The push for environmental awareness has been forefront in the media as of late. The need to lower our “carbon footprint” is headlining newspapers and magazines with the intent of influencing consumer choices. Whether these articles are biased or unbiased is a debate for the reader to discover.

However, one voice that has recently weighed in on the issue is Vice President Dick Cheney. Quoted in a recent New York Times magazine piece by Michael Pollan. Cheney likens conservation to personal choice and virtue.

Cheney labels the actions of those who participate in environmental initiatives as showing a “sign of personal virtue.” The implications are two-fold.

First, Cheney is allowing room for conservationists to condemn non-recyclers as being less virtuous than those who do. Do you believe that this criticism is valid?

Secondly, the type of ethics and ethical behavior Cheney calls virtuous is labeled as right or wrong because of someone’s discretion. He is openly promoting judgment as a way of gauging another’s behavior as being virtuous or not. This makes virtuous behavior subjective, a notion long debated within the field of ethics. Is there an objective standard of ethics, and if so, where to you think it originates. Most people marry virtue to God? Do you subscribe to this idea?