Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions

Environmental ethics is a relatively new philosophical discipline that addresses the complex convergence of humans with the natural world and its nonhuman inhabitants. Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions presents a series of interdisciplinary readings that examine the moral dimensions of the delicate relationship between human beings and the environment. Carefully chosen selections drawn from philosophy, the social and life sciences, economics, history, legal studies, business, and literature are organized clearly around the history of anthropocentric (human–centered) and nonanthropocentric origins of environmental ethics. The readings serve as an investigation of the proper scope of moral considerations relating to the environment – one that includes humans, animals, living things, ecosystems, and the built environment. Other topics include political approaches to environmental ethics, the importance of ecological science, and contemporary public policy issues such as agriculture, sustainability, population, globalization, and injustice. Readers are also directed to an online archive of continually updated international case studies that serve to complement and explicate the theoretical discussions outlined in the text. Thought provoking and timely, Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions offers illuminating insights into an issue that is becoming more critical each year. To view a growing archive of environmental ethics case studies, please visit: http://environmentalethics.info/.