Alternative proteins, including plant-based and cell-based meat and dairy analogues, are discursively positioned as a new form of meat and dairy and as a solution to the myriad of issues associated with conventional animal agriculture. Animal agricultural industries across various nations have resisted this positioning in regulatory spaces by advocating for laws that restrict the use of meat and dairy terms on the labels of alternative proteins products. Underlying this contestation are differing understandings of, and vested interests in, desirable futures (...) for animal agriculture. In Australia, this broader contestation led to a national-level inquiry by a Senate parliamentary committee entitled _Definitions of meat and other animal products_ (the Inquiry). This paper reports findings from a study of the problematizations developed through the Inquiry using a framework for policy discourse analysis referred to as Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ methodology. It shows how the dominant discourse throughout the Inquiry moved away from the initial problematization of alternative proteins as a threat to animal agriculture. Instead, both industries were ultimately positioned as not in competition and only labelling laws were problematized with the solution being amendments to ensure ‘consumer clarity’. This outcome ignored a range of alternative problematizations related to the ethical, environmental, health, social and economic issues raised by animal agriculture and by alternative proteins. This lack of scrutiny benefits both industries, by closing off the policy discourse to consideration of a range of alternative interests, voices, and potential solutions, such as stricter health and welfare regulation. (shrink)

Alternative food movements work to create more environmentally and economically sustainable food systems, but vary widely in their advocacy for social, racial and environmental justice. However, even those food justice activists explicitly dedicated to equity must respond to the unintended consequences of their work. This paper analyzes the work of activists in Oakland, CA, who have increasingly realized that their gardens, health food stores and farm-to-table restaurants play a role in what scholars have called green gentrification, the upscaling of (...) neighborhoods through the creation of environmental amenities. Gentrification has had grave consequences for the low-income communities of color that food justice activists seek to serve. Activists are reflexive about this dynamic, and have developed strategies to push back against displacement. Most commonly, non-profit organizations and individual social entrepreneurs found businesses that seek to raise the profile of people of color in the trendy Oakland food scene while employing long-term residents in well-paying, green jobs. However, while these efforts are an essential component of a broader agenda to create both food justice and development without displacement, even these relatively high paying “good food jobs” cannot keep up with escalating rents. For this reason, we also highlight the direct action and policy-oriented strategies engaged by a smaller number of food justice activists, and argue that these are necessary compliments to a market-based approach. (shrink)

This research examines the possibility of developing a new corporate social responsibility (CSR) auditing system based on the analysis of current CSR literature and interviews conducted with a number of interested and knowledgeable stakeholders. This work attempts to create a framework for social responsibility auditing compatible with an existing commercially successful environmental audit system. The project is unusual in that it tackles the complex issue of CSR auditing with a scientific approach using Grounded Theory. On the evidence discovered to (...) date in the literature review and the interviews, CSR seems to be perceived by many as the social strand of sustainable development. However, there is far less agreement regarding its measurement. Both the literature review and the interview analysis indicate that developing an applied CSR auditing procedure will be a challenging task. This is principally due to the lack of formal study of this complex subject, which, despite the widespread debate it has engendered, still lacks a single and broadly accepted definition. The concepts developed from the findings of this research, together with the key factors identified in a literature review of CSR, were developed into a prospective CSR audit protocol. (shrink)

Advocates of environmental sustainability and social justice increasingly pursue their goals through the promotion of so-called “green” products such as locally grown organic produce. While many scholars support this strategy, others criticize it harshly, arguing that environmental degradation and social injustice are inherent results of capitalism and that positive social change must be achieved through collective action. This study draws upon 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork at two farmers markets located in demographically different parts of the San Francisco (...) Bay Area to examine how market managers, vendors, and regular customers negotiate tensions between their economic strategies and environmental sustainability and social justice goals. Managers, vendors, and customers emphasize the ethical rather than financial motivations of their markets through comparisons to capitalist, industrial agriculture and through attention to perceived economic sacrifices made by market vendors. They also portray economic strategies as a pragmatic choice, pointing to failed efforts to achieve justice and sustainability through policy change as well as difficulties funding and sustaining non-profit organizations. While market managers, vendors, and customers deny any difficulties pursuing justice and sustainability through local economics, the need for vendors to sustain their livelihoods does sometimes interfere with their social justice goals. This has consequences for the function of each market. (shrink)

Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa (...) Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. Ecological philosophy requires a significant orientation to the role of hope in both theory and practice. I trace the limited presence of hope in ecological philosophy, and outline reasons why environmental hopelessness is a threat. I articulate and problematize recent environmental publications on the topic of hope, the most important worry being that current literature fails to provide the necessary psychological grounding for hopeful action. I turn to the psychology of hope to provide (...) direction for conceptualizing hope and actualizing hoped for states of affairs. If positive moral action is the goal, hope is a vital concept for underwriting ecological philosophy and a practice requiring considerably more attention. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists often hold that organisms, species, ecosystems, and the like have goods of their own. But, even given that such goods exist, whether we ought to value them is controversial. Hence an environmental philosophy needs, in addition to an account of what sorts of values there are, an explanation what, how and why we morally ought to value—that is, an account of moral valuing. This paper presents one such an account. Specifically, I aim to show that unless (...) there are eternal goods (and maybe even if there are), we have a duty of self-transcendence toward nature—that is, a duty to value nature's goods as ends. This duty is owed, however, not to nature, but to ourselves. It is grounded in what I call an imperative of hope. The argument, in a nutshell, is that we have a duty to ourselves to (in a certain sense) optimize hope. This optimization requires self-transcendence toward entities whose goods are more diverse and enduring than any human goods. But unless there are eternal goods, such goods occur only in nature. (shrink)

(2013). Hope and Fear: The Theological Side of Framing Environmental Change. Ethics, Policy & Environment: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 152-155. doi: 10.1080/21550085.2013.801187.

