ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Modern science and technology have brought about a unique, human-caused transformation of the Earth. Although humans have for thousands of years had measurable terrestrial impacts with fire, agriculture, and urbanization, since the Industrial Revolution the scope, scale, and speed of such impacts have exceeded all those in the past (Kates, Turner, and Clark 1990) and promise to become even more dramatic in the future. Humans have become what the Russian scientist V. I. Vernadsky in the 1920s called a geological force, in a sense even more strongly than he imagined it. Environmental ethics and, more generally, environmental philosophy comprise a variety of philosophical responses to the concerns raised by the magnitude of this transformation.

Basic Issues

Since the noxious clouds and pollution-clogged rivers of the Industrial Revolution, society has generally agreed that many modern technological activities, due to their potentially devastating impact on nature and people, are in need of regulation. Recognition of the fact that humans can foul their own nests is now widely accepted and often politically effective. Indeed concerns about the counterproductivity of scientifically and technologically enhanced human conduct in the early-twenty-first century extends to discussions of population increase, environmental costs borne by the poor and minorities, and responsibilities to future generations. But it is not clear that addressing such anthropocentric worries adequately encompasses all properly human interests. Beyond working to live within the environmental limits for the production of resources and absorption of wastes—which can be pursued both by moderating activities and transforming technologies—questions arise about whether nonhuman or extrahuman considerations have a role to play. What are the ethical responsibilities, the moral duties, of humans to nonhuman animals, plants, populations, species, biotic communities, ecosystems, and landforms? Should environmental outcomes for these, or at least some of these, not mean something in their own right quite apart from their mere resource value for human exploitation? Ought humans not to respect nature to some degree for what it is intrinsically? Much of the professional field of environmental ethics has been exercised with articulation and debate regarding the relative weight of human- and extrahuman-centered concerns.

Moreover early-twenty-first-century humans are often ambivalent about the place of nature in human life. Human beings of all times and places have needed and wanted freedom from many of the harsh conditions of the natural world, but earlier humans also celebrated the grace of nature in art, song, story, and ceremony. Modern technological efforts perfect the former and neglect the latter. Could it be that human flourishing is connected to nature flourishing? If so, over and above respect for nature, a celebration of things natural and the natural world in human lives and communities throughout the world is necessary. Although their numbers remain comparatively small, many people are stirred by passionate feelings about nature in communities that have long turned their backs to the river. While some critics argue the pathetic fallacy of such positions, the question of how much say nature and natural things will have over human life and the planet remains.

Any philosophical criticism of the anthropogenic transformation of the natural world must ultimately lead to an assessment of human culture. Perhaps humans have been at some level mistaken about the fundamental payoffs of environmental exploitation. In many instances, the technological control of nature that displaces its celebration leaves people numb, mindless, or out of shape. It seems necessary to coordinate a critique of technological damage with discovery of new ways for living with nature in order simultaneously to save the planet from environmental degradation and society from cultural impoverishment. The quality of the environment and of human life —questions of environmental and interhuman ethics (the good life)—may be inseparable.

The extensive transformation of the Earth deserves to be seen from the perspective of both the natural world and culture. This transformation could not have taken place without widespread agreement underlying the fundamental orientation of the modern technological project. There may be several ways of understanding this agreement, and there is debate among scholars on this issue (Borgmann 1984; Higgs, Light, and Strong 2000; Zimmerman et al. 2000). Despite differences, there is nevertheless a consensus that unless people unite concerns for nature and culture, environmental ethics will prove to be inconsequential. In other words, an effective environmental ethics and philosophy must include as well a philosophy of technological culture.

Historical Development

Historically environmental ethics is associated with a certain unease about the unbridled exploitation of nature that is typical of post-Industrial Revolution society. As Roderick Nash (2001), among others, points out, such uneasiness was first evidenced in post-Civil War United States concerns over the loss of both wilderness and natural resources—concerns that led to the creation of the first U.S. national park (1872) and then forest service (1905). After World War II, the creation of a second wave of environmental concern centered around the wilderness movement of the 1950s that led to the Wilderness Act (1964) and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), which argued that aggressive technology in the form of the extensive use of chemical pesticides, especially DDT, was killing millions of songbirds and could eventually have a much broader impact on plant, animal, and even human life. Nuclear weapons and energy production, technological disasters (such as the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969), wasteful extraction and use of resources, the rise of consumerism, the population explosion, oil shortages (in 1973 and 1977), pollution, and a host of related environmental problems combined to establish in popular consciousness what can be called an environmental or ecological crisis about the health of the Earth as a whole. Existing conservation measures, with their many successes, were nevertheless judged too weak to respond to the new problems, leading to the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA 1969) and to the establishment of the first national Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by President Richard Nixon in 1972. At the same time, some began to question whether enlightened self-interest was a sufficient basis for assessing the contemporary state of environmental affairs and argue that nature mattered in ways beyond its strictly human utilities and should be protected with an eye for more than human safety and health.

