ECOLOGY POLICY & POLITICS CL (Environmental Philosophies)

The question of the place of our own well-being in environmental concern has been the centre of recent debates on the environment. Two conflicting views dominate. On the one side, environmental economists who defend market-based approaches to environmental policy typically assume that policy is a matter of optimum realization of the well-being of existing humans, where well-being is understood in terms of the satisfaction of preferences whose strength can be measured in monetary terms. On the other side, recent "deep" green thinkers argue that to focus on our well-being fails to acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature and the interests of future generations. This book develops a broadly Aristotelian account of well-being which shows that both positions are mistaken. He shows that welfare and liberal justifications of market-based approaches to environmental philosophy fail and examines the implications that this failure has for wider questions concerning markets, civil society and politics in modern society. Presupposing almost any prior knowledge, this book is ideal for student use on environmental and philosophy courses.