This guest editorial takes stock of what was achieved since the UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio, and speculates on the results of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
The article discusses how far the ecological state can go in pursuing sustainable development without intruding on democratic values. Focussing on social choice mechanisms, it draws the image of the ecological state as a “green fist in a velvet glove.”
Many philosophers consider favoritism toward humans in the context of moral choice to be a prejudice. While several terms are used for it, this article suggests that only the term “speciesism” be used. It attempts conceptual clarification with regard to other terms like “humanistic ethics” or “non-speciesist humanism.”
James P. Sterba offers clarifications to Brian Steverson’s objections to his original reconciliationist argument and notion of intrinsic value.
Brian Baxter responds to Onora O’Neill’s argument that environmental ethics could and should be reformulated in terms of a search for the obligations held by moral agents towards each other, with respect to the non-human world.
This article examines allegedly Humean solutions by J. Baird Callicott to the is/ought dichotomy and the land ethic’s summary moral precept, concluding that neither the solution nor the argument is Humean or cogent.
Alan Carter responds to Ernest Partridge’s article “The Future - For Better or Worse” in Environmental Values 11, no. 1.
This article argues that a purely rights-based approach to greater consideration of animals is not theoretically or practically sound. It suggests a constrained-utility approach, which is both operational and based on negotiated consensus.
In this paper, Robert L. Chapman discusses the importance of a place-based approach to standard virtue ethics, and argues that virtuous action, such as respect and gratitude, arises from deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world.
Christopher J. Preston explores differing stances taken by supporters of the intrinsic value and the care approaches to environmental ethics, and looks for common ground.
