The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics

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The Oxford Handbook of

ENVIRONMENTAL

ETHICS

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The Oxford Handbook of

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Edited by

STEPHEN M. GARDINER

and

ALLEN THOMPSON

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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University

Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted

by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the

address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Gardiner, Stephen Mark, editor.

Title: The Oxford handbook of environmental ethics / edited by Stephen M. Gardiner and Allen Thompson.

Other titles: Handbook of environmental ethics Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017. |

Series: Oxford handbooks

Identifiers: LCCN 2016014553 | ISBN 9780199941339 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Environmental ethics. | Environmental protection—Moral and ethical aspects. | Nature—Effect of human beings on—Moral and ethical aspects.

Classification: LCC GE42 .O84 2017 | DDC 179/.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014553

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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

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PART II SUBJECTS OF VALUE What Ought to Count Morally and How

7. Humanity

Anthropocentrism: Humanity as Peril and Promise 77 Allen Thompson

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vi Contents

8. Conscious Animals

Conscious Animals and the Value of Experience 91 Lori Gruen

9. Living Indiviudals

Living Individuals: Biocentrism in Environmental Ethics 101 Clare Palmer

10. Ecological Collectives

How Ecological Collectives are Morally Considerable 113 J. Baird Callicott

11. Wild Nature

Valuing Wild Nature 125

Philip Cafaro

PART III NATURE OF VALUE The Meaning of Value and Normative Claims

12. Truth and Goodness

Truth and Goodness: Metaethics in Environmental Ethics 139 Katie McShane

13. Practical Reasons

Practical Reasons and Environmental Commitment 151 Alan Holland

14. Hermeneutics

Environmental Hermeneutics and the Meaning of Nature 162 Martin Drenthen

15. Phenomenology

Phenomenology and Environmental Ethics 174 Ted Toadvine

16. Aesthetics

Aesthetic Value, Nature, and Environment 186 Emily Brady

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Contents vii

PART IV HOW THINGS MATTER Theoretical Perspectives on the Way We Ought to Act

17. States of Affairs

Consequentialism in Environmental Ethics 199 Avram Hiller

18. Duty & Obligation

Rights, Rules, and Respect for Nature 211

Benjamin Hale 19. Character

Environmental Virtue Ethics: Value, Normativity,

and Right Action 223

Ronald Sandler 20. Caring Relations

Ethics of Caring in Environmental Ethics: Indigenous

and Feminist Philosophies 234

Kyle Powys Whyte and Chris J. Cuomo 21. The Sacred

The Sacred, Reverence for Life, and Environmental Ethics

in America 248

Bron Taylor

PART V KEY CONCEPTS Tools for Framing and Addressing Problems

22. Responsibility

Individual and Contributory Responsibility for

Environmental Harm 265

Kenneth Shockley 23. Justice

Justice on One Planet 276

Derek Bell 24. Gender

Sexual Politics in Environmental Ethics: Impacts,

Causes, Alternatives 288

Chris J. Cuomo

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viii Contents 25. Rights

Human Rights and the Environment 301

Steve Vanderheiden 26. Ecological Space

Ecological Space: The Concept and Its Ethical Significance 311 Tim Hayward

27. Risk & Precaution

Risk and Precaution in Decision Making about Nature 321 Jonathan Aldred

28. Citizenship

Citizenship and (Un)Sustainability: A Green Republican

Perspective 333

John Barry 29. Future Generations

Future Generations in Environmental Ethics 344 John Nolt

30. Sustainability

Sustainability as the Multigenerational Public Interest 355 Bryan G. Norton

PART VI CENTRAL ISSUES Specific Areas Of Environmental Concern

31. Pollution

The Ethics of Environmental Pollution 369

Kevin C. Elliott 32. Population

Population and Environment : The Impossible,

the Impermissible, and the Imperative 380

Elizabeth Cripps 33. Energy

Ethical Energy Choices 391

Kristin Shrader- Frechette

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Contents ix 34. Food

Narratives of Food, Agriculture, and the Environment 404 David M. Kaplan

35. Water

Water Ethics: Toward Ecological Cooperation 416 Angela Kallhoff

36. Mass Extinction

Anthropogenic Mass Extinction: The Science, the Ethics,

and the Civics 427

Jeremy David Bendik- Keymer and Chris Haufe 37. Technology

Philosophy of Technology and the Environment 438 Paul B. Thompson

38. Ecosystem Managment

The Ethics of Ecosystem Management 449

Marion Hourdequin

PART VII CLIMATE CHANGE

The Defining Environmental Problem of Our Time

39. Mitigation

Mitigation: First Imperative of Environmental Ethics 465 Henry Shue

40. Adaptation

Ethics and Climate Adaptation 474

Clare Heyward 41. Diplomacy

Climate Diplomacy 487

Andrew Light 42. Geoengineering

Geoengineering: Ethical Questions for Deliberate

Climate Manipulators 501

Stephen M. Gardiner

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PART VIII SOCIAL CHANGE Doing What We Ought to Do

43. Conflict

Environmental Conflict 517

David Schmidtz 44. Pragmatism

Environmental Ethics, Sustainability Science, and the Recovery

of Pragmatism 528

Ben A. Minteer 45. Sacrifice

Sacrifice and the Possibilities for Environmental Action 541 John M. Meyer

46. Action

From Environmental Ethics to Environmental Action 552 Avner de Shalit

Index 563

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The Contributors

Jonathan Aldred is Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics at Emmanuel College and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, UK. He is interested in the ethical foundations of orthodox economics and the economic policy derived from it, with a particular focus on environmental policy. He has published on ethical issues arising in the cost- benefit analysis of climate change, the precautionary principle, and carbon trading. More general publications include The Skeptical Economist (Earthscan/

Routledge, 2009), which explores the ethical assumptions behind popular economic arguments.

John Barry is Professor of Green Political Economy at Queens University Belfast. He is the author of The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability (Oxford, 2012) and coeditor of Global Ecological Politics (Emerald, 2011) and Environmental Philosophy: The Art of Living in a World of Limits (Emerald, 2013). His research focuses on the political economy of un/

sustainability, low carbon energy transitions, and civic republicanism.

Derek Bell is Professor of Environmental Political Theory at Newcastle University, UK. He is the coeditor of Environmental Citizenship (MIT Press, 2006) and Justice and Fairness in the City (Policy Press, 2016). His work on environmental justice and climate justice has been published in leading journals, including The Monist, Political Studies, Environmental Ethics, and Environmental Politics.

