English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

The reading for this week was very straightforward and contained most things I would consider to be common sense for most people in term of ethics. I think the Albert Einstein example of being torn between social ethics and his personal ethics is a dilemma that many of us has faced and had to deal with, often resulting in guilt or doubt.

Ethics does somewhat come into play in the current White Paper Project for this course. The idea of renewable and eco-friendly energy sources being more widely used is more than likely not considered unethical in general. However, when you look more closely at the subjects at hand, you can see that ethics are very important. I think that social and conservation ethics play the biggest role rather than personal ethics. For example, renewable energy is directly related to conservation ethics because these are the values required to protect the environment. Sure the electricity we are using now gives us the same quality of power that we see on our end in the home, but the pollutants that go into the atmosphere every time we turn a light on should weigh heavily on our conservational values.

Much of this has to do with money. Politicians and many others do not want to waste the money replacing the already functioning electricity grid. They are only seeing ethics in terms of the social values. They are not breaking any laws by keeping the energy sources we already have, but they are breaking conservational ethics.

Another, less noted aspect of the renewable energy sources has to do with nuclear power. There is a justified fear of nuclear power because of its danger to the population. However, if we trusted our government to enact and enforce the laws for companies to follow, we needn’t worry. People worry because often the company that wins the job to build the nuclear power plant was the lowest bidder and may try to take shortcuts and cut corners even though it is socially unethical. The actual company running the power plant might dispose of the waste improperly to save money, thus breaking a law.

All of these things will be noted in our research and discussed in the final white paper. We will identify which ethical category a certain dilemma falls into and discuss the decision that should be made. By dividing the situations into rights, justice, utilitarianism, or care, it will help us to decide which course of action should be taken.