Environmental Ethics

This is an essay in appreciation of The Abundant Herds, a study of the amaZulu’s naming practices for their Nguni cattle. The book reveals an aesthetic vision in which contemplative and practical attention are intertwined and a complex classificatory system does not undermine an appreciation of the individuality of the cattle. The book and the practices it celebrates permit a richer account of the beauty of farm animals to the standard functionalist approach.

Xunzi’s philosophy provides a rich resource for understanding how ethical relationships between humans and nature can be articulated in terms of harmony. In this paper, I build on his ideas to develop the concept of reciprocal harmony, which requires us to reciprocate those who make our lives liveable. In the context of the environment, I argue that reciprocal harmony generates moral obligations towards nature, in return for the existential debt that humanity owes towards heaven and earth. This can be used (...) as a normative basis for an environmental ethic that enables humanity and nature to flourish together. (shrink)

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including (...) mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal, reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises. (shrink)

Global climate change has been characterised as the crisis of reason, imagination and language, to mention some. The 'everything change', as Margaret Atwood calls it, arguably also impacts on how we aesthetically perceive, interpret and appreciate nature. This article looks at philosophical theories of nature appreciation against global environmental change. The article examines how human-induced global climate change affects the 'scientific' approaches to nature appreciation which base aesthetic judgment on scientific knowledge and the competing 'non-scientific' approaches which emphasise the role (...) of emotions, imagination and stories in the aesthetic understanding of environment. The author claims that both approaches are threatened by global climate change and cannot continue as usual. In particular, he explores aesthetic imagination in contemporary times when our visions about environment are thoroughly coloured by worry and uncertainty and there seems to be little room for awe and wonder, which have traditionally characterised the aesthetic experience of nature. Finally, he proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper describes the disorienting aesthetics of some environments that are characteristic of the Anthropocene. We refer to these environments as 'mashed-up' and present three dimensions - phenomenological, epistemological and narrative - of the aesthetic disorientation they can trigger. We then advance the suggestion that a rich, nuanced and meaningful aesthetic experience of mashed-up Anthropocene environments calls for a mode of appreciation grounded on performative practices of aesthetic familiarisation with particular MAEs and entities and processes thereof. Familiarisation with MAEs, we (...) further note, can have disorienting codas of its own. It can reveal and highlight, rather than eliminate or alleviate, the solid strangeness of Earth even in the systemically humanised world of the Anthropocene, and it can expose and tie at least some of our agency, identity and sources of meaning in life to the same unstable evolvability of particular MAEs. (shrink)

What kinds of issues does the global crisis of climate change present to aesthetics, and how will they challenge the field to respond? This paper argues that a new research agenda is needed for aesthetics with respect to global climate change and outlines a set of foundational issues which are especially pressing: attention to environments that have been neglected by philosophers, for example, the cryosphere and aerosphere; negative aesthetics of environment, in order to grasp aesthetic experiences, meanings, and dis/values in (...) light of the catastrophic effects of GCC; bringing intergenerational thinking into aesthetics through concepts of temporality and 'future aesthetics' understanding the relationship between aesthetic and ethical values as they arise in regard to GCC. (shrink)

This paper analyses the cluster of aesthetic features involved in the common experience of the weather. Perceptual features are accompanied by 'atmospheric' moods that are irreducible to physiological well-being. Representation and imagination reach their limits due to the more-than-human spatiotemporal scale of the atmosphere. Finally, some 'transaesthetic' aspects include the agency of an active matter and the longing for an elemental alterity. The aesthetics of the weather has to account for the interdependence between aesthetic and ethical values, between bodily engagement (...) and appropriate knowledge, individual contemplation and social commitment, in order to develop ecological responsibility. (shrink)

A COVID-19 vaccine mandate is being introduced for health and social care workers in England, and those refusing to comply will either be redeployed from their patient-facing role or have their employment terminated. We argue that COVID-19 vaccination should not be mandatory for these workers for several reasons. First, it ignores their genuine concerns and fails to respect their moral integrity and bodily autonomy. Second, it risks causing psychological reactance, potentially worsening vaccine hesitancy. Third, Black and minority ethnic health and (...) social care workers are less likely to have been vaccinated and therefore may be disproportionately impacted by the implications of the mandate. Fourth, a mandate could have a significant negative effect on service provision. Fifth, waning immunity and new variants mean booster doses are increasingly likely to be regularly required, meaning immunity and what constitutes being ‘fully vaccinated’ will be a constantly shifting target. Finally, vaccine mandates may have an adverse effect on future health and social care recruitment. We argue that daily rapid antigen testing is a viable alternative to a vaccine mandate that is non-coercive and fair. This could also be supplemented by monetary incentives to be vaccinated. (shrink)

