- The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics
- The Contributors
- Introducing Contemporary Environmental Ethics
- A History of Environmental Ethics
- Environmental Science: Empirical Claims in Environmental Ethics
- Markets, Ethics, and Environment
- Law, Governance, and the Ecological Ethos
- The Anthropocene!: Beyond the Natural?
- Anthropocentrism: Humanity as Peril and Promise
- Conscious Animals and the Value of Experience
- Living Individuals: Biocentrism in Environmental Ethics
- How Ecological Collectives are Morally Considerable
- Valuing Wild Nature
- Truth and Goodness: Metaethics in Environmental Ethics
- Practical Reasons and Environmental Commitment
- Environmental Hermeneutics and the Meaning of Nature
- Phenomenology and Environmental Ethics
- Aesthetic Value, Nature, and Environment
- Consequentialism in Environmental Ethics
- Rights, Rules, and Respect for Nature
- Environmental Virtue Ethics: Value, Normativity, and Right Action
- Ethics of Caring in Environmental Ethics: Indigenous and Feminist Philosophies
- The Sacred, Reverence for Life, and Environmental Ethics in America
- Individual and Contributory Responsibility for Environmental Harm
- Justice on One Planet
- Sexual Politics in Environmental Ethics: Impacts, Causes, Alternatives
- Human Rights and the Environment
- Ecological Space: The Concept and Its Ethical Significance
- Risk and Precaution in Decision Making about Nature
- Citizenship and (Un)Sustainability: A Green Republican Perspective
- Future Generations in Environmental Ethics
- Sustainability as the Multigenerational Public Interest
- The Ethics of Environmental Pollution
- Population and Environment: The Impossible, the Impermissible, and the Imperative
- Ethical Energy Choices
- Narratives of Food, Agriculture, and the Environment
- Water Ethics: Toward Ecological Cooperation
- Anthropogenic Mass Extinction: The Science, the Ethics, and the Civics
- Philosophy of Technology and the Environment
- The Ethics of Ecosystem Management
- Mitigation: First Imperative of Environmental Ethics
- Ethics and Climate Adaptation
- Climate Diplomacy
- Geoengineering: Ethical Questions for Deliberate Climate Manipulators
- Environmental Conflict
- Environmental Ethics, Sustainability Science, and the Recovery of Pragmatism
- Sacrifice and the Possibilities for Environmental Action
- From Environmental Ethics to Environmental Action
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Intergenerational ethics is the study of our responsibilities to future individuals—individuals (human or not) who are not now alive but will be. The term “future” characterizes, not the kind of a thing, but rather the temporal perspective from which it is being described. Future people, as such, therefore differ from us neither intrinsically nor in moral status. Our responsibilities to them are best understood by attempts to see things from their perspective, not from ours. Though intergenerational ethics takes various forms, the credible forms in conjunction with known facts yield two great practical conclusions: we must reduce human population, and we must keep most fossil fuels in the ground. The demandingness of these conclusions is no objection against them, but rather an accurate measure of the moral burdens of our godlike knowledge and power.
Keywords: future people, spatiotemporal separation, intergenerational ethics, Parfit, Derek, non-identity problem, repugnant conclusion, population, fossil fuels, climate change
John Nolt, Philosophy Department, University of Tennessee
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- The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics
- The Contributors
- Introducing Contemporary Environmental Ethics
- A History of Environmental Ethics
- Environmental Science: Empirical Claims in Environmental Ethics
- Markets, Ethics, and Environment
- Law, Governance, and the Ecological Ethos
- The Anthropocene!: Beyond the Natural?
- Anthropocentrism: Humanity as Peril and Promise
- Conscious Animals and the Value of Experience
- Living Individuals: Biocentrism in Environmental Ethics
- How Ecological Collectives are Morally Considerable
- Valuing Wild Nature
- Truth and Goodness: Metaethics in Environmental Ethics
- Practical Reasons and Environmental Commitment
- Environmental Hermeneutics and the Meaning of Nature
- Phenomenology and Environmental Ethics
- Aesthetic Value, Nature, and Environment
- Consequentialism in Environmental Ethics
- Rights, Rules, and Respect for Nature
- Environmental Virtue Ethics: Value, Normativity, and Right Action
- Ethics of Caring in Environmental Ethics: Indigenous and Feminist Philosophies
- The Sacred, Reverence for Life, and Environmental Ethics in America
- Individual and Contributory Responsibility for Environmental Harm
- Justice on One Planet
- Sexual Politics in Environmental Ethics: Impacts, Causes, Alternatives
- Human Rights and the Environment
- Ecological Space: The Concept and Its Ethical Significance
- Risk and Precaution in Decision Making about Nature
- Citizenship and (Un)Sustainability: A Green Republican Perspective
- Future Generations in Environmental Ethics
- Sustainability as the Multigenerational Public Interest
- The Ethics of Environmental Pollution
- Population and Environment: The Impossible, the Impermissible, and the Imperative
- Ethical Energy Choices
- Narratives of Food, Agriculture, and the Environment
- Water Ethics: Toward Ecological Cooperation
- Anthropogenic Mass Extinction: The Science, the Ethics, and the Civics
- Philosophy of Technology and the Environment
- The Ethics of Ecosystem Management
- Mitigation: First Imperative of Environmental Ethics
- Ethics and Climate Adaptation
- Climate Diplomacy
- Geoengineering: Ethical Questions for Deliberate Climate Manipulators
- Environmental Conflict
- Environmental Ethics, Sustainability Science, and the Recovery of Pragmatism
- Sacrifice and the Possibilities for Environmental Action
- From Environmental Ethics to Environmental Action
- Index