Deck 16: Sustainability

Question 1

Do engineers have a moral obligation to always design sustainable technologies? Explain.

Answer 1

No Answer.

Question 2

Is the natural environment valuable in an intrinsic or instrumental sense? Explain your answer.

Answer 2

No Answer.

Question 3

Do we have a duty to preserve the planet for future generations? Explain your answer.

Answer 3

No Answer.

Question 4

Should we fear a Global Manhattan? Explain your answer.

Question 5

The Deepwater Horizon case primarily raises ethical questions about the

A) lack of adequate training and oversight of the crew working on the platform.
B) moral permissibility of using fossil fuels.
C) moral permissibility of using nuclear power.
D) internal coherence of the NSPE Code of Ethics.

Question 6

The decision in the Deepwater Horizon case to drill without the centralizers was made on what basis?

A) They could always put centralizers in later.
B) The drilling engineer thought they were not necessary in this situation.
C) The risk of drilling without centralizers was worth the reward of saving money.
D) Centralizers were an unnecessary environmental requirement.

Question 7

Which of the following was a consequence of the blowout?

A) Deepwater Horizon sunk.
B) Eleven people died.
C) 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled, devastating wildlife.
D) All of the above

Question 8

Which of the following definitions of "sustainable development" best fits the notion of sustainability endorsed by the EPA in the past?

A) Development that makes everyone in all generations happy.
B) Development that is fully virtuous in an Aristotelian sense.
C) Development that does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
D) Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Question 9

Broad and weak sustainability are best described as sustainability that

A) maximizes the well-being of the present.
B) permits significant long-term depletion of natural, social, or economic resources so long as the total aggregated value it preserved.
C) does not permit losses in one dimension of resources to be compensation by gains in other dimensions.
D) meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Question 10

Broad and strong sustainability is best described as sustainability that

A) maximizes the well-being of the present.
B) permits significant long-term depletion of natural, social, or economic resources so long as the total aggregated value it preserved.
C) does not permit losses in one dimension of resources to be compensation by gains in other dimensions.
D) does not permit significant long-term depletion of natural resources.

Question 11

Narrow sustainability is best understood as sustainability that

A) meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
B) permits significant long-term depletion of natural, social, or economic resources so long as the total aggregated value it preserved.
C) does not permit losses in one dimension of resources to be compensation by gains in other dimensions.
D) does not permit significant long-term depletion of natural resources.

Question 12

For hundreds of years, Mandragora officinarum (a poisonous plant) was widely used for curing a variety of diseases. Today you can, however, find plenty of equally good or better synthetic medicines in your local drug store. Let us imagine, contrary to the historical facts, that some new technology had been introduced 20 years ago that we knew would kill all Mandragora plants. Would that have been of any concern to us if we knew that no sentient being would ever need the plant again for medical (or any other) purposes?

A) The answer to this question depends primarily on how much money we would have been willing to pay for preserving Mandragora.
B) The answer to this question depends primarily on how much happiness or well-being Mandragora created for us.
C) The answer to this question depends primarily on whether Mandragora was valuable in an intrinsic or instrumental sense.
D) The answer to this question depends primarily on whether Mandragora was valuable in a Kantian or utilitarian sense.

Question 13

Someone who believes that nature has intrinsic value might say that the intrinsic value of the poisonous plant Mandragora Officinarum

A) depends on the effects that Mandragora Officinarum has on the health or welfare for human beings.
B) is independent of the effects that Mandragora Officinarum has on the health or welfare for human beings.
C) supervenes on the effects that Mandragora Officinarum has on the health or welfare for human beings.
D) is caused by the effects that Mandragora Officinarum has on the health or welfare for human beings.

Question 14

Someone who believes that nature has instrumental but no intrinsic value might say that the instrumental value of the poisonous plant Mandragora Officinarum

A) depends on the effects that Mandragora Officinarum has on the health or welfare for human beings.
B) is independent of the effects that Mandragora Officinarum has on the health or welfare for human beings.
C) supervenes on the intrinsic properties of Mandragora Officinarum.
D) depends entirely on the nonrelations properties of Mandragora Officinarum.

Question 15

If the natural world is valuable only in an instrumental sense, then

A) nature is not valuable for its own sake.
B) nature's value depends on what humans (and possibly other sentient beings) can do with them.
C) natural resources can be permissibly bought and sold on a free market.
D) All of the above

Question 16

If the natural world is intrinsically valuable, then

A) nature's value depends on what humans (and possibly other sentient beings) can do with them.
B) nature is valuable for its own sake.
C) natural resources can be permissibly bought and sold on a free market.
D) None of the above

Question 17

In the last man case, Routley has us imagine that, due to some disaster, there is only one man remaining on earth but plenty of plants and animals and life will go on after the last man's death. Routley thinks that we would intuitively judge it morally wrong for the last man to go on a killing spree of plants and animals. What does he think this judgment shows?

A) The virtue of temperance is morally serious.
B) Cruelty is a vice.
C) Nature has only instrumental value.
D) Nature has intrinsic value.

Question 18

The distant nuclear fireworks example has us consider the last man on a spaceship watching as Earth is about to crash into the Sun, killing all the life on it. The last man can delay this inevitable event by five years by firing a missile from the spaceship. The authors think our intuitive moral judgment should be that the last man has no such obligation. What would this show?

A) The vice of wrath does all the moral work in the original last man case.
B) Nature has intrinsic value.
C) Nature only has instrumental value.
D) Nuclear power is environmentally friendly.

Question 19

Comparing the two cases, why might one judge the man destroying nature in the original last man case to have done something wrong, but the man standing back watching Earth fall into the Sun not to have done anything wrong?

A) Inaction is never morally wrong, only action.
B) Nature has no value if it is about to be destroyed.
C) We find aggressive destruction to be incongruent with virtues.
D) There is no duty to protect, only a duty not to destroy.

Question 20

In the case where students can save a little time walking to class by taking a shortcut through the lawn, why is it rational for every student to take the shortcut even if they value the health of the lawn?

A) Walking on the lawn does not harm it at all.
B) The damage to the lawn is imperceptible, while the benefit of time saved is perceptible.
C) The students do not truly value the health of the lawn.
D) If the lawn will be destroyed anyway by others, it no longer matters.

Question 21

Which of the following environmental issues is an issue like the lawn where one has a perceptible reason to perform an action that contributes imperceptible harm?

A) Spilling oil into the ocean
B) Emitting greenhouse gases by driving one's automobile
C) Dumping untreated wastewater into the river
D) Electing not to replace leaking petroleum storage tanks at gas stations

Question 22

"The tragedy of the commons" is a type of

A) tragic outcome in which everyone is harmed by not acting according to the NSPE Code of Ethics.
B) tragic outcome in which everyone is harmed by not acting according to the TEPA.
C) situation in which everyone is acting independently and rationally according to their own self-interest, but the outcome is worse for everyone than it would have been if the agents had cooperated.
D) All of the above

Question 23

If the present generation has a perfect duty to preserve the planet for future generations, it has to be true that the

A) present generation will be able to meet its needs without compromising the needs of future generations.
B) present generation cannot rationally will that the planet is destroyed, because such a future would be extremely undesirable.
C) present generation cannot rationally will that the planet is destroyed, because that would be conceptually impossible or contradictory.
D) cost for this would be morally acceptable according to a cost-benefit analysis.

Question 24

The lesson of prisoner's dilemmas for sustainability is:

A) The most rational thing is for everyone to choose not to cooperate.
B) What is rational is purely subjective.
C) Most people are not capable of being rational.
D) Cooperation is rational, but this requires enforcement mechanisms.