Americans’ excessive consumption of food harms their health and quality of life and also causes direct and indirect environmental degradation, through habitat loss and increased pollution from agricultural fertilizers and pesticides. We show here that reducing food consumption could improve Americans’ health and well-being while facilitating environmental benefits ranging from establishing new national parks and protected areas to allowing more earth-friendly farming and ranching techniques. We conclude by considering various public policy initiatives to lower per capita caloric intake and excessive (...) meat consumption, and to translate this temperate behavior into substantial environmental protection. (shrink)

How should we characterize the interaction between moral and aesthetic values in the context of environmental aesthetics? This question is important given the urgency of many environmental problems and the particular role played by aesthetic value in our experience of environment. To address this question, we develop a model of Environmental Virtue Aesthetics (EVA) that, we argue, offers a promising alternative to current theories in environmental aesthetics with respect to the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. EVA counters environmental aesthetic theories (...) that focus more narrowly on scientific knowledge and ground aesthetic value in ways that obfuscate pluralistic modes of appreciation of and relationships with natural and semi-natural environments. To develop EVA, we work with a revised notion of respect and engage with ideas concerning the development of aesthetic sensibilities, care, and virtuous aesthetic appreciation. EVA has the potential to support forms of human-nature co-flourishing, as well as constituting an aesthetic grounding for ecological citizenship. (shrink)

Conservation biologists agree that humanity is on the verge of causing a mass extinction and that its primary driver is our immense and rapidly expanding global economy. We are replacing Earth’s ten million wild species with more of ourselves, our domesticated species, our economic support systems, and our trash. In the process, we are creating a duller, tamer, and more dangerous world. The moral case for reducing excessive human impacts on the biosphere is strong on both anthropocentric and biocentric ethical (...) grounds. The sine qua non for doing so is reducing human numbers and the size of our economies, while increasing the global acreage set aside in protected areas. We should take these steps as part of comprehensive efforts to create just and sustainable societies in which both humans and other species can flourish. (shrink)