White, Robert; Moo, Jonathan In an age when many have begun to consider widespread environmental collapse inevitable, the certain hope held out in the Christian gospel rules out both complacency and despair. Scripture's vision of a future for all of creation that is secure in Christ and given by God's grace challenges Christians to a radical environmental ethos that is marked by wisdom, self-sacrifice, perseverance, love and joy.

In this article we argue that sustainable development is not a socio-ecologically friendly principle. The principle, which is deeply embedded in environmental law, policymaking and governance, drives environmentally destructive neoliberal economic growth that exploits and degrades the vulnerable living order. Despite seemingly well-meaning intentions behind the emergence of sustainable development, it almost invariably facilitates exploitative economic development activities that exacerbate systemic inequalities and injustices without noticeably protecting all life forms in the Anthropocene. We conclude the article by examining an (...) attempt to construct alternatives to sustainable development through the indigenous onto-epistemology of buen vivir. While no panacea, buen vivir is a worldview that offers the potential to critically rethink how environmental law could re-orientate away from its ‘centered’, gendered and anthropocentric, neoliberal sustainable development ontology, to a radically different ontology that embraces ecologically sustainable ways of seeing, being, knowing and caring. (shrink)

In much environmentally concerned literature, there is a burgeoning concern for the status and sustainability of human hope. Within Christian circles, this attention has often taken the form of eschatological reflection. While there is important warrant for attention to eschatology in Christian examinations of hope, I claim that to move so quickly from hope to eschatology is to confuse a species of Christian hope for a definition of hope itself; as such, it is important for (...) theological ethicists to examine hope also from the experiential perspective of the human hoper. In particular, this is important today given the shortcomings of an eschatological focus in addressing anxieties arising due to the environmental crisis. Through examining hope as a fallible human activity, one can come to better understand hope's importance to human life, its profound ambiguity, and the potential threat that the environmental crisis poses to it. (shrink)

This paper presents a moral–emotional critique of environmental restoration, through discussion of narratives of redemption. The importance of ‘redemption’ vis-à-vis other environmental discourses rests with its capacity to unpack how, why and in what circumstances the idea of ‘putting something back’ for nature exerts a hold on the popular imagination. This paper thus examines the ethical and emotional experiences bound up in restoration discourses, to identify the motives deployed to confront shame and an associated guilt, and achieve restitution. (...) In turn, the paper also offers new insights into the value of restored nature. (shrink)

John Nolt’s “Hope, Self-Transcendence, and Environmental Ethics” is a unique attempt to defend a partial biocentrism – the view that we should regard a significant portion of non-sentient life (as well as sentient life) as having direct moral standing. After defending a general duty to optimize human hope, Nolt argues that this duty requires us to become self-transcendent toward living things in nature. Self-transcendence refers to an intentional state of valuing the good of some object other than (...) yourself as an end. Thus, though Nolt begins from an anthropocentric starting point, his argument reaches a conclusion that biocentrists should find palatable (though some may feel it does not go far enough, since it does not grant direct moral standing to all life). Although Nolt’s argument is novel and thought-provoking, I contend that it is nevertheless unsuccessful because it cannot overcome three significant difficulties. First, it is not clear that self-transcendence toward living things in nature would actually optimize hope. Second, the general duty to optimize hope does not entail an individual duty to seek self-transcendence toward living things in nature. Third, the value of the hope attained by achieving self-transcendence toward non-sentient life seems astronomically minute compared to the hope attained by achieving self-transcendence toward sentient life and especially toward human life. In light of these difficulties, I conclude the essay by arguing that self-transcendence is best directed only toward sentient living things. (shrink)

Environmental changes can bear upon the environmental virtues, having effects not only on the conditions of their application but also altering the concepts themselves. I argue that impending radical changes in global climate will likely precipitate significant changes in the dominate world culture of consumerism and then consider how these changes could alter the moral landscape, particularly culturally thick conceptions of the environmental virtues. According to Jonathan Lear, as the last principal chief of the Crow Nation, Plenty (...) Coups exhibited the virtue of “radical hope,” a novel form of courage appropriate to a culture in crisis. I explore what radical hope may look like today, arguing how it should broadly affect our environmental character and that a framework for future environmental virtues will involve a diminished place for valuing naturalness as autonomy from human interference. (shrink)

"A climate crisis and other pressures on planetary ecology are causing profound anxieties. Climate change threatens to trap hundreds of millions of people in dire poverty and to separate further an already deeply divided world. However, a new generation of activists is offering inspiration, serving as a hope-maker. This book offers an accessible and empirically informed philosophical discussion of climate change, global poverty, justice, and the importance of political responses, both internationally and domestically, that offer hope. There are (...) reasons enough to worry that the era of pervasive human planetary impact, the Anthropocene, could produce terrible global injustices and massive environmental destruction. But that need not be so. Since the Industrial Revolution growth in productive capacity and the egalitarian struggles to share its benefits widely have made another world possible. We still have reason to hope for a world in which international cooperation to manage Earth systems sustainably prevails, in which the natural treasures of the Earth are valued, in which a vision of prosperity is realized and the scourges of disease, ignorance, and poverty are overcome, in which powerful lobbies defending private interests that threaten sustainability are minimized and contained, and in which democratic politics responding to the values of an educated public prevail. The work of bringing about such a world is the work of mobilizing hope"--. (shrink)

