Critical Environmental Philosophy

Simon Hailwood

Philosophical engagement with environmental issues has developed, deepened and

broadened through the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty first
century, alongside the increase in public concern for these issues. Environmental philosophy
no longer seems quite the faddish or niche enterprise it might have appeared to be when it
first began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s. It is relatively hard now to find philosophers
willing to declare that, although important, environmental issues are not philosophically
important; philosophers qua philosophers have nothing of interest to say about them. Most
Anglophone philosophy departments have at least some environmental ethics or philosophy
provision at undergraduate level and many also have staff publishing in the area. General
philosophy journals regularly publish work on environmental issues and a range of more
specialist environmental ethics and philosophy journals have appeared in recent decades.

I want to suggest that it is a mistake to see these developments only as part of a

wider trend of increased attention by professional philosophers to ‘applied philosophy or
‘applied ethics’ (including medical ethics, business ethics, professional ethics and so on). No
doubt it is part of that, but much of what is distinctive, interesting and important about
environmental philosophy, and indeed its wide-ranging diversity, cannot be understood on
the model of taking philosophy as otherwise already complete unto itself and ‘applying’ that
to environmental questions. There are several reasons why it is better to think of much of
the interesting work environmental philosophy as a kind of critical philosophy. Firstly, it has
been motivated by a sense of ecological crisis that throws into question mainstream
assumptions in ways that what is usually thought of as applied philosophy generally does
not. Secondly, the straightforward application of existing mainstream philosophy results in
what from the perspective of influential strands in environmental philosophy is a ‘shallow’
environmentalism. Moreover, phrases like ‘applied philosophy’, especially ‘applied ethics’,
suggests an extensionism that many environmental philosophers have found problematic.
Finally, different strands of environmental philosophy are often opposed to each other in a
more fundamental sense than is generally the case in applied philosophy. In the following I
briefly illustrate each of these themes in turn.

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 As motivated by a sense of ecological crisis that implicates thought and culture in
general, much environmental philosophy does not concern a set of relatively confined,
albeit important, issues and problems (medical, business, media and so on) to the
clarification and solution of which philosophers might contribute. Much of it has not
proceeded on the assumption that things in general are more or less in order but there are a
few problems here and there about which philosophy can have interesting things to say.
Rather it has proceeded from the view that serious and intensifying environmental
problems suggest there are deep problems with social and personal life in general and the
traditional forms of thought that underpin them, at least insofar as these encompass
relations between humanity and its anthropogenic environment and wider terrestrial
nature. What are these problems? They include the many kinds of destructive
environmental consequences of modern social practices and expanding human populations,
such as anthropogenic climate change, atmospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification,
soil erosion, large scale loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and mass extinction. Many
environmental philosophers thus take the work of the various environmental sciences on
these issues as a point of departure or evidence that something is wrong with many of the
commonly accepted ways of thinking about humanity’s place in the wider world. It is about
‘applying’ the ecological crisis to philosophy at least as much as the other way around.

A major crux here has been the contrast between anthropocentric and non-
anthropocentric perspectives, where ‘anthropocentric’ roughly means that what makes a
principle or course of action right is that it is conducive to human interests. Underlying this
is often what Richard Routley called the ‘sole value assumption’ (Routley 1973): that only
humans have ultimate value or are ends in themselves. Non-anthropocentrism is the denial
of this and in one form or other is the mainstream position in environmental philosophy,
motivated by the thought that the contrasting anthropocentrism is the default assumption
in much of the rest of culture and its underlying philosophical traditions. One debate then
concerns the adequacy of a purely anthropocentric perspective on environmental issues.
Certainly, once the fact of human dependency, including that of future generations of
humans, on natural environmental processes and entities, and the ecological principle that
‘everything is connected’ are accepted, then radical principles and policies might be

2
justified. Climate change is a case in point here and there is a rapidly expanding literature on
the ethical and other issues raised by what Stephen Gardiner calls the “perfect moral storm”
that is the climate change situation (Gardiner 2006).