Jeremy David Bendik- Keymer is the Beamer- Schneider Professor in Ethics and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of The Ecological Life: Discovering Citizenship and a Sense of Humanity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) and the mixed- genre, Solar Calendar, and Other Ways of Marking Time (Punctum, 2016). He coedited Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (MIT, 2012) with Allen Thompson. His research is on anthroponomy (the goal of planetary, environmental civics), relational reason (interpersonal phenomenology), and askesis (philosophy as a way of life).

Emily Brady is Professor of Environment and Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.

She is the author of The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature (Cambridge, 2013) and Aesthetics of the Natural Environment (Edinburgh, 2003), and is coeditor of Human- Environment Relations: Transformative Values in Theory and Practice (Springer, 2012) and Aesthetic Concepts: Essays After Sibley (Oxford, 2001). She has research interests in aesthetics and philosophy of art, environmental ethics, eighteenth- century philosophy, and animal studies.

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xii The Contributors

Daniel Butt is Associate Professor in Political Theory at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford. He is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice and the author of Rectifying International Injustice: Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations (Oxford, 2009). He has written on a range of topics relating to global justice, historical wrongdoing, and environmental ethics.

Philip Cafaro is Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University and an affiliated faculty member of CSU’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability. He is the author of Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue (Georgia, 2004) and How Many Is Too Many? The Progressive Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United States (Chicago, 2015) and is coeditor of Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation (Georgia, 2012). His research centers on virtue ethics, environmental ethics, population and consumption issues, and the preservation of wild nature. Cafaro is immedi- ate past president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.

J. Baird Callicott retired as University Distinguished Research Professor and Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Thinking Like a Planet (Oxford, 2013) and the author or editor of a score of other books and author of dozens of journal articles, encyclopedia articles, and book chapters. His research concerns theoretical environmental ethics; comparative environmental ethics and philosophy; the philosophy of ecology and conservation policy; and biocomplexity in the environment, coupled natural and human systems. He taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics in 1971 at the University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point.

Elizabeth Cripps is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh and former British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. Her publications include Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World (Oxford, 2013). Her research focuses on climate change justice and ethics, particularly collective responsibility, individual climate duties, population and justice, and parents' climate duties.

Chris J. Cuomo is Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing (Routledge, 1998) and The Philosopher Queen: Feminist Essays on War, Love, and Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) and is coeditor of The Feminist Philosophy Reader (McGraw- Hill, 2007).

Martin Drenthen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Radboud University (Nijmegen, The Netherlands). He is coeditor of New Visions of Nature: Complexity and Authenticity (Springer, 2009), Interpreting Nature. The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics (Fordham University Press, 2013), Environmental Aesthetics: Crossing Divides and Breaking Ground (Fordham University Press, 2014), and Old World and New World Perspectives in Environmental Philosophy: Transatlantic Conversations. (Springer, 2014). Currently, he leads a research project on a hermeneutic landscape ethics, which focuses on the relation between ecological restoration and rewilding landscapes, cultures of place, and moral identity.

Kevin C. Elliott is Associate Professor of Philosophy in Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, and the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University. He is the author of Is a Little Pollution Good for You? Incorporating Societal Values in Environmental Research (Oxford, 2011), as well as a number of journal articles and book

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The Contributors xiii chapters on issues at the intersection of the philosophy of science and practical ethics. His research focuses on the role of values in science, financial conflicts of interest in research, and ethical issues related to environmental pollution and emerging technologies.

Stephen M. Gardiner is Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of the Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle.

He is the author of A Perfect Moral Storm (Oxford, 2011), co- author of Debating Climate Ethics (Oxford, 2016), editor of Virtue Ethics, Old and New (Cornell, 2005), and coeditor of Climate Ethics: Essential Readings (Oxford, 2010). His research focuses on global environmental problems, future generations, and virtue ethics.

Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. She is also a professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and coordinator of Wesleyan Animal Studies. She is the author and editor of nine books, including Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2011), Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (Oxford, 2012), Ethics of Captivity (Oxford, 2014), and Entangled Empathy (Lantern, 2015). Her work in practical ethics focuses on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations; for example, women, people of color, non- human animals.

Benjamin Hale is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department and the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is coeditor of Ethics, Policy

& Environment and president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.

At Boulder, he served as director of the Center for Values and Social Policy and is co- coordinator of the annual Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress. He has published in The Monist, Metaphilosophy, Public Affairs Quarterly, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, Science, Technology, and Human Values, and popular essays in The New York Times and Slate.

His work has focused emerging technologies, conservation, and the Anthropocene.

Chris Haufe is Assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University, where he works on problems in the history and philosophy of science. He is currently completing two books, one on the concept of fruitfulness, and one on the evolutionary nature of scientific progress.

Tim Hayward is Professor of Environmental Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh.

He is the author of Constitutional Environmental Rights (Oxford, 2005), Political Theory and Ecological Values (Polity, 1998), and Ecological Thought: An Introduction (Polity, 1995). He is currently writing on global justice versus global finance, ecological debt, and human rights in relation to natural resources.

Clare Heyward is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick.

She is interested in issues of global distributive justice and intergenerational justice, especially those connected to climate change. Clare's current project is about the issues of "geoengineering" technologies and global climate justice. Before joining the University of Warwick, she was James Martin Research Fellow on the Oxford Geoengineering Programme and before that, a doctoral student at Oxford University.

Avram Hiller is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University. He coedited Consequentialism and Environmental Ethics (Routledge, 2014) and has research interests in

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xiv The Contributors

environmental ethics as well as in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

His work has appeared in journals including Economics and Philosophy; Environmental Values; Public Affairs Quarterly; Essays in Philosophy; Ethics, Policy, & Environment; The Monist; and Synthese.

Alan Holland is Emeritus Professor of Applied Philosophy at Lancaster University, UK.

After an early focus on epistemology and philosophical logic, his more recent work focuses on topics in environmental philosophy, environmental decision- making, ecological theory and bioethics. He is a former editor of the journal Environmental Values and co- author with Andrew Light and John O'Neill of a monograph, Environmental Values (Routledge, 2008).

He also served for eight years on the UK government's Animal Procedures Committee.

Marion Hourdequin is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Colorado College. Her recent work focuses on the ethics of climate change and climate engineering, and on the social and ethical dimensions of ecological restoration. She is the author of Environmental Ethics: From Theory to Practice (Bloomsbury, 2015) and editor, with David Havlick, of Restoring Layered Landscapes (Oxford, 2015).

