Environmental Virtue Ethics Case Study

Chapter nine of Dr. Byron Williston’s Environmental Ethics for Canadians examines environmental virtue ethics and its applications in real world situations. The case study in this chapter inspects three Canadian environmentalist exemplars. Virtue ethics is the moral theory that searches for a middle ground between extreme opposite characteristics all while taking into consideration the facts that are present at any given time. The case study focusses on David Suzuki, Elizabeth May, and Maude Barlow, who are all powerful beings in the realm of climate change. In relation to these figures, Williston suggests that one should seek these figures as a mentor as one would if they were trying to learn an instrument (Williston 272). Williston claims that if one …show more content…
This suggests that some of the actions that environmental activists take are questionable and morally wrong. Take for example Grant Hadwin, a timber prospector who chopped down the Picea sitchensis Aurea tree as an act of protest against the “predatory forestry industry” (259). This act only made a very select group of people feel sympathetic and instead “shocked and disgusted” large groups of people (259). By committing this extremist action Hadwin disregarded environmental virtue ethics and performed an act that did not follow the moral principles of virtue ethics. If Hadwin had studied the teachings of the exemplar environmental virtue ethicists, this act would not have taken place as he would have realized that his act was damaging instead of helping. This exemplifies that is in fact important to study the lives of key figures in environmental activism, but it can only go so far. It can be assumed that studying the exemplars would have prevented him from acting in this way, but no other conclusion would have been made by him. He would have taken no action at