Topics in Environmental Ethics

This paper explores the interrelations between a wide variety of strategies being deployed to take away the political power of the fossil fuel industry. This paper explains why challenging the political power of the industry is a crucial part of work to address the climate crisis. It explains the logics underlying a variety of strategies to challenge that political power. It explores the ways these disparate strategies, even when not coordinated, can undermine the variety of “pillars of support” which prop (...) up the industry’s political power. Activists are working on multiple fronts to undermine the fossil fuel industry’s political power. As a participant in this movement myself, I wrote this paper as a way of clarifying the strategic objectives of our movement. I hope that those outside the movement will find its approach to challenging entrenched destructive political agents helpful for understanding this and other struggles. (shrink)

Don Ihde’s postphenomenological theory of technological relations has proven its value for understanding the role material artifacts play in our lives. However influential it may be, some of his key concepts have remained ambiguous. In this paper, we analyze and critically evaluate how Ihde describes one of these concepts, namely, alterity relation (Alterity). Alterity describes how technologies appear to subjects as humanlike others, or, as Ihde calls them, quasi-others. We identify and discuss three key problems with Ihde’s account of Alterity, (...) namely, objectness, focality, and continuum. We argue that an overarching issue is prevalent in his account of Alterity: a subtle and possibly unintended emphasis on the subject’s role in constituting technological otherness. This emphasis runs counter to the interrelational ontological foundations of postphenomenology. Moreover, it hinders postphenomenological research from fully addressing the ethical and moral dimensions of its framework. By clarifying these problems, we aim to provide a fruitful groundwork for further reconsiderations of the framework’s key concepts and for the improvement of postphenomenological investigations concerning the nature of artifacts: our multifaceted engagements with, in and through them. (shrink)

Contemporarily, biodiversity loss is the prominent concern of the conservation movement. In reaction to the escalating depletion of biodiversity, governments and organizations are crafting policies and strategies with a central focus on biodiversity conservation. Assessing the extent of biodiversity loss and its relationship with human society necessitates reliable ecological metrics. However, the tools used to assess biodiversity encompass not only empirical dimensions but also normative values that shape conservation outcomes. This review examines the normative dialog implicit in our conceptualizations and (...) measurements of biodiversity through the chronological framework of four conservation focal areas: Red Listing, species richness, environmental indicators, and the integration of human values. This investigation underscores the imperative to more clearly articulate the values of the conservation movement, a task that is even more pressing with the emergence of novel biodiversity finance tools. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether vegan activists should cater to their audience by framing their message according to the pre-existing values of their interlocutors. Specifically, I focus on deliberative activism, which is based on speech and exchanges with the audience. I propose that message framing can lead to a neglect of animal suffering in favor of focusing on less contentious motives for veganism, such as environmental or health benefits. I claim that neglecting the issue of animal suffering can (...) have several problematic consequences. Concretely, I argue that message framing can: (1) lead to the objectification of animals, treating them as mere means to other ends (such as environmental and health benefits); (2) imply a denial of their personhood; (3) perpetuate their status as property; (4) enable future harm to animals; and (5) create a hierarchy of moral worth among different animal species. For these reasons, I suggest that message framing is less appealing than it initially seems. (shrink)

