Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine (Jun 2009)
A Brief History of Enviroethics and Its Challenges
Abstract
Environmental ethics has emerged during the early 1970s, when environmentalists started urging philosophers to consider the philosophical aspects of environmental problems. Environmental ethics considers the ethical relationships between humanity and non-human world. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of over two thousands scientists, has concluded that climatic change is beyond dispute, and already changing our environment. Environmental instability portend ill for public health and well-being. This paper attempts to apply ethical theories to support environmental concerns and provides moral grounds to preserve the earth's environment. This article documents consensus among environmental philosophers as given by synthesis data provided via survey among articles, websites, and books by the keywords: environment, ethics, health and crises. The field has come to exert significant influence over a large number of human science disciplines in relation to environmental sustainability and human wellbeing. Environmental ethics focuses on the possibility of the identification of human ego with nature, means the larger ecological self deserves respect, too. Environmental ethics expands the boundaries of ethics to include the nature and considers its sustainability to ensure human wellbeing. This study emphasizes mainly on a brief history of environmental ethics and its protection against damage. Environmental changes and extreme weather events in plus to species distinction and a growth of diseases are impossible to hide and ought to be impossible to ignore. The health decline associated with various forms of these changes is continuing. It raises crucial issues about environmental justice.