Between 1971 and 1975 Australian building industry workers withdrew their labour from environmentally irresponsible projects and, in coining the term ‘green ban’ to describe their action, originated the political designation ‘green’. Alienated from the products of their own labour and committed to ideas about the social responsibility of labour, they directly confronted what Lamarche [1976] has identified as the ‘planning role’ of property capital. They hindered the means of production by withdrawal of labour and also the reproduction of the relations (...) of production by successfully challenging the legitimacy of private appropriation on the grounds of its adverse ecological effects. Green bans in New South Wales halted development worth A$5 billion and had a significant impact on environmental legislation, town planning and public attitudes. (shrink)

The idea that landscape has been created by human activities on a biophysical basis allows for clear cause–effect reasoning. However, landscape planning and management practice learns that it is impossible to neglect the social perception of landscape, i.e. the ways people think about nature and landscape. It is the result of social research and human sciences of the last decade that a differentiation in views of nature and landscape can be identified in the different groups of social actors in the (...) landscape. Case studies from France and the Netherlands show a marked change in values attributed to nature and landscape in the end of the last century. Social demand for landscape is growing and a shift from a functional image of nature and landscape to a more hedonistic image like the Arcadian and wilderness images has taken place. Comparing the Netherlands with France and rural with urban inhabitants, the influence of urbanisation is evident in this process. It is further shown that images of nature vary considerably between for example farmers, urban residents, hunters and conservationists. The way people perceive landscape seems determined by their functional ties with the landscape and the social praxis in which they encounter the landscape. It is concluded that the concept of landscape is nearer to the lifeworld of people than the abstract notions of nature and biodiversity. This implies a big challenge both for national and international landscape policies and for local landscape management initiatives to be developed, taking into due consideration both the material and immaterial nature of landscape. (shrink)

Humans face wide ranging and global challenges in the Anthropocene, the most prominent of which is anthropogenic climate change. One initial pivot towards sustainability, particularly in my home country of the United States, has been to rely heavily on technological innovation powered most obviously by engineers. Using the climate activist Greta Thunberg's speech at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference as my inspiration, I try to show how some of the technology based solutions only entrench what I call the (...) “Bestance” mentality, that is, the fundamental stance or orientation toward the natural world in the Anthropocene wherein all entities show up as mere resources. Upon showing the various ways in which traditional ethical approaches and environmental philosophical approaches have proved unhelpful in navigating the challenges of the Anthropocene, I try to demonstrate and how a Heideggerian ecophenomenological approach can help us not only understand how the world appears to many of us in the Anthropocene, but also what a more graceful way of being might look like in Heidegger's concept of “dwelling.” Using specific examples of current technologies pervasively normalized in the United States, including hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, desalination, and artificial nitrogen based fertilization, I use Heidegger's philosophical concepts to show how the land, sea, and air can show up as Bestand in the Anthropocene, that is, merely materials on hand to be manipulated in order to serve human interests. (shrink)

