Gregory Mikkelson (McGill University) on Value Theory in Environemental Ethics
Channel: Radio-CRÉ
Date: 2017-10-30

“Convergence and Divergence about Net Value, Wild and Domesticated”

Animal and environmental ethics should converge on the following three value judgments: Natural ecosystems generally involve more good than harm; predation in nature tends to yield positive net benefits; and at least on a global scale, livestock farming is destroying more value than it is creating. But the ecocentric criteria of environmental ethics, and the sentientist criteria of animal ethics, have strongly divergent implications for capitalism's main effect on the world: the collapse of wild nature due to explosive growth in the human economy. Arguably, sentientism must count this effect as a net gain, whereas ecocentrism surely rates it a massive net loss. While supporting the above claims, I show how they fit into a larger argument in favor of the broader, ecocentric value theory of environmental ethics; and against the narrower, sentientist axiology of animal ethics.

Caméra et montage : Marc-Antoine Plouffe