Spurred by growing environmental concern in the 1960s, philosophers paid increasing attention to environmental ethics in the 1970s and 1980s. The field is dominated by dichotomies: anthropocentrism versus nonanthropocentrism, individualism versus holism, environmental ethics versus environmental philosophy, organic versus community metaphors, citizen versus consumer perspectives, scientific versus social scientific justifications, and trade-offs versus synergism.

Anthropocentric Environmentalism

Traditional Western ethics is anthropocentric, as only human beings are considered of moral importance. Because people can help or harm one another indirectly through environmental impact, such as by generating pollution, destroying marshes, and depleting resources, environmental ethics can be pursued as a form of applied ethics in an anthropocentric framework.

Some anthropocentric issues concern the nature and relative importance of values. For example, does the beauty or inspirational quality of a canyon make the canyon intrinsically valuable? If so, is that value an objective feature of the canyon or...