One important tradition of environmental thinking that bears on such matters is that
of stewardship: each generation of humanity should regard itself as the stewards of the
environment and preserve it in good order for future generations1. Also important are
issues of environmental justice, both diachronic – we do our descendants a serious injustice
by bequeathing them a degraded environment – and synchronic: the current distribution of
environmental benefits and harms clearly raises issues of justice. These matters can, and
have been, debated within the frame of anthropocentrism. However, one might also take
the stewardship tradition in its original theological guise to straddle the
anthropocentric/non-anthropocentric contrast, roughly: God has created the world and
mankind as its protector, both for mankind’s own sake and that of the other created beings.
To adapt one of Locke’s provisos on acquired property rights, mankind should leave enough
and as good for others, both human and nonhuman, in their unavoidable transactions with
the rest of the world. It is not clear though how far this escapes anthropocentrism or how
adequate a strongly anthropocentric perspective can be when it comes to articulating the
issues raised by our environmental situation and the proper normative responses to them.
Thus, in a much-discussed article for the journal Science, the historian Lynn White Jr argued
that Judaeo-Christian theology has left western thought, including natural scientific thought,
with a presumption of dominion over an inferior natural world, and that “[e]specially in its
Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.” (1967
p.1205). Indeed:

Since both science and technology are blessed words in our contemporary vocabulary,
some may be happy at the notions, first, that viewed historically, modern science is
an extrapolation of natural theology and, second, that modern technology is at least
partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist realization of the Christian dogma
of man's transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature. But, as we now
recognize, somewhat over a century ago science and technology - hitherto quite

1
See for example John Passmore’s 1980 analysis of the stewardship tradition as, for him, a
properly anthropocentric tradition.
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 separate activities - joined to give mankind powers which, to judge by many of the
ecologic effects, are out of control. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt.
(p.1206)

Such claims about the role of theological doctrine are contested of course, and there
are lively ecotheological defences of more benign stewardship readings of the bible. White
himself pointed, albeit not very optimistically, towards resources within historical
Christianity: “Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be
essentially religious, whether we call it that or not… The profoundly religious, but heretical,
sense of the primitive Franciscans for the spiritual autonomy of all parts of nature may point
a direction. I propose Francis as a patron saint for ecologists.” (p.1207)

Whatever one makes of White’s specific claims about the spiritual roots and
dimension of the ecological crisis in his remarkable essay, the general thrust that prevalent
modes of thinking underpin the attitudes and practices that drive the ecological crisis has
been taken up in various ways by environmental philosophy. This makes it critical rather
than merely applied philosophy. Not critical in the sense of the critical theory of the
Frankfurt School, though there is a robust strand of environmental thought that takes its
bearings from that source (e.g. Bìro 2005, Vogel 2015). More influential in the development
of environmental philosophy however has been the position labelled by the Norwegian
philosopher Arne Naess as ‘deep ecology’ (Naess 1973). The main emphasis of this is the
need for transformation in the light of critique of the assumptions of modern consumerist
society from a range of spiritual perspectives, including Buddhist, Jain and Native American,
as well as various philosophical traditions, such as Spinozist metaphysical monism. Deep
ecology sees all living beings as intrinsically valuable, whatever their instrumental
importance to humanity. However, this is to be understood holistically in terms of the
interrelationship of interdependent organisms within complex ecosystems: living nature as a
whole is to be respected and individuals within it understood in terms of how they are
constituted as interrelated parts of this whole. Deep ecology thus has an ‘ecocentric’
orientation. The term ‘deep’ refers to its claimed depth of interrogation of the reality of
humanity’s place within complex systems, free of any pretence of mastery and ownership of
the whole; and of its probing of the significance to human society of accepting this reality
(e.g., Devall and Sessions 1985).

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 Another strand of critical environmental thought that has developed over recent
decades is that of eco-phenomenology. Taking its cue from Husserl and his followers
(especially Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas) that we should ‘return to the things
themselves’ – what is given in basic experience – this approach tends to criticize scientific
naturalism as the dominant view of nature. The basic problem is taken to be that having
abstracted away from the world as experienced scientific naturalism produces a model of
reality that forgets its own roots in experience and thereby supplants experienced reality.
Despite its obvious utility in many contexts, especially in enabling technology, there are no
grounds for taking the perspective of scientific naturalism to be epistemologically or
metaphysically privileged in general over the lifeworld of primary experience, where
responses of respect, awe and wonder with regards to nature are rooted. Once this latter is
supplanted by (or reduced to) the natural scientific model of reality then it is difficult to
reinsert normative grounds for anything other than an anthropocentric mastery perspective
in which human subjects look out onto nonhuman objects as mere things to be exploited.
This line of thought is unpacked and defended in various ways depending largely on which
of the great phenomenologists are taken as the point of departure. Heidegger’s account of
‘technological enframing’ has been highly influential, as has Merleau-Ponty on embodied
perception (see for example, Brown and Toadvine 2003, Evernden 1993). There is an affinity
between much of this work with the critical ‘deep’ questioning of deep ecology (Devall and
Sessions 1985).