On November 30th, 1999, tens of thousands of demonstrators surrounded the Washington State Convention Center in what is now known as the Battle in Seattle, or simply N30. Even though these activists came from disparate backgrounds, they rallied around a common goal: to hinder negotiations at the WTO’s Third Ministerial Conference and shed light on the deleterious effects of the WTO’s agenda for developing nations, workers’ rights, and the environment. Although that week ended in hundreds of arrests and injuries and (...) an estimated $20 million dollars in property damage, N30 remains one of the few direct actions over the last 50 years to achieve its stated objectives, shutting down the WTO meeting and raising public awareness around the inequalities within global trade politics. As the 25th anniversary of the protest approaches, that week in Seattle continues to loom large in the imaginations of activists, not only for its large turnout and tactical successes, but for the way it proved the efficacy of decentralized, democratic organization for large-scale demonstration. -/- With an eye toward recapturing something of that N30 spirit, particularly in the context of global climate activism, I draw here on John Dewey’s philosophy of social transformation, which supplanted rugged individualism with a social view of the self, was built on an ontology of interdependence, and undergirded his characterization of democracy as both an intersubjective ethos and a politically pluralistic praxis. I borrow ‘radical amelioration' from Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South (1892) to describe Dewey's position as a kind of activism that balances conflict and cooperation with critical inquiry. -/- This phrase still finds some usage in agricultural studies with reference to soil remediation... which may prove an apt metaphor. Far from espousing a wait-and-see philosophy, Dewey’s radical sort of amelioration located the seeds for social transformation already in the soil of American society, lying dormant and awaiting the thoughtful tending that might bring them to fruition. However, he also acknowledged such tending not only included, but required, conflict. (shrink)

Informed by his experiences as a hunter, forester, wildlife manager, ecologist, conservationist, and professor, Aldo Leopold developed a view he called the land ethic. In a classic essay, published posthumously in A Sand County Almanac, Leopold advocated for an expansion of our ethical obligations beyond the purely human to include what he variously termed the “land community” or the “biotic community”—communities of interdependent humans, nonhuman animals, plants, soils, and waters, understood collectively. This philosophy has been extremely influential in environmental ethics (...) as well as conservation biology and related fields. Using an approach grounded in environmental ethics and the history and philosophy of science, Roberta L. Millstein reexamines Leopold’s land ethic in light of contemporary ecology. Despite the enormous influence of the land ethic, it has sometimes been dismissed as either empirically out of date or ethically flawed. Millstein argues that these dismissals are based on problematic readings of Leopold’s ideas. In this book, she provides new interpretations of the central concepts underlying the land ethic: interdependence, land community, and land health. She also offers a fresh take on of his argument for extending our ethics to include land communities as well as Leopold-inspired guidelines for how the land ethic can steer conservation and restoration policy. (shrink)

A uniform carbon tax with equal per capita dividends is usually advocated as a cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions without increasing, and in many cases even reducing, economic inequality, in particular because of the positive balance between the carbon taxes paid by the worse off and the carbon dividends they receive back. In this article, I argue that a uniform carbon tax reform is unjust regardless of how the revenue is used, because it does not discourage the (...) rich from indulging in wasteful emissions. This is at odds with a normative account of the distribution of the GHG budget that I define as emissions limitarianism, which is a climate derivative of economic limitarianism. Emissions limitarianism holds that, under low GHG budget conditions, emissions permits should not be used to achieve functionings that over-consume the GHG budget without producing significant welfare gains relative to the achievement of alternative functionings. Accordingly, I argue that a uniform carbon tax should be complemented by a limitarian carbon tax, which restricts the capabilities of the rich to achieve wasteful emission-generating functionings. The article adopts a methodological multi-level perspective on capabilities as a measure of welfare, distinguishing between basic, secondary and tertiary capabilities. (shrink)

Essays in Philosophy is proud to publish a special issue titled “New Currents in Environmental Virtue Ethics.” This issue invited submissions exploring innovations within environmental virtue ethics (EVE), a burgeoning subfield in environmental ethics that applies virtue ethics to environmental concerns. Some have referred to the recent interest in EVE in environmental ethics as the “Turn” to virtue. The call for papers encouraged authors to submit original research that expands the theoretical framework of EVE and applies EVE to new contexts (...) to address pressing environmental challenges. Topics for submission encompassed a broad spectrum, ranging from ethical adaptation to climate change and the virtue of resilience to discussions on moral psychology, animal virtue ethics, and the role of virtue in human flourishing amidst environmental challenges. (shrink)

A rhetoric of refuge and escape is a consistent feature of the world’s great garden traditions. The connections between a desire for escape, need for refuge and disquieting sense that life is no longer what it ought to be gestures to a complex conception of garden appreciation. I explore these connections using Christian, Islamic, and Chinese garden traditions. In them one finds a conception of certain gardens as places of moral refuge from the corruption and failings of the mainstream world.

