Pro-environmental behaviors symbolic of the three R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle—are focused on individual consumption and use patterns. These traditional environmentalist behaviors—what I shall call “shallow environmentalism”—are vulnerable to the problem of inconsequentialism, in that a single individual engaging in them does little to combat or mitigate climate change. Indeed, some argue that continued occupation with shallow environmental behaviors such as recycling and reducing travel gets in the way of fighting climate change by inappropriately focusing blame on individuals, wasting energy on ineffective (...) means, and creating a low benchmark by which people can measure whether they have done their environmental duty. Using environmental virtue ethics, I will argue for the importance of engaging in shallow environmentalism. I will use findings in behavioral psychology to show how these behaviors play an important role in fostering motivation and how behavioral alignment with popular understandings of environmentalism is related to perceptions of legitimacy of climate activists’ positions. (shrink)

Essays in Philosophy is proud to publish a special issue titled “New Currents in Environmental Virtue Ethics.” This issue invited submissions exploring innovations within environmental virtue ethics (EVE), a burgeoning subfield in environmental ethics that applies virtue ethics to environmental concerns. Some have referred to the recent interest in EVE in environmental ethics as the “Turn” to virtue. The call for papers encouraged authors to submit original research that expands the theoretical framework of EVE and applies EVE to new contexts (...) to address pressing environmental challenges. Topics for submission encompassed a broad spectrum, ranging from ethical adaptation to climate change and the virtue of resilience to discussions on moral psychology, animal virtue ethics, and the role of virtue in human flourishing amidst environmental challenges. (shrink)

Human beings have always used technology to navigate the world around them. Some of it has had devastating consequences for the environment. In particular, technology that made industrial animal agriculture possible has led to climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution of water, and soil desertification among other environmental impacts. Cell cultured or in vitro meat has the potential to satisfy the same demand while reducing impacts on the environment. Many of the moral arguments offered in favor of in vitro (...) meat have been consequentialist in nature. Some of the main arguments against it have been motivated by virtue theory. This paper will defend in vitro meat on virtue theoretic grounds. The first section of the paper addresses arguments that have been offered and those that might potentially be offered against in vitro meat on the basis of virtues such as reverence for life, temperance, respect for nature, and simplicity. The second section provides an argument for curiosity as an environmental virtue and emphasizes the importance of using the Indian concept of ahimsa to guide our thinking about how to be curious virtuously. I argue that developing in vitro meat is an example of this kind of curiosity. (shrink)