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1. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
News and Notes
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from the guest editor
2. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Ricardo Rozzi Collaborative Inter-Continental Dialogues: From a Necrocene to a Biocene
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features
3. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Luca Valera Depth, Ecology, and the Deep Ecology Movement: Arne Næss’s Proposal for the Future
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The aim of this paper is to focus on the idea of depth developed by Arne Næss, which is related both to his research methodology and some of its anthropological/cosmological implications. Far from being purely a psychological dimension (as argued by Warwick Fox), in Næss’s perspective, the subject of depth is a methodological and ontological issue that underpins and lays the framework for the deep ecology movement. We cannot interpret the question of “depth” without considering the “relational ontology” that he himself has developed in which the “ecological self” is viewed as a “relational union within the total field.” Based on this point of view, I propose that we are able to reinterpret the history of the deep ecology movement and its future, while rereading its politics, from the issue of depth.
4. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Eric Pommier The Problem of Environmental Democracy: Responsibility and Deliberation
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The work of Hans Jonas’ has been largely overlooked by environmental philosophers. His Principle of Responsibility can help guide effective development of political institutions for environmental purposes. It is possible to use this principle to develop a deliberative and environmental conception of democracy. Some implications of the social contract framework of deliberative democracy show that Jonas’ conceptualization of responsibility leads to an environmental and deliberative conception of democracy by accommodating different citizens’ senses of the good in terms of an environmentally conceived global governance.
5. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Catherine Larrère “A Life Worthy of Being Called Human”: The Actuality of Hans Jonas’ Maxim
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“Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on Earth.” How can we understand Jonas’ “maxim”? Is it too anthropocentric to be of any interest for an environmental ethic? Is is too limited to survival to have a moral signification in a truly human ethic? One can argue first that it is not so much anti-Kantian than that it challenges the current prevailing “presentism” and obliges us to take into consideration not only future generations, but also the context in which one anticipates these future generations to be living. Therefore, we can distinguish two different interpretations of Jonas’ maxim: in a first stage, that of sustainable development, it was understood as taking into consideration not only the needs but also the rights of future generations; in a second stage, that of an Anthropocene and ecological transition, it means that making sense of humanity implies connecting human beings to the Earth and other living beings far from opposing them.
6. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Daniel Loewe Environmental Intergenerational Justice and the Nonidentity Problem: A Kantian Approach
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A moral Kantian approach can be developed to deal with the nonidentity problem with regard to environmental intergenerationl justice—at least in cases of depletion or risky policy. Being a duty-oriented moral theory, this approach allows both that people coming into existence in a nonidentity situation can be glad to exist while simultaneously taking into account depletion or risky policy, to which their existence is causally related, as possibly being morally wrong because of a violation of moral duties.
7. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Hernán Neira Climax: Biology and Ethics in Environmental Restoration
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Justifications for the environmental restoration of the Pumalín National Park, originally known as Pumalín Nature Sanctuary, in Chile can be analyzed from a philosophical and ethical point of view. The environmental stage to which the park should be restored is defined as a moral choice, rather than an ecological one, that is based on “climax” as an a priori value that supports and guides the main restoration actions carried out in the park. This climax is a pre-settling or pre-colonization condition. Defined philosophically, climax is both an ethical and political value. For these actions, the ecosystem’s health can be treated the same as that of a human’s health: each society defines the criteria and the acme of health, as well as the valid efforts to restore it.
8. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Andrea Nye Aimé Bonpland: A Land Ethic in the La Plata
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Recent books promote Alexander Humboldt as an environmental hero, dismissing Humboldt’s partner in exploration, the botanist Aimé Bonpland, in a few inaccurate phrases: left Europe, went native somewhere in South America, did some farming. Bonpland’s writings and his forty years of regional development, botanical research, ethno-pharmacology, and environmental conservation in Argentina and Brazil present a better model for an environmental ethics than Humboldt’s climb to fame in Europe.
9. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Referees 2019
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10. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 4
Index for 2019
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11. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
News and Notes
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from the guest editors
12. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Ricardo Rozzi, Alexandria Poole, Francisca Massardo Environmental Philosophies' Inter-Continental Dialogues
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from the conference editors
13. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Eric Pommier, Luca Valera Introduction to this Special Issue
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features
14. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Stephen M. Gardiner Motivating (or Baby-Stepping Toward) a Global Constitutional Convention for Future Generation
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Recently, I have been arguing for a global constitutional convention focused on protecting future generations. This deliberative body would be akin to the American constitutional convention of 1787, which gave rise to the present structure of government in the United States. It would confront the “governance gap” that currently exists surrounding concern for future generations. In particular, contemporary institutions tend to crowd out intergenerational concern, and thereby facilitate a “tyranny of the contemporary.” They not only fail to address a basic standing threat to humanity and other species, but help that threat become manifest. Climate change is a prime example. In this paper, I sketch out a natural argumentative path toward the global constitutional convention and argue that is difficult to resist. I also insist that we should be evenhanded in the way we treat the proposal. Those who put their faith in alternatives (e.g., the emergence of a great leader, a grand alignment of interests, bottom up climate anarchism, or national governments understood as effective intergenerational stewards) must also confront standard complaints about naivety, urgency, threats to democratic values, and the like. Moreover, the global constitutional convention has the advantage of addressing the problem we face head on.
15. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Ronald Sandler Should We Engineer Species in Order to Save Them?
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There are two strategies for engineering species for conservation purposes, de-extinction and gene drives. Engineering species for conservation purposes is not in principle wrong, and on common criteria for assessing conservation interventions there may well be cases in which de-extinction and gene drives are evaluated positively in comparison to other possible strategies. De-extinction is not as transformative a conservation technique as it initially appears. It is largely dependent, as a conservation activity, upon traditional conservation practices, such as captive breeding programs, species reintroductions, and habitat improvement and protection. In contrast, gene drives have the potential to significantly restructure how conservation problems are framed and approached. Gene drives are therefore a much more disruptive technology for conservation philosophy and practice.
16. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Sandra Baquedano Jer Ecocide or Environmental Self-Destruction?
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The anthropocentric destruction of nature can be viewed as a form of self-destruction, which affects individuals and also the human species. It entails active destruction of the natural surroundings that are vital for the preservation of the planet’s biodiversity. But should ecocide, or environmental self-destruction of the life of certain species, be considered an “interruption” to the life of such species, or it is part of their natural life course? Are ecocide and environmental destruction identical, or substantively different, phenomena? Prevention of the death of biotic species, and of the massive destruction of abiotic species, constitutes the ultimate challenge for both environmental and animal ethics. Modern mass extinction of species can be understood as a form of speciesism, and the prevention of such extinction is the most urgent challenge for any ethics centered on the recognition of the value, or rights, of nonhuman species.
17. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Ricardo Rozzi Taxonomic Chauvinism, No More!: Antidotes from Hume, Darwin, and Biocultural Ethics
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The culture of global society commonly associates the word animal with vertebrates. Paradoxically, most of animal diversity is composed of small organisms that remain invisible in the global culture and are underrepresented in philosophy, science, and education. Twenty-first century science has revealed that many invertebrates have consciousness and the capacity to feel pain. These discoveries urge animal ethicists to be more inclusive and to reevaluate the participation of invertebrates in the moral community. Science also has warned of the disappearance of small animal co-inhabitants that is occurring in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. This “invisible extinction” compels environmental philosophers to make visible invertebrates, whose existence is precious in itself and for the functioning of ecosystems on which biodiversity and human societies depend. With a biocultural approach that integrates the biophysical and cultural dimensions of biodiversity, I investigate the roots of taxonomic chauvinism associated with the under-representation and subordination of invertebrates in modern philosophy and science. The bad news is the confirmation of a marked vertebratism in animal imagery. The good news is that David Hume, Charles Darwin, and biocultural ethics provide conceptual foundations for cultivating an appreciation of the small co-inhabitants with whom we share our local habitats and the global biosphere.
book reviews
18. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Patrick Taylor Smith Daniel Edward Callies: Climate Engineering: A Normative Perspective
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19. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 3
Charles Hayes Benjamin Hale: The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature
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20. Environmental Ethics: Volume > 41 > Issue: 2
News and Notes
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