Also important has been the development of feminist environmental thought. The
critical potential of this is exemplified by the work of eco-feminist Val Plumwood, centred
on the critique of a series of interrelated dualisms permeating (mostly western) thought and
culture that need to be overcome to resolve the ecological crisis2. ‘Dualism’ here means a
distinction solidified into a dichotomy in which the elements are ‘hyper-separated’ (viewed
as utterly – or excessively – distinct and independent) and related hierarchically with the
lower, subordinate element homogenized (the particularities of different tokens
overlooked) and backgrounded (ignored, or dismissed as insignificant) or viewed as merely
instrumental to the interests of the higher, ‘master’ element. Dualisms include those of

2
Plumwood (1993, 2002). Other important eco-feminist work includes that of Carolyn
Merchant (1980) and Karen Warren (2000).
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mind/body, reason/emotion, the West/the Rest. What marks the approach as ‘eco-feminist’
is the centrality of dualisms of male/female and humanity (or culture)/ nature understood
as constituting interrelated patterns of domination. The master perspective, site of
(narrowly instrumental) reason, is a traditionally patriarchal perspective presenting itself as
the human perspective, and either ignores nature (as the mere backdrop to its exploits) or
looks down upon it a separate realm significant only as a bundle of resources and (at least
implicitly) denigrated as a site of primitive, unreasoning bodily feeling, and absence of
culture.

Characterizing environmental philosophy as applied philosophy risks confining it to

the ‘shallow’ side of a contrast with positions that seek the kind of ‘depth’ associated
explicitly with deep ecology and (at least implicitly) also sought by those who, like Lyn White
Jr, point to the need for a spiritual solution to the ecological crisis, or consider the crisis in
eco-phenomenological or eco-feminist terms, for example. Indeed, Naess coined the phrase
‘deep ecology’ in a paper contrasting it with a ‘shallow environmentalism’ based on an
(inconsistent) anthropocentric project aimed at combatting pollution and resource
depletion for the sake of “the health and affluence of people in developed countries” (1973
p.95). Naess rejects any ranking of beings in terms of relative value: from the ‘ecological
point of view’ all beings have the right to live and unfold in their own way (‘biospheric
egalitarianism’). Of course, even a philosophy inclined to criticize alternatives as
environmentally shallow anthropocentric business as usual will take something from
previous philosophy. For example, as already noted, several deep ecologists have taken
Spinoza’s monism as the appropriate metaphysical underpinning for their approach: all
beings, including humanity, are but aspects of a single unfolding reality. There are no
ontological boundaries, “except at a superficial level of perception”, says Naess, who rejects
the picture of “man in environment in favour of a relational, total field image. Organisms as
knots in a biospherical net or field of intrinsic relations.” (ibid)

The term deep ecology is also intended to suggest scientific ecology’s contemporary
validation of the old claim that ‘everything is connected to everything else’. However, the
main movement in such thinking is probably better characterized as spiritual or
phenomenological than scientific, or even in any conventional sense moral. Genuine
awareness of human inseparability from the whole requires a transformation in outlook

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which rejects human exceptionalism and overlordship. Such awareness is understood in
terms of a self-realisation that involves intuitive grasp of an ecocentric perspective, in turn
understood as a matter of ‘expanding the self’ to identify with ‘others’ – including
nonhuman others. The more we do this the more we realize our (real, ecologically
embedded) selves. These claims about the self feature in Naess’s own version of deep
ecology: ‘Ecosophy T’. In identifying with others one expands one’s true ecological Self,
capitalized to contrast it with the ‘narrow’ self viewed independently of ecological
identifications. This picture of the Self as the totality of its identifications is often associated
with deep ecology as such though Naess originally intended it as only his own version, not
an official doctrine3. Nor does the expanded Self or any radically holist doctrine appear on
the eight point platform Naess drew up with George Sessions to clarify the deep ecology
‘programme’ (Naess 1986). This platform, which was apparently intended to focus
something like an overlapping consensus amongst those moved by the non-anthropocentric
implications of ecology (without necessary commitment to mysticism or strong
metaphysical holism), can be reduced to three basic principles: protect wilderness and
biodiversity; control the human population; live simply so as to ‘tread lightly on the Earth’.

