The Study Of Peter·S.Wenz’s Thought Of Environmental Justice

The issue of justice has always been the focus of ethics research.Environmental justice is the expression of justice in environment,and it is also the core issue in contemporary environmental ethics.Since 1982,when the famous Warren Movement broke out in the United States,the concept of "environmental justice" was not only formally born,but also made people pay more and more attention to it.The content of environmental justice is not limited to environmental protection,but more importantly,it pays attention to social justice.Based on the social background of environmental injustice,American environmental ethicist Peter S.Wenz’s "A Theory of Environmental Justice" is published,which is the representative work of Wenz and a major theoretical innovation in the field of environmental justice,because it is the first time that distributive justice is combined with environmental affairs.Based on "A Theory of Environmental Justice",this paper aims to explore the content and influence of Wenz’s theoretical system of environmental justice,and to evaluate the theory accordingly.On the whole,this paper first discusses the foundation of the birth of Wenz’s environmental justice theory,including the practical basis and theoretical basis,that is,the development of western environmental justice movement and the evolution of western environmental justice theory.In this context,Wenz made a general analysis of the emergence of environmental justice,and believed that justice originated from the situation that the demand was greater than the supply,and that the reflection of environmental resources was the "tragedy of the Commons",so this became the logical starting point of Wenz’s environmental justice.Justice problems,he argues,is derived from the resource scarcity,finiteness and people desire limitless,everybody attention due to their fair share,so the main content and essence of environmental justice is the limited resources and environment,environmental rights and obligations between a reasonable allocation,thus caused to the environment of distribution justice.This assignment is to require not just in the same society between the rich and the poor,poor countries in international society,and the distribution of the distribution between developed countries,also asked the earth between the contemporary and future generations,between human and non-human species for natural resources,how to make reasonable allocation,which requires generation of distribution justice and inter-generational justice and distributive justice.So what methodology should be used to make the assignment? In order to be able to carry out the practice,Unz designed a multi-deontology that divides the obligations and responsibilities according to the distant,near and distant relations,namely the "concentric circle theory",which provides a reasonable theoretical framework for solving the environmental justice problem.Here,the complete framework of Wenz’s theory of environmental justice emerges.After analyzing the concrete contents,the thesis evaluates Wenz’s environmental justice system from the perspective of Marxism.It is believed that this theory is of great value in constructing a reasonable order of environmental resources distribution,breaking the situation of taking the powerful country as the center and expanding the vision of justice.But it also has certain limitations inevitably,especially in the distribution of content,procedural justice and the degree of practice there are some drawbacks.However,one cannot deny the reasonableness and progress of Wenz’s theory.I believe that further exploration of his environmental justice theory will bring us more inspiration and thinking.