Ethics is used to decide what is right or wrong in a situation. The use of critical thinking can help a person make the correct ethical choice. The relationship between critical thinking and ethics also occurs when someone has to choose between their own personal ethics beliefs and the ethics of the company they work at. This is clearly shown within management working for the Bureau of Land Management.
In order to create more oil and gas development wells in the United States, the wildlife and ecosystem will have to suffer greatly. Even though this could help the US economy greatly, it can also harm the landscape and wildlife more than it would help. By thinking critically, one could see that a balance must be made instead of filling up what the government sees as just “empty” land into a field of industry.
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These fields are alive with wildlife and a lush ecosystem and will be harmed by continuing to fill the land with man-made objects. Already animals have a difficult time with migration because of all the man made obstacles they must cross.
While the Bureau of Land Management helps to keep a balance on how public land is used, those involved are usually caught in between conflicts of interest. The drilling requests have greatly increased for the following areas: Front Range in Wyoming, Montana, Eastern Utah, Western Colorado, and Northern New Mexico.
And the BLM Manager in Pinedale has said that feels caught in the middle of conserving the land for the wildlife and following the rules of the government.
Many traditional conservation people who work at BLM are scared of sticking to their ethical beliefs because they might lose their job. Even though there is a lot of money to be made in Wyoming, $20 million from each gas well, the effects on the ecosystem can be permanently harmful. For many who live there, they don’t want to see the beauty of the untouched landscape because an industrial landscape with 10,000 rigs spread out across the Rockies. The moral failings of the stakeholders are that they are willing to put an ecosystem, which sometimes is very difficult to become healthy again, to dig up all the beautiful land for more money coming from oil. If they would think critically, they would understand that putting something as natural resources, wildlife and the ecosystem at risk, would be detrimental to the future of the entire area.
While more gas and oil wells would increase dollar signs, more pollution would be increased in these clean, mountain areas. In the end more bad will be done then good, therefore the stakeholders must think about what the end result will look like: more money, more pollution. This doesn’t make sense because, with more pollution, the entire area and ozone layer is affected. What the government is doing will not just affect the people, wildlife and other living creatures in the area but the entire world. If they choose to do this, soon in the future there will be no more “empty” landscapes. The capitalist side of the United States government sometimes pays more attention to money than on the long lasting harmful effects some decisions can have on the entire country.
