ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the significant failure of environmental ethics to affect environmental policy-making and some recommendations for action. It begins with a summary of the general failure of environmental ethics as a subdiscipline to address policy. It then gives evidence for the claim that environmental ethics is very rarely being considered by environmental policy-makers. Next the chapter discusses the causes of this failure; including, the dominance of instrumental rationality in public-policy-making, the power of opponents of environmental policies to frame opposition to proposed policies in a way that hides ethical issues, the focus of much of academic environmental ethics on theoretical ethical questions thereby ignoring ethical issues that arise in environmental policy formation, the lack of engagement by ethicists with advocates, policy-makers and the media, and the dominance of scientists and economists in government policy positions who have no or little training in ethics. The chapter ends with recommendations about what should be done to achieve greater traction for ethical considerations in environmental policy formation.
