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contents
1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
NEWS AND NOTES
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features
2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Marion Hourdequin Doing, Allowing, and Precaution
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Many environmental policies seem to rest on an implicit distinction between doing and allowing. For example, it is generally thought worse to drive a speciesto extinction than to fail to save a species that is declining through no fault of our own, and worse to pollute the air with chemicals that trigger asthma attacks thanto fail to remove naturally occurring allergens such as pollen and mold. The distinction between doing and allowing seems to underlie certain versions of the precautionary principle, and insofar as the precautionary principle rests on this distinction, it diverges from direct consequentialist approaches to risk management.There are two ways in which such reliance on the doing/allowing distinction may be defended: by appeal to indirect consequentialist considerations, and by appeal to deontological considerations. Neither approach is unproblematic; however, retention of a distinction between doing and allowing in environmentalpolicy is consistent with the widespread intuition that there is something prima facie valuable about the world as we find it.
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Robin Attfield Beyond the Earth Charter: Taking Possible People Seriously
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The Earth Charter is largely a wholesome embodiment of a commendable and globally applicable ecological ethic. But it fails to treat responsibilities towardfuture generations with sufficient clarity, presenting these generations as comparable to present and past generations, whose members are identifiable, whenin fact most future people are of unknown identity, and when the very existence of most of them depends on current actions. It can be claimed that we still haveobligations with regard to whoever there will be whom we could affect, and in addition, all the possible people of the future whom we could affect have moralstanding, as well as corresponding members of other species. These obligations clash with the person-affecting principle, which considerably restricts suchobligations and the scope of moral standing at the same time. Finally, there are implications for sustainability, at least with regard to sustainable levels ofpopulation and with regard to global warming, and thus a need for further clarification of the content of responsibilities toward future generations.
4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
William J. FitzPatrick Climate Change and the Rights of Future Generations: Social Justice beyond Mutual Advantage
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Despite widespread agreement that we have moral responsibilities to future generations, many are reluctant to frame the issues in terms of justice and rights.There are indeed philosophical challenges here, particularly concerning nonoverlapping generations. They can, however, be met. For example, talk of justiceand rights for future generations in connection with climate change is both appropriate and important, although it requires revising some common theoreticalassumptions about the nature of justice and rights. We can, in fact, be bound by the rights of future people, despite the “non-identity problem,” and the force of these rights cannot be diluted by “discounting” future costs. Moreover, a rights-based approach provides an effective answer to political arguments against taking mandatory measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions when these are unpopular with a democratic populace.
discussion papers
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Murray Sheard Sustainability and Property Rights in Environmental Resources
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How do we weigh the claims of current and future people when current exercise of rights to property conflict with sustainability? Are property rights over theseresources more limited due to the claims of posterity? Lockean property rights allow no right to degrade resources when doing so threatens the basic needs offuture generations. A stewardship conception of property rights can be developed, providing a justification for sustainable management legislation even whensuch law conflicts with the rights an owner would have, were the resource under more full-blown ownership. A protection indicator can be developed that is sensitive to a range of empirical factors such as scarcity, renewability, importance of the resource, and seriousness and reversibility of potential harm. The stewardship conception of rights over environmental resources can be applied in policy settings, for example, in decisions over emissions limits and land-use patterns. Such harnessing of Lockean intuitions to argue for environmental protection is in sharp contrast to Locke’s usual employment by those keen to show that such protection violates owners’ rights.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
David K. Goodin Schweitzer Reconsidered: The Applicability of Reverence for Life as Environmental Philosophy
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As the last great philosopher of the will, Albert Schweitzer rejected the radical individualism of Nietzsche and the pessimistic-mystical detachment of Schopenhauer, and instead sought to create a true social ethic. Schweitzer’s particular contribution was to move further than Nietzsche to reconcile philosophy with natural science while simultaneously preserving and transforming the sense of mysticism and higher world-order principles from Schopenhauer. He joined this new cosmology to the virtue ethics of Aristotle, and recovered one key element of his ontology of becoming to transcend the Humean “is/ought” gap for ethics.The result is a philosophy that is as much biographical of Schweitzer himself as it is systematic. This result is both the strength and greatest weakness of hisreverence-for-life ethic. It is tailor-made for contemporary environmental ethics: it has applications in many strands of environmental thought, including deepecology, ecofeminism, and ecotheology, and may attract considerable interest from environmental movements that seek to cultivate deep personal conviction.
book reviews
7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Deane Curtin Teaching Environmental Ethics
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8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Willis Jenkins The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America
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9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Allen Thompson The Ecological Life: Discovering Citizenship and a Sense of Humanity
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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Elizabeth Reynolds The Splendor of Creation: A Biblical Ecology
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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Gail Stenstad The Incarnality of Being: The Earth, Animals, and the Body in Heidegger’s Thought
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12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Anna L. Peterson Religion and the New Ecology: Environmental Responsibility in a World in Flux
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13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Jerome A. Stone A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future
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14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
Steve Vanderheiden Understanding Environmental Policy
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referees
15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
REFEREES 2007
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index
16. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 29 > Issue: 4
INDEX FOR 2007
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