Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T01:21:07.481Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Issues with choice architecture, environmental ethics, and globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2018

Edward Sankowski
Edward Sankowski*
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
*
Correspondence: Edward Sankowski, Department of Philosophy, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Cass R. Sunstein’s book The Ethics of Influence appears to have three ideological features notable for purposes of this essay. The book emphasizes choice architecture (and related notions such as nudges and defaults), which should be ethically scrutinized to guard against ethical abuses and to assist us in ethically desirable uses of scientific psychology and behavioral economics. (1) This particular book focuses more on scrutinizing nation-state government than on corporate activities. (2) This book focuses more on domestically directed governmental action than on externally directed governmental action. (3) This book focuses more on certain developed liberal democracies than on the more comprehensive global situation. Sunstein is especially interested in environmental issues, particularly energy policy, global warming, and climate change. This essay argues that Sunstein’s conceptual scheme can be fruitfully expanded to progress toward a normative environmental ethics that can be integrated with the insights of global political economy.

Keywords

Choiceclimateglobalizationenergypolitical economy
Type
Forum
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , Spring 2018 , pp. 130 - 134
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Sunstein, C. R., The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 3.Google Scholar
Sunstein, chap. 7, “Green by Default? Ethical Challenges for Environmental Protection,” pp. 159–186.Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 3.Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 12.Google Scholar
Sunstein, pp. viii, 1–2, 5–6, 9–10, 17, 70, 119–120, 133–134, 147–148, 164–166, 168, 171.Google Scholar
Sunstein, pp. 26–27. In a list of nudges, Sunstein mentions “disclosure of factual information” and refers to various communications that include value judgments. This appears to be analogous to international discourse that includes exposure of facts about human rights abuses, supplemented by ethical principles along with the justification of such principles.Google Scholar
One interesting account including reference to various analogous forms of global and international influence, some nudge-like, subsequently discussed here (though very briefly) is in Leif Wenar, Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
For more specific discussion of the concept of “least developed countries,” see United Nations, Development Policy & Analysis Division, https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/least-developed-country-category.html (accessed February 27, 2018).Google Scholar
Issues about “the right to development” in relation to the LDCs are discussed on the website of the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/Pages/LDCIVconferenceandRighttoDevelopment.aspx (accessed February 27, 2018).Google Scholar
Our Common Future: World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Report) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf (accessed February 27, 2018).Google Scholar
For the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, seehttp://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ (accessed February 27, 2018).Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 21.Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 159.Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 185.Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 186.Google Scholar
Sunstein, p. 186.Google Scholar