The urgency of climate change has never been greater, nor the moral case for responding to it more compelling. This review essay critically compares Darrel Moellendorf's Mobilizing Hope and Catriona McKinnon's Climate Change and Political Theory. Moellendorf's book defends the moral importance of poverty alleviation through sustainable economic growth and argues for a mass climate movement based on the promise of a more prosperous future. By contrast, McKinnon provides a political vocabulary to articulate the many faces of climate injustice, (...) and to critically examine proposed policy solutions—notably including the indefinite pursuit of economic growth. While both find reasons to be hopeful, their wide-ranging accounts reflect different visions of what a just and sustainable future might look like. They reflect different understandings of sustainable development and the significance of environmental values; the scope of permissible climate activism; and the ethics of geoengineering. Building upon them, I argue in favor of a more pluralistic vision of a just climate future, one that is capable of speaking to the range of moral interests bearing upon the climate and biodiversity crises, and that supports sustainable development that is inclusive of diverse human-nature relationships. (shrink)

While an environmental ethic is not explicitly developed in A Theory of Justice, or Political Liberalism, it is possible to extrapolate some principles dealing with non-human nature, and thereby some environmental protections, with what Rawls provides. However, his inability to provide a non-anthropocentric environmental ethic might threaten the stability of a 'well-ordered' society, and this possibility gestures to the potential 'problem' of pluralism in general. Certain environmentalists will be dissatisfied with the status of their environmental values (...) in a Rawlsian society. If the group is 'unreasonable', then while they are not technically threats to 'stability' (in that they are not part of the 'overlapping consensus' to begin with), they might instead be threats to the well-orderedness of the society. If the group is 'reasonable', Rawls must hope that they will also agree with enough of the political conception of justice, and be swayed by appeals to reasonableness, that they will join in the overlapping consensus despite their environmental concerns. There appear to be reasons to believe that, at least given a well-ordered society, this will often be the case. (shrink)

This paper examines expressed hopelessness among environmental activists in Extinction Rebellion. While activists claim that they have lost all hope for a future without global warming and species extinction, through despair emerges a new hope for saving what can still be saved—a hope for what is left. This radical hope, emerging from despair, may make Extinction Rebellion even more effective. Drawing from personal interviews with 25 Extinction Rebellion activists in the United Kingdom and the published (...) work of other Extinction Rebellion activists, this paper identifies signs of radical hope. While activists have cast off false hope and passive hope, a new hope for what is still possible remains. This hope is based on virtue ethics: doing what is right in the moment, rather than being attached to a desired outcome. This drives forward activism despite the results. Through their principle of regenerative culture, Extinction Rebellion activists learn to support each other and be prepared for a more turbulent and challenging future. Through a regenerative culture they can salvage and repair what is left and sustain radical hope. (shrink)

China has achieved economic prominence but damaged the natural environment. Can religions excite pro-environmental actions? Chinese religion encompasses Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, native Taoism, and indigenous folk beliefs (GuanDi and Mazu). We theorize that believers demonstrate more sustainable HOPE (Help Ourselves Protect the Environment) than non-believers. Religions with standardized and formal liturgy show more pro-environmental HOPE than those without it. We challenge the myth that the believers of Christianity and Islam display more sustainable HOPE than other (...) faith. The 2013 Chinese General Social Survey (involving 10,017 randomly selected participants across 28 provinces) revealed that 11.10% of them have faith. Believers display higher levels of HOPE than atheists, demonstrating the __religion__ effect. Among believers, native Taoism and Buddhism exhibit more ecological HOPE than other religions, supporting the __dogma__ effect in the Chinese culture. Religions with formalized liturgy demonstrate more pro-environmental HOPE than generalized folk beliefs—GuanDi and Mazu, validating the __liturgy__ effect. Females, married, and people with good income, education, health, and country-domicile—the haves—exhibit robust ecological HOPE. The rich get richer and greener. However, those who are older, males, urban residents, and the Han majority do not. We empirically demonstrate the Matthew Effect in Religious Social Responsibility: Religious faith facilitates believers’ pro-environmental behaviors—HOPE and ethical behaviors in China. (shrink)

This volume brings together essays written at the cutting edge of an emerging sub-field of environmental philosophy, relating to the nature and role of hope.