Theories of energy justice are standardly used to evaluate decision-making and policy-design related to energy infrastructure. All too rarely attention is paid to the need for a method of justifying principles of justice as well as justice-based judgments that are appealed to in this context. This article responds to this need by offering an engaged ethics approach to normative justification useful for energy justice theory. More specifically, it presents a method of public reflective equilibrium and shows its potential as systematic (...) method for both anchoring analyses of justice in practically relevant judgments and for critically examining perceived injustices. The method is developed and demonstrated through the case of injustices related to a hypothetical but realistic case of wind power development. Participants were invited to a process of justifying justice-claims, using a version of the method of public reflective equilibrium. They reflected on a preliminary normative framework created by the research team and visually depicted by a graphic artist. The analysis of the workshop identifies the following three themes as particularly important for just wind power development: (1) establishing trust among the stakeholders; (2) questioning energy demand; and (3) identifying the right site and scale for energy decisions. All three themes have to do with fair procedures. The latter part of the paper explores what this means for theorising energy justice and outlines a theory of imperfect procedural energy justice. (shrink)

This article develops the philosophical work of Joanna Macy. It argues that ecological grief is a fitting response to our ecological predicament and that much of the ‘mental ill health’ that we are now seeing is, in fact, a perfectly sane response to our ecological reality. This paper claims that all ecological emotions are grounded in love/compassion. Acceptance of these emotions reveals that everything is fine in the world as it is, providing that we accept our ecological emotions as part (...) of what is ‘in the world’. This is non-dualistic acceptance or ‘fierce’ acceptance. This paper focuses primarily on the revolutionary qualities of ecological grief: a paradoxical revolution, coming as it does from a profound process of acceptance. (shrink)

This note critiques the concept of “wicked problems” and its usefulness in crises such as Covid-19. There are two problems with the concept as defined by Rittel, Webber, and those who draw from them, which undermine its value in the analysis of social policy. First, their characterisation of wicked problems is founded on a crude and false picture of science (cf. Turnbull and Hoppe 2019). Second, it is so vague that on an expansive reading all social problems are wicked problems (...) while on a restrictive reading almost none are. Having discussed these, we close with a reflection on managing complexity and uncertainty in complex policy problems like the pandemic. (shrink)

Every day, wild animals suffer and die from myriad natural causes. For those committed to non-speciesism, what wild animal suffering entails for us morally is a question of the utmost importance, and yet there remains significant disagreement at the level of normative theory. In this paper I argue that in situations of moral urgency environmental managers and policy makers should refer to widely-agreeable moral principles for guidance. I claim that the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice do well to (...) capture our widely-held values, and that the first three principles all support large-scale interventions in nature. I then argue that balancing these against non-maleficence will still allow for the careful consideration of interventions, although is unlikely to support lethal methods. This argument is intended to provide a reasonable starting point for theory-agnostic decision makers, and places the burden of proof on those who oppose intervention. -/- . (shrink)

This article examines the visualization strategies informing public understandings of planetary scale ecological crisis. Working with scientific visualizations as well as the Suicide Narcissus art exhibition, it interrogates the inherent problems in conveying extinction as a process and future potential. This essay ultimately considers the psychosocial tensions inherent in contemplating collective death.

