Take this example of a man and his five year old son going on a hike.
Near the top the boy begins to get very tired.
Instead of staying on the trail through all the switchbacks the boy decided that it would much easier on his aching legs if he stepped off the path and bee lined straight to the top.
This action was fueled by an individual desire of the boy to expend less energy as he had no prior knowledge of of the environmental harm that was causing.
When previously untouched soil is compacted by a human foot it can prevent the growth of any new organism for up to one hundred years.
This is not innate knowledge and everyone has to be told the reasoning behind badness of their action so in the future they can apply their environmental ethical calculus properly.
To most efficiently use any of the frameworks the two most important factors are both the role of education and then using that knowledge to analyze and correctly complete their ethical calculus transaction with every move.
There is a definite growth and building of knowledge in every persons life.
In the example of the boy not knowing that it is bad to litter his plastic bag he lacked a fundamental set of knowledge on how to act in an environmentally friendly way.
Now that the boy is aware of the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life he will act differently and accordingly.
Most of the time it is a naivety that makes people act in harmful ways.
A virtue ethicist would deem these naive actions as tolerable because the persons intentions were not bad.
Consequential theory dictates that the intentions do not matter and the outcome is the only important thing to consider.
Environmental ethics is in need of much more radical change.
That is why consequentialism is the only ethical framework that will lead to an improvement in the environmental ethics landscape.