Introduction

Of the many environmental ethics readers available on library shelves, most organize around traditional distinctions in value theory and normative ethics – moral status, anthropocentrism, intrinsic value, duties to the distant, non-identity, and so on – typically with the objective of providing an environmental gloss on historically significant philosophical problems. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book brings together ethicists and experts in 12 broad categories of environmental inquiry: Animals, Land, Water, Climate, Energy and Extraction, Cities, Agriculture, Environmental Transformation, Law and Policy, Regulatory Tools, Advocacy, and Activism. It creates some potential for bringing philosophical work into the practical realm, while at the same time offering philosophers more detail on the practical questions that presumably inform their work.