Like much critical environmental thought, the approaches mentioned so far were
deeply inspired by the pioneering work of earlier conservationists and nature writers.
Particularly influential has been the work of conservationist, ecologist and wilderness
defender Aldo Leopold, best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (first published
posthumously in 1949) in which he propounds an ecocentric ‘land ethic’. Working for the US
Forestry Service led Leopold to appreciate the ecological importance of the predators he
was required to hunt to protect livestock, and to advocate wilderness protection in national
forests facing large scale road-building and burgeoning recreational demands. Rather than a
mere space for hunting and recreation ‘wilderness’ should be reconceived as biotic
community the health of which requires predators. A Sound County Almanac contains
many ideas and phrases that have resonated through subsequent environmental thought
and profoundly influenced the work of some important later twentieth century

3
The ‘T’ in Ecosophy T stands for Tvergasten a mountain hut where he wrote much of his
work; it expresses Naess’s view that it is for each person to work out their own ecologically
informed philosophy (ecosophy).
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environmental philosophers (e.g. Callicott 1989). In a chapter called ‘Thinking Like a
Mountain’ Leopold explains the notion of trophic cascade through an account of the
ecosystemic consequences of killing a wolf. The chapter on the land ethic defends the
principle that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of
the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” (Leopold 1987, p.204) This
‘community’ is not strictly limited to living beings however, for “the land ethic simply
enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or
collectively: the land”. For Leopold, this ecological communitarianism “changes the role of
Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It
implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.” (ibid)

Also of great importance was the work of biologist and conservationist Rachel
Carson, especially in her book Silent Spring (1962), generally taken to be a major spur to the
development of grassroots environmental movements. The book focuses on the often
unforeseen detrimental consequences for ecosystems of synthetic pesticides (in her term
‘biocides’) such as DDT, the effects of which are rarely limited to targeted pests. It criticizes
short-sighted and indiscriminate technologically enabled interventions within the natural
world, driven by metaphors of war, as generally damaging to that world (for example
through bioaccumulation and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to unanticipated invasive
species); and damaging also to a humanity whose continuity with the affected natural
systems is underappreciated.

One reason for the impact of Silent Spring is that it obviously appeals to
anthropocentric (and shallow) imperatives as well as more critical non-anthropocentric
considerations. Still, and certainly when it is focused on the latter, it remains misleading to
characterize environmental philosophy as applied ethics because in environmental contexts
this suggests the mere extension of already well-established ethical ideas to previously
overlooked issues and entities. In contrast, much environmental thought has been critical of
such extensionism. For Plumwood, for example, insofar as dualism remains in play it will be
difficult not only to summon the humility required to admit and sustain attention on
humanity’s dependence on wider ecological reality. It will also be a struggle to articulate and
live what, for her, is an appropriate ethical relation to nature. That is, an ethic focused on
the particularities of the nonhuman in its otherness, recognizing the continuities and

8
interrelatedness with humanity without placing it within a normative framework that
privileges humanity as the centre and all other beings owed consideration only to the extent
they exemplify the favoured human feature (whether rationality, sentience or something
else) (Plumwood 2002, pp97ff). In fact a range of environmental philosophers have
rejected attempts to ground the ‘moral considerability’ of nonhuman beings by extending
classic moral theories, as in well-known work on animal rights and welfare by Tom Regan
and Peter Singer. Even if better than nothing this still affords nonhumans a status as second
class or defective humans (see for example, Rodman 1977; Goodpaster 1978). Some
environmental philosophers have looked to virtue as the appropriate ethical concept with
which to address ethical issues raised by the ecological crisis. Here too though the tendency
has been to re-tool traditional virtues, such as temperance and humility, or formulate new
ones, such as ‘respect for nature’, rather than simply ‘apply’ to the issues a virtue ethic held
to be already adequate for the purpose (see for example, Hursthouse 2007; Jamieson 2007).

