Scholarly record
FROM PROFIT TO THE BIOSPHERE: LINKING GLUCHMAN AND SINGER ETHICS IN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
Abstract
Environmental management and genetic engineering today must cope with the increasing need to integrate ethical considerations into technical solutions. In the real scientific world, there is a truly wide range of scientific approaches. Our contribution presents an analysis of two significant consequentialist approaches today – Gluchman’s ethics of social consequences and Peter Singer’s preferential utilitarianism. The aim of the contribution is not a simple comparison of both concepts. It is to apply these theoretical models to the field of geosciences and environmental management. In this area, the emphasis is on the consequences of decisions. Social consequences ethics presents possibilities for evaluating the positive and negative social consequences of human actions, not excluding the ethical impact on the environment and the planet in general. This concept emphasizes responsibility towards society. Singer extended the moral status of the personality to non-human entities. He takes into account their interests, as well as the need to minimize their suffering. A possible combination of both approaches helps to solve moral dilemmas in industrial mining or remediation of environmental burdens. Within this combination of approaches, it is possible to devise an Ethical Impact Index, which would force geoengineers to make decisions not only in terms of profit intentions and social impact in the near future, but also ecocentric consequences for the biosphere. I believe that the connection of Singer's emphasis on the biosphere and Gluchman's emphasis on the social sphere can bring a pragmatic and rational ethical tool for modern environmental policy in the Anthropocene era.
Publication details
References14
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