The Role of Virtue Ethics in Environmental Sustainability

This essay delves into the realm of environmental virtue ethics, exploring the critical role of virtues in fostering a sustainable environment. It begins by defining virtue ethics and its practical applications, emphasizing the concept of the 'mean' as articulated by Aristotle. The essay then addresses the ethical implications of environmental pollution, particularly the responsibility of industries, and examines the purpose of environmental virtue ethics in shaping human behavior and promoting environmental consciousness. It further investigates how individuals can act virtuously toward the environment, categorizing environmental virtues into responsive, justified, and productive types. The essay also discusses the challenges in implementing environmental ethics, including the limitations of right-based moral theories and the importance of conservation and preservation ethics in addressing environmental concerns. It highlights the need for a balanced approach that considers both human interests and the intrinsic value of nature, drawing on the referenced sources to support its arguments.

Environmental
harm and virtue
ethics

Thesis statement
Some virtues like virtues of sustainability, virtues of interaction with the
nature and respect for the nature, virtues of the stewardship and the
virtues of environmental activism in mankind can pave the way for a
sustainable environment, as it is these virtues that will make people to
take care of their environment.

What is virtue ethics and how can it be
applicable to the real world?
 Virtue ethics mainly rely on virtues and
qualities that are considered to be morally
good and are made to make good and
ethical decisions.
 As stated by “Aristotle” virtue can be
considered to be “the mean” of the two
extremes. At one end of the extreme , one
has the deficiency of the trait, while at other
end there is deficiency of the trait (Sandler,
2013).

Why environmental pollution is an ethical
issue?
 Environmental pollution is an
ethical issue as pollution is
directly responsible for the
sufferings of the human’s
sufferings. This makes it an
ethical issue that lies on the
shoulders of the fossil fuel
industries.

Corporate moral dilemma
 Companies will always find a way out to justify
the transgressions, regardless of how fragile the
justification is.
 The fact is that the industry knows that they are
the prime reasons for air pollution for not
maintaining or abiding by the emission
standards. Yet they pay very less attention to it.

What is the purpose of environmental
virtue ethics?
 Human beings need to develop habits
and beliefs and should pay attention to
the environmental issues like air
pollution, that we generally tend to
avoid and should be politically active
and less pollute our environment.
 The exploration of the attitudes, habits
and virtues would help people to make
earth, a sustainable place to live in.

How can we act virtuously towards out own
environment?
 The environmental virtue mainly focusses on the ideas of justice and the way it
related to the environment. There are several ways in which people can protect
the earth and other species from air pollution.

Environmental virtues
 Environmental virtues can be classified in to three types –
 Environmentally responsive virtues
 Environmentally justified virtues
 Environmentally productive virtues

Environmental ethics and the
issues faced in implementation
 The human factors play an important role in the application of the
environmental ethics.

Problems In applying the right based moral
theories to the environmental concerns
 The ethical policies that has been adopted might be as per the
interest of the mankind, but definitely not for the interest of the biotic
and the abiotic factors of the nature.

Environmental ethics and
conservation and preservation
 The conservation ethics recognizes he limitations of the natural
resources in this planet and states and have stated that unlimited
population growth is not feasible.
 The preservation ethics on the other hand suggested that nature
itself has an intrinsic value and hence needs protection.

References
 Fossheim, H. J. (2014). Virtue ethics and everyday strategies. Revue
internationale de philosophie, (1), 65-82.
 Karataş, A. (2015). Importance of Ethical Principles for Eco-friendly Management.
China-USA Business Review, 14, 298-303.
 Lu, J. G., Lee, J. J., Gino, F., & Galinsky, A. D. (2018). Polluted morality: Air
pollution predicts criminal activity and unethical behavior. Psychological science,
29(3), 340-355.
 Sandler, R. L. (2013). Environmental virtue ethics. International Encyclopedia of
Ethics.
 Shogren, J. (2013). Encyclopedia of energy, natural resource, and environmental
economics. Newnes.