basic economic relationship is that markets will spur creative efforts to fill unmet demand. This was observed in the first decade of the 21st century when oil prices increased dramatically as people wanted more of it, rising to well over $140 a barrel as oil became scarcer. But this scarcity and expense made the industry try harder and harder to find oil, drilling in more difficult places to access (such as deep under the ocean) and inventing new technologies (such as directional drilling) and complex extraction techniques (such as from tar sand) to get oil.

Supply

In economics, the total quantity of a good or service that is available.

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

Management of non-hazardous and hazardous solid waste including landfills and storage tanks. Set minimal standards for all waste disposal facilities and for hazardous wastes. It governs solid and hazardous waste disposal.

Environmental Policy Act of 1970

Required environmental impact reports for projects involving federal funds, property, or permits. Created EPA. Mandated that agencies prepare environmental impact statements. The act requires that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), lengthy documents compiled over many months or even years with a high level of public involvement, be prepared when actions taken by the federal government are likely to have a significant environmental impact. It overarches with the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The US federal agency with a mission to protect human health and the environment. It was · created in 1970, sets minimum national standards for pollution levels and the procedures governing polluting activities. The ____ then works with state governments to enforce the standards by granting permits to various categories of polluters and administering penalties to those who fail to comply with the standards.

Boycott

The act of withholding your buying power (as an individual or group) from a company to motivate change. For example, consumer ____________ played an important role in motivating apparel companies such as Nike to improve their labor standards in factories overseas and in influencing tuna companies to adopt fishing practices that lessen adverse effects on dolphins.

Utilitarianism

The greatest good for the greatest number): An approach to ethics that defines what is right by determining what actions would bring as much good (or as little harm) as possible. The rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by the balance of good and bad consequences that result from it. In other words, the end is given more moral weight than the means in decision making. Second, it typically assesses the consequences by attempting to calculate the total benefits and the total harms experienced by all those affected.

Clean Air Act of 1970

The law aimed at combating air pollution, by charging the EPA with protecting and improving the quality of the nation's air. It governs air pollution.

Intrinsic value

The value of something in and of itself apart from its usefulness to others. For example, the United Nations (UN) initiated the Earth Charter.

Toxic Substances Control Act (1976)

This law regulates chemicals and chemical compounds that are known to be toxic and provides for investigation of any possible harmful effects from new compounds. It specifically requires anyone planning to use chemicals first determine their effect on human health and environment. The EPA regulations require special labeling, production and use quotas, and the prohibiting of use altogether. It gives gives the EPA authority to inventory, test, and regulate chemical substances currently manufactured or processed within the United States.

Ethics

To determine whether a particular action is right or wrong, good or bad, our personal ethics—a set of moral principles—provide guidelines for our behavior. We make decisions on the basis of ethical judgments every day by combining our personal beliefs and values to guide our own actions, sometimes with powerful effects. For example, in 2010 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a report that identified possible hazards to fetuses, infants, and young children from an additive to plastic products known as bisphenol A (BPA). Several states passed legislation to this effect, and the FDA ultimately passed a regulation banning the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups.