The effects of idealism and relativism on the moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and their relation to self-reported pro-environmental behaviours.

Many studies have demonstrated that moral philosophies, such as idealism and relativism, could be used as robust predictors of judgements and behaviours related to common moral issues, such as business ethics, unethical beliefs, workplace deviance, marketing practices, gambling, etc. However, little consideration has been given to using moral philosophies to predict environmentally (un)friendly attitudes and behaviours, which could also be classified as moral. In this study, we have assessed the impact of idealism and relativism using the Ethics Position Theory. We have tested its capacity to predict moral identity, moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours. The results from an online MTurk study of 432 US participants revealed that idealism had a significant impact on all the tested variables, but the case was different with relativism. Consistently with the findings of previous studies, we found relativism to be a strong predictor of moral identity and moral judgement of social issues. In contrast, relativism only weakly interacted with making moral judgements of environmental issues, and had no effects in predicting pro-environmental behaviours. These findings suggest that Ethics Position Theory could have a strong potential for defining moral differences between environmental attitudes and behaviours, capturing the moral drivers of an attitude-behaviour gap, which continuously stands as a barrier in motivating people to become more pro-environmental.

Does Health Promotion Harm the Environment?

Health promotion involves social and environmental interventions designed to benefit and protect health. It often harmfully impacts the environment through air and water pollution, medical waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and other externalities. We consider potential conflicts between health promotion and environmental protection and why and how the healthcare industry might promote health while protecting environments. After probing conflicts between promoting health and protecting the environment we highlight the essential role that environmental resources play in health and healthcare to show that environmental protection is a form of health promotion. We then explore relationships between three radical forms of health promotion and the environment: (1) lowering the human birth rate; (2) transforming the food system; and (3) genetically modifying mosquitos. We conclude that healthcare and other industries and their institutions and leaders have responsibilities to re-consider and modify their priorities, policies, and practices.

Planetary Ethics: Russell Train and Richard Nixon at the Creation.

This piece offers a retrospective review of a plenary speech at the 1969 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association by the leading environmentalist of the Nixon administration, attorney and judge Russell Train. Train's talk, titled "Prescription for a Planet," can be seen as an early argument for uniting environmental health and public health as the two main determinants of both individual and population health and for the inclusion of these fields in the then-new field of "bioethics."

The Health Reframing of Climate Change and the Poverty of Narrow Bioethics.

We must resist thoroughly reframing climate change as a health issue. For human health-centric ethical frameworks omit dimensions of value that we must duly consider. We need a new, an environmental, research ethic, one that we can use to more completely and impartially evaluate proposed research on mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Power, pollution, and ethics.

Environmental problems are more urgent and serious than ever: climate change, air pollution, water pollution, shortages of freshwater, deforestation, over-fishing, antibiotic resistance, and more. Discussions in public health address these problems because they affect people's health and life prospects so profoundly. In this work, we add to the discussion by exploring the ethical aspects of a case scenario that involves pollution from a coal-fired power plant. After we note how the plant contributes to pollution, we discuss ethical issues of justice and responsibility. We show how the burdens of pollution and the benefits of the activities that generate pollution are unfairly distributed in this case. We also suggest that social justice demands certain forms of respect, consideration, and participation. Then we turn to issues of responsibility. We focus on responsibilities citizens have to try to change the social structures, background conditions, economic systems, and accepted practices that underlie the problem. We also consider responsibilities that physicians have, both collectively and individually. Taking responsibility for pollution is not a matter of following a medical protocol or legal requirement. It involves creativity, judgement, and a sense of what the situation calls for.

Decision-making under uncertainty in environmental health policy: new approaches.

Decision-making in environmental health policy is a complex procedure even in well-known conditions. Thus, in the case of uncertainty, decision-making becomes a hurdle race. We address scientific uncertainty, methods to reduce uncertainty, biomedical doubt and science communication, and the role of stakeholders, activists, lobbies and media that together influence policy decisions. We also consider the major responsibility and role of the medico-scientific community in this process. This community can and should teach the principle of scientific uncertainty to all stakeholders, advise policy-makers and underline the ethical issues, considering that our brains are not only the deposit of our humanity but also the route to environmental health and societal harmony.