A related major focus in environmental ethics has been an attempt to formulate

accounts of the value of natural entities as intrinsic, inherent, or at any rate not merely
instrumental, and to clarify the axiological and meta-ethical commitments of such a
position. An influential point of departure for this work were intuitions in papers such as
Richard Routley’s (1973) presentation of his ‘last man’ argument (the last living human’s
final act should not be to destroy the rest of the natural world, even though this would not
be detrimental to human interests) designed to show the untenability of the sole value
assumption. There have been debates about the axiological and ontological status of such
value (intrinsic or relational, objective or subjective; e.g. Callicott 1986; Elliot 1992) and
work analyzing the differences between these notions as they figure, not always very
consistently, within environmental philosophy (e.g. O’Neill, 1992; Green 1996).

An important question of course is which nonhuman natural entities should be taken

to be non-instrumentally valuable; in particular, should it be biological individuals or larger
wholes, ecosystems, species, biodiversity and other things not in themselves alive.
Important also are metaphysical debates about the reality of any such supposed entities and
a range of related conceptual and empirical issues (for example, should one be a realist
about species; what is going to count as an ecosystem; can ecosystems be individuated
sufficiently precisely to be appropriate bearers value in their own right?). Holmes Rolston’s

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ecocentric theory, which has a nested structure giving different kinds of value to parts and
wholes, has been influential and exemplifies problems in this area. For Rolston, the value of
natural entities is objective (independent of human valuers) and has a variety of different
forms and bases. The value of plants and other non-sentient living beings is grounded in
their teleological organization; their being self-maintaining, goal-directed systems (Rolston
2012, p.100). Species are valuable as “dynamic life forms preserved in historic lines that
persist genetically over millions of years” (p.129); their destruction involves “a kind of
superkilling” (p.135). Ecosystems lack interests and have “no brain, no genome, no skin, no
self-identification, no telos, no unified program”; yet they have “projective value” in that
they generate the complex order and interdependence that is life in all its diversity (Rolston
2003, pp.148-9). An ecosystem is valuable as the goose that lays the valuable golden eggs -
diverse, interdependent species (p.150). But again, does the goose really exist over and
above the eggs and if so where does it begin and end? Moreover, does valuing ecosystems
and species in these ways not involve genetic fallacies; what is the relation between these
kinds of value and what is required of us ethically; if we value biological individuals as, in the
words of another influential environmental ethicist ‘teleological centres of life’ (Taylor
1986), does this not commit us to caring similarly about the ‘interests’ automobiles have in
being well-oiled? Debates about these issues are ongoing.

The differing strands and tendencies of environmental philosophy are often critical
of each other in a deeper sense than in most debates within applied philosophy. In this
respect it is perhaps more like political philosophy. Deep ecology has been much criticized
for example. It is certainly possible of course to have an environmental philosophy focused
on radical change and critique without the baggage associated (sometimes unfairly) with
deep ecology. The explicitly rival position of ‘social ecology’, centred on the work of Murray
Bookchin, for instance, aims to replace the ecocentric focus of deep ecology with an account
and critique of the historical socio-economic factors (including hierarchical political
structures and capitalism) implicated in the environmental crisis (Bookchin 1982). It is also
sharply critical of deep ecology’s alleged misanthropic anti-humanism. This latter objection
seems particularly misplaced. The ideas properly associated with deep ecology are only
contingently related to declarations such as that of Earth Firster David Foreman that
“humanity is a cancer on nature… the optimum human population is zero”. Non-

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anthropocentrism as such entails no such claim even when it is unpacked in ecocentric and
egalitarian terms. To think it does is to commit what former deep ecologist Warwick Fox
calls the “fallacy of misplaced misanthropy” (Fox 1990, pp.19-20). However, as many have
pointed out, including Fox, the egalitarianism does pose problems, for example by obscuring
apparently important ethical distinctions: if all forms of life are equally valuable and this is
meant to inform our ethics (say by grounding an equal right to life), then it will be difficult to
explain ethical differences between killing a rhubarb plant, an elephant and a human (Fox
1984). If it is not supposed to inform our ethics, then it is unclear what it is for.