If ecologists "live in a world of wounds", then conservation biologists could be said to per-form triage daily in a ward full of chronically hemorrhag-ing patients. In the two decades since its inception, the crisis discipline of conservation biology has reacted to a neverending onslaught of threats. In the face of escalat-ing rates of overharvest, habitat degradation and conver-sion, spread of exotic species, and exponential growth of the human population, it seems inevitable that we as conservation biologists and managers should (...) become in-creasingly jaded and pessimistic as our careers advance. Nevertheless, I challenge us instead to adopt a positive outlook in our work. An optimistic attitude should increase the conserva-tion biologist's ability to initiate and sustain collabora-tions with colleagues, as few professionals choose to work with consistently pessimistic individuals. As conserva-tion and management strategies incorporate broader spatial scales, where professionals with different train-ing, paradigms, legislative mandates, and jargon come together, truly collaborative effort becomes a necessity. Consequently, an overly skeptical perspective may re-sult in missed opportunities to create revolutionary ideas, develop new methods, or formulate new questions. We conservation biologists should foster optimism in professional life also because the success of conservation efforts depends on how we are perceived by decision-makers and the public at large. Although we must alert these groups to impending ecological challenges, we must also give them reasons for hope. If we do not, resis-tance to conservation biology and a negative perception of its practitioners could marginalize our efforts at all scales. In addition to advantages that optimism conveys pro-fessionally, it also may have tangible personal benefits. Individuals espousing a positive worldview are consis-tently more effective than those with a negative operat-ing paradigm. Optimism correlates with improved performance of real-world tasks and performance in classes and helps prevent the development of distress, anxiety, and other health problems. An optimistic mentality may help us maintain sanity and avoid apathy or misanthropy when confronted with un-ending onslaughts to biotic diversity. Optimism is particularly crucial in conservation educa-tion, outreach activities, and policy. Finger com-pared the ability of three strategies, scare tactics, infor-mational, and experiential, to transmit and activate ecological knowledge among Swiss adults. He found that scare tactics were least effective in imparting eco-logical knowledge, and adults receiving this "treatment" were later least likely to retain learned principles and translate these into "environmental behavior". Optimism-inspired educational strategies include heralding past achievements of conservationists and highlighting the fi-nancial and other benefits gained by integrating conser-vation philosophies into projects in diverse academic disciplines. Because an informed public can contribute to the success of future strategies for biodiversity, efforts to improve the amount and quality of conservation edu-cation should remain resolute, even aggressive. Although there are usually not institutional rewards for participating in extension-style activities or present-ing research results to local agencies or environmental interest groups, these actions may indirectly benefit conservation biologists. Instead of increasing incompati-bility between academia and applied conservation, biol-ogists should engage in continuous communication. Man-agers may contribute large data sets for examining temporal trends and community dynamics, and academicians may provide assistance with hypothesis formation, experi-mental design, and analysis. Similarly, instead of assum-ing that individual voices advocating biodiversity to leg-islators will be drowned out by opposing lobbyists, conservation biologists should realize that legislators Paper submitted March 29, 1999; revised manuscript accepted July 27, 1999. (shrink)

Though the mountain lion has been considered extirpated in Michigan since the early 1900s, sightings of the big cats have persisted in both the Upper and Lower Peninsulas. Reports of mountain lions increased during the 1990s, and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources does acknowledge the existence of this species within the state. However, State officials continue to insist that the majority of these sightings involve former captive animals or misidentification of other species, rather than a wild population of mountain (...) lions. The growing number of mountain lion sightings in recent years — by biologists, hunters, and other citizens — suggests that there may well be a small breeding population of the species in Michigan. History In 1984, while hunting on the Patowachie-Hannaville Indian Reservation fifteen miles west of the town of Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a Native American hunter spotted a mountain lion — also known as cougar or puma — while trying to spook some deer. The man quickly lifted his rifle and fired, wounding the cat, which responded by leaping ten feet into the air, and then running off with one leg flopping. The hunter discovered bone fragments from the right front paw and proceeded to track the cat in light snow into a bog full of leatherleaf shrubs. He collected the bone fragments and gave them to wildlife officials. Michael Zuidema, a retired Forester from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, sent the bone samples to a wildlife lab at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Fort Collins, where high resolution electrophoresis determined it was indeed from a mountain lion. The mountain lion was originally part of Michigan's native fauna, at the top of the food chain with the black bear,, the wolf, and the wolverine. By the late 1800s, however, only a few of the felids still survived in remote recesses of the Upper Peninsula. The last recorded cougar killed in Michigan was in the UP in December of 1906, near the Tahquamenon River, in Luce County. By the early 1900s the species was listed as extirpated in Michigan. It seems clear, though, that the Tahquamenon cat was not the last of its kind in the UP, or even the Lower Peninsula. Since the 1920s, there has been a steady stream of reports of the big cats, mostly dismissed by DNR officials. There are several reliable records of people seeing pumas in the late 1930s and early 1940s, including one documented record of a cougar from the Huron Mountains of Marquette County in 1937. Credible sightings of the felids also date from the 1960s to the present. From 1962-1992 there were valid reports of cougars from every county in the UP except for Keweenaw. Many of those reports, though, were not verified by DNR officials. Frequently, people who claim to have spotted a large felid either inform the DNR too long after the a sighting or sign, or the supposed cat turns out to be another large mammal, such as a deer or wolf. In addition, a large number of reported puma sightings are in areas where wolves are known residents. Recent sightings in the Upper Peninsula There is, however, conclusive evidence of mountain lions in Michigan. On Memorial Day in 1998, a puma was photographed on the grounds of Thistledowne, a Bed & Breakfast establishment near the town of Gulliver in southern Schoolcraft County. Three fuzzy photographs through a plate-glass window were taken of the cougar as it stood outside in the yard by the gazebo along the sand dunes. The animal then ran into the woods on the shore of Seul Choix Point, on Lake Michigan. Two of the photographs show the unmistakable outline of a large felid's lithe body and rounded head. Seul Choix Point is a sandy spit of land in southern Schoolcraft. (shrink)