How Should Engineered Nanomaterials Be Regulated for Public and Environmental Health?

A central ethical and policy issue regarding minimizing and managing risks of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) is whether existing legal frameworks sufficiently protect public health and the environment. This article argues that policymakers should (1) use existing laws to regulate ENMs and the best available evidence to inform appropriate levels of regulation and (2) support additional research on risks of ENMs. Were they to do so, public health and environmental risks of ENMs could be minimized and managed without sacrificing their potential clinical, social, and economic benefits.

Survey on Using Ethical Principles in Environmental Field Research with Place-Based Communities.

Researchers of the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership (NEEP) at Brown University sought to improve an understanding of the ethical challenges of field researchers with place-based communities in environmental studies/sciences and environmental health by disseminating a questionnaire which requested information about their ethical approaches to these researched communities. NEEP faculty sought to gain actual field guidance to improve research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate students and faculty in environmental sciences/studies. Some aspects of the ethical challenges in field studies are not well-covered in the literature. More training and information resources are needed on the bioethical challenges in environmental field research relating to maximizing benefits/reducing risks to local inhabitants and ecosystems from research; appropriate and effective group consent and individual consent processes for many diverse communities in the United States and abroad; and justice considerations of ensuring fair benefits and protections against exploitation through community-based approaches, and cultural appropriateness and competence in researcher relationships.

Attending to scalar ethical issues in emerging approaches to environmental health research and practice.

Accelerated changes to the planet have created novel spaces to re-imagine the boundaries and foci of environmental health research. Climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, biogeochemical disturbance, and other emergent environmental issues have precipitated new population health perspectives, including, but not limited to, one health, ecohealth, and planetary health. These perspectives, while nuanced, all attempt to reconcile broad global challenges with localized health impacts by attending to the reciprocal relationships between the health of ecosystems, animals, and humans. While such innovation is to be encouraged, we argue that a more comprehensive engagement with the ethics of these emerging fields of inquiry will add value in terms of the significance and impact of associated interventions. In this contribution, we highlight how the concept of spatial and temporal scale can be usefully deployed to shed light on a variety of ethical issues common to emerging environmental health perspectives, and that the potential of scalar analysis implicit to van Potter's conceptualization of bioethics has yet to be fully appreciated. Specifically, we identify how scale interacts with key ethical issues that require consideration and clarification by one health, ecohealth, and planetary health researchers and practitioners to enhance the effectiveness of research and practice, including justice and governance.

Ethical Dilemmas in Protecting Susceptible Subpopulations From Environmental Health Risks: Liberty, Utility, Fairness, and Accountability for Reasonableness.

Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning policy choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations.

Ethics Guidelines in Environmental Epidemiology: Their Development and Challenges We Face.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review integrates historical developments and key events in bringing ethics into epidemiology in general and into environmental epidemiology in particular. The goal is to provide context for and discern among the various approaches and motivations that drive the need for ethical conduct in support of the public interest. RECENT FINDINGS: The need for ethics guidelines in epidemiology is different from developments in other biomedical-related fields by virtue of its focus on populations rather than on individuals. The need for ethics guidelines in environmental epidemiology as a subspecialty of epidemiology stems from the larger scale of its mission than that of epidemiology per se. Ethics guidelines in the field of environmental epidemiology have been established. They articulate not only the profession's core values and mission, but more specifically, they address the environmental epidemiologist's obligations to the participants in research, to colleagues, and to employers. They are the product of consensus, scholarship, and diligent stewardship over several decades. The next challenge is ensuring their value and impact. The forces that support professional and institutional success, and the power of special interests, are the major threats to achieving the goals of ethical conduct and research for the public good. In environmental epidemiology, these threats have global implications.

Justice Is the Missing Link in One Health: Results of a Mixed Methods Study in an Urban City State.

