Doing Environmental Ethics - Softcover

Traer, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813347416 ISBN 13: 9780813347417

Publisher: Westview Press, 2012

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Traer holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, a J.D. from the School of Law of the University of California at Davis, and a D.Min. from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He is a faculty member of the Dominican University of California. With Harlan Stelmach, he is coauthor of Doing Ethics in a Diverse World (Westview Press).

From Booklist:

In this scholarly, extensively documented volume, Traer brings the discipline of ethics to our current environmental crisis. He explores how governments, corporations, and citizens can work together to address environmental problems by reducing air and water pollution, transforming industrial agriculture, preserving endangered species, promoting urban ecology, and ending global warming—all policies that value biodiversity — and by supporting laws that regulate our use of finite natural resources. Environmental ethics took off, he says, in the 1970s, and “doing” ethics remains “a way of trying to clarify our moral reasoning” regarding our treatment of the planet by showing how patterns of ethical reasoning are derived from philosophical traditions of what is “right.” Our first goal, Traer maintains, is to achieve an environmentally sustainable economy by limiting the adverse impact of that economy on the environment. Traer manages a unique blend of the philosophical with the pragmatic, ending with a discussion of 15 strategies using existing technology that would prevent a global warming disaster within 50 years. --Deborah Donovan

About this edition

• Publisher: Westview Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0813347416
• ISBN 13: 9780813347417
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 400