Environmental Values

244 Pages·2008·1.27 MB·English

by  Andrew Light, John O'Neill, Alan Holland

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4 Environmental Values
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3 We live in a world confronted by mounting environmental problems. We read
4 of increasing global deforestation and desertification, loss of species diversity,
5 pollution and global warming. In everyday life people mourn the loss of valued
6 landscapes and urban spaces. Underlying these problems are conflicting
7 priorities and values. Yet dominant approaches to policy making seem ill-
8 equipped to capture the various ways in which the environment matters to us.
9 Environmental Values introduces readers to these issues by presenting, and then
20 challenging, two dominant approaches to environmental decision making, one
1 from environmental economics, the other from environmental philosophy. The
2 authors present a sustained case for questioning the underlying ethical theories
3 of both of these traditions. They defend a pluralistic alternative rooted in the
4 rich everyday relations of humans to the environments they inhabit, providing
5 a path for integrating human needs with environmental protection through an
6 understanding of the narrative and history of particular places. The book
7 examines the implications of this approach for policy issues such as biodiversity,
8 conservation and sustainability.
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30 The book is written in a clear and accessible style for an interdisciplinary
1 audience. It will be ideal for student use in environmental courses in geography,
2 economics, philosophy, politics and sociology. It will also be of wider interest
3 to policy makers and the concerned general reader.
4 John O’Neill is Professor of Political Economy at The University of Manchester.
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6 Alan Holland is Emeritus Professor of Applied Philosophy at Lancaster
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8 Andrew Light is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs at the
9 University of Washington, Seattle.
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Routledge Introductions to Environment Series
Published and Forthcoming Titles
Titles under Series Editors: Titles under Series Editor:
Rita Gardner and A. M. Mannion David Pepper
Environmental Science texts Environment and Society texts
Atmospheric Processes and Systems Environment and Philosophy
Natural Environmental Change Environment and Social Theory
Biodiversity and Conservation Energy, Society and Environment,
Ecosystems 2nd edition
Environmental Biology Environment and Tourism
Using Statistics to Understand Gender and Environment
the Environment Environment and Business
Coastal Systems Environment and Politics, 2nd edition
Environmental Physics Environment and Law
Environmental Chemistry Environment and Society
Biodiversity and Conservation, Environmental Policy
2nd edition Representing the Environment
Ecosystems, 2nd edition Sustainable Development
Environment and Social Theory,
2nd edition
Environmental Values
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First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2008 John O’Neill, Alan Holland and Andrew Light
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
O’Neill, John, 1956–
Environmental values / John O’Neill, Alan Holland, and Andrew Light.
p. cm – (Routledge introductions to environment)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Environmental ethics. 2. Environmental policy.
I. Holland, Alan, 1939– II. Light, Andrew, 1966– III. Title.
GE42.O54 2007
179′.1–dc22 2006023830
ISBN 0-203-49545-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–14508–2 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–14509–0 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–63952–9 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–14509–1 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–14508–4 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–63952–8 (ebk)
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2 Contents
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2 List of Figures viii
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Acknowledgements ix
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5 Chapter 1 Values and the environment 1
6 Environments and values 1
7 Living from the world 1
Living in the world 2
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Living with the world 3
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Addressing value conflicts 4
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Value conflicts 4
1 The distribution of goods and harms 5
2 Addressing conflicts 5
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4 PART ONE Utilitarian approaches to environmental decision making 11
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Chapter 2 Human well-being and the natural world 13
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Introduction 13
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Welfare: hedonism, preferences and objective lists 15
8 The hedonistic account of well-being 15
9 Bentham and the felicific calculus 15
30 John Stuart Mill 16
1 Preference utilitarianism 21
2 Objectivist accounts of welfare 24
3 Whose well-being counts? 26
4 Making comparisons: utilitarianism, economics and efficiency 27
5 Chapter 3 Consequentialism and its critics 31
6 Introduction 31
7 Consequentialism permits too much 32
8 What is the problem with consequentialism? The moral
9 standing of individuals 33
40 Rights, conflicts and community 36
1 Consequentialism demands too much 39
2 What is the problem with consequentialism? Agent-based
restrictions on action 40
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vi • Contents
Virtues and environmental concern 41
Consequentialist responses 43
Indirect utilitarianism 44
Extend the account of the good 46
Ethical pluralism and the limits of theory 47
