Ethical issues are being neglected when researching and teaching sustainability, according to a research paper co-authored by an MSU professor, published in this month’s journal, “Bioscience” and entitled “Sustainability: Virtuous or Vulgar?”
Michael Nelson, an MSU associate professor of environmental ethics and John Vucetich, an assistant professor of wildlife biology at Michigan Technological University, collaborated to create the argument and asked what the authors call a vitally important question regarding ethics in sustainability.
“Do we care about ecosystem health because ecosystems are intrinsically valuable, or do we care about ecosystem health because it serves human interest?” Nelson asked.
Vucetich said although they both could have provided the answer in their paper, they didn’t because their answers would mean nothing.
“We all have to understand the ethical dimension,” Vucetich said. “‘How much stuff do I need? Is it fair to take this resource from the environment?’ These aren’t the kind of questions one person can answer. We have to rise as an entire community.”
Although sustainability is a positive goal for a community, Nelson said there’s no attention given to the ethical dimension of it.
“We were motivated by the fact that universities have been dumping lots of resources into sustainability, and when you actually look at where that money goes, almost all of it goes toward increasing energy efficiency and zero percent goes toward ethics,” Nelson said.
Nelson said the first way to correct the problem is to recognize there is a problem.
“If you want sustainability, you’re assuming you want to arrive somewhere,” he said. “The problem is if you don’t do the ethical work along the way you’ll never know if you actually arrive at something.”
Jianguo Liu, the Rachel Carson Chair in Ecological Sustainability at MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, said buying energy-saving light bulbs will not help sustainability, because there are other pressing issues in becoming environmentally friendly.
“Our research indicates that even divorce will be bad for the environment,” Liu said. “A one person household is more damaging to the environment than multiple people in a household. This deals with lifestyle issues, not just the light bulbs you have and energy used.”
Nelson said there are several methods to increase public knowledge of how to act ethically regarding sustainability and find the answers to his questions, but he only promotes one.
“I’m supposed to say you should take classes in ethics, but I’m not going to say that because I’m not sure that the way we formally study ethics helps us,” he said. “Conversations you might have with people that are creative and imaginative, or spark a sense of empathy and a sense of care prompts us to think about right and wrong are the most important.”
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