ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main characteristics of the two ethics, namely an ethic of respect and an ethic of responsibility, and shows how they reflect different cultural and historical contexts. Although the ethic of respect for nature reflects a first stage in environmental ethics, emphasizing the preservation of threatened natural spaces, the ethics of responsibility characterizes a new age of political ecology, with a greater focus on the question of technology and risks. The globalization of environmental issues requires us to redefine the spatial and temporal scale of the ethics of respect for nature. Even if globalization requires a reassessment of environmental ethics, the latter, relying especially on Leopold's legacy, can still play their past critical role by highlighting the Western arrogance of the ethics of responsibility. The ethic of conservation and the ethic of responsibility for the consequences of our technological actions thus converge towards a global ethic.