Chapter 4 Equality, justice and environment 49
Utilitarianism and distribution 50
Equality in moral standing 52
Indirect utilitarian arguments for distributive equality 53
Economics, efficiency and equality 54
Willingness to pay 55
The Kaldor–Hicks compensation test 56
Discounting the future 57
Egalitarian ethics 58
Consequentialism without maximisation 59
The priority view 59
Telic egalitarianism 60
Deontological responses 62
Community, character and equality 64
Equality of what? 67
Chapter 5 Value pluralism, value commensurability and environmental
choice 70
Value monism 72
Value pluralism 74
Trading-off values 75
Constitutive incommensurabilities 77
Value pluralism, consequentialism, and the alternatives 79
Structural pluralism 81
Choice without commensurability 83
What can we expect from a theory of rational choice? 85
PART TWO A new environmental ethic? 89
Chapter 6 The moral considerability of the non-human world 91
New ethics for old? 91
Moral considerability 93
Extending the boundaries of moral considerability 98
New theories for old? 108
Chapter 7 Environment, meta-ethics and intrinsic value 112
Meta-ethics and normative ethics 113
Intrinsic value 114
Is the rejection of meta-ethical realism compatible with an
environmental ethic? 116
Objective value and the flourishing of living things 119
Environmental ethics through thick and thin 121
Contents • vii
1 Chapter 8 Nature and the natural 125
2 Valuing the ‘natural’ 125
The complexity of ‘nature’ 126
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Some distinctions 126
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Natural and artificial 128
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Natural and cultural 131
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Nature as wilderness 132
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The value of natural things 134
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Nature conservation 138
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A paradox? 139
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On restoring the value of nature 141
1 Restitutive ecology 146
2 History, narrative and environmental goods 148
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4 PART THREE The narratives of nature 151
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Chapter 9 Nature and narrative 153
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Three walks 154
7 History and processes as sources of value 155
8 Going back to nature? 158
9 Old worlds and new 162
20 Narrative and nature 163
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Chapter 10 Biodiversity: biology as biography 165
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The itemising approach to environmental values 167
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The nature of biodiversity – conceptual clarifications 167
4 The attractions of itemisation 170
5 Biodiversity and environmental sustainability 173
6 Time, history and biodiversity 175
7 The dangers of moral trumps 179
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Chapter 11 Sustainability and human well-being 183
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Sustainability: of what, for whom and why? 183
30 Economic accounts of sustainability 185
1 Sustainability: weak and strong 186
2 Human well-being and substitutability 189
3 From preferences to needs 193
Narrative, human well-being and sustainability 196
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Sustainability without capital 200
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Chapter 12 Public decisions and environmental goods 202
7 Procedural rationality and deliberative institutions 203
8 Decisions in context 206
9 Responsibility and character 212
40 What makes for good decisions? 215
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Bibliography 217
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Index 225
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List of Figures
4.1 Distributions of Welfare and a Utilitarian Justification of
the Narmada Dam 51
4.2 The Utilitarian Argument for Equality 54
4.3 A Problem with the Utilitarian Argument for Equality 55
11.1 An Indifference Curve 191
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2 Acknowledgements
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2 Parts of chapters 4, 10 and 11 draw on material in John O’Neill Markets,
3 Deliberation and the Environment (London: Routledge, 2007), John O’Neill
4 ‘Sustainability: Ethics, Knowledge and Politics’ in J. O’Neill, I. Bateman and
5 R. K. Turner (eds) Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (Aldershot: Edward
6 Elgar, 2001), and John O’Neill and Alan Holland ‘Two Approaches to Bio-
7 diversity Value’ in D. Posey (ed.) Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity
8 (London: UNEP, 1999). Chapter 1 draws on material in Alan Holland, Martin
9 O’Connor and John O’Neill Costing Environmental Damage (Report for the
20 European Parliament, Directorate General for Research, STOA, Brussels, 1996).
1 Chapter 7 draws on material in John O’Neill ‘Meta-ethics’ in D. Jamieson (ed.)
2 Blackwell Companion to Environmental Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
3 Chapter 9 draws on material in John O’Neill and Alan Holland ‘Yew Trees,
4 Butterflies, Rotting Boots and Washing Lines’ in A. Light and A. de-Shalit (eds)
5 Reasoning in Environmental Practice: Philosophy and Politics in Global
6 Ecological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003). Parts of chapters
7 6 and 10 draw on material in Andrew Light ‘Contemporary Environmental
8 Ethics: From Metaethics to Public Philosophy’, Metaphilosophy 2002, 33:
9 426–449. Some of the ideas for this book began their life in work towards
30 teaching material produced for Wye College. Others involved in producing that
1 material were John Benson and Jeremy Roxbee Cox and we would like to record
2 our thanks for their conversations and fruitful collaboration.
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