Among figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Albert Schweitzer, wildlife biologist and ecologist Aldo Leopold advocated this position before environmental ethics became a popular movement. Early in his career as a professor of wildlife management, Leopold thought that nature could be reorganized for human ends (enhancing wildlife populations by eliminating wolves, for instance) if one took a long-range view and was scientifically informed. However in his mature work A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949), Leopold criticized reliance on the conservationist position, and argued that the land, what is now called an ecosystem, must be approached holistically and with love and respect, that is, with what he calls the land ethic. He said, "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise" (Leopold 2000, pp. 224–225). Leopold articulated the emerging new ethic concerning both living things as individuals and the natural system itself, including the community concept generated by the relatively new sciences of evolution and ecology. This was in contrast to earlier theories that invited human domination of nature, which Leopold believed were encouraged by the older hard sciences.

The groundwork for environmental ethics as such was laid in the 1970s. During the first half of that decade, four independent philosophical works launched the academic field. Arne Naess's "The Shallow and Deep, Long-range Ecology Movement: A Summary" (1973) called for a radical change in the human-nature relationship, and became a seminal work of the deep ecology movement. Richard Sylvan's (then Routley) "Is There a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?" (1973) argued that modern ethical theories were inadequate for the full range of moral intuitions regarding nature. Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" (1973) reanimated Jeremy Bentham's proposal for including sentient members of nonhuman species in the utilitarian calculus. And Holmes Rolston III's "Is There an Ecological Ethic?" (1975) distinguished between a secondary sense environmental ethic in which moral rules are derived from concerns for human health or related issues, and a primary sense environmental ethic, in which nonhuman sentient animals as well as all living things, ecosystems, and even landforms are respected because they are intrinsically valuable apart from any value to humans. For Rolston, the secondary ethic is anthropocentric and not truly environmental, whereas the primary is truly environmental and ecocentric. Subsequently Kenneth Goodpaster (1978) developed the fertile concept of moral considerability to discuss more generally who and what, if anything nonhuman, counts ethically. In 1979 Eugene C. Hargrove founded Environmental Ethics, the first journal in the field.

Mainstream environmental ethics matured over the next decade. Animal liberation and rights discussions flourished and became a separate field from, and often in conflict with, environmental ethics, because ecosystems sacrifice the welfare of individual animals. Within mainstream environmental ethics, ethical theories regarding individual lives of animals and plants, usually called biocentric or life-centered, began to be distinguished from holistic approaches that dealt with preserving entire ecosystems, called ecocentric or ecosystem-centered ethics. Leopold's earlier vision developed in different ways in the systematic works of J. Baird Callicot, deep ecologists, and others.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the field witnessed remarkable growth. Currently there are numerous journals, two professional organizations (the International Society for Environmental Ethics and the International Association for Environmental Philosophy), and an array of Internet sites devoted to it. Colleges and universities routinely teach courses in environmental ethics.

Environmental ethics theorists, in the early twenty-first century, believe they are taking a radically new direction because they are informed by scientific insight and philosophical prowess. Many aspire to produce universal claims about humans and the environment. They argue the urgent need for a new environmental ethic governing the duties of people toward nature, and reject the view of nature, which started with the rise of modern science, as value-neutral stuff that humans can manipulate as they please.

