Environmental Ethics: An Introduction and Learning Guide

As the destructive consequences of environmental problems such as global warming, water scarcity and resource and biodiversity destruction have been felt ever more heavily, people are becoming more aware of the importance of and their responsibilities towards environmental protection. The causes of our problems are anthropogenic. The number of people working in what might be termed environmental industries or with environmental responsibilities in their day-to-day work has mushroomed. In many cases, however, individuals charged with protecting the environment have a set of empirical priorities: what is done, rather than moral priorities which consider what should be done. The need to harmonise environmental knowledge with ethical behaviour and thus achieve behavioural change and the internalisation of environmentally ethical values has never been more urgent.