29 exam-style questions on Environmental ethics — topic HL.c of HL lenses (applied across all Topics) in the IB Environmental Systems and Societies syllabus — with answers and explanations. Samples below; the full set is free with an account.
A conservation trust argues that a rare cave beetle should be protected even though it has no known use to people and plays no measurable role in any ecosystem service; the trust explicitly declines to argue that the beetle might one day prove useful. Which claim is the trust making about the beetle?
Answer: It has intrinsic value
Intrinsic value is worth held in its own right, independent of any usefulness to people. Option value and natural income are both instrumental: they still price the beetle by the benefit it might one day deliver to humans.
Which statement expresses an ecocentric rather than a biocentric position?
Answer: Species and ecosystems have moral standing as wholes
Ecocentrism locates moral standing in ecological wholes, so the system can outweigh the individual; biocentrism locates it in each living organism. Protecting nature because people depend on it is anthropocentric, and limiting moral consideration to beings that can feel pain is the sentientist boundary drawn by Peter Singer.
Arne Naess contrasted a 'deep' ecology movement with a 'shallow' one. Which aim is characteristic of the shallow movement?
Answer: Cutting pollution to protect human health and prosperity
Naess called the reform position shallow because it keeps the human-centred goal and only changes the means; deep ecology instead changes the goal by granting non-human life worth of its own. Shallow is a description of the reasoning, not an insult about ambition.
In Richard Sylvan's 'last man' thought experiment the sole surviving human destroys the last living forest just before dying. Which view is someone committed to who judges this act wrong?
Answer: Nature has value independent of any human interest
The scenario deliberately removes every human beneficiary, so any remaining wrongness cannot rest on instrumental value or on harm to future people. That is precisely why the argument is used to test whether we really believe in intrinsic value.
Which statement best expresses the principle of intergenerational equity?
Answer: Each generation holds the environment in trust for the next
Intergenerational equity is fairness across time, and it underpins the Brundtland report's 1987 definition of sustainable development. Fairness between groups alive at the same moment is intragenerational equity, a different claim.
Tom Regan argued that some animals are 'subjects-of-a-life'. How does this differ from Peter Singer's argument for the same animals?
Answer: It grounds protection in rights rather than in total welfare
Regan's case is deontological: a subject-of-a-life may not be used merely as a means, whatever the sums say. Singer's case is utilitarian, so on his view a harm can in principle be outweighed by a larger benefit elsewhere.
That was 6 of 29 Environmental ethics questions.
Practise all 29 freeOutlineAO2 · 1–4 marks
A brief account or summary: the main points in two or three sentences, no evaluation.
DistinguishAO2 · 1–4 marks
Make the difference clear for BOTH terms — a definition of one of them is only half an answer.
DescribeAO2 · 1–4 marks
Give a detailed account of what it is or how it happens — steps, features, pattern — without saying why.
29 Environmental ethics questions — free with an account. Spaced repetition, streaks and full exam simulations included.
Practise them freeThis platform is independently developed and is not endorsed by, affiliated with, or sponsored by the International Baccalaureate Organization. “International Baccalaureate” and “IB” are registered trademarks of the IBO.