However recent developments in science complicate and challenge environmental ethics. Ecology has always accepted change, but modern ecology has moved away from early ecology's notion of stable, climax communities (usually pre-Columbian) reached by moving at a steady pace through successive stages. The notion that nature tends toward equilibrium conditions, a balance of nature, has become largely rejected in favor of the view that ecological processes are much more unruly and undirected. Catastrophic, episodic, and random events may be more responsible for the ecological condition than ordinary cycles. Ecological settings, once disturbed, do not automatically return to their predisturbance state. What were thought to be symbiotic relationships between members of an ecological community are often better understood as assemblages of individuals acting opportunistically. The assumed relationship between biodiversity and stability does not always hold up to scientific scrutiny. Added to these are complicating human and cultural influences such as the role of Native Americans in shaping ecosystems, the European introduction of horses, and global climate change. In light of these factors, environmental ethics theorists must again consider the acceptability of the control and maintenance of nature for human benefit. Those who have been inspired by ecology generally, and Leopold in particular, struggle to revise their theories. Most of these revisions turn on protecting dynamic processes rather than fixed-states and on considering the relative magnitude of anthropogenic transformation. Modern human-caused ecological changes differ dramatically from natural-caused changes in terms of rates (for instance, of extinction or of climate change), scope, and scale.

Beginning in the late 1980s and following a direction initiated by deep ecology, environmental ethics, with its focus on elaborating moral duties to nature, was felt by many to be too constrictive to address the questions of humankind's place in nature or nature's place in the technological setting. Nature seems to count in ways that were neither exclusively exploitive nor independent of humans. Others find that environmental ethics too often stops short of cultural critique. For instance, criticism of the modern transformation of the Earth from a predominantly technological and cultural standpoint is considered to be an inappropriate subject for the journal Environmental Ethics. Third, concern with a new environmental ethic in a primary sense was denounced for diverting attention from developing sophisticated and effective anthropocentric positions. Whereas environmental ethics is popularly understood as being synonymous with environmental philosophy, philosophers often conceive of environmental philosophy an alternative field, distinguished by its philosophical broader concern regarding the human and cultural relationship with nature (Zimmerman et al. 2000).

Scope and Central Issues of Environmental Ethics

Human beings are expected to act morally, but no such expectation exists for animals and plants; ethics is limited traditionally to the sphere of moral agents, those capable of reciprocity of rights and duties. No one in environmental ethics argues that anything in nature is a moral agent and morally responsible. If human beings can overcome the problem of extending moral duties beyond moral agents, other issues become central for environmental ethics including: (a) What duties should constrain human actions on the part of other beings who can suffer or are subjects of a life, that is, sentient animals? and (b) Should sentient animals be ranked, for example, primates first, followed by squirrels, trout, and shrimp, depending on the degree to which an animal can be pained or the complexity of their psychological makeup? Human duties toward different kinds of animals may be clarified with advances in neuroscience and animal psychology.

However ranking animals according to these hierarchies may simply be an imposition of anthropocentric norms, that is selecting paradigmatically human characteristics as a basis for rank. What duties do humans have toward those who are alive, usually defined as nonsentient animals and plants? Do all living things possess biological needs, even when there are no psychological interests? If some duties obtain, how should these take into consideration the natural order where life feeds on life and might makes right, for instance?

Other issues also merit consideration. Can moral extensionism by analogy apply beyond individualistic accounts, beyond selves, to other parts of the natural world? Do humans have duties to microbes and to mere things such as rocks, rivers, landforms, and places? A final crucial issue to be considered by environmental ethics is whether humans have duties to species and ecosystems that are not only not alive and do not suffer, but are not individual beings at all?

Many environmental ethicists believe that humankind can answer these questions only when the question of whether nature possesses intrinsic value is answered (Light and Rolston 2002). Normally intrinsic value is distinguished from instrumental value. Instrumental value is use-value, that is, something is valued merely for its utility as a means to some other end beyond itself. Exploiting nature for its instrumental value is seen as the root cause of the ecological crisis. If nature is value-neutral, then humans can dispose of it anthropocentrically as they please. The only alternative to instrumental value, it may seem, is a kind of hands-off, nonrelational respect for nature. If nature matters intrinsically, independently of humans, then its value may prescribe moral consideration.

For instance, all life forms seek to avoid death and injury and to grow, repair, and reproduce themselves by using elements (including other life forms) of the environment instrumentally. These elements have instrumental value for the life-form. On the other hand, in order to generate instrumental value these life-forms must be centers of purpose—growth, maintenance, and reproduction. They must have sakes or intrinsic value which they pursue. Because the organism's intrinsic value and the instrumental values derived from the organism's pursuit of its own well-being exist whether or not there are humans, such values are independent of humans. For example, grizzlies have a stake in the use of pesticides to control army cutworms in the Midwest because scientific studies show that migrated cutworm moths constitute a significant portion of their diet.

