Environmental ethics rests on a mistake. At least a common conception of what such an ethic must be like rests on a mistake. To make this clearer, I first explain this conception, then characterize and defend the charge I make against it.

In this article, I expand the existing discourse on climate justice by drawing out the implications of taking animal rights seriously in the context of human-induced climate change. More specifically, I argue that nonhuman animals are owed adaptive assistance to help them cope with the ill-effects of climate change, and I advance and defend four principles of climate justice that derive from a general duty of adaptation. Lastly, I suggest that even if one can successfully argue that the protection of (...) human interests in adaptation ought to be prioritised, nonhuman animal rights will continue to place significant constraints on climate change action. (shrink)

Wild animals probably have net negative lives. Christine Korsgaard rejects the view that we might engineer paradise by redesigning nature and animals so that they have the best possible existences. She believes the genetic changes required would not be identity-preserving, thereby causing animals to cease to exist. I argue, first, that paradise engineering is permissible. Many harms are caused by non-sentient natural entities and processes. Moreover, sentient animals can survive modifications compatible with their psychological persistence over time. Second, we are (...) required to re-engineer nature in order to satisfy animals' right to the resources necessary for a reasonable life. (shrink)

Welfare biology is the study of living things and their environment with respect to their welfare. Despite difficulties of ascertaining and measuring welfare and relevancy to normative issues, welfare biology is a positive science. Evolutionary economics and population dynamics are used to help answer basic questions in welfare biology : Which species are affective sentients capable of welfare? Do they enjoy positive or negative welfare? Can their welfare be dramatically increased? Under plausible axioms, all conscious species are plastic and all (...) plastic species are conscious. More complex niches favour the evolution of more rational species. Evolutionary economics also supports the common-sense view that individual sentients failing to survive to mate suffer negative welfare. A kind of God-made fairness between species is also unexpectedly found. The contrast between growth maximization, average welfare, and total welfare maximization is discussed. It is shown that welfare could be increased without even sacrificing numbers. Since the long-term reduction in animal suffering depends on scientific advances, strict restrictions on animal experimentation may be counter-productive to animal welfare. (shrink)

Interpreters of Robert Nozick’s political philosophy fall into two broad groups concerning his application of the ‘Lockean proviso’. Some read his argument in an undemanding way: individual instances of ownership which make people worse off than they would have been in a world without any ownership are unjust. Others read the argument in a demanding way: individual instances of ownership which make people worse off than they would have been in a world without that particular ownership are unjust. While I (...) argue that the former reading is correct as an interpretive matter, I suggest that this reading is nonetheless highly demanding. In particular, I argue that it is demanding when it is expanded to include the protection of nonhuman animals; if such beings are right bearers, as more and more academics are beginning to suggest, then there is no nonarbitrary reason to exclude them from the protection of the proviso. (shrink)

Recent proposals in political philosophy concerning nonhuman animals as property-holders - by John Hadley and Steve Cooke - have focused on the interests that nonhuman animals have in access to and use of their territories. The possibility that such rights might be grounded on the basis of a Lockean (that is, labour-mixing) account of property has been rejected. In this paper, I explore four criticisms of Lockean property rights for nonhuman animals - concerning self-ownership, initiative, exertion and the sufficiency of (...) protection offered - concluding that Lockean property rights could be extended to nonhuman animals. I then suggest that Lockean property rights actually offer advantages over interest-based accounts: they more clearly ground property, they are potentially broader, and they are considerably stronger. (shrink)

Wild animal reproduction poses an important moral problem for animal rights theorists. Many wild animals give birth to large numbers of uncared-for offspring, and thus child mortality rates are far higher in nature than they are among human beings. In light of this reproductive strategy – traditionally referred to as the ‘r-strategy’ – does concern for the interests of wild animals require us to intervene in nature? In this paper, I argue that animal rights theorists should embrace fallibility-constrained interventionism: the (...) view that intervention in nature is desirable but should be constrained by our ignorance of the inner workings of ecosystems. Though authors sometimes assume that large-scale intervention requires turning nature into an enormous zoo, I suggest an alternative. With sufficient research, a new form of gene editing called CRISPR promises to one day give us the capacity to intervene without perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties. (shrink)

I begin by briefly tracing the history of the split between environmental ethics and animal liberation, go on to sketch a theory of value that I think is implicit in animal liberation, and explain how this theory is consistent with strong environmental commitments. I conclude with some observations about problems that remain.

Many people think we should refrain from intervening in nature as much as possible. One of the main reasons for thinking this way is that the existence of nature is a net positive. However, population dynamics teaches us that most sentient animals who come into existence in nature die shortly thereafter, mostly in painful ways. Those who survive often suffer greatly due to natural causes. If sentient beings matter, this gives us reasons to intervene to prevent such harms. This counterintuitive (...) conclusion can be opposed by arguing that we should not care about nonhuman animals; that other values, such as the existence of certain ecosystemic relations or of untouched wild areas, count for more than the interests of sentient beings; or that intervention in nature cannot succeed. There are, however, strong reasons to reject these claims and to support significant intervention in nature for the sake of animals, despite our deep-rooted intuitions to the contrary. (shrink)

In this paper I extend liberal property rights theory to nonhuman animals.I sketch an outline of a nonhuman animal property rights regime and argue that both proponents of animal rights and ecological holism ought to accept nonhuman animal property rights. To conclude I address a series of objections.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