In April 1996, two men working at a convalescent center wrote a letter to the journal Nature proposing that a new word be adopted to designate a person who is the last in the lineage: endling. This had come up because of patients who were dying and thought of themselves as the last of their family line. The word was not picked up in medical circles. But, in 2001, when the National Museum of Australia (NMA) opened its doors, it featured (...) a gallery called Tangled Destinies and endling reappeared. On the wall facing a case with a thylacine specimen was written: Endling (n.) The last surviving individual of a species of animal or plant. Since that appearance, the word endling has slowly seeped into popular culture, appearing in symphonic music, performance art, science fiction stories, comics, and other art works. This paper examines the cultural power of the concept of endling as the last of a species and the history of its mobilization in a world facing extinction around every corner. (shrink)

Questions of individuality are traditionally predicated upon recognizing discrete entities whose behavior can be measured and whose value and agency can be meaningfully ascribed. We consider a series of challenges to the metaphysical concept of individuality as the ground of the self. We argue that an ecological conception of individuality renders ascriptions of autonomy to selves highly improbable. We find conceptual resources in the work of environmental philosopher Arne Naess, whose distinction between shallow and deep responses helps us rethink the (...) notion of individuality and, thus, assess whether the conceptual and normative coherence of human autonomy could, at least partially, be salvaged. (shrink)

Important marine mammal areas (IMMAs)—‘discrete habitat areas, important for one or more marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation’ (IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force 2018, p. 3)—were introduced in 2014 by the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force to support marine mammal and wider ocean conservation. IMMAs provide decision-makers with a user-friendly, actionable tool to inform them of the whereabouts of habitat important for marine mammal survival. However, in view of (...) their non-prescriptive, evidence-based and biocentric nature, the conservation effectiveness of IMMAs is strictly dependent on politicians’ willingness to make use of them. It has been the customary task of advocacy non-governmental organisations to lobby decision-makers to stimulate respect for environmental law, but the scientific community is increasingly joining this effort. Scientists can effectively strengthen a healthy relationship between scientific objectivity and political advocacy without damaging the credibility of conservation science. Thus, those undertaking the identification of IMMAs can be among those responsible for strongly advocating the implementation of IMMAs and other conservation initiatives. (shrink)

Human-wildlife interactions frequently lead to conflicts – about the fair use of natural resources, for example. Various principled accounts have been proposed to resolve such interspecies conflicts. However, the existing frameworks are often inadequate to the complexities of real-life scenarios. In particular, they frequently fail because they do not adequately take account of the qualitative importance of individual interests, their relative importance, and the number of individuals affected. This article presents a limited aggregation account designed to overcome these shortcomings and (...) thus to facilitate decision-making in real-world human-wildlife conflicts. (shrink)

Modernity is founded on the belief that the world we build is a human invention, not a part of nature. The ecological consequences of this idea have been catastrophic. We have laid waste to natural ecosystems, replacing them with fundamentally unsustainable human designs. With time running out to address the environmental crises we have caused, our best path forward is to turn to nature for guidance. In this book, Henry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of a revolutionary approach to sustainable (...) innovation: biomimicry. The term describes the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems, such as passive cooling techniques modeled on termite mounds or solar cells modeled on leaves. Dicks argues that biomimicry, typically seen as just a design strategy, can also serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world. By showing how we can imitate, emulate, and learn from nature, biomimicry points us toward a genuinely sustainable way of inhabiting the earth. Rooted in philosophy, The Biomimicry Revolution has profound implications spanning the natural sciences, design, architecture, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. It presents a sweeping reconception of what philosophy can be and offers a powerful new vision of terrestrial existence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Stefansson (forthcoming) argues that by emitting and offsetting, we fail to fulfil our justice-based duty to avoid harm owed to specific individuals. In this paper, I explore a case where offsetting fails to prevent some but not all risks of harms that our emissions impose on them. By drawing on a distinction between general and specific duties not to (risk) harm, I argue that if by emitting and offsetting, we satisfy some (if not all) of our specific duties we (...) owe others, then this gives us stronger moral reasons to offset than give to charities that do good more effectively. (shrink)