Angela Kallhoff is Professor of Ethics with special emphasis on Applied Ethics at the University of Vienna, Austria. She is the author of Prinzipien der Pflanzenethik (Campus, 2002), Ethischer Naturalismus nach Aristoteles (Mentis, 2010), Why Democracy Needs Public Goods (Lexington, 2011), and Politische Philosophie des Bürgers (Böhlau, 2013) and is editor of Klimaethik und Klimagerechtigkeit (De Gruyter, 2015). Her research focuses on environmental ethics, ethical naturalism, and political philosophy.

David M. Kaplan is Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Texas. His research focuses on three sets of issues: hermeneutics, food, and technology. He is the editor of Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, second edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009); Philosophy of Food (University of California Press, 2012); Reading Ricoeur (SUNY Press, 2008); and coeditor with Paul B. Thompson of The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics (Springer, 2014). Kaplan runs the Philosophy of Food Project at the University of North Texas: www.food.unt.edu

Jason Kawall is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies and Director of the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs at Colgate University. His research focuses on virtue ethics and epistemology, with a particular emphasis on their application to environmental issues. He has published many articles in these and related areas, with his work appearing in such journals as American Philosophical Quarterly;

Canadian Journal of Philosophy; Environmental Ethics; Ethics, Policy &Environment;

and Philosophical Studies and in a number of edited volumes, including the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Virtue.

Andrew Light is University Professor and Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University and Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. From 2013 to 2016 he served as Senior Adviser and India Counselor to the Special Envoy on Climate Change, and Staff Climate Adviser in the Secretary’s Office of Policy Planning, in the US Department of State. He has authored, co- authored, and edited 19 books, including Environmental Values (Routledge, 2008), Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT, 2003), Environmental Pragmatism

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The Contributors xv (Routledge, 1996), and the forthcoming Ethics in the Anthropocene (MIT). In recognition of his role in creating the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, he received the inau- gural Alain Locke Award for Public Philosophy from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy.

Katie McShane is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University special- izing in environmental ethics and ethical theory. She has written articles on ecosystem health, the place of environmental concerns in theories of value, and the moral significance of our emotional engagements with nature. Her work has been published in journals such as Philosophical Studies, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, and Ethics and the Environment.

John M. Meyer is a Professor in the Department of Politics and in the programs on Environmental Studies and Environment and Community at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. He is the author of Engaging the Everyday: Environmental Social Criticism and the Resonance Dilemma (MIT, 2015), coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford, 2016), and coeditor of The Greening of Everyday Life: Challenging Practices, Imagining Possibilities (Oxford, 2016).

Ben A. Minteer holds the Arizona Zoological Society Endowed Chair at Arizona State University, where he is also Professor of Environmental Ethics and Conservation in ASU’s School of Life Sciences. His work explores our responsibility toward species and wildlands in a rapidly changing environment, as well as the intellectual history of conservation and environmentalism. He is author or editor of a number of books, including most recently After Preservation: Saving American Nature in the Age of Humans (Chicago, 2015).

John Nolt is a Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Tennessee and a Research Fellow in the Energy and Environment Program of the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy. He works in environmental ethics, intergenerational ethics, climate ethics, formal value theory, and philosophical logic. His publications include seven books— most recently Environmental Ethics for the Long Term (Routledge, 2015).

Bryan G. Norton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of Sustainable Values, Sustainable Change: A Guide to Environmental Decision Making (Chicago, 2015), Why Preserve Natural Variety? (Princeton, 1987), Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford, 1991), Searching for Sustainability (Cambridge, 2003), and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (Chicago, 2005). Norton has contributed to journals in several fields, served as a member of the US EPA Science Advisory Board, the Governing Board of the Society for Conservation Biology, and the Board of Directors of Defenders of Wildlife.

John O’Neill is Hallsworth Professor of Political Economy at Manchester University and Director of the Political Economy Institute. He has written widely on philosophy, political economy, and environmental policy. His books include Markets, Deliberation, and Environment (Routledge, 2007), The Market: Ethics, Knowledge, and Politics (Routledge, 1998), and Ecology, Policy, and Politics: Human Well- Being and the Natural World (Routledge, 1993). He is co- author of Environmental Values (Routledge, 2008) with Alan Holland and Andrew Light.

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xvi The Contributors

Clare Palmer is Professor of Philosophy and Cornerstone Fellow in the Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. She works in environmental ethics, animal ethics, and climate ethics. She is the author of several books including Animal Ethics in Context (Columbia University Press, 2010) and she co-authored Companion Animal Ethics with Peter Sandoe and Sandra Corr (Wiley Blackwell, 2015). She has edited or co-edited a number of volumes in environmental and animal ethics, including Animal Rights (Ashgate, 2008) and, with J. Baird Callicott, the fifth-volume set Environmental Philosophy (Routledge, 2005).

Wendy S. Parker is Reader in Philosophy and Associate Director of the Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS) at Durham University. Her research focuses on the methodology and epistemology of contemporary science, with special attention to climate science. She is particularly interested in questions about scientific evidence, computer simulation, measurement, explanation, and values in science.

Holmes Rolston, III, is University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He has written seven books, most recently A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth. He gave the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997– 1998, and won the Templeton Prize in Religion in 2003. Rolston has spo- ken as distinguished lecturer on all seven continents. He is featured in Joy A. Palmer, ed., Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment (Routledge, 2001). He is past and founding president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He is a founding editor of the journal Environmental Ethics.

Ronald Sandler is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University. His primary areas of research are environmental ethics, ethics and technology, and ethical theory. He is author of Food Ethics: The Basics (Routledge, 2015), The Ethics of Species (Cambridge, 2012), and Character and Environment (Columbia, 2007), as well as editor of Ethics and Emerging Technologies (Palgrave, 2014) and coeditor of Environmental Justice and Environmentalism (MIT, 2007) and Environmental Virtue Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).

David Schmidtz is Kendrick Professor at the University of Arizona and editor- in- chief of Social Philosophy and Policy. His fourteen former doctoral students all hold faculty positions and have published articles in Journal of Philosophy and Ethics. Oxford, Cambridge, and Princeton University Presses have published their books.

Avner de Shalit is the Max Kampelman Professor of Democracy and Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Why Posterity Matters (Routledge, 1995), The Environment: Between Theory and Practice (Oxford, 2000), Power to the People (Lexington, 2004), Disadvantage (with Jonathan Wolff, Oxford, 2011), and The Spirit of Cities (with Daniel Bell, Princeton 2011). He is coeditor (with Shlomo Avineri) of Communitarianism and Individualism (Oxford, 1993) and (with Andrew Light) of Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice (MIT, 2003). His research and teaching focuses on environmental political theory, urban politics, democracy, and inequality.

