Environmental Ethics in a Changing Climate

Clare Alexandra Palmer (Texas A&M University)

Environmental ethics and policy in the USA have long championed the values of ecological communities, species and wildness. These values have been protected in important environmental legislation such as the US Endangered Species Act (1973) and the Wilderness Act (1974). However, I’ll argue, as we move into the Anthropocene – that is, the current era of human dominance –significant challenges to the understanding and protection of these traditional environmental values exist. In this talk, I’ll explain what I take these traditional values to be, outline some of the leading challenges presented by climate change, technological change and several important value shifts, and use case studies to think through how environmental ethicists could respond to such challenges.