i have hw on philosophy

Environmental Impact : Product of the probability and magnitude of “harmful” changes to the composition of air, water, and soil.

Varieties of Environmental Impact: Changes to air, water, or soil are harmful to...

Human beings = Anthropocentrism

Living things = Biocentrism

Ecosystems = Ecocentrism

Naive Approaches (Minimal environmental impact)

1. “Absolutely” Sustainable: Insure that design products have an absolutely low environmental impact by having them use mostly renewable resources and making them “clean”

2. “Relatively” Sustainable: Insure that design products have a relatively low environmental impact by having sustainability considerations override all others

Standard Approaches (Acceptable environmental impact)

4. Consent: Insure that the environmental impact is less than the level at which people would begin to withhold their informed consent

5. Compensation: Insure that the level of environmental impact is adequately outweighed by utility

Alternative Approach (Optimal environmental impact)

6. Minimal Environmental Impact: Insure that there are no alternative designs available with significantly better environmental impact profiles

a. Alternative: functionally equivalent--solves the relevant complex material problem

b. Available: competent (careful, creative, and conservative) engineers could reasonable be expected to come up with in the circumstances with due diligence

c. Better Environmental Impact Profile: uses fewer non-renewable resources as inputs and produces fewer non-manageable toxins as outputs