ABSTRACT
What ecological insights can we bring to bear on pacifism and nonviolence? This chapter explores different ways of looking at wars, military activities, and nonviolence through a lens of ecology and what we might call an environmental ethic of war and peace. Ecological pacifism is a moral opposition to wars and armed conflicts grounded in ecological considerations. Michael Fox develops an anti-war argument along these lines. He argues that because the fates of Homo sapiens and other species are interrelated, we have moral obligations to nonhumans. Peace ecology focuses on how to move beyond wars and war ecologies in positive ways. It asks the question: how can environmental issues become catalysts for peace instead of for war? Bringing together ecology and pacifism offers much promise. For the ecological pacifist, a critique of war and military activities by itself is as incomplete as a critique of the human relationship with nature without a critique of war and military activities.