Kenneth Shockley is Associate Professor at Colorado State University where he holds the Rolston Chair in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy. He has published widely in climate ethics, environmental ethics, and ethical theory. He is coeditor of Ethics and the Anthropocene (forthcoming, MIT), and has coedited several special journal issues on the

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The Contributors xvii ethical dimensions of climate change and climate policy. His current research focuses on the expression of environmental values in public policy, the ethical dimensions of climate policy, ecological restoration, and several problems in philosophical ethics. He taught previously at the University at Buffalo, Barnard College, and the University of Malawi.

Kristin Shrader- Frechette, O’Neill Professor, University of Notre Dame, in both Philosophy and Biological Sciences, has NSF- funded post- docs in biology, economics, and hydrogeology and 28 years of NSF- research funding. Her work has been translated into 13 languages. Author of 16 books and 400 articles appearing in journals such as Science, Shrader- Frechette has served on many US National Academy of Sciences, EPA, WHO, and international boards/ committees. Named one of 12 "Heroes for the US and the World" for her pro- bono scientific/ ethics work to protect poor/ minority communities from environmental injustice, she is only the third American to win the World Technology Association’s Ethics Prize.

Henry Shue is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford; and Senior Research Fellow Emeritus, Merton College, Oxford. He is the author of Basic Rights (Princeton, 1980; 2nd ed., 1996); Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection (Oxford, 2014); and Fighting Hurt: Rule and Exception in Torture and War (Oxford, 2016). He coedited Preemption (Oxford, 2007);

Just and Unjust Warriors (Oxford, 2008); and Climate Ethics (Oxford, 2010). His most recent article is “Uncertainty as the Reason for Action: Last Opportunity and Future Climate Disaster,” Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric (2016).

Bron Taylor is Professor of Religion and Environmental Ethics at the University of Florida and a Fellow of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig- Maximilians- Universität, Munich, Germany. His books include Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (UC Press, 2010) and he is editor of the award- win- ning Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Bloomsbury, 2008), Avatar and Nature Spirituality (Wilfrid Laurier, 2013), and Ecological Resistance Movements (SUNY, 1995). In 2006 he founded the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, which he edits. See also www.brontay- lor.com.

Allen Thompson is Associate Professor of Ethics and Environmental Philosophy at Oregon State University and a Fellow with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig Maximilian University. His research concerns broadening our conception of environmental virtue and moral responsibility as part of understanding human excellence in adapting to new ecological conditions of the Anthropocene. He is coeditor of Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (MIT, 2012) and serves as an officer for the International Society for Environmental Ethics (Treasurer 2013– 2015, Vice- President 2016– 2018, and President 2019– 2021).

Paul B. Thompson holds the W. K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food, and Community Ethics at Michigan State University. He has published extensively on the environmental ethics of emerging technologies, including nuclear power, GMOs, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. Thompson’s work on agriculture has appeared in scientific journals such as Poultry Science, Plant Physiology, and The Journal of Animal Science. His book From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone was published by Oxford University Press in 2015.

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xviii The Contributors

Ted Toadvine, incoming Director of the Rock Ethics Institute at the Pennsylvania State University, is currently Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. He is author of Merleau- Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern, 2009);

editor of Merleau- Ponty: Critical Assessments (Routledge, 2006); and coeditor of Nature’s Edge (SUNY, 2007), The Merleau- Ponty Reader (Northwestern, 2007), Eco- Phenomenology (SUNY, 2003), and Merleau- Ponty’s Reading of Husserl (Kluwer, 2002). Toadvine directs the Series in Continental Thought at Ohio University Press, is Editor- in- Chief of the journal Environmental Philosophy, and is a coeditor of Chiasmi International. His current research addresses environmental apocalypticism, deep time, and geomateriality.

Steve Vanderheiden is Associate Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Professorial Fellow with the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is the author of Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford, 2008) and editor of Political Theory and Global Climate Change (MIT, 2008). His work focuses upon justice and responsibility issues in global environmental governance.

Kyle Powys Whyte holds the Timnick Chair in the Humanities at Michigan State University.

He is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Community Sustainability, a faculty member of the Environmental Philosophy & Ethics graduate concentration, and a faculty affiliate of the American Indian Studies and Environmental Science & Policy programs. His primary research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate policy and Indigenous peoples and the ethics of cooperative relationships between Indigenous peoples and climate science organizations. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

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Chapter 1

Introducing Contemporary

Environmental Ethics

Allen Thompson and Stephen M. Gardiner

1 Perspective on the Anthropocene

Humans are relative newcomers. The Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, and multicellular life evolved 2.1 billion years ago, yet the oldest fossil remains of anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens date back a mere 195,000 years, or 0.004% of the planet’s history. For the vast majority of humanity’s existence so far, its influence on the terrestrial environment and biotic communities was the result of activities of small bands of hunter- gatherers. Consequently, human impacts were likely to have been relatively limited, being local in scope and modest in magnitude, or at least comparable to many other species.

At some point, humans began to have much more exceptional effects. One plausible example occurs about 12,000 years ago, on the cusp between the Pleistocene and Holocene geological epochs. The Late Pleistocene Extinction Event was a worldwide phenomenon of megafauna extinctions, especially pronounced in North America. Paleontologists have hypothesized three possible causal drivers: natural climate change (as the ice sheets retreated), human predation (the “prehistoric overkill hypothesis”), and significant trophic cascades following the (anthropogenic) demise of woolly mammoths (Sandom et al., 2014).

Here, for the first time, human activity is put forward as potentially a major cause of global and systematic environmental change.

