Customer Reviews

Environmental Ethics Today

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I had high hopes for this book, and wanted to use it as the primary text in a class on environemental ethics. Unfortunately it is too biased and dated for that task, and perhaps only useful as a recommended resource to present one side of the issues.

Wenz has an annoying habit of seeming to be objective, but actually riding his own hobby horses in to save the day. Case in point: despite the fact that there are a noticable cadre of scientists and environmentalists who are not "gloom and doomers" about the overall state of the environment, Wenz uses Julian Simon as his "whipping boy" almost exclusively, quoting snippets of Simon's work (from the early 80s) then retorting "But he is wrong" almost as an automated response. Although I am not a Simon devotee, his work needs to be taken much more seriously, and his main point (that humans' increasing longevity argues well for better environmentla health) cannot be dismissed nearly so easily as Wenz suggests. In addition, the book suffers from not bringing in more who share Simon's take--if Wenz's own views are right, why doesn't he want to engage all reflective thinkers on the issues? Good question.

And I was frankly incredulous to read Wenz' claim that "the media continue to emphasize the positive [news about the environment] and ignore the negative" (p. 5). That claim is flatly false on its face, and can be disproven on an almost hourly basis by watching channels as diverse as the Weather Channel, the History Channel, or any media outlet. Television virtually pulses with negative takes on the environment, but that fact apparently would not support Wenz' cause (as a prophet?) so he either ignores it or is woefully ignorant of what drives the modern media. Al Gore has reportedly reaped over $30 million off his global tour with his road show version of An Inconvenient Truth, and his notoriety and fame cannot be escaped by even those who ignore the TV altogether. Frankly, wearing the sackcloth robes of the modern-day environmental gloomer is big business, and is the fuel that drives about 90% of the media's take on the environment. How did Wenz miss this?

Thus, this book is far from an objective "state of the globe" insofar as a snapshot of the environment, and more one man's take on what he thinks are its problems and its solutions. I expect better from academics.