Numerous humans - in my opinion, far too many - continue to live apart from nature, rather than as a part of nature. In this personal essay I discuss various aspects of traditional science and suggest that holistic and heart-driven compassionate science needs to replace reductionist and impersonal science. I argue that creative proactive solutions drenched in deep caring, respect, and love for the universe need to be developed to deal with the broad range of problems with which we are (...) confronted. Simply put, I have had enough. I want the world to be a better place for all of its inhabitants and time is not on our side. I feel a deep sense of urgency and passionate impatience. We are worrying about wildness as it is disappearing right in front of our eyes - as I write and we discuss. Thus, I am willing to open myself to criticism, to be vulnerable for expressing views that are not part of main-stream science. Rather than take a doomsday view that the world will not even exist in 100 years if we fail to accept our unique responsibilities, it is more disturbing to imagine a world in which humans and other life coexist in the absence of any intimacy and interconnectedness. Surely we do not want to be remembered as the generation that killed nature. To illustrate some of my points, I discuss various aspects of translocation studies in which animals are moved about from one place to another in humans' attempts to "redecorate" nature. In these projects interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary and disciplinary boundaries must be trespassed. I also emphasize the importance of teaching children well for their and our futures rest on their developing a deeply-rooted caring ethic. My vision is to create a world-wide community in which humans perceive themselves as a part of nature and not apart from her, in which humans who are overwhelmed and whose spirits and souls have been robbed and squelched by living in and amongst steel, concrete, asphalt, noise, and a multitude of invasions of their private space reconnect with raw nature - with the wind in their faces, the odors of wild flowers, and the sounds, sights, odors, and touch of other animals and inanimate environs. A world in which sensing is feeling. Nature is our unconditional friend and reconnecting with nature can help overcome alienation and loneliness. The power of love must not be underestimated as we forge ahead to reconnect with nature. (shrink)

The human relationship to nature is a deeply ambiguous one. Human animals are both a part of nature and distinct from it. They are part of nature in the sense that, like other forms of life, they were brought into existence by natural processes, and, like other forms of life, they are dependent on their environment for survival and success. Yet humans are also reflective animals with sophisticated cultural systems. Because of their immense power and their ability to wield it (...) intentionally, humans have duties and responsibilities that other animals do not. (shrink)

Environmental aesthetics is a relatively new sub-field ofphilosophical aesthetics. It arose within analytic aesthetics in thelast third of the twentieth century. Prior to its emergence,aesthetics within the analytic tradition was largely concerned withphilosophy of art. Environmental aesthetics originated as a reactionto this emphasis, pursuing instead the investigation of the aestheticappreciation of natural environments. Since its early stages, thescope of environmental aesthetics has broadened to include not simplynatural environments but also human and human-influenced ones. At thesame time, the discipline has also (...) come to include the examination ofthat which falls within such environments, giving rise to what iscalled the aesthetics of everyday life. This area involves theaesthetics of not only more common objects and environments, but alsoa range of everyday activities. Thus, early in the twenty-firstcentury, environmental aesthetics embraced the study of the aestheticsignificance of almost everything other than art. Together with thisbroader scope of environmental aesthetics, the twenty-first centuryhas also given rise to renewed and more intense investigations of therelationship between environmental aesthetics and environmentalism aswell as to several new interests and directions. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Remsen attacked moral objections to killing birds for museum collections, objections that are frequently raised by the general public and scientific community alike. The only grounds for moral objections against killing birds that Remsen considers and rejects are reverence for all life or personal, that is sentimental reasons. What Remsen ignores is avian sentience and the moral imperative of respecting it.

Recently, Howard argued for the defensibility of research on nonhuman animals. Unfortunately, his essay is unnecessarily combative, lacking in detail, unbalanced, and poorly argued. Howard unfairly and mistakenly stereotypes as biologically naive anyone who rejects his position that nature's poor treatment of wild animals justifies animal research. Those interested in the morality of animal research deserve better guidance than what Howard provides. Here, we analyze Howard's claims and their implications, present relevant literature on ethics and animals, and conclude that much (...) work remains to be done to understand and properly appreciate the moral dimensions of animal research. The questions raised about uses of animals by humans in various activities, including research, are difficult and demand careful interdisciplinary analysis. Simple answers should not be expected. We explore some of the issues and make them accessible to a wide audience, including practicing scientists. (shrink)