Does the environment matter?

We all live in the same world and our actions affect the current and the future world.

Although most people may share the same ethical approach to, for example, violent crime, there is less consensus about the environment. For example, some Christians might say that humans were given the Earth and that they should act as good tenants.  Equally, other Christians maintain that the world will soon end in judgment day and there is little need for long-term environmental planning.

You could say that the environment is becoming a  part of the concepts of "expanding rights". Someone once said to me that the scope of human rights have been increasing throughout history. Originally only the Kind had rights. Those spread to the nobility and later to the middle classes. Later, the rights were extended to women and to the working class.  Rights have been extended across national boundaries with the notion of universal human rights. Rights have also been extended to other species an it is widely believed that animals have rights.  This process has continues and there are those who believe the even a wilderness has rights (to remain a wilderness). This begs the question "Does the environment have an intrinsic value"?

Times have changed. Times have change culturally because there is a more widespread view that we should not waste energy unnecessarily, we should not pollute the environment, and we should produce the minimum amount of waste. You see this in, for example, the recycling of toner cartridges in laser printers.

The ACM Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice makes a direct reference to the environment is the following statement:

Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good.

Professional engineers are, therefore, expected to comply with environmental considerations.

The so-called environmental and ecology debate is highly polarized. The world appears to be divided into two mutually hostile camps.

On one side there are those who feel that there is no problem and the world is inherently self-correcting. If people use more energy, then the market will solve the problem by generating more investment in other sources of energy.

On the other side there of the debate many feel that the environment is not self-regulating and the growing consumption of resources such as oil will permanently damage the environment. Moreover, they that declining recourses are going to create political instability as large nations compete for the raw materials they need to continue to grow.