A more familiar example is associated with the First Agricultural (or Neolithic) Revolution, which originated around 10,000 bc in Mesopotamia and then spread across the Middle East into Europe, Asia, parts of Africa and eventually into the Americas. With new techniques of food cultivation, including agriculture and the domestication of animals, human beings engaged in the wholesale alteration of landscapes and ecosystems to suit human purposes (see Lyons et al., 2015). Similar increases in human impact are associated with the Age of Enlightenment and “scientific revolution” of the 17th and 18th centuries (see Merchant, 1980) and the shift from agrarian to industrial societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Still, perhaps the most striking shift is much more recent. In the “Great Acceleration”

after World War II, the human “population doubled in just 50 years, to over 6 billion by the

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2 Allen Thompson and Stephen M. Gardiner

end of the 20th century [and] the global economy increased by more than 15- fold” (Steffen et al., 2007: 617. See also Steffen et al., 2004). This radical human expansion has had dramatic effects, from the emerging threat of dangerous climate change (see Section 7) to the onset of the Earth’s sixth great extinction event.¹

Consider, for example, the “Planetary Boundaries” analysis, which sets out the limits of a “safe operating space for humanity” and suggests that several of the planet’s major bio- systems are currently at risk or in decline (Rockström et al. (2009). Rockström and his col- leagues identify nine sectors of Earth system operation relevant to human well- being and propose quantification for seven: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone, biochemical nitrogen cycle and phosphorus cycle, global freshwater use, land system use, and biodiversity loss. Within the quantified sectors, they claim that we have already crossed boundaries pertaining to climate change, the rate of interference with the nitrogen cycle, and the rate of biodiversity loss.² The remaining four quantified boundaries (global freshwater use, land system change, ocean acidification, and stratospheric ozone depletion) remain areas of great uncertainty, largely because we lack scientific knowledge about the nature of biophysical thresholds at the planetary scale. This, of course, is hardly comforting, since we may already be outside the “safe operating space.”

The sheer scale of human impact has become so great that some have proposed defining a new unit within the geological time scale: the Anthropocene, the age of “human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth” (Crutzen & Schwägerl, 2011). The idea and the language of the Anthropocene are now widely employed. Indeed, this term is currently being taken so seriously that an official decision on its usage from the geologists is expected from the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2016. Still, the proposal continues to generate significant controversy. Some consider it grossly hubristic to name a geologic period after one’s own kind and morally repugnant, if not dangerous (Vucetich et al., 2015; Hamilton, 2014). By contrast, some seem to enthusiastically embrace an open future of “new nature” designed by us and for us, exhibiting our human ingenuity (Ellis, 2011; Seielstad, 2012; Pearce, 2015). Others still have taken the idea of the Anthropocene to be purely descriptive but representing something morally significant— human responsibility for the state of the planet— thus they find the idea heuristically useful for advancing a more traditional environmental ethos of Earth stewardship (Purdy, 2015; Marris, 2011).³

As editors, we do not need to take a stance on controversies surrounding “the Anthropocene.”

Nevertheless, we do believe that the proposal that we are entering, or have recently entered, a new geological period is no accident. Today human activity effects environmental change globally, systematically, and at a fundamental level. Moreover, its scale has increased dramati- cally in just a few generations, a very small portion of human history. Human activities now threaten basic planetary systems, yet we continue to accelerate rapidly into an uncertain environmental future.

2 Organization of the Volume

In such a context, the field of environmental ethics provides much needed analysis of values, norms, and concepts relevant to responding well to the radical anthropogenic environmental change that the 21st century promises. Established as a professional subfield of academic

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Introducing Contemporary Environmental Ethics 3 philosophy only in the early 1970s, the field is changing to confront new environmental, social, technical, and political realities.

In this collection, we hope to provide guidance for those interested in exploring this relatively new territory. Our strategy is as follows. Each chapter reviews the role of a key topic, idea, concept, problem, or approach in the field and briefly reflects on its future. It provides an informed entry- point into the area that helps situate the reader in the relevant literature. Although the chapters do not aspire to represent consensus opinion, the authors do aim to provide a solid grounding in the relevant concepts and basic positions, as well as an informed opinion about possible future developments in the subject area. Consequently, each chapter can be seen as an authoritative “first step” on some topic to get you started, rather than the “last word.” Think of the collection as a set of maps, compasses, and other tools that one might take along when setting out on an evolving journey whose destination is yet to be decided.

Our selection has been influenced by our own sense of where the field stands, what is exciting about it, and what is needed.⁴ One decision we made was to emphasize an increasing politicization of environmental ethics, in the positive sense of the increasing attention being paid to justice and other political values. A related decision was to expand the range of authors represented to include not just traditional, theoretical moral philosophers, but also philosophers of science, political philosophers, applied ethicists, political theorists, and philosophers of law.

A third choice was to set aside areas already well- covered elsewhere. For example, we did not commission a section on traditional, cultural attitudes, such as those of classical China, India, or Greece. Nor are there chapters representing diverse religious perspectives on the environment, such as Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam (see Jamieson, 2001).⁵ Similarly, we did not commission chapters on the history of the environment in political thought (see Gabrielson et al., 2016), nor those representing the global plurality of diverse worldviews, such as Polynesian paganism, South American eco- eroticism, African biocom- munitarianism, and Australian Dreamtime (see Callicott, 1997).

In general, we have tried to be guided in our commissions by an emphasis on the importance of confronting radical environmental change and the special challenges facing humanity in this vital period of its history. In our view, if this volume plays even a small part in preparing the next generation of scholars to contribute to this work, then it will have achieved something of real importance.

3 Description of Chapters

The Handbook is organized into eight sections. In the remainder of this introduction, we explain the theme unifying each section and provide a very brief description of each chapter.⁶

Section 1 sets out a variety of social contexts for contemporary environmental ethics. In chapter 1, Jason Kawall provides a clear and detailed history of the field of environmental ethics, providing an account of key movements and theories shaping the field, including anthropocentrism, biocentrism, eco-holism, deep ecology, ecofeminism, pragmatism, and virtue theory. In chapter 2, Wendy Parker illuminates the practice of environmental science through contemporary philosophy of science, covering issues such as the nature of scientific

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evidence, the use and evaluation of scientific models, and questions of values and objectiv- ity in scientific practice. In chapter 3, John O’Neill examines the role of economic values by considering two alternative and competing sets of answers to the question: Is there a relation between the increasing extension of markets and market norms to previously non- market goods and the growth of environmental problems? His exploration sheds light on the role of cost- benefit analysis in environmental policy formation and the development of new markets for goods such as emission rights and biodiversity offsets. In chapter 4, Daniel Butt’s focus is on the limitations of command- and- control and market- based legal mechanisms in the pursuit of environmental justice. He argues for a need to supplement existing instru- ments of environmental governance with an “ecological ethos” shared among a wide range of cooperative non- state actors. Holmes Rolston wraps up the opening section in chapter 5 by reflecting on the controversial proposal that we have entered the Anthropocene, the age of human domination, by considering three distinct sets of responses to the provocative idea that we are now moving “beyond the natural.”

