Environmental Ethics

Philosophy 250

Spring 2005

Extra Credit Assignment

Choose one of the following books to read (click on the links for more information). Then write a five-page paper evaluating the book. In your evaluation you should briefly summarize the broad themes of the book. Then choose one (or two) of the author’s main points, and offer your own original evaluation of it (or them). Answer questions such as the following: What might a critic of this author’s position say in response to his/her point? How might the author respond to this criticism? Who has the stronger position in this dispute? Etc.

The highest possible grade (100%) will garner you two extra percentage points on your overall course grade (e.g. if your overall course grade is an 85%, you would end up with an overall grade of 87%). Grades below the highest possible will receive the appropriate fraction of the 2% maximum top-up (e.g. if you score a 75% on your extra credit paper, your overall grade for the course will increase 1.5%).

I’m not sure how many of these books our library at Ithaca College owns. They surely own some, so it is a good place to start looking. Don’t forget too that you can request a book free of charge through Inter-library Loan (click here). You might also check the local public library; their environmental books collection is pretty good (click here for their online catalogue). I’m sure that local bookstores must have some of these in stock, too. Other than that, the books can of course be purchased on-line; local bookstores (including the Ithaca College Bookstore) are also usually happy to order them for you.

In order to receive extra credit, papers must be turned into me by the day of the final exam.

Atkisson, Alan – Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist’s World

Beckerman, Wilfred – A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth

Brower, Michael, and Warren Leon – The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices

Brown, Lester – Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

Brown, Lester – Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth

Carruthers, Peter – The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice

Davidson, Eric A. – You Can’t Eat GNP: Economics As If Ecology Mattered

De Waal, Frans – Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

Diamond, Jared – Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Easterbrook, Gregg – A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism

Francione, Gary L. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog?

Godrej, Dinyar – The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Warming

Hardin, Garrett – Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics and Population Taboos

Hardin, Garrett – The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia

Hart, Kathleen – Eating in the Dark: America’s Experiment with Genetically-Modified Foods

Hawkin, Paul – Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

Hoffman, Peter – Tomorrow’s Energy

Huber, Peter – Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists—A Conservative Manifesto

Kasun, Jacqueline – The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of Population Control

Leggett, Jeremy K. -- The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era

Leopold, Aldo – Sand County Almanac

Lomborg, Bjorn – The Skeptical Environmentalist

Lynas, Mark – High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis

Maslin, Mark – Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction

McHugen, Alan – Pandora’s Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modified Foods

McKibben, Bill – Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age

McKibben, Bill – Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on Earth

McKibben, Bill – The End of Nature: Tenth Anniversary Edition

Michaels, Patrick J. and Robert C. Balling – The Satanic Gases

Pence, Gregory – Designer Food: Mutant Harvest or Breadbasket of the World?

Pimm, Stuart – The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth

Rachels, James – Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism

Ray, Dixie Lee and Lou Guzzo – Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened to Common Sense?

Rees, Williams – Our Ecological Footprint

Regan, Tom – Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights

Romm, Joseph J. – The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate

Jeffrey Sachs – The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

Sagoff, Mark – Price, Principle and the Environment

Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue – Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind

Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue, and Stuart G. Shanker and Talbot J. Taylor – Apes, Language, and the Human Mind

Schor, Juliet – Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-First Century

Simon, Julian – The Ultimate Resource 2

Singer, Peter – Animal Liberation

Speth, James – Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment

Taverne, Dick – The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism

Taylor, Paul – Respect for Nature

Warren, Mary Anne – Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things

Weart, Stephen R. The Discovery of Global Warming

Wilson, E. O. – The Future of Life

Wise, Steven M. – Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights

Wise, Steven M. – Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals

Wynne, Clive D. L. – Do Animals Think?