In this chapter we will use the case of beaver reintroduction in southern Scandinavia to illuminate the philosophical issues underlying the value of biodiversity. First, we rehearse some of the main types of argument relating to the practice of ecological restoration. This is followed by a description of the case study, and by a summary of what we take to be the main positions in the ongoing debate over reintroduction of beavers. We then interpret these different positions, asking in each (...) case how ‘biodiversity’ is being understood. In this way, we try to establish the causes of the disagreement. It is important to distinguish between disagreements caused by conflicting interests and disagreements caused by conflicting values. We shall focus on a special type of disagreement where there seems to be a genuine conflict of values pertaining to biodiversity. Finally, we show how the claim that biodiversity should be protected is made by several participants in the debate and taken to have remarkably different implications: the need to protect biodiversity has been invoked both in attacks on, and defenses of, reintroduction and other forms of ecological restoration. (shrink)

Although this book is about the newly emerging academic field of environmental communication, it is also about voice and practical activism.

This paper seeks to examine the thought of philosophers about the influence of the environment on humans' physical, mental and moral habits, as well as how these philosophers used this influence to categorise individuals according to their habitat. As such this research begins with Herodotus and Hippocrates, and briefly discusses Plato, Aristotle, and seven medieval philosophers belonging to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions (Al-Kindi, Eriugena, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Tufail, Averroes, and Moses Maimonides). Also, this study investigates Montesquieu from the (...) seventh century, eight modern thinkers from the 19th through the 21st centuries, determinism (Carl Ritter, Ellen Churchill Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington), geography of possibilism (Vidal de Blacche, Lucian Febwer, and Cari Sauer), bioregionalism (Richard Evanoff), and meteorology (Frederik Nebeker). Lastly, this study concludes that all aforementioned 19th philosophers agreed that the environment influences human behaviour and physical condition. -/- . (shrink)

Creating and caring for a garden is a long-term project whose success requires commitment and devotion and love and proper performance of a range of activities that involve virtues and sensibilities like attentiveness, carefulness, humility, imaginativeness, and sensitivity to the natures and needs of plants and animals. In this chapter, I elaborate this conception of gardens and explore its relationship to artistic activities, like composing poetry or performing music. My focus are Confucianism and Daosim and their accounts of the relationships (...) between cultured practices, ethics and the arts, and garden-practices. (shrink)

This paper examines the evidence concerning the frequent accusation that technology, capitalism, and Christianity—three bases of modern Western society—are root causes of environmental degradation. A critical assessment indicates that, although these aspects of the present-day world are associated with failures to protect the environment, labeling them as causal factors contradicts known facts. A major theme of the paper is the combined application of scientific and folk wisdom in addressing environmental issues. An attempt is made to synthesize different positions, and the (...) implications for environmental psychology are discussed. (shrink)

In the framework of ethical social choice theory, sustainability is justified by efficiency and equity as ethical axioms. These axioms correspond to the Suppes–Sen grading principle. In technologies that are productive in a certain sense, the set of Suppes–Sen maximal utility paths is shown to equal the set of non-decreasing and efficient paths. Since any such path is sustainable, efficiency and equity can thus be used to deem any unsustainable path as ethically unacceptable. This finding is contrasted with results that (...) seem to indicate that an infinite number of generations cannot be treated equally. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that existing studies of Black environmentalism do not appropriately measure the environmental concerns and activities most relevant to Blacks and hence do not accurately reflect the extent to which African Americans are responsive on environmental issues. Using data that measure Black environmental concern and activity in communities threatened by hazardous industries to various degrees, the authors evaluate 2 competing sets of expectations regarding the manner in which these concerns and activities are affected by differential (...) environmental threats to the community. They find that specific local concerns and activities depend, to some extent, on the nature of the threat from nearby industry, but that more general attitudes toward the regulation of industry and concern about the environment do not Reasons as to why this might be the case are discussed. (shrink)

Land use regulation is one of the most poorly understood areas of law and public policy in the United States. At the same time, the land use regulatory system is expected to solve complex issues. The structure of the land use regulatory system can tell us quite a bit about the role that land use regulation, especially local land use regulation, can play in addressing specific public policy problems. This article illuminates common misunderstandings associated with the land use regulatory system, (...) identifies its proper functions, location, scope, components and processes, and analyzes whether the land use regulatory structure can value and conserve ecosystem services. Additionally, this article posits that the land use regulatory system has great potential for incorporating concepts and considerations of ecosystem services into land use actions and decisions. (shrink)

Can environmental law actually achieve environmental conservation or implement an environmental ethic in practice? The environmental movement has been captured by a legal centralist perspective, which asserts that legal institutions and processes are integral to achieving environmental conservation and environmentally ethical behavior.