It also seems better to have a critical environmental philosophy that is not

committed to claims about the (expanding) Self that seem either simply mysterious or to
turn on an equivocation between two senses of ‘identify with another’. In one sense this
means something like standing up for, or standing in solidarity with, some being or cause.
This looks important as a way of expressing concern or respect for vulnerable others,
especially in a time of environmental crisis. In another sense, however, it means something
like become identical with, especially through acquiring the same interests as the other, or
coming to realize that one always already did have those same interests. This second sense
looks like an impossibility: for example, physiological and other differences rule out my
having the same interests as a black widow spider. But it is this sense that seems to be
involved in the expanded Self account: my Self is the totality of my identifications. On the
other hand, it seems entirely possible that having taken myself to be ‘identical’ with, say, a
rainforest in this way, I will come to equate its interests with my own, leaving at best an
enlightened form of egoism with little to distinguish it substantively from the shallowest
forms of environmentalism. It would be unhelpful to argue that these observations ignore a
properly radical holism: boundaries between such things are real only at a superficial level
of perception. The differences between myself and a spider, or between humanity and
nonhuman life in general, seem fundamental to our environmental situation. Nor is this
point threatened by ecological science. We might accept that everything is connected to
everything else without that committing us to thinking that everything is Really or
Ultimately, One. Most of these difficulties with the expanding Self and strongly holist
elements of at least Naess’s own original version of deep ecology have been pointed out by
Val Plumwood amongst others (Plumwood 2002, pp.196ff).

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 The emphasis in much of what has now come to look like ‘traditional’ environmental
ethics on developing accounts of the intrinsic value of nature, or natural entities and
processes, as present paradigmatically in wilderness for example, has also provoked has
strong counter currents, if not a backlash, within environmental philosophy. This has taken
various forms some of which can be brought under the heading of ‘postnaturalism’. One
strand of this takes its cue from the environmentalist Bill McKibben’s (1990) claim that the
massive scale of human impact on the world, such as through climate change, means that
we are living through the ‘end of nature’. The argument then is that valuing and preserving
nature as such (independent of humanity) no longer makes sense. Another emphasizes the
historically contingent, socially constructed status of concepts of nature and wilderness and
criticizes the ideological character of wilderness preservation, for example in concealing the
presence and labour of indigenous peoples (e.g. Cronon 1995). A third strand suggests
attention be focused on problems internal to our anthropogenic, artefactual and
technological environment rather than protection of intrinsically valuable nature. Steven
Vogel, for example, urges us to “think like a mall” instead of like Leopold’s mountain (Vogel
2015).

More than one of these strands are sometimes present within the same argument,
though not always very coherently. The first and third are strongly present in current
debates about ‘the Anthropocene’, where the central thought is that the scale of human
impact requires a relabelling of the current geological epoch from Holocene to
Anthropocene: The New Age of Man (see for example Crutzen 2002; Ellis 2011). The claims
involved are frequently unconvincing however, turning on crude oversimplified
understandings of the concepts involved. There is often a failure to distinguish different
senses of nature in play and a tendency to presuppose that nonhuman nature or wilderness
must be ‘pure’ or literally untouched by human activity (see for example, Hailwood 2015).

Another form of objection to ‘traditional’ environmental ethics comes under the

heading of ‘environmental pragmatism’. Environmental philosophers inspired by the
tradition of philosophical pragmatism have complained that environmental ethics and
philosophy will continue to have little practical effect or relevance if its attention remains
fixed on formulating more or less radically non-anthropocentric perspectives, and debating
the finer points of the associated axiologies, independently of any particular concrete

12
problems. Instead it should focus on such problems and on ground shared with
anthropocentric considerations (for example, maintaining biodiversity in a particular place
can be justified in terms of relevant human interests just as easily, if not more easily, than in
terms of its intrinsic value or significance from an ecocentric perspective) to underwrite
progressive policies and programmes of action (see for example, Norton 1991; Light and
Katz 1996; Minteer 2012).

It should be noted that such positions can still often count as forms of critical
environmental philosophy. Despite the reservations about ‘mainstream’ environmental
philosophy the resulting controversies are largely ‘in-house’ controversies; critics of
traditional environmentalism are still often sharply critical of the non-environmental
mainstream for its neglect of our environmental situation. Vogel’s postnaturalism, for
example, has a critical theoretic and early Marxian focus on our alienation from our
anthropogenic environment and lack of genuine democratic control over it. Environmental
pragmatist Ben Minteer draws upon John Dewey’s conception of ‘natural piety’ to distance
his pragmatism from crass instrumentalism and consumerism (Minteer 2012). Bryan
Norton’s earlier distinction between considered, ecologically informed preferences and the
felt preferences of mainstream consumer culture does similar work (Norton 1984). The
appropriate depth and shade of green is contested; that there should be some such depth
and shade generally is not.

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