Do we owe our duties to future generations? Do animals have rights? Should nature be respected for its own sake or only as a resource for human use? These questions and others are explored in the book, which takes a fresh approach by exploring environmental law in the context of ethical ideas. Written in an accessible style and including many case studies, Environmental Law and Ethics is a concise text not only for students of law and related courses but also for all who are interested in environmental matters.

This collection explores a broad range of topics approaching environmental ethics from many different angles. A common thread running through the volume is the analysis of ethical principles as the backbone of practical policies and law for the benefit of the environment, and ultimately for the benefit of its inhabitants. The contributors are all at the forefront of their respective fields and fall into two essential categories: well-established scholars in the field of environmental ethics; and a group of newer voices that have followed what might be characterized as the first wave of environmental ethics scholarship.

Environmental justice is the concept that minority and low-income individuals, communities and populations should not be disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, and that they should share fully in making the decisions that affect their environment. This volume examines the sources of environmental justice law and how evolving regulations and court decisions impact projects around the country.

What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. Respect for Nature provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature. This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of Respect for Nature has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today.

This book increases the visibility, clarity and understanding of ecological law. Ecological law is emerging as a field of law founded on systems thinking and the need to integrate ecological limits, such as planetary boundaries, into law. Presenting new thinking in the field, this book focuses on problem areas of contemporary law including environmental law, property law, trusts, legal theory and First Nations law and explains how ecological law provides solutions. Written by ecological law experts, it does this by 1) providing an overview of shortcomings of environmental law and other areas of contemporary law, 2) presenting specific examples of these shortcomings, 3) explaining what ecological law is and how it provides solutions to the shortcomings of contemporary law, and 4) showing how society can overcome some key challenges in the transition to ecological law. Drawing on a diverse range of case study examples including Indigenous law, ecological restoration and mining, this volume will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers of environmental and ecological law and governance, political science, environmental ethics and ecological and degrowth economics.

Examining the issues of ethics and justice as they apply to the environment, this book starts from the observation that the parallel expositions of environmental ethics and environmental justice appear to have few points of contact. Environmental justice is highly politicized and concerned with human access to the environment and the unequal exposure to environmental pollution. It grew out of the US civil rights movement, the liberal tradition of rights, and Rawls’ description of justice as fairness. It is thus almost exclusively anthropocentric, and does not address the question of justice for the environment. By contrast environmental ethical studies are a wide ranging collection of approaches that are concerned with caring for the earth, and the justifications for it, but rarely consider the issue of justice. Although the two movements do not come together at the theoretical level, they do so at the grass roots activist level. An essential component of this study is thus to consider both the issues of grass roots action, and the application of the methods to actual case studies. This book finds a common ground between these two strands and so to develop a unified statement of justice for the environment that includes the insights of both approaches, particularly based on the 'capability ideas of justice' developed by Martha Nussbaum.

Doing Environmental Ethics faces our ecological crisis by drawing on environmental science, economic theory, international law, and religious teachings, as well as philosophical arguments. It engages students in constructing ethical presumptions based on arguments for duty, character, relationships, and rights, and then tests these moral presumptions by predicting the likely consequences of acting on them. Students apply what they learn to policy issues discussed in the final part of the book: sustainable consumption, environmental policy, clean air and water, agriculture, managing public lands, urban ecology, and climate change. Questions after each chapter and a worksheet aid readers in deciding how to live more responsibly. The second edition has been updated to reflect the latest developments in environmental ethics, including sustainable practices of corporations, environmental NGO actions, and rainforest certification programs. This edition also gives greater emphasis to environmental justice, Rawls, and ecofeminism. Revised study questions concern application and analysis, and new 'Decisions' inserts invite students to analyze evaluate current environmental issues.

The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business is a concise presentation of the key business-law topics that ensures every page is relevant, engaging, and interesting to today's learners. Summaries of cases and case excerpts improve student understanding. Plentiful embedded video links expand on topics to shed light on how law and ethics impact real-world business situations. This book encourages students to retain what they learn by understanding the reasons behind the law, rather than simply memorizing facts and cases.

This book argues that the standard arguments for and against the claim that certain Hindu texts and traditions attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants are unconvincing. It presents careful, extensive, and original interpretations of passages from the Manusmrti (law), the Mahābhārata (literature), and the Yogasūtra (philosophy), and argues that these texts attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants for at least three reasons: they are sentient, they are alive, and they possess a range of other relevant attributes and abilities. This book is of interest to scholars of Hinduism and the environment, religion and the environment, Hindu and/or Buddhist philosophy more broadly, and environmental ethics.

We have used this book, manuscript form, as supplemental reading in our environmental engineering classes at Duke University. The discussion of ethics is usually reserved for the final few days of class, when the students should start asking ‘so what? about course material. We respond to this question by covering the principles of ethics in one lecture and spending two or more sessions discussing various readings. Engineering students who have spent four years learning how to crunch numbers and to solve technical problems to three significant figures admit that the study of environmental ethics introduces new and exciting concepts into their professional thinking, and provides a perspective which otherwise would be missing from their education.