Environmental Values

by John O'Neill, Andrew Light, Alan Holland

Overview

We live in a world confronted by mounting environmental problems; increasing global deforestation and desertification, loss of species diversity, pollution and global warming. In everyday life people mourn the loss of valued landscapes and urban spaces. Underlying these problems are conflicting priorities and values. Yet dominant approaches to policy-making seem ill-equipped to capture the various ways in which the environment matters to us.

Environmental Values introduces readers to these issues by presenting, and then challenging, two dominant approaches to environmental decision-making, one from environmental economics, the other from environmental philosophy. The authors present a sustained case for questioning the underlying ethical theories of both of these traditions. They defend a pluralistic alternative rooted in the rich everyday relations of humans to the environments they inhabit, providing a path for integrating human needs with environmental protection through an understanding of the narrative and history of particular places. The book examines the implications of this approach for policy issues such as biodiversity conservation and sustainability.

Written in a clear and accessible style for an interdisciplinary audience, this volume will be ideal for student use in environmental courses in geography, economics, philosophy, politics and sociology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415145084
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/13/2007
Series:	Routledge Introductions to Environment: Environment and Society Texts
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

John O'Neill is Professor of Political Economy at The University of Manchester.

Alan Holland is Emeritus Professor of Applied Philosophy at Lancaster University

Andrew Light is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Table of Contents

1. Values and the Environment Part 1: Utilitarian Approaches to Environmental Decision Making 2. Human Well-Being and the Natural World 3. Consequentialism and its Critics 4. Equality, Justice and Environment 5. Value Pluralism, Value Commensurability and Environmental Choice Part 2: A New Environmental Ethic? 6. The Moral Considerability of the Non-Human World 7. Environment, Meta-Ethics and Intrinsic Value 8. Nature and the Natural Part 3: The Narratives of Nature 9. Nature and Narrative 10. Biodiversity: Biology as Biography 11. Sustainability and Human Well-Being 12. Public Decisions and Environmental Goods

Editorial Reviews

"Environmental Values is an excellent book, easy to read, and relatively short." — Richard Haynes, Ecological Restoration, Vol. 26, No. 1

Environmental Values covers an extraordinary amount of ground with clarity and precision. It distils key ideas from leading thinkers in environmental philosophy into one tightly argued volume. It offers both careful, accurate summaries of existing positions and an original, stuimulating position of its own. I highly recommend it. Clare Palmer, Geographical Journal

From the Publisher