ABSTRACT
Many people think that environmental problems are essentially ethical problems, and much of ethics can be understood as concerned with responding rightly to value in the world. Their philosophical diagnosis of the cause of environmental problems led to a theory of value called anthropocentrism which asserts that all and only human persons are intrinsically valuable. If the dominant theory of value in the dominant global culture is anthropocentric, then this would explain why human beings were, in general, respecting nature only to the extent that it could be useful to them. According to anthropocentrism, when nature is not useful to humans, it has no value. Therefore, degrading ecosystems and harming animals are not, considered by themselves, morally problematic behaviors. There will never be more human people nor will other, human-like extraterrestrial persons visit Earth. At the same time it seems that some things are valued, or perhaps should be valued, independently of being useful.
