Sustainability

How do and should human beings relate to the natural world - and what is the natural world? What moral obligations or considerations for non-human animals, plants, and other parts or features of nature? What do we owe to other human beings, and future humans, with respect to the environment? This course examines such questions in light of current ethical and social-political theories and uses such questions to assess the adequacy of those theories (which were often formulated without explicit concern to answer such questions about the environment). We can then assess the pressing environmental issues of today - climate change, conservation, pollution, sustainability, and population - in light of those theoretical perspectives.