This lesson provides a decision-making guide to help you integrate what you've learned in previous lessons. The main benefit of this guide is that it will force you to think more clearly about the different considerations that must be considered when making an ethical decision about an environmental problem. Analysis, Assessment, and Action are the three general phases in the decision-making model. Even if you can't answer all of these questions, grouping your thoughts into these three main categories will help you avoid the fatal mistake of conflating empirical and normative, or spiritual, considerations.
This model is meant to aid a decision involving a case in environmental ethics. Other environmental ethics cases can be found by searching on the Web. It also highly encouraged  to use these decision-making model on a real-life case that you may be confronting in your communities. Go through each step of the model, take notes as you go.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES & ETHICS
TOPIC 11
AN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS DECISION-MAKING GUIDE

ASSESSMENT (USE NORMS TO EVALUATE ALTERNATIVES)

1. Ethical perspective: What would be a fair solution to these problems? Keep in mind that ethics isn't only about what we shouldn't do; it's also about how we envision things to be.

2. Dealing with a lack of environmental knowledge: how can you assess the degree of certainty with which options are presented? What are the potential consequences of unknown environmental effects, and who bears the risk?


3. Which style of ethical reasoning appears to be the most appropriate? (commands, repercussions, and personality)
4. Moral values: What are the most important ethical principles to consider? (justice, sufficiency, sustainability, unity, engagement, and prevention are some examples.)
5. Virtues: What character traits do you want to show in your decisions? (Examples: caution, foresight, and bravery)