In “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce,” Mark Sagoff asserts that “environmentalists cannot be animal liberationists. Animal liberationists cannot be environmentalists”. In this article, I explore and refute this claim. As a result of structuring his argument around the work of Peter Singer and Aldo Leopold, I argue Sagoff too quickly dismisses rights-based approaches to animal liberation. Drawing on Thomas Pogge’s institutional framework for human rights, I present a rights-based foundation upon which animal liberationism and environmentalism can (...) be based compatibly. (shrink)

The existence of predatory animals is a problem in animal ethics that is often not taken as seriously as it should be. We show that it reveals a weakness in Tom Regan's theory of animal rights that also becomes apparent in his treatment of innocent human threats. We show that there are cases in which Regan's justice-prevails-approach to morality implies a duty not to assist the jeopardized, contrary to his own moral beliefs. While a modified account of animal rights that (...) recognizes the moral patient as a kind of entity that can violate moral rights avoids this counterintuitive conclusion, it makes non-human predation a rights issue that morally ought to be subjected to human regulation. Jennifer Everett, Lori Gruen and other animal advocates base their treatment of predation in part on Regan's theory and run into similar problems, demonstrating the need to radically rethink the foundations of the animal rights movement. We suggest to those who, like us, find it less plausible to introduce morality to the wild than to reject the concept of rights that makes this move necessary to read our criticism either as a modus tollens argument and reject non-human animal rights altogether or as motivating a libertarian-ish theory of animal rights. (shrink)

The greatest threat faced by wild animals often comes from the destruction of their habitats by humans. Traditional environmental-conservation paradigms often fail to prevent this destruction. This paper claims that, where access to habitat is a necessary condition of their continued existence or wellbeing, wild animals have sufficiently strong interests in their habitat to generate rights to it. The paper argues that these rights should be instantiated in the form of collective usufructuary property rights, and, in cases of serious and (...) systematic violation of these rights, wild animals gain a remedial right of secession for their habitat. (shrink)

The central and most recalcitrant problem for environmental ethics is the problem of constructing an adequate theory of intrinsic value for nonhuman natural entities and for nature as a whole. In part one, I retrospectively survey the problem, review certain classical approaches to it, and recommend one as an adequate, albeit only partial, solution. In part two, I show that the classical theory of inherent value for nonhuman entities and nature as a whole outlined in part one is inconsistent with (...) a contemporary scientific world view because it assumes the validity of the classical Cartesian partition between subject and object which has been overturned by quantum theory. Based upon the minimalistic Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory, I then develop a theory of inherent value which does not repose upon the obsolete subject/object and ancillary fact/value dichotomies. In part three, I suggest that a more speculative metaphysical interpretation of quantum theory--one involving the notion ofreal internal relations anda holistic picture of nature-permits a principle of “axiological complementary,” a theory of “intrinsic”-as opposed to “inherent”-value in nature as a simple extension of ego. (shrink)

The ethical foundations of the “animal liberation” movement are compared with those of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic,” which is taken as the paradigm for environmental ethics in general. Notwithstanding certain superficial similarities, more profound practical and theoretical differences are exposed. While only sentient animals are moraIly considerable according to the humane ethic, the land ethic includes within its purview plants as weIl as animals and even soils and waters. Nor does the land ethic prohibit the hunting, killing, and eating ofcertain (...) animal species, in sharp contrast to the humane ethic. The humane ethic rests upon Benthamic foundations: pain is taken to be the ultimate evil and it is reductive or atomistic in its moral focus. The land ethic, on the other hand, is holistic in the sense that theintegrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community is its summum bonum. A classical antecedent of some of the formal characteristics of the land ethic is found in Plato’s moral philosophy. Special consideration is given to the differing moral status of domestic and wild animals in the humane and land ethics and to the question of moral vegetarianism. (shrink)

The ethical foundations of the “animal liberation” movement are compared with those of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic,” which is taken as the paradigm for environmental ethics in general. Notwithstanding certain superficial similarities, more profound practical and theoretical differences are exposed. While only sentient animals are moraIly considerable according to the humane ethic, the land ethic includes within its purview plants as weIl as animals and even soils and waters. Nor does the land ethic prohibit the hunting, killing, and eating ofcertain (...) animal species, in sharp contrast to the humane ethic. The humane ethic rests upon Benthamic foundations: pain is taken to be the ultimate evil and it is reductive or atomistic in its moral focus. The land ethic, on the other hand, is holistic in the sense that theintegrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community is its summum bonum. A classical antecedent of some of the formal characteristics of the land ethic is found in Plato’s moral philosophy. Special consideration is given to the differing moral status of domestic and wild animals in the humane and land ethics and to the question of moral vegetarianism. (shrink)

The ethical foundations of the “animal liberation” movement are compared with those of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic,” which is taken as the paradigm for environmental ethics in general. Notwithstanding certain superficial similarities, more profound practical and theoretical differences are exposed. While only sentient animals are moraIly considerable according to the humane ethic, the land ethic includes within its purview plants as weIl as animals and even soils and waters. Nor does the land ethic prohibit the hunting, killing, and eating ofcertain (...) animal species, in sharp contrast to the humane ethic. The humane ethic rests upon Benthamic foundations: pain is taken to be the ultimate evil and it is reductive or atomistic in its moral focus. The land ethic, on the other hand, is holistic in the sense that theintegrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community is its summum bonum. A classical antecedent of some of the formal characteristics of the land ethic is found in Plato’s moral philosophy. Special consideration is given to the differing moral status of domestic and wild animals in the humane and land ethics and to the question of moral vegetarianism. (shrink)