Journal article
Ecocentrism and biosphere life extension
- Abstract:
- The biosphere represents the global sum of all ecosystems. According to a prominent view in environmental ethics, ecocentrism, these ecosystems matter for their own sake, and not only because they contribute to human ends. As such, some ecocentrists are critical of the modern industrial civilization, and a few even argue that an irreversible collapse of the modern industrial civilization would be a good thing. However, taking a longer view and considering the eventual destruction of the biosphere by astronomical processes, we argue that humans, a species with considerable technological know-how and industrial capacity could intervene to extend the lifespan of Earth’s biosphere, perhaps by several billion years. We argue that human civilization, despite its flaws and harmful impacts on many ecosystems, is the biosphere’s best hope of avoiding premature destruction. We argue that proponents of ecocentrism, even those who wholly disregard anthropocentric values, have a strong moral reason preserve the modern industrial civilization, for as long as needed to ensure biosphere survival.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 829.7KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s11948-022-00404-2
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Science and Engineering Ethics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 6
- Article number:
- 46
- Publication date:
- 2022-10-26
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-09-12
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1471-5546
- ISSN:
-
1353-3452
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1287668
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1287668
- Deposit date:
-
2022-10-27
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jebari and Sandberg
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record