Environmental Philosophy

Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
OR Michael E. Zimmerman, J. Baird Calliot, Karen J. Warren, Irene J. Klaver and John Clark ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.

Taylor, Paul W. 2005 [1981]. The Ethics of Respect for Nature. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 67-81.

Scientists who have made careful studies of particular plants and animals, whether in the field or in laboratories, have often acquired a knowledge of their subjects as identifiable individuals. Close observation over extended periods of time has led them to an appreciation of the unique "personalities" of their subjects. Sometimes a scientist may come to take a special interest in a particular animal or plant, all the while remaining strictly objective in the gathering and recording of data. Nonscientists may likewise experience this development of interest when, as amateur naturalists, they make accurate observations over sustained periods of close acquaintance with an individual organism. As one becomes more and more familiar with the organism and its behavior, one becomes fully sensitive to the particular way it is living out its life cycle. One may become fascinated by it and even experience some involvement with its good and bad fortunes (that is, with the occurrence of environmental conditions favorable or unfavorable to the realization of its good). The organism comes to mean something to one as a unique, irreplacaple individual. The final culmination of this process is the achievement of a genuine understanding of its point of view and, with that understanding, an ability to "take" that point of view. Conveiving of it as a center of life, one is able to look at the world from its perspective. (Taylor 2005 [1981]: 75-76)

Rolston, Holmes III 2005 [1991]. Challenges in Environmental ethics. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 82-101.

They knew rather well that, while intrinsic pain is a bad thing whether in humans or in sheep, pain in ecosystems is instrumental pain, through which the sheep are naturally selected for a more satisfactory adaptive fit. Pain in a medically skilled culture is pointless, once the alarm to health is sounded, but pain operates functionally in bihorns in their niche, even after it becomes no longer in the interests of the pained inviduals. To have interfered in the interests of the blind sheep would have weakened the species. The question, Can they suffer? is not as simple as Bentham thought. What we ought to do depends on what is. The is of nature differs significantly from the is of culture even when similar suffering is present in both. (Rolston 2005 [1991]: 86)

Leopold, Aldo 2005 [1949]. The Land Ethic. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 102-115.

Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land. Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He had no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Turn him loose for a day on the land, and if the spot does not happen to be a golk links or a 'scenic' area, he is bored stiff. If crops could be raised by hydroponic instead of farmind, it would suit him very well. Synthetic substitutes for wood, leather, wool, and other natural land products suit him better than the originals. In short, land is something he has 'outgrown.' (Leopold 2005 [1949]: 114)

Calliott, J Baird 2005 [1999]. Holistic Environmental Ethics and the Problem of Ecofascism. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 116-129.

...from an evolutionary point of view, the social contract theory and its variants put the cart before the horse. Indeed, from an evolutionary point of view, the hypothesized state of nature - the supposition that rationa human beings ever actually lived as solitaries in a condition of universal war - is absurd and preposterous. (Calliott 2005 [1999]: 120)

Gaard, Greta and Lori Gruen 2005. Ecofeminism: Toward Global Justice and Planetary Health. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 155-177.

When women have access to education and employment, they tend to want fewer children. Until women are valued in ways other than and in addition to their reproduction capabilities, and men's virility is established in ways other than through the production of many male offspring, there will be little hope of reducing birth rates. (Gaard & Gruen 2005: 167)

Shiva, Vandana 2005 [1993]. The Impoverishment of the Environment: Women and Children Last. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 178-193.

In a book entitled Poverty: the Wealth of the People, an African writer draws a distinction between poverty as subsistence, and poverty as deprivation. It is useful to separate a cultural conception of subsistence living as poverty from the material experience of poverty resulting from dispossession and deprivation. Culturally perceived poverty is not necessarily real material poverty: subsistence economies that satisfy basic needs through self-provisioning are not poor in the sense of deprivation. Yet the ideology of development declares them to be so because they neither participate overwhelmingly in the market economy nor consume commodities produced for and distributed through the market, even though they might be satisfying those basic needs through satisfy basic needs through self-provisioning mechanisms. People are perceived as poor if they eat millets (grown by women) rather than commercially produced and distributed processed foods sold by global agribusiness. They are seen as poor if they live in houses self-built with natural materials like bamboo and mud rather than concrete. They are seen as poor if they wear home-made garments of natural fibre rather than synthetics. Subsistence, as culturally perceived poverty, does not necessarily imply a low material quality of life. On the contrary, millets, for example, are nutritionally superior to processed foods, houses built with local materials rather than concrete are better adapted to the local climate and ecology, natural fibres are generally preferable to synthetic ones - and often more affordable. The cultural perception of prudent subsistence living as poverty has provided legitimization for the development process as a "povery-removal" project. "Development," as a culturally biased process, destroys wholesome and sustainable lifestyles and instead creates real material poverty, and misery, by denying the means of survival through the diversion of resources to resource-intensive commodity production. Cash crop production and food processing, by diverting land and water resources away from sustenance needs, deprive increasingly large numbers of people from the means of satisfying their entitlements to food. (Shiva 2005 [1993]: 180).

Warren, Karen J 2005. The Power and the Promise of Ecofeminism, Revisited. In Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. ed. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 252-279.

Oppression consists in institutional structures, strategies, and processes whereby some groups (Downs) are limited, inhibited, coerced, or prevented from mobilizing resources for self-determined goals by limiting their choices and options. Oppressive institutions use various tools of subjugation (e.g., violence, threats, exploitation, colonization, exclusion) to reinforce the power and privilege of Ups in oppressive systems and to enforce the subordination or domination of Downs. Domination is one such tool of subjugation: it reinforces the power and privileges of Ups over Downs in Up-Down relationships of domination and subordination. All oppression involves domination.
By contrast, not all domination involves oppression. This is basically because oppression limits choices and options. So it is only beings who can meaningfully be spoken of as "having options" who also can meaningfully be said to be oppressed. Since I assume that from a Wester philosophical perspective trees, rivers, mountains, communities of flora and fauna, species, and ecosystems are not the sort of things that make choices or have options, I assume that they cannot be oppressed. But they can be dominated. (Warren 2005: 261-262)