TECEP® Test Description for ETH-210-TE

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

This exam explores the concept of environmental ethics, a philosophy that extends the ethical concepts 
traditionally applied to human behavior to address the entire natural world. Topics include: history of 
environmental ethics, the idea of environmental justice, and how our views about the natural world have 
changed over time.​ (3 credits)

● Test format:
o 40 multiple choice questions (1 point each)
o 4 essay questions (10 points each)
● Passing score:​ 65% (52/80 points). Your grade will be reported as CR (credit) or NC (no credit).
● Time limit:​ 2 hours

OUTCOMES ASSESSED ON THE TEST

● Describe the key concepts on which environmental ethics is based

● Describe the main environmental ethics approaches and viewpoints

● Relate ethical concepts about the environment to religious teachings/beliefs around the world

● Explain how our moral attitude toward the natural world has changed over time

● Identify key events and pioneers in the environmental ethics movement

● Evaluate the impact of environmental justice on various social groups and the world

● Identify the major environmental laws passed throughout the world, focusing on those
implemented in the United States and the European Union countries

● Discuss the development of international accords, such as the Copenhagen Accord

● Identify non-governmental advocacy organizations, such as Greenpeace etc.

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TOPICS ON THE TEST AND THEIR APPROXIMATE DISTRIBUTION

The table below indicates the main topics covered by this exam and the approximate percentage of the
exam devoted to each main topic. Under the main topic heading is a list of related–but more
specific–topics. It is important to review these topics to determine how much prior knowledge you have
and/or how much additional study is necessary.

Topic Percentage

Overview
● Ethical behavior
● Environmental ethics perspectives
○ Anthropocentric
○ Biocentric
(20-25%)
○ Ecocentric
○ Deep ecology and the Gaia hypothesis
○ Speciesism
○ Ethical egoism and utilitarianism (how they apply to
environmental issues)

Approaches, Beliefs, and World Views

● Religious views about the environment
● Utilitarian conservation vs. biocentric preservation
● Anthropocentric vs. non-anthropocentric ethical approaches (20-25%)
● Models of environmental sustainability and sustainable development
● Instrumental or extrinsic values vs. intrinsic values
● TEK (traditional ecological knowledge)

History, Pioneers, Key Events

● John Muir:Sierra Club, national parks
● Gifford Pinchot:U. S. Forest Service
● Aldo Leopold:Land Ethic, wildlife/wilderness ecology
● Garrett Hardin:The Tragedy of the Commons
● Rachel Carson:“Silent Spring”
(20-25%)
● Arne Naess: Deep Ecology
● James Lovelock: Gaia hypothesis
● Formation/role of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
● Air and water quality issues
● Energy
● Climate change

Environmental Justice
● Environmental justice definition
(20-25%)
● Environmental racism
● Environmental injustice around the world

TECEP Test Description for ETH-210-TE by Thomas Edison State University is licensed under a ​Creative Commons
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 ● Relationship between the human rights movement and environmental
justice
● Environmental rights litigation
● Environmental management strategies
● Goals of the environmental rights movement
● Environmental effects on health
● Community focus of environmental justice movement
● Industrial and corporate interests

Environmental Law
● Key environmental laws in the U. S. and European Union
● Impact of these environmental laws (5%)
● Enforcement of current international environmental laws and accords
● Areas for environmental law improvement

STUDY MATERIALS

Below is a list of recommended study materials to help prepare you for your exam. Most textbooks in this
subject include the topics listed above and will prepare you for the test. If you choose another text, be
sure to compare its table of contents against the topic list to make sure all topics are covered.

Title

Pojman, P., & Pojman, L. ​Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application​. Current
edition.Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage.

Schmidtz, D., & Willot, E. (eds.). ​Environmental Ethics: What Really Matters, What Really Works​.
Current edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

You may also wish to review the Saylor open online course below. This resource is openly licensed,
which means that it is free to be ​revised, remixed, reused, redistributed, and retained​, so long as its
unique terms are followed. You can learn more about open licensing ​here​.

