ABSTRACT
To focus on the attitudinal or "motive" aspects of ethical language may devalue the role of reasoning in ethics. Environmental ethics is a young and highly volatile field, and new ideas and concepts are constantly being advanced. This chapter begins by noting that some traditional and contemporary ethical theories could be extended to include animals, at least, and perhaps plants and inanimate natural features too. Singer argues that sexism and racism are wrong, we cannot then accept speciesism. Singer's argument has the merit of appealing to a widely popular and respectable ethical theory, utilitarianism. To see value in each living thing, and to recognize that it also has a value because it has an ecological role, is essential to an environmental ethic. Environmental ethics is difficult to overestimate what the idea of environmental ethics has done to the ethics profession. Finally, consider the application of the "universalizability criterion".