Yet, it is argued, this cannot be a complete account of intrinsic value because the individual may not be a good kind, for example, a nonnative species such as spotted-knapweed in North America. Should the life of such a species be respected and allowed to be a good of its kind, or should humans seek to eliminate it? Good kinds need to be weighed in relation to a natural ecosystem. Can a species that uses the forces of evolution to improve itself have intrinsic value, even though it has no self? Having wolves cull elk herds will help the species by assuring that elk maintain a good gene pool that is better adapted; however, no individual elk welcomes these wolves. Are any species more valuable than others? By genetic standards alone, there is more biodiversity among the microbes in some Yellowstone Park hotpots than the rest of the larger life-forms of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Finally should the concept of intrinsic value be reserved for the products of the ecosystem and evolution and not the processes themselves, the source of these products?

Significant philosophical (and practical) problems as suggested occur here. How do humans adjust intrinsic values found in nature with people (Schmidtz and Willott 2002)? Second, can humans speak of intrinsic value apart from human minds? Environmental ethicists provide conflicting answers, ranging from conventional anthropocentric to nonanthropocentric value subjectivist versus value objectivist debates between Callicot and Rolston (Rolston 1993). Third, by focusing so much energy on the nonrelational, intrinsic value of the autonomy of natural things and of nature, environmental ethics tends to concentrate on nature disengaged from humans: particularly on wild nature and the independent natural order. Initial unease with the environment, however, is likely caused in part by the disruption of humanity's bonds of engagement with nature. Between the instrumental resource value of nature and the nonrelational intrinsic value of nature, between the misused and the unused, lies a third alternative: the well used and the well loved. Nature has correlational value for humans in the sense that nature's flourishing is bound up with human flourishing in a kind of correlational coexistence (Strong 1995, p. 70). Allowing consideration for nature to more strongly influence the design and maintenance of cities may make them more livable, enjoyable, and attractive.

Environmental Philosophy

Turning from environmental ethics to environmental philosophy, agreement about the limitations of conservation measures and analysis of nature solely in terms of its exploitive-value exists, but with an argument for broader reflection. Deep ecologists, for instance, call for metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, and cultural changes. What philosophers find most troubling—anthropocentrism, patriarchy, class struggle, placelessness, the technological project itself, and so on—colors the nature of the environmental philosophy.

Deep ecology has focused on anthropocentrism as the source of ecological problems. To overcome this, deep ecologists, such as Naess, advocate a new sense of self-realization (Fox 1995). Anthropocentric self-realization is atomistic, selfish behavior. From an ecological understanding of humankind as part of a larger whole, deep ecologists argue that human beings can reconceive of themselves as extending to that larger whole; reframed, human realization is tantamount to the realization of that larger whole, usually written as Self-realization in contrast to anthropocentric self-realization. From this perspective or reframing of human life, nature no longer seems like a resource to be used for a separate human good, but rather as its own good. Other ways of overcoming this anthropocentrism emphasize Naess's eight-point platform that includes a call for decreases in consumption. Yet to rail against consumerism and its destructiveness is not to understand its motivation and attraction. Without understanding those aspects (a topic for technology studies and ethics), can humans become genuinely liberated from it?

Stepping beyond strictly scientific accounts of ecosystems, humans historically and across cultures—for example, Greek, Chinese, and Incan temples—have understood profoundly, cared for, respected, revered, and celebrated the natural world. There is a good deal to learn from how some cultures prescribe the human relationship with nature, and for recent developments in environmental philosophy, such as bioregionalism, an understanding of cultures of place plays a central role their theories and practices (Abram 1996, Jamieson 2003, Snyder 2000). The intuitive and eclectic nature of deep ecology and bioregionalism, as well as their activist emphasis, has made these environmental philosophies especially popular.

Ecofeminism is another promising version of environmental philosophy. Common to different kinds of ecofeminism is the idea of, as Karen Warren puts it, the "twin domination of women and nature," and that both forms of domination ought to be overcome (Zimmerman et al. 2000, p. 325). Some ecofeminists distance themselves from other forms of environmental ethics by arguing that the latter are dominated by male voices and male-centrism, or androcentrism. Some ecofeminists, inspired by Carol Gilligan's work and postmodernism generally, criticize notions of abstraction and detachment, reason, and universality as pretentious and arrogant. They attempt to replace such concepts with an ethics of care, which is highly contextual, particular, and more focused on relationships than on formal rules and individuals (such as earlier philosophies that focused on animals and plants). For instance, ecofeminists have characterized the notion of Self-realization as a means of eradicating the differences between humans and the natural world rather than as an instrument that fosters recognition and acceptance of the differences of these others.