Against these background social conditions, the chapters in Section 2 present a version of the influential “expanding circle of moral considerability” framework for setting out distinct accounts of who or what direct moral duties are owed to my moral agents In chapter 6, Allen Thompson considers the widely accepted thesis that anthropocentrism— the view that all and only human beings have an intrinsic moral value— is the ideological root of our “environmental crisis.” Thompson distinguishes three types of anthropocentrism and, following others, suggests how one form may be simply unavoidable. He argues that, nonetheless, an appropriate focus on our very humanity remains a promising way forward in environmental ethics. In chapter 7, Lori Gruen set outs one form of non- anthropocentrism, sometimes called sentiocentrism, the view that locates human beings in a wider class of animals capa- ble of conscious experience who thus have morally relevant interests in the content of their experiences. She argues that empathy and respect leads us to focus on what counts as the well- being of conscious others from their own perspective. In chapter 8, Clare Palmer considers ideas associated with biocentrism, the perspective that life itself is deserving of moral respect and perhaps bears an intrinsic value or inherent worth. Palmer distinguishes among egalitarian, inegalitarian, monistic, and pluralistic versions of biocentrism and whether they are grounded in a virtue, consequentialist, or deontological ethical theory. In chapter 9, J. Baird Callicott considers the view that collections of entities, such as species, ecosystems, landscapes, and biomes, may be the loci of intrinsic moral value, the objects of direct moral duties, and deserving of due moral consideration. Callicott describes how developments in the study of the human microbiome support a surprising conclusion that even “individual”

human beings are themselves actually ecological collectives. In chapter 10, Philip Cafaro moves one step beyond customary accounts of who or what counts as a subject of value in nature to offer a spirited defense of wildness as a value- conferring property. Cafaro argues that although preserving the wild has long been a central value in “new world” conservation and preservation philosophies, we are quickly losing wild nature, due primarily to human overpopulation and overconsumption.

Section 3 considers diverse theoretical accounts of the nature of environmental value (rather than the subjects or bearers of that value, as in Section 2). In chapter 11 Katie McShane argues against the popular claim that metaethics is irrelevant for environmental ethics.

Instead, she claims that contemporary views in analytical metaethics are able to address concerns in environmental ethics from several different theoretical perspectives. In chapter 12,

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Introducing Contemporary Environmental Ethics 5 Alan Holland discusses how reasons for doing something vis- à- vis the environment are connected with our motivational repertoire and quest for meaning. He distinguishes three types of practical reasons and concludes that a Leopoldian position of having regard for the land community is superior to other perspectives well represented in the field, including traditional appeals to intrinsic value, relational accounts of caring, or perfectionist views about the well- lived human life. In chapter 13, Martin Drenthen develops a hermeneutic account of how we find meaning in nature through normatively potent acts of interpretation, directed at landscapes and other environments, and the connection of such meaning with the development of an environmental identity. In chapter 14, Ted Toadvine explores how the tradition of phenomenology contributes to environmental thought by emphasizing the primacy of experience and providing a critique of the metaphysical naturalism and instrumental- ist framing characteristic of technocratic, economic, and managerial approaches to nature.

Finally, in chapter 15 Emily Brady explores key issues about aesthetic experience and valuing natural objects, processes, and phenomenon. She parses the debate as being between two central views, “scientific cognitivism” and “non- cognitivism”; stresses the values of a pluralistic approach; and closes with concern for developing further accounts of interactions between aesthetic and ethical values.

As the last section with an explicit focus in ethical theory, Section 4 contains chapters canvasing different theoretical perspectives on how we ought to think about the normative basis of environmentalism, including consequentialist, deontic, virtue, care, and spiri- tual grounds. In chapter 16, Avram Hiller discusses consequentialist environmental ethics;

distinguishes classical utilitarian, biocentric, and ecocentric forms; and contrasts the consequentialist approach to environmentalism with deontological, virtue theoretic, and pragmatic approaches. The deontological approach is taken up and defended in chapter 17 by Ben Hale, who develops a theory of right action based on Habermasian discourse ethics and an account of interpersonal justifications. In chapter 18, Ronald Sandler sets out an alternative non- consequentialist normative theory, based in the virtues of personal character. He describes virtue ethics as a distinctive approach to normative theory, attempting to demon- strate how virtue ethics can accommodate whatever the correct account of value in nature is, how its pluralism is indispensable to environmental ethics, and how it offers a plausible principle of right action for use in decision making. In chapter 19, Kyle Powys Whyte and Chris Cuomo relate two alternatives to mainstream normative ethics, each based in the notion of care. Indigenous approaches to environmental ethics highlight caring relations within interdependent human and non- human communities, whereas feminist environmental care ethics bring out the importance of empowering communities to care for themselves, along with the social and ecological communities with which they are integrated. Bron Taylor in chapter 20 closes this section with a historical tour of the important role that perceptions of environmental systems and places as sacred have in grounding environmental ethics— both in the past and the present. Taylor contrasts this perception of the sacred in nature with the transcendent focus more characteristic of the major world religions, on one hand, and the scientific materialist worldview that underlies most contemporary environmental ethics, on the other.

Section 5 tackles a variety of key concepts that are useful for framing and addressing problems in environmental ethics. The topic of chapter 21 is moral responsibility. Ken Shockley investigates the difficulties encountered when trying to give an account of our individual contributions to collective harms, emphasizing the influence individuals can have through

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connections with institutions and practices. Justice is taken up in chapter 22 by Derek Bell, who presents three kinds of challenges to traditional liberal conceptions of justice and argues that an ecologically aware theory of justice is likely to exhibit some striking differ- ences. In chapter 23, Chris Cuomo details the significance that norms of gender, sexual inequalities, and the often- overlooked perspective of women have for environmental ethics.

Gender norms and roles, she explains, are often promoted as “natural” rather than socially constructed and connect the oppression of women with the domination of nature. Steve Vanderheiden, in chapter 24, evaluates human rights as an ethical construct and a political mechanism for developing protections against environmental harms that threaten human well- being. Chapter 25 concerns intergenerational ethics. John Nolt argues that responsibili- ties owed to future individuals— human or not— demand that we reduce the human population and must keep most fossil fuels in the ground. In chapter 26, Bryan Norton presents a communitarian, public- interest conception of sustainability as offering a path to favor protecting ecophysical features of the environment, rather than a mere transfer of wealth or utility, across generations. Chapter 27, by John Barry, proposes an account of “green republican citizenship” after exploring connections between the decline in active citizenship with the development of consumer identities and a transactional mode of democratic politics.

