Most environmental ethicists adhere to a standard intellectual history of the field, one that explains and justifies the dominant commitments to nonanthropocentrism, moral dualism, and wilderness/wildlife preservation. Yet this narrative—which finds strong support in the work of first generation environmental historians—is at best incomplete. It has tended to ignore those philosophical projects and thinkers in the American environmental tradition that challenge the received history and the established conceptual categories and arguments of environmental ethics. One such figure is the agrarian thinker, conservationist, and rural reformer, Liberty Hyde Bailey. A writer whose environmental philosophy combined biocentric attitudes toward nature with more humanistic concerns about intergenerational fairness and civic responsibility, Bailey remains an invisible figure in environmental ethics, despite his clear influence on the later work of such conservation luminaries as Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and others. We would benefit from a recovery of Bailey’s environmental philosophy, especially his articulation of a pluralistic ethical outlook defined by the melding of anthropocentric moral and civic concerns with biocentric commitments regarding the beauty and resilience of the properly cultivated landscape.

It is increasingly clear that virtue ethics has an important role to play in environmental ethics. However, virtue ethics—which has always been characterized by a degree of ambiguity—is faced with substantial challenges in the contemporary “postmodern” cultural milieu. Among these challenges is the lure of relativism. Most virtue ethics depend upon some view of the good life; however, today there is no unambiguous, easily agreed-upon account of the good life. Rather, we are presented with a bewildering variety of conflicting accounts of the good life. Narrative—in particular Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity—has much to contribute to virtue ethics, including resources that can help us respond to the chal­lenges presented by the postmodern context. Narrative constitutes an “ethical laboratory” by providing us with an “as if” experience through which we can try out various ethical alternatives. Two sorts of environmental narratives, working in concert, further help to limit relativist objections: (1) narratives of environmental survival (which identify dispositions, such as simplicity, necessary for our long-term survival) and (2) narratives of environmental flourishing (which make a virtue of necessity by pointing out those dispositions necessary for our survival often contribute to our flourishing beyond mere survival).

An interdisciplinary reappraisal of Lynn White, Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” reopens several issues, including the suggestion by Peter Harrison that White’s thesis was historical and that it is a mistake to regard it as theological. It also facilitates a comparison between “Roots” and White’s earlier book Medieval Technology and Social Change. In “Roots,” White discarded or de-emphasized numerous qualifications and nuances present in his earlier work so as to heighten the effect of certain rhetorical aphorisms and to generalize their scope and bearing well beyond what the evidence could bear. The meaning of Genesis and other biblical books proves to be just as important in White’s thesis as their historical reception. In “Roots,” White presents, alongside other contentions, the claims that Christian doctrines have all along been both anthropocentric and despotic, especially in the West, and that this is where the real roots of the problems are to be found. These claims, however, conflict with most of the relevant evidence. An adequate reappraisal of White’s work needs to recognize that there is a cultural determinism parallel to the technological determinisms alleged by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, to endorse Elspeth Whitney’s “single-cause” critique of links between religion and technological change in the Middle Ages, and to treat sympathetically Whitney’s claim that White and some of his eco-theological critics (despite their disagreements) have in common both their valorizing of individual beliefs and values and their neglect of economic and institutional factors. Nevertheless, our ecological problems need to be understood through explanations turning on beliefs and values as well as on economics and institutions.

A serious commitment to environmentalism entails ending America’s population growth and hence a more restrictive immigration policy. The need to limit immigration necessarily follows when we combine a clear statement of our main environmental goals—living sustainably and sharing the landscape generously with nonhuman beings—with uncontroversial accounts of our current demographic trajectory and of the negative environmental effects of U.S. population growth, nationally and globally. Standard arguments for the immigration status quo or for an even more permissive immigration policy are without merit. Americans must choose between allowing continued high levels of immigration and creating a sustainable society.

Analysis of academic forest scientists’ ethical reasoning and values given decision-making scenarios indicates that Holmes Rolston, III’s value theory, specifically his ethics of “following nature” is an important and current environmental ethics in forestry. Nevertheless, while academic forest scientists appear to espouse “following nature” in decision making, they also make use of numerous other values and ethics. Academic forest scientists’ moral reasoning is more akin to a pragmatic approach to decision making rather than an approach based on building or advocating an internally consistent and coherent moral position. Rolston’s environmental ethics is relevant and useful to decision making in forestry if it is interpreted as one among various value theories used to guide decision making rather than an ethical theory to be accepted or rejected en bloc.