Val Plumwood in particular has shown that concerns about anthropocentrism can be addressed in the same ways concerns with androcentrism are dealt with by her, without giving up personal points of view, which she argues is impossible (Plumwood 1999). More specific analyses of anthropocentrism allow people to devise more alternatives to it. However arguments for an end to the domination of nature entirely are too general. One can criticize a limitless technological domination of nature without claiming that all human domination is unwarranted. Even though Warren rappels down a cliff as opposed to climbing and dominating it, she uses technological devices that lessen the risk involved and insure that the activity is performed safely. Whether humans use bicycles, public transportation, or SUVs to reach such cliffs, they use technology that dominates nature to some extent, albeit almost imperceptibly. What human beings must learn is to carefully limit technology and technological domination.

As with ecofeminist views of patriarchy, many social and political ecologists, inspired by socialist economic perspectives (and some inspired by the work Lewis Mumford), locate the source of human unease as social hierarchy, placing dominance of economic power at the root of social injustice and the ecological crisis. If social hierarchy does not end, humans cannot expect a substantive change in their relationship with nature.

Consideration of social issues opens environmental philosophy to social and philosophical theories of technology (and vice versa) in ways that remain largely undeveloped. The question concerns the earlier issue of how deeply human culture's fundamental orientation toward nature lies. Would a change of social hierarchy alone result in a sufficiently radical change of orientation or does society need to outgrow its current technological orientation, as is posited in the social theories of technology based on the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul? Locating the center of gravity with technology, these theories of technology call for prescriptions that differ with other social theories. To use technology in a different way may call for a sea change for nature and material culture.

A related political issue is environmental justice. Some argue that it would take the resources of at least two more Earths to bring all people on this planet up to the standard of the developed nations. The environmental cost of the transformation of the Earth is borne disproportionately, both within and outside of the United States, by the poor, minorities, and women. Moreover the cost of environmental legislation often falls disproportionately on these groups, giving rise to a charge of elitism against environmentalists. Finally, those in developed countries who take modern conveniences for granted often callously disregard the genuine hardships suffered by those in developing countries where such technological relief is unavailable or inadequate. The challenge for environmental philosophy is to meet moral concerns for social justice and nature. What conditions are required to put a life of excellence within everyone's reach?

A Consequential Environmental Ethic?

What are the practical achievements of environmental ethics? While environmental ethics is not simply applied ethics (a body of traditional normative ethical theories is not being applied to specific ethical issues as is often the case in medical or business ethics), it is important to apply traditional theories of interhuman ethics to environmental problems in a secondary sense. Arguably the most valuable contributions to policy decisions have been made in terms of risk assessment and related issues (Shrader-Frechette 2002). Animal rights and liberation theories indirectly influence legislation such as the laboratory care and use of animals. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics explicitly advances Leopold's land ethic in a quest for a new resource ethic; departments of natural resources, as they move toward ecosystem approaches of management, seem to be attentive to these discussions of Leopold and those philosophers influenced by him. More progressive hunting and fishing regulations sometimes mimic ecosystem processes by reducing the number of trophy animals harvested. Environmental philosophers have proven most effective publicly when they, like Rolston, listen and speak in intelligible ways to a broad spectrum of people including those in the fields of technical philosophy and science, activists, and ordinary people (Mitcham et al. 1999, Rolston 1993).

All major pieces of environmental legislation preceded the development of environmental ethics, and as yet there is no effective green party in the United States. In particular there is none inspired by philosophers. Environmental pragmatists criticize environmental ethics and environmental philosophy for missing opportunities to make significant contributions to policy because they are too impractical and dismissive of activism. In their view, environmental ethicists divert attention from actual environmental problems by being overly concerned with theoretical issues such as intrinsic value, whereas environmental philosophers do the same by concentrating on the impossible task of radical reform. Pragmatists urge philosophers to apply their unique abilities and resources to solving concrete environmental problems. Distinct problems, in their view, call for different approaches (ranging from the economic to the aesthetic); no single approach is the correct one. In fact, the same problem may require a solution that includes approaches from incompatible theoretical positions. Thus, as pluralists, they call for cooperation between environmental philosophers.

