Notes Ch2: Values, Worldviews, Decisions, Ethics, Economics, Ecosystem Services

Why We Study Values and Worldviews

To promote sustainable behavior, we must have an understanding of the variety of Value Systems or Worldviews. In this unit you will learn about those value systems or worldviews.

Efforts to create a society that uses resources sustainably must navigate a variety of Value Systems or Worldviews. To change human behavior so that resources are used sustainably, requires and understanding of these different worldviews. From this understanding of value systems/world views, effective strategies for changing behavior might emerge.

A person can hold many of these world views at one time even though it is contradictory. Persuading people to change behavior often involves appealing to one of the person’s worldviews while finding a way to quiet their conflicting worldview

{Give an example of how an understanding of a worldview can actually create a workable strategy that would change behavior to be more sustainable.}

Decisions

  • You will be involved in making decisions at some level in the future.
  • How do you make good decisions?
  • How do you influence others to make good decisions?
  • Some levels of decision making: Global (UN, Corporations, NGO’s),State and local government, businesses and organizations, the courts, your school, your neighborhood, your family, yourself.

Science, Economics, and Society provide INFORMATION, not decisions

HOW you use this information to make decisions comes from your ethics or worldview.

Ethics

Ethics: the study of good and bad or right and wrong.

Ethical Standards:

  • Moral Excellence in Character and Reasoning – Aristotle
  • The Categorical Imperative - Kant – The Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.
  • Utility – John Stewart Mill - The greatest practical benefit for the greatest number.

[Give an example of how you would use one of these ethical standards to persuadesomeone to follow a certain environmental behavior]

“Surely you agree that you would not want to destroy a religious site like the Vatican because there is Uranium found there. Then you certainly would not support mining the uranium under the religiously significant land of the Mirrar Clan” (Categorical Imperative)

“If the entire population of Australia will be able to afford better health care by mining uranium under the Mirrar Clan’s tribal lands, surely it is worth developing some of their tribal lands” (Utilitarian)

Worldviews

Fundamental Value Dichotomy

Intrinsic Value – things have value because they exist. Vs.

Utilitarian Value- things have value because they are useful to humans.)

The “Centrics”

  • Anthropocentric
  • Human Centered
  • How can it be used by or for the benefit of humans
  • Use or Utilitarian value
  • Biocentric
  • Values living things
  • Living things have intrinsic value
  • Ecocentric
  • Values living and non-living aspects of an ecosystem as well as the processes and cycles that maintain that ecosystem.
  • Even the landscape, the rivers, the mountains, the rocks, have value
  • Al things have Intrinsic value

[Give an example of how you would use one of these “Centrics” to persuadesomeone to follow a certain environmental behavior]

Preservationist

  • Ecocentric/ Biocentric
  • All life has equal value (Intrinsic Value)
  • We should protect the natural environment in a pristine, unaltered state.
  • John Muir (and Roosevelt
  • Aldo Leopold

Conservationist

  • Anthropocentric
  • People should put natural resources to use (Utilitarian Value)
  • We have a responsibility to manage them wisely
  • Utilitarian standard: attempt to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.
  • Sustainable extraction
  • Gifford Pinchot
  • Theodore Roosevelt

Deep Ecologist

  • Poem
  • Kill bugs for no reason
  • We are inseparable from all other nature and therefore we should protect all other living things as we would protect ourselves.(Intrinsic Value)
  • Spiritual Connection
  • Transendentalist (Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman)
  • Ecocentric

Ecofeminism

  • The male-dominated structure of society is the root cause of both social and environmental problems

Environmental Justice

  • Priority is for equal treatment of humans and respect for culture and values of poor and powerless.
  • Environmental policy and practice should treat all people fairly and equitably regardless of race, religion, income or ethnicity.
  • Sustainability is the key to ethical treatment of future generations of humans, as well as of the nonhuman environment; this is environmental justice.
  • Anthropocentric

[Give an example of how you would use one of these worldviews to persuadesomeone to follow a certain environmental behavior]

Economics

Classical Economics

  • Adam Smith
  • Self Interest: If everyone acts in their own self-interest, resources will be valued correctly by the market.
  • The “Invisible hand” will guide the economic system to value things properly.
  • Ignores power and access imbalances

Neoclassical Economics

  • Resources are infinite or substitutable
  • Cost and benefits are internal
  • Long term effects should be discounted
  • Includes psychological effects on the Market found in Supply and Demand.
  • Growth Paradigm: Growth is good.
  • Uses GDP to measure economic growth
  • Cornucopian

Ecological Economics

  • Seeks to model the human economy after natural systems that promote balance and stability over growth.
  • Growth is not an absolute good -- Ecosystems do not grow, they function through cycles for stability and evolve in complexity not quantity.
  • Advocates Steady State economy (no growth) as only sustainable economy.
  • Resources are finite
  • The future or long term sustainability is important
  • Externalized costs and benefits are real
  • Current practices (population growth and use of resources) are unsustainable
  • Overuse of resources will doom us if we don’t stop growth
  • Cassandra

Environmental Economics

  • Current practices (population growth and use of resources) are unsustainable
  • We can become sustainable and grow by modifying the current economic model (neoclassical) to include externalities, non market values, ecosystem services in its cost/benefit analysis.
  • Use GPI instead of GDP
  • Environmental economics adopts the goals of ecological economics (e.g., sustainability) but tries to achieve them within a neoclassical economic framework (Growth, Supply/Demand but NOT Short Term, Infinite resources, concern for environmental justice and other externalities)
  • Cornucopian

[Give an example of how you would use one of these economic worldviews to persuadesomeone to follow a certain environmental behavior]

Economic Market

  • A mechanism that uses the interaction between the Buyer and Seller to set the price (Value) of a resource (good or service).
  • The use of Cost-Benefit Analysis (Internal Costs & supply and demand) to price or “value” resources. If resources are properly valued then they will be used in sustainable way.

Market Failure:

  • When the Market Price is less than the Costs. When the Market does not accurately price or value resources and they become unsustainable.
  • Neoclassical: Caused by mistakes in calculating costs or supply and demand.
  • Environmental: Caused by ignoring externalities

Response to market failure:

  • Regulation (Taxes, incentives, Fees, etc.)
  • Government uses regulations to adequately value all resources for the long term so the Market will value them so they are used in an sustainable way.

Externalities (Impacts outside of the buyer/seller relationship)

  • Pollution
  • Physical Habitat Destruction
  • Cultural Damage (to cultural sites or practices)
  • Aesthetic damage
  • Economic Damage (Property damage or Economic Damage to someone besides the buyer or seller)
  • Human health problems
  • Stress and anxiety
  • Lower Property values

Values

  • Market Values
  • Economic Value
  • Non-Market Values
  • Aesthetic Value
  • Scientific Value
  • Existence Value
  • Option Value
  • Use value
  • Educational Value

Ecosystem

A group of living and non-living things that work together to

•Capture energy and nutrients

•Distribute energy and nutrients

•Cycle nutrients through the ecosystem for reuse.

•Control Populations

•Apply pressures for evolution of species

Ecosystem Services

  • Regulating atmospheric gases
  • Regulating climate
  • Purifying Water, Soil, and Air
  • Cycling, storing, and Cleaning water
  • Cycling nutrients
  • Controlling populations
  • Providing food
  • Providing habitats
  • Supplying raw materials
  • Reservoir of medicines
  • Genetic resources
  • Soil Formation
  • Pollinating plants
  • Sewage Treatment
  • Dampening Disturbances (Erosion Control, Flood control, Hurricane Protection)
  • Education
  • Recreation
  • Cultural, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Quality