Abstract

The plain speaking of the new environmental movements places emphasis on an imminent ecological crisis, but the 'new' environmentalists appear to lack insight into what specific action is required, to what they stand in opposition and more generally the political and economic context within which they (as social movements) are operating. The fact is that political and economic elites around the world have long been taking 'environmental action', to protect not Nature but themselves, against environmentalists and environmental regulation. The papers in this issue of Environmental Values set out a range of ethical arguments and concerns that bring corporate capitalism into question or oppose it, and reflect upon ethical responses to its ongoing infliction of harm on the innocent. They make it clear that conformity to the system that produced the crisis will not deliver the necessary revolutionary social ecological transformation.