Place and Time - Sustainable Design: The Science of Sustainability and Green Engineering - page 174

egoistic view may well push the decision toward immediate gratification of the
individual at the expense of the collective good. Tragically, this view can result
in large-scale harm (e.g., artifacts of pollution, waste of resources, legacies of
diseases, exhaustion of resources).
Ethics of Place
Let us venture more deeply into the realm of ethics. After all, ethics is intricately
tied to sustainability. Ultimately, ethics tells us what we ought to do. It informs us
of how we need to think about ourselves and others. These others can be near
or distant, present or future. If we seek sustainable designs, all of these must be
served. Thus, as mentioned, ethics has dimensions in space and time.
Green design is a virtuous endeavor. Virtue ethics is the ethical theory that
emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in ethical decision making. It focuses
on what makes a good person rather than what makes a good action. People who
devote their lives to doing the right thing are said to behave virtuously. Aristotle
tried to clarify the dichotomy of good and evil by devising lists of virtues and vices
which amount to a taxonomy of good and evil. One of the many achievements
of Aristotle was his keen insight as to the similarities of various kinds of living
things. He categorized organisms into two kingdoms, plants and animals. Others
no doubt made such observations, but Aristotle documented them. He formalized
and systematized this taxonomy. Such a taxonomic perspective also found its way
into Aristotle's moral philosophy.
The classical works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and others make the case
for life being a mix of virtues and vices available to humans. Virtue can be defined
as the power to do good or a habit of doing good. In fact, one of Aristotle's
most memorable lines is that “Excellence is habit.” If we do good, we are more
likely, according to Aristotle, to keep doing good. Conversely, vice is the power
and habit of doing evil. The subjectivity or relational nature of good and evil,
however, causes discomfort among engineers. We place great import on certainty
and consistency of definition.
We all will not all agree on which of the virtues and vices are best or even
whether something is a virtue or a vice (e.g., loyalty), but one concept does seem
to come to the fore in most major religions and moral philosophies: empathy.
Putting oneself in another's situation is a good metric for virtuous acts.
Green design also has a beneficial end in mind. Consequentialism holds that
the value of an action derives solely from the value of its consequences. Conse-
quentialists believe that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for
any valid moral judgment about that action, so that a morally right action is an
action that produces good consequences. One type of consequentialism is that of
utilitarianism, which measures the ethical value in terms of greatest good for the