BACKGROUND: One Health (OH) is an interdisciplinary collaborative approach to human and animal health that aims to break down conventional research and policy 'silos'. OH has been used to develop strategies for zoonotic Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID). However, the ethical case for OH as an alternative to more traditional public health approaches is largely absent from the discourse. To study the ethics of OH, we examined perceptions of the human health and ecological priorities for the management of zoonotic EID in the Southeast Asia country of Singapore. METHODS: We conducted a mixed methods study using a modified Delphi technique with a panel of 32 opinion leaders and 11 semi-structured interviews with a sub-set of those experts in Singapore. Panellists rated concepts of OH and priorities for zoonotic EID preparedness planning using a series of scenarios developed through the study. Interview data were examined qualitatively using thematic analysis. FINDINGS: We found that panellists agreed that OH is a cross-disciplinary collaboration among the veterinary, medical, and ecological sciences, as well as relevant government agencies encompassing animal, human, and environmental health. Although human health was often framed as the most important priority in zoonotic EID planning, our qualitative analysis suggested that consideration of non-human animal health and welfare was also important for an effective and ethical response. The panellists also suggested that effective pandemic planning demands regional leadership and investment from wealthier countries to better enable international cooperation. CONCLUSION: We argue that EID planning under an OH approach would benefit greatly from an ethical ecological framework that accounts for justice in human, animal, and environmental health.

El hombre como centro integrador de la bioética / The man as integrating center of bioethics

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¿Qué es la ética ambiental? desde sus raíces hacia el futuro / What is environmental ethics? from its roots to the future

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¿Aplicar la ética, aplacar la ética, o aplicarse en ética? una visión crítica de la ética ambiental en cuanto ética aplicada / Applying ethics, placating ethics, or applying ourselves to ethics? a critical view of environmental ethics as applied ethics

Existe hoy en día una tendencia generalizada a considerar la ética ambiental y la bioética como casos específicos relativos a una supuesta especie de "ética aplicada". La aplicación puede entenderse en dos sentidos diferentes: un sentido concreto, como en las aplicaciones técnicas, y un significado psicológico, como cuando nos aplicamos mentalmente en hacer bien una tarea. La ética se ha pensado siempre como un conocimiento práctico, en un sentido "práxico" y no en uno "poiético". La ética tiene que ver con "fines", no con "medios"; en este sentido la ética es "inútil". Dado que la ética tiene que ver con el sentido último de las cosas, las opciones éticas dan sentido a todas las actividades prácticas. En ese sentido la ética, en lugar de ser inútil, debe considerarse como "supra-útil" (Maritain). Hoy en día la política tiende a instrumentalizar la ética para objetivos políticos. La consecuencia ha sido la reconceptualización de una ética específica como ética aplicada. La ética ambiental y la bioética son sometidas a la política, siguiendo la lógica de aplicaciones técnicas. La ética ambiental y la bioética, consideradas como éticas aplicadas están en riesgo de convertirse no sólo en inútiles, sino también en algo que, en tanto que éticas, carece de sentido

There is actually a pervasive tendency to consider environmental ethics and bioethics as specific cases pertaining to a supposed kind of "applied ethics". Application can be understood in two different meanings: a concrete sense, as in technical applications, and a psychological meaning, as when we mentally apply ourselves to a task. Ethics has been always thought as a practical knowledge, in a "praxical" sense and not in a "poietic" one. Ethics has to do with "ends" not with "means"; in this sense ethics is "useless". Since ethics has to do with the ultimate meaning of things, ethical choices give meaning to all practical activities. In that sense ethics instead of being useless must be considered as "over useful2 (Maritain). Nowadays politics tend to instrumentalize ethics in order to political objectives. The consequence has been the reconceptualization of specific ethics as applied ethics. Environmental ethics and bioethics are then submitted to politics following the logic of technical applications. Environmental ethics and bioethics considered as applied ethics are at risk to becoming not only useless, but also meaningless

The centrality of philosophical anthropology to (a future) environmental ethics / La centralidad de la antropología filosófica para una (futura) ética ambiental

