This acclaimed book is back in print with a new introduction by its award-winning author.

This Second Edition of A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth offers clear, powerful, and often moving thoughts from Holmes Rolston III, one of the first and most respected philosophers to write on the environment and often called the "father of environmental ethics." Rolston surveys the full spectrum of approaches in the field of environmental ethics and offers critical assessments of contemporary academic accounts. He draws on a lifetime of research and experience to (...) suggest an outlook, and even hope, for the future. This forward-looking analysis, focused on the new millennium, will be a necessary complement to any balanced textbook or anthology in environmental ethics. The First Edition guaranteed "to put you in your place." Beyond that, the Second Edition, asks whether you want to live a "de-natured life on a de-natured planet." Key Updates in the Second Edition - Covers the worsening environmental situation due to actions of the Trump administration, including withdrawal from the Paris accord and from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change - Includes information on legislation in key U.S. states aimed to ameliorate the damage done at the Federal level - Increases coverage of group knowledge, group agreement and disagreement, and group action in collective environmental ethics, as distinguished from individual knowledge and action - Examines the deleterious effects of online consumer behavior - Explains how a loss of solidarity among a nation's citizens and even a larger solidary among humanity leads to environmental degradation - Offers new analysis of the effects of epistemic bubbles, echo chambers, and fake news on the behavior of voters and consumers - Provides an extended critique of the Anthropocene Epoch, and the prospect of geo-engineering Earth to become a synthetic environment. (shrink)

Environmental Ethics is a systematic account of values carried by the natural world, coupled with an inquiry into duties toward animals, plants, species, and ecosystems. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is illustrated by and integrated with numerous actual examples of ethical decisions made in encounters with fauna and flora, endangered species, and threatened ecosystems. The ethics developed is informed throughout by ecological science and evolutionary biology, with attention to the logic of moving from what is in nature to what ought (...) to be. The ethical theory is applied in detail to social, public, and business policy. Written in an engaging style, using diagrams and figures as well as numerous case studies, Environmental Ethics prods the reader into concrete application and invites reader participation in the ethical discussions. The ethics concludes by exploring the historical experiences of personal residence in a surrounding environment. Here is an adventure into what it means to live as responsible human beings in the community of life on Earth. In the series Ethics and Action, edited by Tom Regan. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Neither ecologists nor economists can teach us what we most need to know about nature: how to value it. The Hebrew prophets claimed that there can be no intelligent human ecology except as people learn to use land justly and charitably. Lands do not flow with milk and honey for all unless and until justice rolls down like waters. What kind of planet ought we humans wish to have? One we resourcefully manage for our benefits? Or one we hold in (...) loving care? Science and economics can't teach us that; perhaps religion and ethics can. (shrink)

Holmes Rolston challenges the sociobiological orthodoxy that would naturalize science, ethics, and religion. The book argues that genetic processes are not blind, selfish, and contingent, and that nature is therefore not value-free. The author examines the emergence of complex biodiversity through evolutionary history. Especially remarkable in this narrative is the genesis of human beings with their capacities for science, ethics, and religion. A major conceptual task of the book is to relate cultural genesis to natural genesis. There is (...) also a general account of how values are created and transmitted in both natural and human cultural history. The book is written by one of the most well-respected figures in the philosophy of biology and religion. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Discusses ethical ecology, the value of nature, environmental philosophy, and the experience of nature.

This introduction to biological conservation assesses the value judgments at the heart of conservation. The author elaborates on such questions as: how much habitat does an endangered species require?; does this particular species deserve to be saved?; who will pay for its upkeep?; and much more.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

I offer myself as a nature guide, exploring for values. Many before us have got lost and we must look the world over. The unexamined life is not worth living; life in an unexamined world is not worthy living either. We miss too much of value.

covenant. " Behold I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you ". In modern terms, the covenant was both ecumenical and ecological. However, the ecological dimension is usually forgotten ; recalling it is worth a sermon.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

In the case of the irreversibly comatose patient, though no personal consciousness remains, some moral duty is owed the remaining biological life. Such an ending to human life, if pathetic, is also both intelligible and meaningful in a biological and evolutionary perspective. By distinguishing between the human subjective life and the spontaneous objective life, we can recognize a naturalistic principle in medical ethics, contrary to a current tendency to defend purely humanistic norms. This principle has applications in clinical care in (...) the definition of death, in the use of life support therapy, in distinguishing ordinary from extraordinary therapy, in evaluating euthanasia, and in the extent of appropriate medical intervention in terminal cases. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

staggering fact; life renewed after death would be continuing miracle, but, just that: continuing miracle. My friends puzzle over my claim. "Well, I hadn't thought of it like that. You could be right. I agree that creation, or nature is surprising. Still, science leads us to think that nature is all there is. Resurrection is supernatural, and.

Christopher Southgate recognizes that the natural world is both ambiguous, mixing goods and bads, and simultaneously dramatically creative, such creativity resulting from just this ambiguous challenge of environmental conductance and resistance. Life is lived in green pastures and in the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps this is the only way God could have created the values found on Earth, by means of such disvalues, as a Darwinian natural selection account suggests. Generating Earth's biodiversity requires struggle, success, and failure—and (...) such an only way would constrain a powerful, loving God. But Southgate judges this too uncaring of suffering individuals, the products of evolution sacrificed to the systemic process. Perhaps God through Jesus redeems all the sacrificed individuals—pelicans in a pelican heaven—but redemption of all the bullfrogs and acorns becomes an incredible hope. Nature is a cruciform creation, where life persists in perpetual perishing. Life is forever conserved, regenerated, redeemed. (shrink)

If one compares the general worldview of biology with that of theology, it first seems that there is only stark contrast. To move from Darwinian nature to Christian theology, one will have to change the sign of natural history, from selfish genes to suffering love. Theologians also hold that, in regeneration, humans with their sinful natures must be reformed to lives that are more altruistic, also requiring a change of sign. But the problem lies deeper; all of biological nature can (...) seem to run counter to what Jesus teaches: that one ought to lay down one s life for others. In nature, there is no altruism, much less kenosis. (shrink)

In both environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics something of value is at stake. These are often connected: If beauty, then: duty. But not all duties are tied to beauties. Other premises, such as resource use or respect for life, might better yield duties. Human aesthetic capacities depend on aesthetic properties of value. Wildlife admirers focus on animal excellences. Biotic communities, ecosystems, have their integrities. In a participatory aesthetics, an appropriate admiration for nature transforms into our caring.