Ecologically responsible policies are concerned only in part with pollution and resource depletion. There are deeper concerns which touch upon principles of diversity, complexity, autonomy, decentralization, symbiosis, egalitarianism, and classlessness.

Environmental ethics has almost exclusively been focused on multicellular organisms. However, because microorganisms form the base of the world’s food chains, allowing for the existence of all higher organisms, the complexities of the moral considerability of microorganisms deserve attention. Despite the impossible task of protecting individual microorganisms—the paradigmatic example of the limitations to a Schweitzerian “reverence for life”—microorganisms can be considered to have intrinsic value on the basis of conation, along with their enormous instrumental value. This intrinsic value even manifests (...) itself at the individual level, although in this case the ethic can only be regulative (an ethical principle). Biocentrism is the most appropriate ethical framework for microorganisms, and the most useful normative framework for implementing the preservation and conservation of microorganisms. This ethic has implications for how we deal with disease-causing microorganisms. (shrink)

Environmental policy has a size bias. Small organisms, such as microorganisms, command less attention from environmentalists than larger organisms, such as birds and large mammals. A simple thought experiment involving microscopic polar bears and giant microorganisms illustrates the importance of size in environmental ethics. Given the positive correlation between body size and brain size, there is probably a basis for a size bias in environmental ethics using ethical frameworks based on conations. This paper examines the relevance of the size of (...) organisms in environmental ethics. It emphasizes the need to understand the theoretical reasons for the importance of size, and not to base a size bias merely on a subjective anthropocentric prejudice favouring large organisms. (shrink)