What should environmentalists say about free trade? Many environmentalists object to free trade by appealing the “Race to the Bottom Argument.” This argument is inconclusive, but there are reasons to worry about unrestricted free trade’s environmental effects nonetheless; the rules of trade embodied in institutions such as the World Trade Organization may be unjustifiable. Programs to compensate for trade-related environmental damage, appropriate trade barriers, and consumer movements may be necessary and desirable. At least environmentalists should consider these alternatives to unrestricted free trade if they do not prevent the achievement of other important moral objectives, can efficiently reduce environmental problems, and institutional safeguards can prevent their abuse.

One aspect of social constructionist thought, which seldom receives the kind of explicit attention it warrants, has considerable potential: namely, the observation that our limited knowings of the world are achieved in numerous, yet deeply particularized, relational engagements in and with it. Foregrounding and elaborating such relational engagements provides an alternate way of developing a typology of constructionist thought. By emphasizing relationality as inherent in both social constructionism and many environmental and deep ecological positions, a potentially useful and powerful way of bringing the so-called warring factions to the treaty table emerges. A tripartite scheme of “natures,” focusing on relationality with the natural world, can provide a framework for dissolving some of the disputes in the literature, such as deep ecology’s current discomfort with constructionist thought.

Environmental ethicists who look toward East Asian philosophies in their quest for a fruitful way of conceiving the relationship of humans to nature often turn to Taoism and Buddhism for inspiration. They rarely turn to Confucianism. Moreover, among those who do look to Confucianism for inspiration, almost no attention is given to the early Confucians, most likely because they are seen as embracing a humanist perspective—that is, they are concerned with how humans should relate to other humans and with the flourishing of human societies. An initial examination of an early Confucian, Mencius, who did consider his attitude toward nature, suggests that he viewed the natural world only as an instrument to promote human welfare. However, this account is not entirely fair to him, for an expansion of Mencius’ fundamental tenets can lead to an interesting account of the relation of humans and nature—one that balances human concerns with respect for nature. Mencius would very likely have endorsed this expansion.

Do we do anything wrong to animals simply by ending their lives if it causes them no pain or suffering? According to some, we can do no wrong to animals by killing them because animals do not have an interest in continued life. An attempt to ground an interest in continued life in animals’ desires faces the challenge that animals are supposedly incapable of desiring to live or of having the kinds of long-range desires which could be thwarted by death. Some philosophers argue that death harms animals not because it thwarts their desires, but rather because it forecloses their future opportunities for satisfaction. However, this argument is problematic because (1) it’s unclear that animals’ future opportunities belong to the same continuing selves and (2) it’s unclear why we should think that animals’ future opportunities have value for them. A more promising argument holds that many animals have an interest in continued life insofar as they possess certain enjoyments in life, where animals’ enjoyments are best understood not merely as fleeting experiences but rather as dispositional desires which animals continue to possess over time.

Wilderness is often understood as land untouched by people. On this reading, wilderness management seems to be a simple contradiction, but it is in fact a thriving and functional practice. Wilderness is not simply an absence of human influence, but the presence of something else. Wilderness is land characterized by the flourishing of natural purpose. When this is understood, wilderness management becomes intelligible and several recent criticisms of wilderness preservation are defused.

Although other quasi-Kantian theories have been adapted, Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory has been largely ignored in discussions of environmental ethics. Indeed on some versions of what an environmental philosophy must entail, Habermas’s anthropocentric approach must be disqualified from the start. Yet, there are some environmentally friendly implications of his discourse theory. They may not give us everything we would wish, but in the contemporary political context we must treasure any moral theory that can draw on the still-extensive theoretical and political resources of liberalism.

Homer’s Odyssey has long served as a touchstone for environmental writers, but is this text itself a work of environmental ethics? Homer portrays, as a major and consistent purpose, the environmentally destructive consequences of hedonism, and the environmentally beneficent consequences of conservation and sustainable agriculture. The evidence of The Odyssey suggests that public critical dialectic about the treatment of animals, soil, and forests was not unknown to the ancient Greek world. Further, The Odyssey can have relevance to modern environmental ethics, especially in Homer’s study of the relation between religion (especially its eating rituals) and the health of the natural environment. Finally, Homer teaches that it is not only possible but also worthwhile to code the arguments of environmental ethics in poetic/fictional terms.

