ABSTRACT
How are we to understand and respond to the clash of values that we experience when trying to make decisions that affect the environment? Should certain environmental values take precedence over other sorts of values in our decisions and judgements? Is there a single environmental ethic that can guide our interventions in the non-human world? We might hope to fi nd answers to these kinds of questions within environmental ethics – the branch of moral philosophy that concerns itself with the relationship between human and non-human entities. Much of the writing within environmental ethics can be seen as a response to the perceived lack of analysis of, and lack of sensitivity towards, the non-human world in traditional ethical and political theorising. However, there are two infl uential tendencies within environmental ethics that take the debate about the signifi cance of environmental values in a dubious and unhelpful direction. The fi rst of these tendencies is to believe that nature has intrinsic value – a value independent of the contingencies of human valuation. The second tendency is to believe in ethical monism: a desire to generate a single comprehensive environmental ethic that will guide all of our interventions in the non-human world. This chapter explores the problems generated by these two tendencies and offers an alternative conception of how we value the environment. Initially it will suggest that the dichotomy between instrumental and intrinsic value is unnecessarily limiting and that there is a range of environmental values beyond the instrumental use value of the non-human world. Second, ethical monism will be shown to be unsustainable. Value pluralism will be offered as a more effective framework within which to understand this variety of environmental values and better appreciate the value confl icts that arise when deliberating about the environment.