One problem faced in discussions of the evolution of intelligence is the need to get a precise fix on what is to be explained. Terms like "intelligence," "cognition" and "mind" do not have simple and agreed-upon meanings, and the differences between conceptions of intelligence have consequences for evolutionary explanation. I hope the papers in this volume will enable us to make progress on this problem. The present contribution is mostly focused on these basic and foundational issues, although the last (...) section of the paper will look at some specific models and programs of empirical work. (shrink)

Economic growth and development remain embedded in the very core of our current international economic system and the so called “material economy”. However, depleting natural resources and environmental degradation, which now threaten the well-being of future generations, has challenged this premise, and placed sustainable development as a necessary objective of business activity and expansion. Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) have emerged as a key tool for governments, businesses, and NGOs to manage the negative impact of their activities on the (...) environment. Businesses in particular play a key role in averting or mitigating current environmental trends given that the economic growth they have stimulated has serious consequences for both the environment and social well-being. However, research on the use of EIAs has been conducted mostly from a governmental perspective producing a clear gap between research development and business (corporate) practice. To bridge this gap in knowledge, we develop a new EIA process tailored to real world business constraints and provide a range of propositions which we hope will stimulate future research efforts toward understanding and guiding how businesses integrate environmental issues into their decision-making processes. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an insurgence of corporations that bioprospect in Third World countries (going into these areas in hopes of utilizing traditional knowledge about local natural resources so as to eventually develop a synthetic alternative that they can then market). Although this type of bioprospecting does not encounter the problem of depleting environmental resources, other problems arise. Two primary problems are: (1) determining who has legal ownership of these resources, and (2) who should share in the profits that (...) were derived, in part, from these resources. Despite the attention that these problems have received, there has been little attention focused on the issue that I believe underlies these problems -- the differing views of nature between corporations (who consider nature to be an individually owned resource) and Third World communities (many of whom consider nature to be a communally owned resource). In this paper, I present what I believe is an additional useful tool for policy makers in resolving the current problems regarding bioprospecting in Third World countries. The tool I have in mind is a set of method components that can be used as guidelines as well as a test for inclusiveness. To arrive at these components, I will look to James D. Proctor's methodological proposal for resolving conflicts between those with differing views of nature. Because he presents this methodology in a limited context (as a means of resolving the Ancient Forest debate), I will clarify and expand his methodology so as to arrive at a set of methods that I believe can be helpful in arriving at a fair global policy regarding bioprospecting in Third World countries. (shrink)

In playfully pessimistic and thought-provoking essays, author Andrew McMurry explores a vital but fundamentally perverse human practice: destroying our planet while imagining we are not. How are humans able to do this? Entertaining Futility: Despair and Hope in the Time of Climate Change investigates the discourses of hope, progress, and optimism in the era of climate change, concepts that, McMurry argues, are polite names for blind faith, greed, and wishful thinking. The itemized list of humanity’s arrogance can quickly (...) lead to despair, so McMurry compensates by presenting the news in a darkly comic and irreverent style. McMurry believes human culture relies on a full suite of rhetorical tricks to distract us from our own demise. He investigates the role language, discourse, media, and technology play in shaping perceptions and misperceptions of our complex environmental crises. Writing in a mode that freely mixes the scholarly, fictive, poetic, and personal, McMurry draws on philosophy, history, ecology, film, science fiction, and pop culture to raise questions that are difficult to face, let alone answer. In the author’s words, “our age is utterly paralyzing unless you can crack jokes about it.” Entertaining Futility offers no easy solutions to today’s environmental calamities and, in fact, claims that perhaps the continual proposing of solutions is part of the problem. Instead, McMurry encourages readers to examine their own deeply held beliefs about the environment and the future and to look more closely at where those beliefs originate. By pulling back the curtain, he reveals the rhetorical and cultural ruses that distract us from the reality of our environmental crises. (shrink)

Environmental landscaping is known to build, plan, and manage landscapes that consider the ecology of a site and produce gardens that benefit both people and the rest of the ecosystem. Landscaping and the environment are combined in landscape design planning to provide holistic answers to complex issues. Seeding native species and eradicating alien species are just a few ways humans influence the region’s ecosystem. Landscape architecture is the design of landscapes, urban areas, or gardens and their modification. It comprises (...) the construction of urban and rural landscapes via coordinating the creation and management of open spaces and economics, finding a job, and working within a confined project budget. There was a lot of discussion about global warming and water shortages. There is a lot of hope to be found even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. AI is becoming more significant in many urban landscape planning and design elements with the advent of web 4.0 and Human-Centred computing. It created a virtual reality-based landscape to create deep neural networks (DNNs) to make deep learning (DL) more user-friendly and efficient. Users may only manipulate physical items in this environment to manually construct neural networks. These setups are automatically converted into a model, and the real-time testing set is reported and aware of the DNN models that users are producing. This research presents a novel strategy for combining DL-DNN with landscape architecture, providing a long-term solution to the problem of environmental pollution. Carbon dioxide levels are constantly checked when green plants are in and around the house. Plants, on either hand, remove toxins from the air, making it easier to maintain a healthy environment. Human-centered Artificial Intelligence-based web 4.0 may be used to assess and evaluate the data model. The study findings can be sent back into the design process for further modification and optimization. (shrink)

It might seem strange to connect the word hope with the world's oceans. No honest person can deny that the oceans face multiple crises: overfishing, dying coral reefs, acidification, industrial and agricultural pollution, vast rafts of garbage. The oceans bear witness to humanity's worst tendencies. It is therefore a bold effort that seeks to find hope in this litany of despair.In Hope at Sea Teresa Shewry seeks signs of hope in various literary works from around the (...) Pacific region. This book has many attractions. For the nonspecialist Shewry provides a useful introduction to the environmental/cultural discourse of a region that is often forgotten. She provides a good overview of recent literature dealing with the... (shrink)