Learn to incorporate the principles of environmental justice into your planning processes. This PAS Report outlines the law and regulatory tools.

The metaphor of property as a "bundle of sticks: or "bundle of rights" leads to the "disintegration of property": a concept of property that is too incoherent, ill-defined, and malleable to be meaningful. This article identifies several theoretical problems with the bundle of rights metaphor, and proposes a new metaphor of property as a web of interests.

Landscape or nature quality has become a key concept in relation to nature policy and landscape planning. In the first part of the article it is argued, that these qualities should not be conceived as mere expressions of private or subjective preferences. Even though there may not be any `objective' or `scientific' method dealing with them, they are still values which can be shared, reflected on, and discussed in a reasonable way. The connoisseurs are introduced as experienced persons, who are (...) particularly capable of identifying different kinds of qualities, bridge builders between cognition and evaluation. The second part of the article deals with four central sets of landscape or nature qualities: qualities related to species diversity, qualities related to the `atmospheres' and characters of places, pictorial qualities, and qualities related to narrativity. It is argued that experience of these and similar qualities are an important part of human flourishing, and that they should therefore all have a prominent place in landscape planning. (shrink)

Environmental philosophy has brought two topics to the forefront of philosophical discussion. One is the anthropocentrism/non-anthropocentrism debate in ethics, and the other is the question of obligations towards future generations. The deeper motives for focusing on these issues are, of course, intimately tied to the fact that the present generation may well be on its way to introducing practically irreversible and catastrophic damage to the global ecosystem. For the first time, one has to acknowledge that the global system does not (...) have an infinite capacity to repair itself and provide humans with limitless new opportunities for a fresh start. (shrink)

Concepts of Value in the natural environment are examined and the concept of constitutive value is introduced and discussed.

There is a widely held belief that there are moral limits to what we can do to non-human living beings. This has inspired various varieties of non-anthropocentric ethics. Whether rights- or welfare-oriented, the focus has been on the organisms’ interests. The ability of these theories to explain the moral significance of interests and, more generally, to identify the source of obligation in ethics, is questioned. The metaphor of a game is provided, with the rules of a game, as a model (...) for what can give obligational significance. A Kantian-oriented view of ethics is developed from the model, providing a source for inter-human liberty-rights. Concerning such rights, animals are clearly neither agents nor patients. It is argued that inter-human moral relationships also involve welfare issues. In fact the meaning of ethics is dependent on the welfare aspect. Pre-moral compassion provides direction for the principal task of ethics: to bring compassion out of a particular realm of kindness and under the equity requirements of ethics. This effort demands respect for the welfare of all others, including non-humans. It further condemns acts of wanton destruction, even when no sentient being is the victim. Animals, plants and the environment are therefore the prima facie beneficiaries of an inter-human morality. The moral belief that morality is an issue in human–nature relationships is thereby integrated into an anthropocentric ethic. (shrink)

The widespread concern about the declining state of our physical environment is often accompanied by frustration about what to do to prevent or even reverse such deterioration. In the past, policy makers, legislators, and the general public have usually turned to scientists and scientific knowledge for answers. But recently, theorists and others have reemphasized the importance of culture in understanding the environment. In this article, this culturalist critique of scientific knowledge is discussed and is then related to the decision by (...) Ontario Hydro to lay up seven of its nuclear reactors. This situation is used to illustrate the continuing relevance of scientific knowledge for addressing environmental concerns. (shrink)