While environmental ethics has successfully established itself in philosophy, as presently conceived it is still largely irrelevant to grappling the global ecological crisis because, as Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, ethical philosophy itself is in grave disorder. MacIntyre’s historically oriented recovery of virtue ethics is defended, but it is argued that even MacIntyre was too constrained by received assumptions to overcome this disorder. As he himself realized, his ideas need to be integrated and defended through philosophical anthropology. However, it is suggested that current defenders of philosophical anthropology have not done it justice. To appreciate its importance it is necessary accept that we are cultural beings in which the core of culture is the conception of what are humans. This is presupposed not only in thought but in social practices and forms of life. This was understood by Aristotle, but modernity has been straightjacketed by the Seventeenth Century scientific revolution and Hobbes’ philosophical anthropology, identifying knowledge and with techno-science and eliminating any place for questioning this conception of humans. The only conception of humanity that could successfully challenge and replace Hobbes’ philosophical anthropology, it is argued, is Hegel’s philosophical anthropology reformulated and developed on naturalistic foundations. This involves subordinating science to a reconceived humanities with a fundamentally different role accorded to ethics, placing it at the center of social life, politics and economics and at the centre of the struggle to transform culture and society to create an ecologically sustainable civilization

Mientras que la ética ambiental ha consolidado su presencia en la filosofía, tal como está concebida todavía es en gran medida irrelevante para lidiar la crisis ecológica global, porque, como argumentó Alasdair MacIntyre, la ética en sí está en grave desorden. Se defiende la recuperación de orientación histórica de MacIntyre de ética de la virtud, pero al mismo tiempo se argumenta que incluso MacIntyre fue demasiado limitado para conjeturar de superar este trastorno. Como él mismo cuenta, sus ideas deben ser integradas y defendidas a través de la antropología filosófica. Sin embargo, se sostiene que los defensores actuales de la antropología filosófica no le han todavía hecho justicia. Para apreciar su importancia, es necesario aceptar que somos seres culturales, y el núcleo de la cultura es la concepción que tenemos de la humanidad. Esto se presupone no sólo en el pensamiento, sino también en las prácticas sociales y en las formas de vida. Esto fue entendido por Aristóteles, pero la modernidad ha sido «encarcelada» por la revolución científica del siglo XVII y por la antropología filosófica de Hobbes, por la identificación del conocimiento con la tecnociencia y por la eliminación de cualquier lugar para cuestionar esta concepción de ser humano. Se sostiene que la única concepción de humanidad que podría desafiar y reemplazar la antropología filosófica de Hobbes con éxito es la antropología filosófica de Hegel, reformulada y desarrollada sobre bases naturalistas. Esto implica subordinar la ciencia a una nueva concepción de las humanidades, con un papel fundamentalmente diferente otorgado a la ética, colocándola en el centro de la vida social, política y económica y en el centro de la lucha por transformar la cultura y la sociedad, con el fin de crear una civilización ecológicamente sostenible

Sobre la (no) responsabilidad de la tecnociencia en los problemas ambientales y la búsqueda de política / About (non) responsibility of technoscience in environmental problems and about finding politics

En este trabajo me propongo reflexionar acerca de la configuración moderna de la técnica, es decir, la tecnociencia, y su responsabilidad con nuestro manejo del medio ambiente. Busco mostrar que la construcción tecnológica de un mundo implica una cierta actitud de agresividad contra la naturaleza, contrastante con la actitud de protección frente a ella propia del mundo pretecnológico. Sugiero, como conclusión, la recuperación de la noción clásica de Política como una alternativa posible de control de los imperativos tecnocientíficos

In this paper I propose to reflect upon modern configuration of technique, i.e., technoscience, and our responsibility towards environmental management. I show that the technological products of our world imply a certain attitude of aggression towards nature, contrasting with the attitude of protection from her, which was peculiar of the pre-technological world. Finally I suggest recovering the classical notion of politics as a possible alternative for controlling techno-scientific imperatives

Brain matters: from environmental ethics to environmental neuroethics.

The ways in which humans affect and are affected by their environments have been studied from many different perspectives over the past decades. However, it was not until the 1970s that the discussion of the ethical relationship between humankind and the environment formalized as an academic discipline with the emergence of environmental ethics. A few decades later, environmental health emerged as a discipline focused on the assessment and regulation of environmental factors that affect living beings. Our goal here is to begin a discussion specifically about the impact of modern environmental change on biomedical and social understandings of brain and mental health, and to align this with ethical considerations. We refer to this focus as Environmental Neuroethics, offer a case study to illustrate key themes and issues, and conclude by offering a five-tier framework as a starting point of analysis.