Title License

ENVS203: Environmental Ethics, Justice, and World Views​ [Saylor course]. CC BY 3.0
Washington, D.C.: Saylor Academy.

TECEP Test Description for ETH-210-TE by Thomas Edison State University is licensed under a ​Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License​.
SAMPLE QUESTIONS

The questions below are designed to help you study for your TECEP. Answering these questions does
not guarantee a passing score on your exam.

Please note that the questions below ​will not​ appear on your exam.

Multiple Choice

1. The ancient Greeks valued the environment, as evidenced by their

a. building architecture
b. recycling efforts
c. sleeping in the open air
d. having gods of nature

2. Why is A Sand County Almanac considered an important book in the environmental field?

a. It promotes the idea of a “land ethic.”

b. It has been taught in many colleges around the world.
c. It contains pragmatic conservation advice.
d. Its author was a highly-respected science writer and lecturer.

3. Much of the emphasis on clean water initiatives in the 1970s was prompted by the

a. water pollution of the Great Lakes

b. Cuyahoga River in Ohio catching on fire
c. disposal of radioactive wastes into rivers and the ocean
d. water pollution produced by the mining of coal

4. What important project helped John Muir and Gifford Pinchot articulate their ethical positions on
preservation or conservation for the general public?

a. The declaration of Yosemite Valley as a national park

b. The preservation of the sequoia forests
c. The flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley
d. The designation of regions in the Sierra Nevada Mountains as wilderness areas

5. John Evelyn wrote a famous treatise that foreshowed the detrimental effect of industrialization.
What environmental issue did he highlight?

a. Air pollution
b. Water pollution
c. Soil contamination
d. Sewage disposal

TECEP Test Description for ETH-210-TE by Thomas Edison State University is licensed under a ​Creative Commons
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 6. Environmental justice is described as intergenerational, meaning that

a. both genders should enjoy the environment equally

b. international laws define general environmental laws
c. each generation is responsible for current environmental laws
d. the environment should be preserved for future generations
 
7. Product manufacturers accused of exposing the public to chemical concentrations in excess of
“maximum contaminant levels,” in violation of The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement
Act, is an example of environmental

a. negotiation
b. toxic tort
c. inequality
d. impact assessment

8. The main opposition to Rachel Carson’s thesis in Silent Spring came from

a. the general public

b. the U.S. military
c. government agencies
d. chemical companies

9. What is the purpose of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA)?

a. To provide an ethical framework for the state agencies that monitor environmental activity
b. To create a regional network of environmentally supportive policies that states may
modify
c. To promote informed decision-making by federal agencies by providing detailed
information concerning environmental impacts
d. To enact more effective but less stringent policies affecting specific areas of
environmental concern

Essay Questions

10. Define environmental justice and discuss the issues related to environmental justice with regard
to the effects of pollution, land use and climate change on developing nations.

11. In the landmark 1992 case, Lucas v. South Carolina, the Supreme Court of the United States laid
out precedent principles in the application of “regulatory taking.” Explain what this important
environmental case was about and discuss the meaning of “regulatory taking.”

12. Can anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric environmental ethics be reconciled? Present

arguments made by ethical theorists such as Aldo Leopold and Arne Naess that address this
issue.

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ANSWERS TO SAMPLE QUESTIONS
Multiple Choice

1. (​d​) 4. (​c​) 7. (​b​)

2. (​a​) 5. (​a​) 8. (​d​)
3. (​b)​ 6. (​d)​ 9. (​c​)

Essay Questions

10. There is an inequitable distribution of environmental hazards around the world. The rise of
economic globalization, marked by liberalized trade rules and the dominance of multinational
corporations, has played a key role in shifting environmental pollution from industrialized to
developing countries. This shift can be seen most prominently in the export of polluting industries
and hazardous wastes from developed countries to poor, developing countries in Africa, South
America, and Asia. Weak environmental regulations and lax enforcement of laws foster this shift,
supported by trade rules that force developing countries to make trade-offs between
environmental protection and economic prosperity. Despite attempts to regulate the international
waste trade by treaty, illegal exportation of hazardous wastes to developing countries continues
to flourish.

