Sustainability+Ethics

 Donald Scherer writes of the ethics of sustainability in anthropocentric ethical terms. He is concerned with the nature of “justice,” “opportunity,” and “lifestyle” and attempts through their definition and discussion to understand the way in which new environmental issues tie into these existing ethical theories. Scherer concerns himself with the ethical problems that arise “when we shift our attention from cities to rural areas and from countries that use nonrenewable energy resources intensively to countries that rely much more centrally on human labor” from "the suspicion that concern over sustainability is no more than a concern of elite to retain its privileged status.” The difficulty in finding a policy that can fairly reduce environmental impacts, and not further hinder already impoverished parts of the globe, is met with Scherer’s claim that “at some level just patterns of resource use or changes in the pattern of resource use must be patterns or changes acceptable to the least powerful.” From here, Scherer moves more deeply into the origin of opportunity and its impact on the modern conception of justice, and the way in which this help determine appropriate modern ethical decisions, by describing change in public policy and understanding over this countries life time, moving from a pioneer opportunism to an educational one.
 * Donald **** Scherer & John B. Cobb Jr. **

Both Scherer and Cobb concern themselves with the prevention/restoration dilemma, and discuss in like ways the way in which economic policy can ensure prevention of environmental damage that would otherwise become a far more expensive cleanup effort. They also discuss the use of government influence on the economy to properly internalize costs for pollution, and achieve “proper resource pricing.”

But while Scherer deals with the more abstract nature of sustainability ethics, John B. Cobb Jr. focuses on the way in which economic decisions and policies affect environmental issues dealing with economic systems, free trade, externalized/internalized costs, the role technology plays in sustainable economic models, and the role of government in economic affairs. Cobb is more concerned with practical policy, and the way in which political/economic systems handle the issue of sustainable growth and lifestyle. In terms of Anthropocentrism/non-Anthropocentrism Cobb is more concerned with, for example, in cases of deforestation the way in which deforestation “leads to extensive soil erosion… destroys large tracts of agricultural land... [and takes] away the livelihood of those who have depended on this resource.” Cobb tackles the ostensibly contradictory concepts of growth and sustainability, as he describes the difficulties of achieving the economic growth of the “Our Common Failure” report which “assumes that the present global system will continue… the poor can be benefited only as the rich grow richer, that is, only by, and in proportion to, an increase in the global economy." The only way in which Cobb sees such growth as possible “without intensifying ecological destruction is that resources can be used more efficiently and that particularly destructive channels of growth avoided.”

-Grant