Environmental Ethics, Law, and Public Policy

The course provides a systematic introduction to the philosophical issues underlying environmental and ecological controversies. It will review classical positions on the nature of value and on the status of the human relationship to nature, land, wilderness, and other species. Topics will include such concerns as ozone depletion, global warming, and acid rain, as well as the relation between international justice, poverty, and its effect on the earth's environment and animals. Non-western views as well as those of Native Americans, and the more recent Ecological Feminism, will be considered.