Through a series of multidisciplinary readings, Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions contextualizes environmental ethics within the history of Western intellectual tradition and traces the development of theory since the 1970s. * Includes an extended introduction that provides an historical and thematic introduction to the field of environmental ethics * Features a selection of brief original essays on why to study environmental ethics by leaders in the field * Contextualizes environmental ethics within the history of the Western intellectual tradition by exploring anthropocentric (human-centered) and nonanthropocentric precedents * Offers an interdisciplinary approach to the field by featuring seminal work from eminent philosophers, biologists, ecologists, historians, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, nature writers, business writers, and others * Designed to be used with a web-site which contains a continuously updated archive of case studies