According to Michael Soulé, the debate over whether we should or should not actively manage our nature preserves has driven a deep wedge between “wilderness purists,” who advocate a hands-off approach to nature, and “nature managers,” who want to give nature a helping hand whenever the “fullness of the biota” is under threat. Although both camps share the same formal goal, i.e., preserving “authentic nature,” managers and purists have differing views about what the “authenticity of nature” stands for. By introducing a third way of conceptualizing the authenticity of nature that holds the middle-ground between the authenticity of the purists and the managers—namely, natural areas as authentic relics—a bridge can be found between the two positions. As in the case of heath restorations in Flanders, Belgium, the theory of relics can provide an alternative way in which the concept of authenticity is used when evaluating preservation or restoration projects. Moreover, the conception of natural areas as relics is already tacitly at work within certain preservation and/or restoration practices. A comparison of the theory of relics with Robert Elliot’s anti-restoration thesis as put forward in Faking Nature shows that the theory of relics can, to a large degree, save Elliot’s anti-restorationist’s stance in a world that is waking up to the reality of the “end of nature,” while at the same time softening the rigid rejection of all restorative practices implied in the anti-restoration thesis.

In Conserving Natural Value, Holmes Rolston, III explores the question of why we should value nature as a system and illustrates the view he advocates with the story of the goose who lays golden eggs. The basic idea is that if we value the eggs, we should value the goose. By assuming that Rolston’s fundamental point about the value of nature as a system is war­ranted, it is possible to extend his line of inquiry by arguing that this evocative metaphor actually captures a number of distinct views, and that it is important both conceptually and practically to distinguish these different possibilities as we contemplate and defend the values of the natural world.

Students who enroll in my environmental ethics courses often come with a background in ecology and natural resources. Moreover, they often point to this background when they express their frustration with, or outright rejection of, individualistic or atomistic moral theories that simply strive to include individual living things within the purview of a moral community. They ultimately evoke the concept of holism as the source of their frustration. Addressing this concern requires trying to make sense of both the concept of holism gener­ally and the supposed connection students sense between their training as young scientists and the attempt to ground a worthy environmental ethic. Many theories within the field of environmental ethics either evoke or rest upon the concept of holism. To date, however, the concept of holism has not been unpacked in any detail. To begin such an unpacking teachers need (1) to demonstrate how and when holism appears within the field of environmental ethics, (2) to explain the core idea underpinning holism and compare it to reductionism, and (3) to provide a general classification of how holism is employed in both a metaphysical and ethical sense within environmental ethics.

It has been claimed that Val Plumwood’s work is vulnerable to the same charge of “assimi­lationism” that she has leveled against moral extensionist viewpoints. It is argued that while one might regard Plumwood’s position as suspect because of its emphasis on human-nature continuity, associating claims of continuity with assimilationism could lead one to seek a mode of relating to nature as absolutely other, a move which is claimed to be problematic for several reasons. Because the extensionist error is not simply that of acknowledging human-nature continuity, Plumwood’s position is not extensionist in any objectionable sense. This issue is connected up with the ongoing debate about “perspectival anthropocentrism” in environmental ethics; however, allowing for human epistemic locatedness does not force the conclusion that all environmental ethics is ultimately assimilationist.

Our environmental wrongdoings result in a moral debt that requires restitution. One component of restitution is reparative and another is remediative. The remediative component requires that we remediate our characters in ways that alter or eliminate the character traits that tend to lead, in their expression, to environmental wrongdoing. Restitutive restoration is a way of engaging in ecological restoration that helps to meet the remediative requirement that accompanies environmental wrongdoing. This account of restoration provides a new motivation and justification for engaging in restorative practices in addition to the standard pragmatist justification and motivations.

Environmental groups have worked tirelessly to save several species of endangered fish along the Colorado River, including the humpback chub (Gila cypha). The humpback chub does not seem to have any significant instrumental goods, but these environmentalists have championed its cause nonetheless. If the humpback chub has no instrumental goods, then appealing to another kind of goods is needed to show that it should be preserved. Some environmental ethicists have suggested appealing to the intrinsic goods of a species (or, alternatively, its intrinsic value or inherent value). Drawing on and going beyond John O’Neill’s work, it can be argued that all currently existing (biological) species have their own goods, or intrinsic goods. In terms of the notion of flourishing, the intrinsic goods of a species consist in its abilities to flourish. These goods can be used to construct a defense of the view that a species, even a species such as the humpback chub, ought to be preserved. One way to construct this defense is to appeal to virtue ethics, specifically the virtue of humility. Exercising the virtue of humility in our relations with species that we human beings have endangered involves preserving them along with preserving their intrinsic goods.

Animal beauty provides a significant aesthetic reason for protecting nature. Worries about aesthetic discrimination and the ugliness of predation might make one think otherwise. Although it has been argued that aesthetic merit is a trivial and morally objectionable basis for action, beauty is an important value and a legitimate basis for differential treatment, especially in the case of animals. While the suffering and death of animals due to predation are important disvalues that must be recognized, predation’s tragic beauty has positive aesthetic value that can be appropriately aesthetically appreciated.