Environmental Ethics & Sustainability Flashcards

In greenhouse gas reporting frameworks such as the GHG Protocol, 'Scope 3' emissions refer to:

Answer: All other indirect emissions in an organization's value chain

Scope 3 emissions encompass all indirect emissions that occur in an organization's value chain — including both upstream (suppliers) and downstream (customers and product use) activities — and are often the largest portion of a company's carbon footprint.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are most relevant to corporate environmental ethics because they:

Answer: Provide a globally recognized framework aligning corporate sustainability efforts with broader societal needs

The SDGs provide organizations with a voluntary but widely adopted framework to align their sustainability strategies with global priorities such as climate action, clean water, and responsible consumption.

When a company faces a conflict between short-term profitability and long-term environmental sustainability, ethical decision-making frameworks suggest:

Answer: Balancing economic interests with environmental stewardship by considering long-term stakeholder impacts

Ethical decision-making requires weighing all stakeholder interests, including long-term environmental impacts; the short-term-versus-long-term trade-off is best resolved by considering the full spectrum of consequences for people, planet, and profit.

What is the primary ethical rationale for organizations to engage local communities in environmental decision-making?

Answer: Those most affected by environmental decisions have a right to participate and be heard

Respect for autonomy and justice requires that communities whose environment and health are directly affected have a meaningful voice in decisions that impact them — this is a core principle of both environmental ethics and stakeholder theory.

An organization's commitment to reducing its environmental impact voluntarily, beyond what is legally required, is best characterized as:

Answer: Corporate environmental stewardship

Corporate environmental stewardship refers to an organization's voluntary commitment to exceed legal environmental requirements, driven by ethical responsibility rather than regulatory obligation.

Which ethical principle holds that organizations responsible for causing environmental pollution should bear the costs of managing and remedying that pollution?

Answer: The polluter-pays principle

The polluter-pays principle, a foundational concept in environmental law and ethics, establishes that those who produce pollution bear the financial and remedial responsibility for its impacts rather than shifting costs to society or taxpayers.

Why is long-term environmental thinking considered an ethical imperative rather than merely a strategic business choice?

Answer: Environmental degradation can cause irreversible harm to future generations who have no say in current decisions

Because future generations cannot participate in today's decisions but will inherit the consequences, organizations have an ethical obligation — rooted in intergenerational equity — to consider long-term environmental impacts beyond immediate economic interests.