Love of nonhuman animals and nature is often presumed to have positive moral implications: if we love elks or forests, we will also better appreciate their moral value and treat them with more respect and care. This paper investigates perhaps the most common variety of love – here termed ‘the biological definition of love’ – as applied to other animals and nature. Introducing the notion of ‘the love paradox’, it suggests that biological love of other animals and nature can also (...) have deeply negative and anthropocentric moral consequences, due to the self-directedness and biases inherent to it. The need for more other-directed definitions of love is underlined. (shrink)

The growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted work on the ethical issues raised by AI technology. We argue that environmental ethicists can make important contributions to AI ethics, and that doing so would be a worthy activity for environmental ethicists. Environmental ethicists can highlight the environmental dimensions of AI, such as its energy footprint and its potential application for environmental protection. Additionally, environmental ethicists can assess the ethics of novel situations that could be enabled by AI, such as (...) computer-based artificial life and artificial ecosystems. (shrink)

The intended beneficiaries of the Norwegian Oil Fund are current and future generations of Norwegians, with the interests of current generations served through the expenditure of revenues on public services and the interests of future generations met by increasing the value of the fund. This formulation is reexamined in light of climate change and found to be narrow and incomplete and in tension with reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. I argue that a collective vision encompassing the (...) financial and non-financial interests of current and future generations is needed and highlight the role of greater public deliberation. (shrink)

A genetically modified variant of the critically endangered American chestnut (Castanea dentata) has been developed for use in restoring the species. This essay argues against such use, on the grounds that deploying the engineered tree potentially sets troubling industry and conservation precedents, operates on a paradigm of increased intervention rather than increased accommodation of other forms of life, and presents significant justice challenges in relation to Indigenous groups. In light of these problems, it is recommended that conservationists follow the approach (...) to chestnut restoration adopted by the Canadian Chestnut Council, which opposes the conservation application of genetically modified chestnut trees. (shrink)

This paper vindicates using the harm principle (HP) to justify restricting consumer’s access to meat products in light of the impact that it has on the development of antibiotic resistance (ABR). In particular, the study claims that, since an individual instance of consumption, or purchase of meat, meaningfully contributes to the development of ABR in farming environments, a state intervention limiting consumer freedom would be legitimate. The causal impact of individuals in greater-scale problems has long been debated and dismissed as (...) not relevant. The study analyzed two possible formulations of the inconsequentialist objection. While the first formulation, which maintains that individuals have no impact, can be rejected independently of the context of application, rejecting the second formulation, which maintains that this impact is insufficient to warrant applying HP, is more difficult. In order to successfully respond to this version of inconsequentialism, the paper vindicates the value of considering ABR and ABR-related harm within a more traditional expected utility arguments. (shrink)

Dan Shahar’s Why It’s OK to Eat Meat is an accessible and provocative defense of the claim that one can be morally justified in eating meat even when that meat has been produced via factory farming...

ABSTRACT2019 saw a wave of youth-led climate strikes that demanded states ‘listen to the science’. Some of these states are committed to protecting free speech through neutrality on climate change. That commitment inhibits informed democratic deliberation by remaining neutral between climate science and denial. In response, using the United States as our example, we argue that the state can and should use its expressive capacity to promote climate literacy and doing so does not violate free speech commitments. Public deliberation must (...) move on from whether climate change exists to the urgent question of how we should respond. (shrink)

With regard to any natural resource, we can ask whether we should obtain (more of) it. We may further hold that the answer to this question depends, at least in part, on whether there is a need in our society for the resource in question. In this paper, a framework is developed for evaluating the moral significance of arguments from need in natural resource debates. The main components of the framework are: a harm-based conception of morally significant needs; a transmission (...) principle holding between basic and derived needs; and a bulk of considerations regarding competing concerns. (shrink)

Barry and Cullity argue that when morally assessing a person’s climate actions, we should ask how these actions affect other people’s prospects, understood in terms of the actor’s episemic probabilities. In this comment we argue, first, that even though Barry and Cullity are right in that we should use a person’s epistemic probabilities when assessing her climate actions, it is not clear that their conclusion follows. The reason is that important questions remain about what should be the object of these (...) epistemic probabilities. Second, we argue that emitting and offsetting is morally analogous to drawing from one ‘harm’ bag and one ‘benefit’ bag even though one has the option of drawing from neither bag. (shrink)