Wentz's Environmental Justice Research

Since the 20 th century,with the rapid development of productivity,human beings have been pushed into the abyss of environmental crisis while enjoying the feast brought by technology.Environmental problems such as ecological pollution,resource depletion and the greenhouse effect have kept cropping up,and environmental injustices have gradually surfaced and come into public view.Based on this realistic background,Wenz puts forward an innovative environmental justice theory--as the environmental justice of distributive justice,his environmental justice theory takes distributive justice as the theoretical framework,breaks through the ethical barriers of anthropocentrism,and has far-reaching and important significance for the settlement of current environmental justice affairs.Wenz’s theory of environmental justice is mainly related to the theory of distributive justice.Through his successive investigations of liberal supremacy,utilitarianism and related theories of virtue,property and human rights,he found that no theory could provide a relatively complete theoretical framework for the real settlement of environmental justice affairs.Therefore,he focused on the distributive justice theory of John Rawls and believed that the core concern of environmental justice should be "how to distribute environmental benefits and burdens when they are scarce and excessive".Environmental justice theory is not only the comprehensive expression of justice theory on environmental issues,but also the internal logical coupling between environmental ethics and justice theory.Therefore,on the basis of the investigation of biocentric individualism and ecocentric holism,Wenz constructs the unique theory of environmental justice--concentric circle theory by referring to Rawls’ s reflective balance method.Taking distributive justice as the core and following the logical path of "distribution object","distribution principle" and "distribution dimension",we make an overall analysis of the main contents of Wenz’s theory of environmental justice,and finally find that Wenz’s theory of environmental justice is essentially a theory of distributing environmental good(environmental benefit)and environmental evil(environmental burden)among interspecies group,intragenerational group and intergenerational group according to the theoretical principle of concentric circles.Concentric circle theory is a more elastic and all-embracing theory of multiple justice,which determines the relationship of responsibility and obligation by intimate distance.Because of its prominent theoretical characteristics,Wenz’s environmental justice has been questioned by the academic circle in many aspects,such as the moral pluralism,the ethical obstacles to the realization of interspecific justice,and the lack of recognition of justice.Wenz’s theory of environmental justice not only enriches the theoretical basis of environmental ethics,but also provides important theoretical guidance for the practice of environmental justice in our country.It provides important value guidance for shaping the justice character of environmental subjects,improving the guarantee mechanism of environmental justice and integrating the social forces of environmental justice,and greatly promotes the construction of ecological civilization in our country.