Modern science and technology have brought about a unique, human-caused transformation of the Earth. Although humans have for thousands of years had measurable terrestrial impacts with fire, agriculture, and urbanization, since the Industrial Revolution the scope, scale, and speed of such impacts have exceeded all those in the past (Kates, Turner, and Clark 1990) and promise to become even more dramatic in the future. Humans have become what the Russian scientist V. I. Vernadsky in the 1920s called a geological force, in a sense even more strongly than he imagined it. Environmental ethics and, more generally, environmental philosophy comprise a variety of philosophical responses to the concerns raised by the magnitude of this transformation.

Basic Issues

Since the noxious clouds and pollution-clogged rivers of the Industrial Revolution, society has generally agreed that many modern technological activities, due to their potentially devastating impact on nature and people, are...