Environmental Ethics
—Bunnin, Tsui-James, Blackwell Companion to Philosophy 2003

"Environmental Ethics," in Bunnin, Nicholas and E.P. Tsui-James, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2nd ed., pages 517-530. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/37196

Environmental ethics is theory and practice about appropriate concern for, values in, and duties regarding the natural world. By classical accounts, ethics is people relating to people in justice and love. Environmental ethics starts with human concerns for a quality environment, and some think this shapes the ethic from start to finish. Others hold that, beyond interhuman concerns, values are at stake when humans relate to animals, plants, species, and ecosystems. According to their vision, humans ought to find nature sometimes morally considerable in itself, and this turns ethics in new directions.