Environmental Ethics in Antarctica 2002
Polar Record 2000

"Environmental Ethics in Antartica," Environmental Ethics 24, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 115-134. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/36769 http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics200224226

The concerns of environmental ethics on other continents fail in Antarctica, which is without sustainable development, or ecosystems for a "land ethic," or even familiar terrestrial fauna and flora. An Antarctic regime, developing politically, has been developing an ethics, underrunning the politics, remarkably exemplified in the Madrid Protocol, protecting "the intrinsic value of Antarctica." Without inhabitants, claims of sovereignty are problematic. Antarctica is a continent for scientists and, more recently, tourists. Both focus on wild nature. Life is driven to extremes; these extremes can intensify an ethic. Antarctica as common heritage transforms into wilderness, sanctuary, wonderland. An appropriate ethics for the seventh continent differs radically from that for the other six.

"Environmental Ethics on Antarctic Ice," Polar Record 36, no. 199 (October 2000): 289-290. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/37106

An environmental philosopher gets disoriented in Antarctica, an uninhabited continent, wilderness in deep freeze. Antarctica is peripheral to the main focus of environmental ethics, sustaining life on Earth. Yet Antarctica could set the pace for thinking about the common heritage of humankind. We must stay busy at work on the other six continents, but we ought to set this seventh continent aside. Don't nationalize it. Don't internationalize it. Naturalize it.