In chapter 28, Tim Hayward develops the concept of “ecological space” and its connection to a minimally decent human life. Hayward then distinguishes between using, occupying, and commanding ecological space, which enables him to address distributional inequities though a variety of distinct deontic categories. Chapter 29 brings Section 5 to a close with Jonathan Aldred’s treatment of risk and precaution, in which the appropriate place of cost- benefit analysis and its relation to a precautionary principle in decision making are carefully examined.

Section 6 focuses on specific areas of concern for the application of environmental ethics. Classic issues of environmental pollution are explored in chapter 30 by Kevin Elliott, who identifies pollution as a significant threat to disadvantaged, low- income countries and non- human organisms, calling for greater attention to be given to ethical issues in the scientific research needed to identify harmful pollutants and policy issues concerning their regulation. Chapter 31 concerns human population growth, identified as morally urgent by Elizabeth Cripps, who urges us to approach policy formation with both environmental ethics and global justice in mind. In chapter 32, Kristin Schrader- Frechette describes the environmental harms caused by energy produced from fossil fuels and nuclear power and critically analyzes excuses for society not switching to clean, renewable energy. David Kaplan’s work in chapter 33 examines the role of narratives in a practical approach to understanding the relationships among food, agriculture, and environmental ethics. Angela Kalloff’s contribution, chapter 34, sets out four distinct normative approaches to an ethics of water: human rights, ecocentric non- instrumentalism, water justice, and water cooperation. She concludes that a cooperative approach is the most promising, in part because it already incorporates dimensions of the rights- based and ecocentric perspectives. In chapter 35, Jeremy Bendik- Keymer and Chris Haufe begin the development of an ethical position on anthropogenic mass extinction, opening with insights about the banality of evil and built with appeals to environmental justice, loss of value, and the failure of auton- omy. Paul Thompson examines the fascinating place of technology in chapter 36, discuss- ing not only its role mediating human environmental impacts but also its place in shaping our perceptions of and orientation toward the world. Much of the work in philosophy

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Introducing Contemporary Environmental Ethics 7 of technology crosses interdisciplinary boundaries as it bears on the connections between science and technology. Section 6 closes with chapter 37, in which Marion Hourdequin con- fronts the practices of ecosystem management and identifies both conceptual and ethical challenges for the practice introduced as an improved alternative to other strategies aimed simply at maximizing yields of single- species resources.

There is little argument that anthropogenic global climate change is the defining environmental problem of our time. Whereas many chapters in the collection consider it as illustrat- ing their respective subjects, the chapters in Section 7 focus exclusively on key dimensions the problem. In chapter 38, Henry Shue offers a compelling case for climate mitigation based on elimination of carbon dioxide emissions by the rapid global transition to an energy regime based on clean sources of affordable power. Cooperation in this transition, he argues, cannot be expected from poorer countries without needed assistance with adaptation. In chapter 39, Clare Heyward contends that justice in adaptation should register not only protection of the basic material interest of individuals but also include efforts directed at securing the conditions necessary to maintain one’s cultural identity. In chapter 40, Steve Gardiner addresses geoengineering (roughly, “grand technological interventions into basic planetary systems at a global scale”). Focusing on climate engineering, he argues that early policy framings often marginalize salient ethical concerns, avoiding both important questions of justification and vital contextual issues. Finally, in chapter 41, Andrew Light discusses important issues of international climate diplomacy, drawing on his experience working to direct strategies for the US State Department at international meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The concluding Section 8 contains essays dedicated to issues raised in our attempts to realize the requisite social change. David Schmidtz explains how principles of justice are complemented and importantly matched by principles of conflict resolution in chapter 42.

Then, in chapter 43, Ben Minteer presents a pragmatic conception of environmental ethics for the purpose of integrating it with the rapidly growing normative enterprise of sustainability science and its goal of moving society toward a durable socio- ecological relationship.

In chapter 44, John Meyer offers a strategy for circumventing the barrier to protective environmental policy, most pronounced in wealthy societies, affected by a perceived dichotomy between self- interest and sacrifice. He draws attention to the ubiquity of notions of sacrifice in everyday life and attempts to reduce its ability to short- circuit ambitious calls to action. In chapter 45, Avner de Shalit encourages the move from articulating an environmental ethic to undertaking environmental action by distinguishing two ways a particular problem may be framed, either as a problem of environmental awareness or a problem of political conscious- ness. He closes by arguing how democracy remains a viable avenue for achieving radical changes.

4 Conclusion

As at the beginning of the Holocene, today humanity faces radical global climate change, mass species extinctions, and unprecedented transformations to both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across the globe. Yet this time there is no doubt that human activity is the primary driver, the scale of human affect is much greater, and the rate of global ecological

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change is unprecedented. The future of the basic conditions for all life on the planet— indeed all known life in the universe— is in our hands. So, what shall we do? The forty- five chapters assembled here represent some of the best and most contemporary thinking in environmental ethics, the field expressly concerned with understanding normative and evaluative dimensions of the many and diverse environmental problems that confront us. Hopefully, taking the issues and concerns they highlight seriously is a good first step.

Notes

1. On climate change, see Section 7 of the Oxford Hanbook of Environmental Ethics; on mass extinction, see Bendik- Keymer and Haufe, chapter 35 (all subsequent chapter references herein are to chapters in the Handbook).

2. The proposed “boundaries” are human- set values keeping us a safe distance from sys- temic thresholds, which are defined “non- linear transitions in the functioning of coupled human- environmental systems.” Thus, crossing the boundaries puts humanity at significant risk of radical and unpredictable changes to the global environmental conditions.

3. On the idea that we have entered the Anthropocene, see Holmes Rolston, chapter 5.

4. For various reasons we were unable to include chapters on all the subjects that are important and merit attention.

5. See, however, Bron Taylor’s contribution on reverence for the sacred, in chapter 20.

6. The method employed in the table of contents is meant to quickly reveal the structure of the collection. Each section title is followed by a short description, and each chapter is labeled with a descriptive subject term, followed by the proper title given by author.

References

Callicott, J. B. (1997). Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Crutzen, P., and Schwägerl, C. (2011). “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos.” Yale Environment 360. http:// e360.yale.edu/ feature/ living_ in_ the_ anthropocene_

toward_ a_ new_ global_ ethos/ 2363/

Ellis, E. (2011). “The Planet of No Return.” Breakthrough Journal, 2 (Fall). http:// breakthrough- journal.org/ content/ authors/ erle- ellis/ the- planet- of- no- return.shtml

Gabrielson, T., Hall, C., Meyer, J. M., and Schlosberg, D. eds. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hamilton, C. (2014). “The New Environmentalism Will Lead Us to Disaster.” Scientific American.

http:// www.scientificamerican.com/ article/ the- new- environmentalism- will- lead- us- to- disaster/

Jamieson, D., ed. (2001). A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell Publishers.

