Ethics for a Finite World ─ an Essay Concerning a Sustainable Future

Herschel Elliott takes traditional environmental ethics to task in this provocative, challenging, and controversial look at the balance between human activity and the environment. Elliott, an acclaimed philosopher, constructs a coherent theory of ethics based on the idea that both self-centered and self-sacrificing behaviors lead to the same end: the total collapse of our environment. Therefore, our first ethical obligation should be to maintain the endurance and resilience of the Earth's ecosystem. Then, after the environment is secure, ethical attention can be directed to maintaining the human population at a level that will allow human life to become worth living. Translation: even Prius-loving environmentalists can't claim that they're saving the Earth, not until they lace up their walking shoes.

Herschel Elliot taught philosophy at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and then at the University of Florida.