Although they would be wary of any absolutist tendencies, pragmatists also call for more cooperation between these philosophers and other kinds of, normally anthropocentric, reformist positions that have been developing simultaneously with the field. Some approaches are based on deeply held values, such as the difference between consumers and citizens, in conservative and liberal traditions in order to get people to change attitudes, behaviors, and polices toward nature. Others, such as environmental libertarianism, have developed free-market approaches to resolving environmental problems. This kind of thinking has been used to show that government subsidies to the forest service have been the impetus for much logging and road building that would not have otherwise occurred. More liberal economic approaches demonstrate that while the market is effective for resolving some environmental problems, it is limited with regard to ensuring environmental protection. Many of the market's shortcomings have to do with the limits of economic value, cost benefit analysis itself, or how ethically and scientifically sound solutions to environmental problems are ignored based on economic considerations (Sagoff 1984, Schmitz and Willott 2002). Alternatively green capitalism, in order to avoid ecological catastrophe, advocates government regulations and policies, such as "green taxes," that develop the economy in ecologically sustainable ways (Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins 1999, Thompson 1995).

Is an environmental ethic needed or is ecological prudence sufficient? Apart from meeting people's moral concerns with nature, many advocates argue that an environmental ethic is imperative in order to save the planet from catastrophe. Such pessimism invites detractors who contend that scientists and engineers are making progress with environmental problems and that some fears regarding the environment are unwarranted; moreover unfounded fear is cited as part of the problem (Baarschers 1996, Lomborg 2001, Simon 1995). Certainly informed debate, critical thinking, scientific literacy, and pragmatism are called for.

However even if some consensus were achieved and catastrophic outcomes could be ruled out safely, this debate is a diversion from a submerged but central environmental and ethical issue: Will a saved planet be worth living on? Those who would continue the technological project unimpeded except for refinements and adjustments are quite sanguine in their answer—often assuming that the indisputable early achievements of technology are analogous with later postmodern ones—whereas those concerned about survival are often covertly more concerned about the quality of human life. What level of environmental quality is correlatively important to the quality and excellence of human life? Where is nature's place in a technological setting? How tamed should nature be? Contemplating these questions requires the use of science, technology, ethics, and environmental ethics. These reflections will involve not only specialists, but also each and every person, in a public conversation that considers facts and fallacies, but ultimately ponders alternative visions of life. As Langdon Winner writes, "we can still ask, how are we living now as compared to how we want to live?" (Winner 1988, p. 163). Human beings need to reflect on whether to continue to seek prosperity and happiness entirely through affluence and goods provided by the technological project, or, alternatively, through a new engagement with, among other things that matter, the nonhuman world. In the former vision, the technological project is prudently modified to be environmentally sustainable and shared equally with all people, and nature is controlled as a mere resource and commodity. In the latter vision, nature plays a much greater role in a reformed technological setting.

Unreflective consensus threatens to subvert any substantive environmental ethic because most of the ethical claims of the natural world are overridden when they conflict with consumption as a way of life (Strong 1995). Quite often environmentalists and environmental academics want environmental protection and are attracted to affluence and full-scale technological development. Can both exist? Most people uneasily muddle ahead simply assuming they can. Humans need a vision that values the natural world and includes an understanding of why the planet is being transformed in the way that it is. Only then can people hope to attain some clarity with regard to the real environmental and social consequences of personal, collective, and material choices.

Environmental philosophers must remember the original environmental and cultural problems that caused them to reflect and measure their overall successes in terms of how far human culture has come in dispelling those concerns. In the early-twenty-first century, it is clear that the full autonomous, independent, and nonrelational character of nature has changed (McKibben 1989). Often in restoration work and matters concerning nature in urban settings, the questions are more clearly focused. Will nature be respected and celebrated as having dignity and a commanding presence, expressive of the larger natural and cultural world of particular places, and be correspondingly cared for in that way (will it have correlational rather than intrinsic value alone)? Or will nature be entirely demeaned as a mere resource for humans to control and modify for the convenience of consumption (Borgmann 1995; Higgs 2003)?

DAVID STRONG

SEE ALSO Acid Mine Drainage;Biodiversity;Carson, Rachel;Dams;Deforestation and Desertification;Ecology;Engineering Ethics;Environmental Ethics;Environmentalism;Environmental Justice;Environmental Regulatory Agencies;Environmental Rights;Global Climate Change;Mining;National Parks;Nongovernmental Organizations;Oil;Pollution;Rain Forest;Scandinavian and Nordic Perspectives;Sierra Club;Thoreau, Henry David;United Nations Environmental Program;Waste;Water.

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