ABSTRACT
Being 'green' in our attitudes to non-human nature is often presented as if it involved overcoming human-animal dualism and eroding the conceptual distinctions between ourselves and other creatures. For damaged human beings should no more be regarded as comparable to flourishing apes, than should flourishing apes be exposed to the possible forms of maltreatment that might be invited by their legitimation as in some sense human 'equals'. Resources are deemed scarce or abundant in relation to a certain level of historically developed human needs: they are lacking or available for a given lifestyle and much political talk in the West about ecological shortage takes it for granted that the lifestyle in question is that of relative affluence. To observe the hands-off approach recommended by some deep ecologists would inevitably be to restrict even the most benign and resource-conservatory interventions in nature.
