A Philosophical Case for Ecological Pessimism (Routledge Research in Applied Ethics)

Our current ecological crisis-featuring problems such as climate change, ocean acidification, and mass extinction-raises various moral issues, including a high probability of injustice and massive harm.This book defends a position called ecological pessimism, an attitude whose core feature is the belief that ecological catastrophe is likely to occur in the future. The author’s defense of ecological pessimism has two components.First, he makes the case that the relevant ecological facts about our world make ecological pessimism a reasonable, and indeed plausible, expectation.Second, he argues that ecological pessimism is morally and practically appropriate.Ecological pessimism is a distinctively moral kind of pessimism because the failure to avert ecological catastrophe leads to great ills for human beings and non-human nature.The author’s account responds to likely objections to ecological pessimism and makes the case against ecological optimism.Despite this, the author makes clear tha