Is ecological anxiety—sometimes called eco-anxiety—just a paralyzing affect, or can it lead to an ethical and political commitment? At first glance, it seems that this anxiety implies, by definition, a lack of knowledge, and must therefore be overcome in order to live better and be able to act again. However, I wish to argue in this article that ecological anxiety, when it is a fear for the future, is not a pathology to be rid of, but a valuable awareness. Indeed, (...) in a period of social and environmental disasters on a global scale, this affect is above all indicative of a concern for the world. The question that then arises is that of the effectiveness of practical wisdom, in the sense of Aristotelian φρόνησις [phronesis], in deliberating on issues as complex as global warming. However, it seems necessary, to overcome the paralysing anxiety, to return to the sources of a collective practical wisdom that could enable citizens to reappropriate issues that concern them directly. (shrink)

Joining the dialogue on the relationship between the law and business ethics, Jeffrey Nesteruk and Eric W. Orts have offeredconceptions of the law as a positive influence rather than a negative curb on corporate behavior. While these “legal optimists” pursue anoble end in promoting higher ethical standards for corporations through the law, they may be overly optimistic in their suggestion that these more skillfully wielded legal models will influence corporate behavior for the better. Reviewing the basic tenets of their two (...) approaches, this paper uses corporate responses to environmental statutes to suggest that while legal optimism may offer hope for promoting corporate ethics, it has definite limitations in its current stage of development. (shrink)

Joining the dialogue on the relationship between the law and business ethics, Jeffrey Nesteruk and Eric W. Orts have offeredconceptions of the law as a positive influence rather than a negative curb on corporate behavior. While these “legal optimists” pursue anoble end in promoting higher ethical standards for corporations through the law, they may be overly optimistic in their suggestion that these more skillfully wielded legal models will influence corporate behavior for the better. Reviewing the basic tenets of their two (...) approaches, this paper uses corporate responses to environmental statutes to suggest that while legal optimism may offer hope for promoting corporate ethics, it has definite limitations in its current stage of development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Environmental Genome Project and BioethicsRichard R. Sharp (bio) and J. Carl Barrett (bio)Eight years ago, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal published a brief selection by Eric Juengst (1991) entitled “The Human Genome Project and Bioethics.” That essay introduced and described the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Program at the National Center for Human Genome Research. 1 Since that time, the ELSI program has grown to (...) become one of the largest and most well regarded bioethics programs in the country, sponsoring the work of hundreds of researchers and coordinating bioethics activities both nationally and internationally (Marshall 1996; Meslin, Thomson, and Boyer 1997). In 1991, however, Juengst, the first director of the ELSI program, had no way of anticipating these developments. Juengst’s goal in his essay was simply to highlight some of the moral and social issues that were emerging as focal points for the ELSI program. Looking back, the issues he outlined may seem vague and overly broad. At the time, however, the essay served an important purpose, to identify areas requiring additional study and thereby to serve as a guide to others interested in joining in these discussions.In many ways, Juengst’s article serves as an inspiration to those of us working on a new bioethics project. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) recently launched a multi-year project aimed at better understanding genetic influences on environmentally associated diseases (Albers 1997; Brown and Hartwell 1998; Cannon 1997; Kaiser 1997). This project, known as the Environmental Genome Project (EGP), plans to identify and study a number of common genetic variants that may play an important role in determining how individuals respond to environmental exposures. NIEHS hopes that the information learned through the EGP will be instrumental in developing more effective disease-prevention strategies and intervention programs. Following the precedent developed in connection with the Human Genome Project, NIEHS also plans to address the moral and social implications of the EGP. Efforts in this regard include sponsoring workshops and conferences to address such issues, as well as supporting research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the EGP. Through this work, NIEHS hopes to anticipate potential problems before [End Page 175] they arise and to develop policies that maximize the benefits of the research while avoiding potential misuses of the information learned.In exploring the social implications of the EGP, we at NIEHS are very fortunate to be able to draw upon the work being done by the ELSI program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), as well as the ever-expanding bioethics literature that has been sparked by the ELSI program. Still, there is much to be done and this is an exciting time for those of us involved with the EGP. Many of the ethical, legal, and social implications of the project are only beginning to become clearer, and several of these issues appear quite different from the sorts of concerns that have previously been discussed in connection with other types of genetic research.This essay highlights some of the ethical, legal, and social implications that are emerging as important focal points for the Environmental Genome Project. Like Juengst’s 1991 paper, the goal of this article is to provide an overview of current areas of interest and to encourage others to join us in thinking about these difficult issues.The Environmental Genome ProjectIndividuals differ greatly in their responses to chemicals, drugs, radiation, smoking, alcohol, and other environmental exposures. These differential responses are the result of complex interactions between many factors, including an individual’s genetic make-up, age, sex, nutritional status, and overall health. The EGP aims to better understand the genetic basis of differential responses to environmental exposures. The vast majority of diseases, many forms of cancer, for example, are the consequence of both environmental and genetic contributions (Perera 1997). Hence, understanding the relationships between genetic variation and response to environmental exposure is important for understanding the causes of human disease and is crucial for the development of effective disease-prevention strategies.The EGP and projects like it represent a new stage of genomic research. It is expected that the Human Genome Project will complete... (shrink)

In this commentary on Darrel Moellendorf’s Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change & Global Poverty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), I discuss his use of the precautionary principle, whether his hope for climate-friendly ‘green growth’ is realistic given the tendency for inequality to accelerate as it gets higher, and what I call his assumption of a liberal baseline. That is, I worry that the audience to whom the book is addressed are those who already accept the environmental and economic (...) values to which Moellendorf appeals, while those who are blocking effective action on climate change in fact reject those values and are therefore unlikely to be moved by the arguments the book presents. (shrink)

