Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T00:33:30.988Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Future of Environmental Ethics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2011

Holmes Rolston III
Holmes Rolston III
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Environmental ethics has a future as long as there are moral agents on Earth with values at stake in their environment. Somewhat ironically, just when humans, with their increasing industry and development, seemed further and further from nature, having more power to manage it, just when humans were more and more rebuilding their environments with their super technologies, the natural world emerged as a focus of ethical concern. Environmental alarms started with prophets such as Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, John Muir, and David Brower, and have, over recent decades, become daily news.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 69 , October 2011 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acton, Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), 1949. Essays on Freedom and Power, ed. Gertrude, Himmelfarb. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Beckerman, Wilfred, and Pasek, Joanna, 2001. Justice, Posterity, and the Environment. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergson, Henri, 1911. Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur, Mitchell. London: Macmillan and Co.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botkin, Daniel B. 1990. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boutros-Ghalli, Boutros, 1992a. Extracts from closing UNCED statement, in an UNCED summary, Final Meeting and Round-up of Conference, June 14. UN Document ENV/DEV/RIO/29, 14 June.Google Scholar
Boutros-Ghalli, Boutros, 1992b. Text of closing UNCED statements, in Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992, vol. IV, 66–69. UN Document A/CONF.151.26.Google Scholar
Callicott, J. Baird, 1992. ‘La Nature est morte, vive la nature!’ Hastings Center Report 22 (no. 5, September/October):16–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, Stephen R. et al. , 2006. ‘Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Research Needs’, Science 314 (13 October):257–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Child, Brian, 1993. ‘The Elephant as a Natural Resource’, Wildlife Conservation 96 (no. 2):60–61.Google Scholar
Cohen, Joel E., 1995. ‘Population Growth and Earth's Carrying Capacity’, Science 269 (1995):341–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Michael, 1980. ‘Foreword’, in Gallant, Roy A., Our Universe. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.Google Scholar
Crutzen, Paul J., 2006. ‘The “Anthropocene”’, pages 13–18 in Ehlers, Eckart and Kraft, Thomas, eds., Earth System Science in the Anthropocene. Berlin: Springer, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Erle C. and Navin, Ramankutty, 2008. ‘Putting People in the Map: Anthropogenic Biomes of the World’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6 (no. 8):439–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evernden, Neil, 1993. The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tim, Flannery, 2005. The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Stephen M., 2006. ‘A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption’, Environmental Values 15:397–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garvin, Lucius, 1953. A Modern Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Hannah, Lee, Lohse, David, Hutchinson, Charles, Carr, John L. and Lankerani, Ali, 1994. ‘A Preliminary Inventory of Human Disturbance of World Ecosystems’, Ambio 23:246–50.Google Scholar
Hardin, Garrett, 1968. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (December 13):1243–1248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hawken, Paul, 2007. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Houghton, John, 2003. ‘Global Warming is Now a Weapon of Mass Destruction’, The Guardian, 28 July, p. 14.Google Scholar
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Online at www.ipcc.ch.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelley, Kevin W., ed., 1988. The Home Planet. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Kerry, John, and Kerry, Teresa Heinz, 2007. This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future. New York: Perseus Group, Public Affairs Books.Google Scholar
McKibben, Bill, 1989. The End of Nature. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
McKibben, Bill, 1995. Hope, Human and Wild. Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005a. Living Beyond our Means: Natural Assets and Human Well-Being: Statement from the Board. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.Google Scholar
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005b. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.Google Scholar
Myers, Norman, 1981. ‘Farewell to Africa’, International Wildlife 11(no. 4):36–47.Google Scholar
Riley, Laura and William, Riley, 2005. Nature's Strongholds: The World's Great Wildlife Reserves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Risser, Paul G., Jane, Lubchenco, and Samuel A., Levin, 1991. ‘Biological Research Priorities–A Sustainable Biosphere’, BioScience 47:625–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenzweig, Michael L., 2003. Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth's Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rummel-Bulska, Iwona and Seth, Osafo, eds., 1991. Selected Multilateral Treaties in the Field of the Environment, II. Cambridge: Grotius Publications.Google Scholar
Seelye, Katharine Q., 2001. ‘Facing Obstacles on Plan for Drilling for Arctic Oil, Bush Says He'll Look Elsewhere’, The New York Times, March 30, 2001, p. A13.Google Scholar
Soulé, Michael E., 1989. ‘Conservation Biology in the Twenty-first Century: Summary and Outlook’, in Western, David and Pearl, Mary, eds., Conservation for the Twenty-first Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Steffen, Will et al. , 2004. Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2000. ‘The Insider: What I Learned at the World Economic Crisis’, The New Republic 222 (no. 16/17, April 17 and 24):56–60.Google Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2002. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) 1992a. Agenda 21. Document No. A/CONF.151/26. http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/index.htmGoogle Scholar
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 1992b. The Rio Declaration. UNCED Document A/CONF.151/5/Rev. 1, 13 June.Google Scholar
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2000. Human Development Report 2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2005. Human Development Report 2005. New York: United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
United Nations Environment Programme, 1997. Register of International Treaties and Other Agreements in the Field of the Environment. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme.Google Scholar
United Nations General Assembly, 1982. World Charter for Nature, UN General Assembly Resolution No. 37/7 of 28 October.Google Scholar
United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2006. ‘The World Distribution of Household Wealth’, online at www.wider.uni.edu.Google Scholar
Vitousek, Peter M., Ehrlich, Paul R., Ehrlich, Anne H., and Matson, Pamela A., 1986. ‘Human Appropriation of the Products of Biosynthesis’, BioScience 36:368–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Edward O., 1984. Biophilia. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Edward O., 2002. The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Wolff, Edward N., 2002. Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America and What Can Be Done About It. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
World Health Organization, Commission on Health and Environment, 1992. Geneva: World Health Organization, Our Planet, Our Health: Report of the WHO Commission on Health and Environment.Google Scholar