Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent introduction to key environmental debates
Review: A very useful undergraduate level reader in environmental ethics. I use it in the course I teach in the UK. It would also make a good tool for self-teaching or for self-led small group study. For each chapter of readings there are discussion topics, an exercise, suggestions for a debate and a selection of further reading. The wide-ranging readings are carefully chosen, edited and arranged into key themes such as morality, aesthetics, ecofeminism and environmetnal ethics in society. The only other book to cover similar material in a similar manner is Louis Pojman's 'Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Practice'. In my opinion they are equally valuable, making it difficult (should it be neccessary) to choose between them. From a British perspective they both lack historical depth. Botzler and Armstrong's book has only two readings from the eighteenth century or earlier (St Francis and Kant) but this can be supplied from elsewhere if needed.