This Second Edition of A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth offers clear, powerful, and often moving thoughts from Holmes Rolston III, one of the first and most respected philosophers to write on the environment and often called the "father of environmental ethics." Rolston surveys the full spectrum of approaches in the field of environmental ethics and offers critical assessments of contemporary academic accounts. He draws on a lifetime of research and experience to (...) suggest an outlook, and even hope, for the future. This forward-looking analysis, focused on the new millennium, will be a necessary complement to any balanced textbook or anthology in environmental ethics. The First Edition guaranteed "to put you in your place." Beyond that, the Second Edition, asks whether you want to live a "de-natured life on a de-natured planet." Key Updates in the Second Edition - Covers the worsening environmental situation due to actions of the Trump administration, including withdrawal from the Paris accord and from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change - Includes information on legislation in key U.S. states aimed to ameliorate the damage done at the Federal level - Increases coverage of group knowledge, group agreement and disagreement, and group action in collective environmental ethics, as distinguished from individual knowledge and action - Examines the deleterious effects of online consumer behavior - Explains how a loss of solidarity among a nation's citizens and even a larger solidary among humanity leads to environmental degradation - Offers new analysis of the effects of epistemic bubbles, echo chambers, and fake news on the behavior of voters and consumers - Provides an extended critique of the Anthropocene Epoch, and the prospect of geo-engineering Earth to become a synthetic environment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Environmental Midwifery and the Need for an Ethics of the Transition:A Quick Riff on the Future of Environmental EthicsStephen M. Gardiner (bio)It is worth remembering that in many ways environmental ethics is a very successful field. Over the course of only thirty or forty years, we have reached a point at which almost every significant philosophy program in the country offers a course in environmental (...) ethics, there are several established and well respected journals, and the subject is regarded as one of the core areas of "applied ethics." This is quite an achievement; and one that is easy to forget. (When I listen to the complaints of environmental colleagues in other disciplines, or of philosophers working in many areas of applied ethics, I am vividly reminded.)Still, there is a sense that the job is only half done. For one thing, although environmental ethics classes are ubiquitous, they are usually undergraduate survey courses taught by nonspecialists. For another, although good work appears in the specialist journals, it rarely makes it into the "mainstream" journals that most philosophers read. Finally, although environmental ethics counts as one of three or four core areas of applied ethics, environmental philosophers are rarely hired by (so-called) top departments (and if they are, it is often not because they are environmental philosophers, but because of the other things they do).Now, many questions arise about this situation. One of them, of course, is whether there is some kind of "glass ceiling" on environmental ethics, and if there is, what causes it? Another is whether the core problem [End Page 122] is that we're just not all that good at environmental ethics (yet)? These are reasonable worries (about which my own views would be rather sanguine). But I am more concerned about another issue, which one might call that of "interfacing".The claim that environmental ethics has some problems in interacting with philosophy more generally, with allied disciplines, and with the wider public has been widely discussed in recent years, especially in the emergence of what has come to be called "environmental pragmatism." There is something important about this debate, but my own sense is that it can become overblown. For example, when I teach my undergraduate survey course, mainly to nonphilosophers, they are, if anything, more excited about the Land Ethic, Biocentric Egalitarianism, and the worth of species than about climate change and sustainability. Still, there is something going on. However sympathetic they are to philosophy, I have the sense that my students (as well as my colleagues in other disciplines and the wider public) are dissatisfied. Having heard the critiques and the first set of grand visions, the new challenges and their problems, they want more. Irritatingly, they want to know what to do now—either how to turn grand visions into actions, or (more usually) how to successfully muddle through in the absence of a compelling grand vision. In short, they want an ethics for the transition.For what it is worth, my sense is that the main task of an ethics for the transition lies somewhere between grand theory and pragmatism. What people are hoping for is a way to transform serious environmental concern into social change. But they want this transformation to be responsive to, reflective of, and integrated with wider values. Sensing that modern life has significant vices, but also major virtues, they wish to see environmental ethics synthesize their concerns in new and creative ways. In short, like a Socratic midwife, they want environmental philosophy to help them to articulate the way forward.I'm sympathetic to the need for an ethics for the transition. I also think that taking on the task of articulating such an ethic may help the field to break through some of the institutional constraints now restricting it. But mainly it just seems to be a worthy topic in its own right. Environmental ethics should try to become an ethics for living now. In the nicest sense of the phrase, it should seek to "grow up."Stephen M. Gardiner Stephen M. Gardiner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society at the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 10.2 (2005) 5-27 [Access article in PDF] Environmental Epistemology Mark Rowlands 1. Externalism and Environmentalism There is a view of the mind that began life as a controversial philosophical thesis, and then, much like an aging rock group, evolved into respectability. Indeed, it became common sense. According to this view, minds are to be assimilated to the category of substance. That is, minds are (...) objects that possess properties. Indeed, minds can, to some extent, be conceived of as relatively similar to other bodily organs. Just as the heart circulates blood, the kidneys process waste, the mind thinks. According to the official version of this view, the major difference between the mind and these other organs is that the mind is a nonphysical substance. The brain and mind are, thus, distinct entities; the former a physical organ operating exclusively on mechanical principles, the latter a nonphysical organ operating according to principles of reason. The philosophical thesis from which this view was born was spelled out by Descartes, and its association with him is sufficiently robust for it to be called the Cartesian conception.The Cartesian conception has famously been ridiculed as the myth of the ghost in the machine. And it has been Descartes' decision to make the mind ghostly (i.e., nonphysical) that has drawn the principal fire from dissenters. The dissenters' case here has been largely successful, and, today, [End Page 5] not many would describe themselves as Cartesians in this sense. Ryle's expression, however, has another facet. Not only is the mind a ghost, but it is one that is in a machine. And while the revolt against ghostly views of the mind has been overwhelmingly successful, criticism of this second aspect of Descartes' view has, until recently, been comparatively muted. This changed with the development of a view that came to be known as externalism.The term 'externalism' in the philosophy of mind typically denotes a family of views, deriving from the work of Hilary Putnam (1975), Tyler Burge (1979, 1986), and certain work on indexicals associated, principally, with David Kaplan (1980), and all united by the idea that mental states, in some sense, are not in the head. Specifying the content of the clause in some sense, however, is no easy matter. Species and sub-species of externalism abound. Forms of externalism that assert the external location of mental states are contrasted with those that assert merely their external individuation (see, for example, McDowell 1986 and McGinn 1989 versus Macdonald 1990) Forms of externalism that admit a conceptually separable internally constituted component of mental states are contrasted with those that deny such a component. Weak externalism is commonly contrasted with strong, and one would look in vain for any unified construal of these qualifiers (contrast, for example, Forbes 1987, McGinn 1989, and Macdonald 1990).Nevertheless, for the purposes of this paper, externalism in all its forms, possesses two essential theses, one concerning the nature of the states to which the externalist thesis applies, and the other concerning the properties of those states in virtue of which it applies. The first thesis is that externalism applies only to the so-called propositional attitudes. It applies to beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, expectations, anticipations, and the like, all of which are (i) attributed to a subject by way of a that-clause, and (ii) are individuated, in part, by way of the proposition that follows this clause. The second thesis is that the externalist claim applies to such states because they possess semantic content; because they are individuated by way of the proposition that follows the that-clause.This means that the scope of externalism is severely restricted: it applies only to that relatively small group of mental states that have their contents essentially (i.e., propositional attitudes and possibly experiences—on some views of experience). What we might regard as the nuts [End Page 6] and bolts of cognition, processes, such as perceiving, remembering, thinking, reasoning, whereby we arrive at, or come to have, propositional attitudes, these are left outside the scope of externalism. That is, externalism as it is commonly understood, is... (shrink)

