The Ethics of the Global Environment

Front Cover
Edinburgh University Press, 1999 - 232 pages

This book defends a cosmopolitan ethic, that of biocentric consequentialism, and applies it to a range of global environmental issues (e.g. resources, population, biodiversity loss) and policies (e.g.sustainable development, population policies, biodiversity preservation.) It also applies this ethic to global justice, international order, intergenerational equity, decision-making, models of agency and global citizenship. It thus supplies an ethical critique of current international environmental problems and negotiations, and the shape which international regimes will need in order to cope with global environmental problems.

About the author (1999)

Robin Attfield is Professor of Philosophy at Cardiff University, where he has taught philosophy since 1968. He has also served as Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Ife, Nigeria (1972-3), Inter-University Council Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1975, and National Research Council (Republic of South Africa) Visiting Research Fellow (July/August 1999). He has written the following books: 'God and The Secular: A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning from Bacon to Kant' (1978 and 1993), 'The Ethics of Environmental Concern' (1983 and 1991), 'A Theory of Value and Obligation' (1987), 'Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects' (1994), 'Value, Obligation and Meta-Ethics' (1995), 'The Ethics of the Global Environment' (1999), 'Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First Century (2003 and 2014), 'Creation, Evolution and Meaning' (2006), and 'Ethics: An Overview' (2012). He is the joint editor of 'Values, Conflict and the Environment' (1989 and 1996), of 'International Justice and the Third World' (1992), and of 'Philosophy and the Natural Environment' (1994), and the editor of 'The Ethics of the Environment' (2008).

Bibliographic information