ABSTRACT
The topic of ethics and environmental responsibility is so vast that many volumes might be devoted to it-many have been (see Simmons 1988). Yet here the subject must be confined to a few short pages. Despite my long personal involvement with the issues, my response here has been to focus primarily on orienting the reader to the complex range of possibilities in the topic. I have found a guide of this kind to the conceptual landscape sorely needed, but lacking. So I hope the reader, especially the beginning reader, will find its distinctions a helpful framework. I shall use one specific book, John Passmore’s Man’s Responsibility for Nature (1980), as a reference point for my otherwise rather abstract remarks. This is not the first time I have examined Passmore, or environmental issues;1 the present remarks are made against the background of these other examinations.