Neosentimentalism provides environmental ethics with a theory of value that might be particularly useful for solving many of the problems that have plagued the field since its early days. In particular, a neosentimentalist understanding of value offers us hope for making sense of (1) what intrinsic value might be and how we could know whether parts of the natural world have it; (2) the extent to which value is an essentially anthropocentric concept; and (3) how our understanding of (...) value could be compatible with both a respectable naturalism and a robust normativity. (shrink)

Prescient essays about the state of our politics from the philosopher who predicted that a populist demagogue would become president of the United States Richard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a Trumpian strongman in America. What Can We Hope For? gathers nineteen of Rorty’s essays on American and global politics, including four (...) previously unpublished and many lesser-known and hard-to-find pieces. In these provocative and compelling essays, Rorty confronts the critical challenges democracies face at home and abroad, including populism, growing economic inequality, and overpopulation and environmental devastation. In response, he offers optimistic and realistic ideas about how to address these crises. He outlines strategies for fostering social hope and building an inclusive global community of trust, and urges us to put our faith in trade unions, universities, bottom-up social campaigns, and bold political visions that thwart ideological pieties. Driven by Rorty’s sense of emergency about our collective future, What Can We Hope For? is filled with striking diagnoses of today’s political crises and creative proposals for solving them. (shrink)

Environmentalists do not appear to walk their walk as consistently as animal liberationists and anti-abortionists. Are we therefore more hypocritical? Maybe; but there's another explanation. Unlike concern for individual animals or individual fetuses, environmental concerns are holistic —air and waterpollution, species extinction, diminished ecological health and integrity. One pro-life pregnant woman may preserve the life of one unborn baby, the one in her uterus; and one animal liberationist can save the life of one animal, the one he didn't eat. (...) But one environmentalist who refuses to own and operate an automobile has no measurable effect on air pollution. Only collective, social change—universal banning of automobiles, mandatory recycling, etc.—will effectively redress environmental insults. Thus, the best way to put environmental ethics into practice is not to try to do one's bit—retire one's own car, recycle one's own waste—and leave it to every other person to do his or her bit and hope that all such individual environmental ethical acts will aggregate into significance. The best way to put environmental ethics into practice is to work to instill environmental values in society as the foundation for coercive environmental policies, regulations, and laws. The mechanistic-materialistic worldview and its associated consumerist value system trickled down into the collective consciousness via its technological manifestation in a plethora of machines. The systemic worldview in which environmental values are embedded may be communicated to the general public less by means of discursive discourse than by a new generation of systemic-electronic technologies. (shrink)

