CAJ 12 - Ethical Issues concerning Environmental Technologies

We discussed in class, what ethical problems could arise from the implementation of each students CAJ topic. After this lesson and the assignment about ethical issues, I often thought about what I might have forgotten or what else might be relevant. This resulted in three ethical issues that seemed particularly important to me.

The first and probably most obvious one is the uncertainty if what we are doing is better than what we did before. What I mean with this is that new technologies like solar panels and biomass energy are trying to make up for the damage done by fossil fuels and other harmful human technologies. However, soon after the introduction of solar panels, it was clear that solar cells in this form were harming the environment as well because they used up a lot of energy and rare natural resources in their production. What if there are more mistakes like that in the new technologies we are using now? Maybe there are disadvantages we cannot foresee and what if it is too late when we have finally realized what they are?

Secondly, if there is going to be real change, politicians have to make decisions. We all know that hard decisions are not their strength. But let us say that there is one politician, who is tough and smart and has decided to change something in the world. He decides that fossil fuels will run out in the next couple of years anyway and that we need alternatives right now. That is why he signs a law that prohibits the use of fossil fueled cars because there are so much better electrical cars that everybody could use. After his signing the law, the whole country would be furious and in the next election no one would elect this politician again because all his opponents would promote the cheap, old fossil fueled cars. The new legislation would simply reverse the law and everything would go back to normal but without the smart politician.

The third issue is the availability of environmentally friendly technology. Let us take a family of the working class. There is a single mother with three kids between the ages of three and eight. The money is scarce as it is and now you tell this woman that she can not use the second hand car she has been using for the past couple of years because it pollutes the environment too much. How is this woman supposed to afford a new shiny electrical car? No government will be able to pay for every new car that has to be bought and that means that people are on their own and have to pay themselves if they want to drive a car at all.