ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that questions and issues concerning our environment pose a profound challenge to ethical, social, and political theories. Our growing understanding of the world in which we live, and of the possible ramifications of our actions, must be taken into account somehow as we go about assessing what we humans have done and what we are going to do next. But it seems to many as though conventional ways of making such decisions and assessing their results, along with conventional ways of understanding humans as social and political beings, are inadequate either to encompass or to resolve environmental problems.