Hydraulic fracturing used to remove natural gas from the Marcellus Shale has raised environmental concerns in the region both in terms of air and water pollution. This article will examine those concerns and how the natural gas industry has responded to them. After discussing the issues related to groundwater contamination and air quality. I discuss industry responses and how the costs and harm associated with fracking could be reduced, with the knowledge that despite opposition from environmental groups, fracking (...) will continue. The hope is that more drillers will begin to operate in a socially responsible manner that will allow companies to be profitable while limiting harm to the environment and to individuals living near drilling sites. (shrink)

Abstract:Joining the dialogue on the relationship between the law and business ethics, Jeffrey Nesteruk and Eric W. Orts have offered conceptions of the law as a positive influence rather than a negative curb on corporate behavior. While these “legal optimists” pursue a noble end in promoting higher ethical standards for corporations through the law, they may be overly optimistic in their suggestion that these more skillfully wielded legal models will influence corporate behavior for the better. Reviewing the basic tenets of (...) their two approaches, this paper uses corporate responses to environmental statutes to suggest that while legal optimism may offer hope for promoting corporate ethics, it has definite limitations in its current stage of development. (shrink)

Brooks convincingly makes the case that the current arguments for climate mitigation and adaptation fail. Each of the arguments discussed by Brooks appeals to end-state solutions that are some combination of poorly defined, inadequate, inappropriate, or are impossible. Thus, those arguments provide us with relatively limited guidance regarding what we should do about climate change. I hope to extend Brooks’ article by providing a rough sketch of how we might think about responding to climate change that does not depend (...) upon achieving a particular end state. (shrink)

In environmental ethics a debate has arisen over the extent to which the individual should make changes in personal lifestyle in a long-term program of ameliorating environmental degradation, as opposed to directing energies toward public-policy change. In opposition are the facts that an individual’s contribution to environmental degradation can only have a negligible effect. Public policy offers the only real hope for such massive coordinated effort, and environmental degradation is only one of many global problems (...) to which ethi­cally oriented people must focus their attentions and energies. So far, the pro-personal responsibility side has urged that personal lifestyle changes are necessary for moral coher­ence, thus in turn for integrity of character, and lifestyle changes can affect others in a kind of chain reaction because humans are socially submerged beings. The stalemate here can only stymies the needed coordinated effort toward ameliorating environmental degradation. Further, moral concerns need to be brought into this issue; namely, the ramifications of pursuing a policy-only approach, emphasizing policy as the sole (or even primary) means of ameliorating environmental degradation, implicitly undercuts the role of individual agents in morality in general, in terms of (1) individual responsibility, (2) autonomy, and (3) creativity in solving problems. All these problems not only bear on the program to reverse environmental degradation, but undermine other widely held moral values. Emphasizing personal lifestyle responsibility is not only the most moral alternative but is also the most assured way to affect long-term changes and the better way to make policy changes credible and sufficiently substantive for change. (shrink)

Given the potential that environmentally oriented anti-consumption (EOA) has in achieving environmental sustainability, the authors draw upon marketing, management, environmental, and psychology studies to conceptualize and delimit EOA, differentiating it from other (related but distinct) phenomena. In addition, the authors review the available literature at the individual (micro) level and summarize research on the antecedents and meanings of broad and specific/strict EOA practices with different targets. Furthermore, the authors propose an agenda for future research, which reflects on EOA (...) not only at the individual (micro) level, but also lays out new opportunities for EOA work at organizational (meso), industry, and national (macro) levels. The work presented here hopes to spark multilevel research on EOA, its antecedents and consequences, and reactions to EOA phenomena. (shrink)

Fears about the sustainability of oil-rich communities and hopes that petroleum would fuel financial, social, and moral renewal have accompanied the oil industry since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century. With each successive ecological disaster caused by oil spills, debates over the industry's ecological sustainability sharpen. Discussions about the geological sustainability of the petroleum industry intensify when oil supplies tighten, and dissipate when they increase. Although concerns about the moral viability of communities dependent on oil have become radically unfamiliar since (...) the late nineteenth century, these, too, were once central to debates about the effects of oil on human society. In the nineteenth century, the progress that oil promised to bring was to be measured not only in material wealth, but in the attainment of social harmony and the attenuation of political strife. (shrink)

Many environmental problems are now more serious and urgent than ever. In high‐income countries, health care is part of the problem. In Principles of Green Bioethics: Sustainability in Health Care, Cristina Richie focuses on medical developments, techniques, and procedures, and she proposes four principles for green bioethics: distributive justice, resource conservation, simplicity, and ethical economics. Richie is right to emphasize the need for green bioethics, and I admire her aim to bring environmental concerns back into bioethics, but I (...) was disappointed with this book. Since Plato, much of ethics has focused on the characteristics or principles of the ideally just society. This work in ethics seeks to transcend the culture in which we live in order to provide guidance about what we should do. I think it would be better to start with the messy, problematic, and unjust situations in which we are enmeshed. (shrink)

In her book Natural Saints: How People of Faith Are Working to Save God's Earth Mallory McDuff quotes a member of the religious environmental group Georgia Interfaith Power and Light as saying that:the science of climate change and the environmental crisis is the wakeup call. But faith in God provides the hope that gets us out of bed to do something about it. Faith gives us the hope, joy, and possibility of triumph to "let not our (...) hearts be troubled" but to move forward with action. And ultimately, this hope is what the religious community can offer that the secular environmental groups have not been able to provide.1At the end of her book McDuff revisits much the same theme, writing that "[the] God thing has the... (shrink)