ABSTRACT
In his book Ecology, Policy and Politics, * O’Neill opposes two approaches to environmental decision making which he takes to be the dominant ones, on the one hand the position that holds that environmental problems can be accommodated within existing procedures of public decision making, one of whose main methods is cost benefit analysis. and on the other hand the ‘deep green’ approach popular with many environmental philosophers and green activists. He argues against the former that the standard economic assessment of environmental goods values them in the wrong way and against the latter that there is no incompatibility between a concern for human well-being and the recognition of, and care for, the intrinsic (non-instrumental) value of the non-human world. The Reading is part of the chapter in which he focuses on the way in which science and the arts contribute to well-being through the appreciation of the intrinsic value of the non-human world.
