Contested Frameworks in Environmental Ethics Chapter uri icon

abstract

  • Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013. This chapter provides an overview of some key, and contrasting, ideas in environmental ethics for those unfamiliar with the field. It outlines the ways in which environmental ethicists have defended different positions concerning what matters ethically, from those that focus on human beings (including issues of environmental justice and justice between generations) to those who argue that nonhuman animals, living organisms, ecosystems and species have some kind of moral status. The chapter also considers different theoretical approaches to environmental ethics in terms of consequentialist, broadly deontological and virtue theories. Finally, three different interpretations of moral pluralism in environmental ethics are introduced: pluralism about values, pluralism about theories, and a pragmatic, methodological pluralism.

author list (cited authors)

  • Palmer, C.

citation count

  • 8

complete list of authors

  • Palmer, Clare

editor list (cited editors)

  • Rozzi, R., Pickett, S., Palmer, C., Armesto, J. J., & Callicott, J. B.

Book Title

  • Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World

publication date

  • January 2013