In addition, the negative effects of widely recognized environmental degradation (ozone

depletion, climate change, declining biodiversity, deforestation) are disproportionately borne by
developing countries and poor populations across the globe. The United States is responsible for
25% of the world’s greenhouse gases, even though it has only 4% of the world’s population. In
contrast, developing countries have only recently started down the path to industrialization, and
their per capita emissions of greenhouse gases are comparatively low. Developing nations are
especially vulnerable to climate change and other adverse impacts. They also have fewer
resources to respond to these problems, and stand to lose the most ground in their development
efforts, threatening to entrench existing global economic and social inequalities.

Scoring Rubric

Criteria Points

Definition of environmental justice 4 points

Appropriate discussion of issues 3 points

Acknowledgment of the limited power of developing nations 3 points

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 11. The Fifth Amendment states that private property shall not “be taken for public use without just
compensation.” Federal courts have interpreted this clause to ban not only the literal taking of
private property but also “regulatory taking.” Regulatory taking occurs when the government, by
law or regulation, deprives a land owner of all or some economic uses of his or her property.

A builder named David Lucas bought two beach front lots on the South Carolina coast with the
intent to build houses. Before he could build, South Carolina passed a law prohibiting building on
critical areas or near beaches and denied him a building permit.

Lucas took the state agency that grants permits to court. Although the State said the denial was
not a regulatory taking, a lower court ruled in the builder’s favor and awarded him a cash
settlement. After the Supreme Court of South Carolina overturned the lower court’s decision, the
case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, who decided that the Supreme Court of
South Carolina had erred when they ruled that the case was not a regulatory taking. Lucas was
allowed to build houses on his beachfront property.

This set the following precedent for environmental law: A regulation that deprives a land owner of
all economically beneficial uses of land constitutes a regulatory taking.

Scoring Rubric

Criteria Points

Definition of regulatory taking 5 points

Application to case 5 points

12. Anthropocentric ethics considers humans the sole possessors of moral consideration.
Non-anthropocentric (ecocentric or biocentric) ethics believes that non-humans also deserve
moral consideration. The closest approach to reconciliation between these schools of thought
comes from Utilitarianism, which is largely anthropocentric in its approach, but believes that
animal pain is a moral consideration.

The Land Ethic, by Aldo Leopold, was the first of the ecocentric theories and claimed that an act
is good if it promotes the beauty, integrity and stability of the ecosystem, and bad if it harms it.
According to this ethic, the ecosystem has the highest moral value and if necessary, human
interests can be secondary.

Deep Ecology, by Arne Naess, is a holistic ethical theory that believes we need to reevaluate our
notion of self in order to address the ecological crisis. It involves a sense of identification with the
entire planet, in which the individual’s true self is recognized as identical with the cosmos. The
“depth” of Deep Ecology lies in its rejection of the anthropocentric approach that believes the
living environment exists to support human use.

The two theories cannot be reconciled when there is a conflict of interest between ecological
preservation and human use. An example of this is whale hunting. A non-anthropocentric

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 approach would recognize that whales have been driven to near-extinction and regulation of their
hunting should be enforced to prevent their disappearance for future generations. An
anthropocentric perspective would claim that human benefits trump saving whales.

Scoring Rubric

Criteria Points

Definition of anthropocentric, biocentric and ecocentric principles 4 points

Discussion of Leopold’s approach 2 points

Discussion of Naess’s approach 2 points

Answer to and defense of the question 2 points

TECEP Test Description for ETH-210-TE by Thomas Edison State University is licensed under a ​Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License​.