Lyons, S. K., Amatangelo, K. L., Behrensmeyer, A. K., Bercovici, A., Blois, J. L., Davis, M., Gotelli, J. L. (2015). “Holocene Shifts in the Assembly of Plant and Animal Communities Implicate Human Impacts.” Nature (2015) doi: 10.1038/ nature16447

Marris, E. (2011). Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post Wild World. New York:

Bloomsbury.

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Introducing Contemporary Environmental Ethics 9 Merchant, C. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution.

New York: Harper and Row.

Pearce, F. (2015). “The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation.” Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Purdy, J. (2015). After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S. III, Lambin, E., Foley, J. (2009).

“Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space For Humanity.” Ecology and Society 14(2): 32. http:// www.ecologyandsociety.org/ vol14/ iss2/ art32/

Sandom, C., Faurby, S., Sandel, B., Svenning, J. C. (2014). “Global Late Quaternary Megafauna Extinctions Linked to Humans, Not Climate Change.” Proceedings of the Royal Society 281 (1787). http:// rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ content/ 281/ 1787.toc (accessed Sept. 3, 2015).

Seielstad, G. A. (2012). Dawn of the Anthropocene: Humanity’s Defining Moment. Alexandria, VA: American Geosciences Institute. (A digital book).

Steffen. W., Crutzen, P., McNeill, J. (2007). “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now the Overwhelming Force of Nature?” Ambio 36: 614– 621.

Steffen, W., Sanderson, A., Tyson, P. D., Jäger, J., Matson, P. A., Moore, B. III, Wasson, R. J.

(2004). Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer- Verlag.

Vucetich, J., Nelson, M., and Batavia, C. (2015). “The Anthropocene: Disturbing Name, Limited Insight.” In After Preservation, edited by Minteer and Pyne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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P a r t I

CONTEXT

Broad Social Conditions in which

We Find Ourselves

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Chapter 2

A History of

Environmental Ethics

Jason Kawall

This chapter presents a history of environmental ethics as a distinct field of philosophy, and attempts to characterize its most prominent and influential movements.¹ While myriad fac- tors contributed to the emergence of environmental ethics, three influential works published in the 1960s can be seen, with some justification, as especially important catalysts. Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring (1962) drew attention to the effects of synthetic pesticides such as DDT on our food, the environment, and upon birds in particular. The book was very widely read, and it is credited with playing a key role in drawing both public and academic attention to environmental issues.

Lynn White, Jr.’s article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” (1967) also received much attention, particularly within the academic world. White argued that widely accepted strands of Christian theology have played a key role in justifying a deeply exploit- ative attitude toward the natural world. Judeo- Christian claims that God has given mankind dominion over nature, and that mankind is made in God’s image, have created and justified a problematic dualism between humanity and the rest of the natural world. Given this worldview, our ongoing technological advances have been aimed at subduing and exerting control over nature; these manipulations have in turn led to ecological crisis.

White’s article provoked dozens of responses, particularly from theologians who held that a properly understood Christianity would encourage caring stewardship of the natural world because, they argued, God sees the world as good, and humanity’s dominion gives us the role of steward, rather than conqueror. White himself pointed to St. Francis of Assisi and the Eastern Orthodox traditions as presenting more humble, non- dominating forms of Christianity (for early responses, see Cobb, 1972 and Barbour, 1973). White’s piece brought to the fore questions about the values and worldviews that would lead to environmental degradation— and how to change or overcome them.

Finally, Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968) raised important questions about human population growth, resource use, and collective action. Hardin argued that individuals will use more resources, have more children, and so on, so long as the ben- efits they gain from these goods outweigh the costs they incur, regardless of the broader impacts on society or future generations. Humanity risks resource shortages and environmental collapse as we grow beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity (see also Ehrlich, 1968). We

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14 Jason Kawall

might hope for restraint in such circumstances, but unless an individual has reason to expect others to restrain themselves, her sacrifice is likely to have little or no beneficial impact while costing her dearly; such sacrifice seems irrational. We are thus faced with a collective action problem, where a set of individually rational actions will ultimately lead to a worse outcome for everyone involved than if they were able to cooperate in restraint. Hardin’s paper led to extensive consideration of such collective action problems while also drawing attention to the impacts of human consumption and population.

1 The Emergence of Environmental Ethics in the 1970s

Philosophical responses to the questions raised by Carson, White, and Hardin began to appear by the early 1970s, and during this decade came crucial works that established a number of distinct traditions within environmental ethics.

Among the first roots was a conference organized by William T. Blackstone at the University of Georgia, in 1971; the papers were later published in 1974 as Philosophy and Environmental Crisis. This conference, which featured both theologians and philosophers, is widely regarded as the first conference on environmental ethics with significant participa- tion by philosophers.

Early work in the field was often concerned with the question of whether the environmental crisis faced by humanity required new approaches to ethics. Richard Routley (later Sylvan) presented “Is There a Need for a New, an Ecological Ethic?” at the 15th World Congress of Philosophy in 1973. In it, Routley presented his famous “last man” argument: following a catastrophe, would there be anything wrong with last surviving human, in his final days, destroying all remaining life? After all, once he passes away there would be no further human interests or needs at stake. Routley believed that such actions would strike us as wrong but argued that traditional ethical theories, which typically treat the rest of nature simply in terms of human interests, cannot capture this fundamental intuition, thus pointing to the need to develop a new ecological ethic.

Christopher Stone, a legal scholar, wrote “Should Trees Have Standing?” (1972) in response to plans by Walt Disney Enterprises to build a ski resort in the Mineral King val- ley of Sequoia National Forest, California. In the article, which soon after he expanded and published as a book (Stone, 1974), Stone argued for the legal rights of trees, forests, oceans, and other “natural objects” in the environment. He proposed that the interests of such entities could be represented in the courts by guardians or trustees— this was already done for human infants and others, and would be similar to the protections afforded to corporations, municipalities, and other such inanimate rights- holders.

Holmes Rolston III published his “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” in the journal Ethics in 1975; in it he sketches proposals, including the attribution of intrinsic value to species, that he would later develop in great depth. Rolston’s paper is perhaps most significant as it appeared in one of the most widely read and respected journals in the analytic philosophical tradition.

This was something of a coup, and it would serve to introduce the wider philosophical community to the emerging field and its questions.