Many philosophers who endorse an environmental ethic are uneasy with animal protectionist philosophies. They reject sentientism – the view that sentience is necessary and sufficient for moral considerability – in favor of biocentrism, the view that being alive is necessary and sufficient for moral considerability. It is difficult to characterize both sentience and being alive in ways that are both informative and noncontroversial. Some environmental philosophers reject the individualism of both these views, and embrace instead holistic views that place such entities as ecosystems at the center of moral concern. Deep ecologists go even further, making it difficult to know how to live in accordance with their principles. Such views provide insight, but seem to abandon the fundamental questions of ethics.

As I indicated in the Introduction, I will begin my tour of four select security referents at the macro level and work my way down. I will do so for four reasons. The first is to help shake off any lingering anthropocentric biases that might skew the analysis were we to work in the opposite direction. Human security, of course, naturally invites an anthropocentric treatment; culture as I shall be discussing it is also largely a human concern; and the state is a human creation. Were we to get into the habit of putting people at the centre of our analysis, we might do so too readily precisely where it would be least appropriate. The second is that ecospheric security will be the least familiar concept of the four and for that reason might risk coming across as an afterthought if I were to treat it last. Third, and relatedly, given the unfamiliar style of analysis to which I aim to subject these referents, I see advantages in giving it its first rigorous test in a context in which it is least likely to grate, hoping thereby to cultivate a degree of comfort with it once I turn to referents that we are used to analyzing in less unconventional ways. Fourth, and most importantly, I will argue that the ecosphere must take priority as a security referent, and accordingly must condition our understanding of the others. This argument would be more difficult to make were I to put various carts before the horse.

In the concluding Chapter Seven, the study brings together the analysis conducted in previous chapters in order to extract their combined meaning. This book shows that the concept of human dignity made its first appearance in legal history in a religious form and was later transformed into a secularized concept, as a reaction to and limit upon the classical conception of sovereign dignity, enshrined in State sovereignty. This origin is at the root of and is still manifested in the various legal formulations of human dignity in different areas of law. To explain human dignity, to seek its religious roots, to see its evolution and its many legal manifestations, ultimately demonstrates that international law was historically shaped, despite the multi-cultural context in which it unfolded, by a secularization process akin to that of many domestic legal systems. Chapter Seven adopts this macro view and discusses the secularization argument in the light of the transformative function of human dignity in international law.

This chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of Atwood’s ongoing environmental concerns over five decades and her increasingly urgent warnings, referencing her fiction, nonfictional prose, and recent interviews. Framed by extensive discussions of contemporary writings on the deep ecology and radical environmentalism that have influenced Atwood’s thinking, the chapter includes brief critical analyses of Surfacing, Life Before Man, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Payback, with its main focus on the MaddAddam trilogy. In an extended analysis of Atwood’s speculative fiction across the three volumes, Bouson addresses multiple topics relating to environmentalism and bioengineering: “The Perils of the Anthropocene Age: Humanity’s Ecocidal Exploitation of Nature,” “Green Religion and Green Anarchism,” “Crake as Eco-terrorist and Radical Environmentalist,” which features a critical discussion of his Crakers, and “Deep Ecology and Ecospiritualism.” The chapter argues that Atwood leaves the question of future human survival open to speculation.

“The Death of the Supertramp” examines the extent to which psychoanalytic concepts inform contemporary expressions of the American wilderness myth. It does so by focusing on the much-publicized death of Christopher McCandless, the subject of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild (1996), as well as his cult following. McCandless takes to an extreme an idea popular within the deep ecology movement: that by quitting human civilization one might recover a repressed, authentic sense of wholeness. McCandless equates this lost unity with the expansive scope of the ecosystem as a whole rather than a bounded sense of self. Krakauer’s account demonstrates the centrality of Freud’s developmental schema to the young man’s logic: McCandless believes that his civilized ego represses a natural, more expansive psychic condition. It also suggests that this influence introduces a certain political quiescence to both wilderness discourse and mainstream environmentalism in general. In dismissing the importance of his self-identity – the ego that gives him reason to stay alive – McCandless does the most authentically ecological thing possible: he dies, consequently allowing his bodily matter to circulate.

In 1971 Norwegian ecophilosophers Sigmund Kvaløy, Arne Næss, and Nils Faarlund traveled to the periphery, to the faraway mountains of Nepal. It was a transformative experience for them. In the lives of the Sherpa, they saw an alternative environmentally friendly way of living. Upon their return to Norway they wrote about Sherpa life as an Oriental harmony juxtaposed with the harsh Occidental values of their own Western culture. This demarcation between Oriental ecological wisdom and the Occidental stupidity of the West eventually came to frame the deep-ecological debate at home and abroad. Sherpa life was to be a model for all Norwegians, and Sherpa-informed Norwegians were to be a subsequent model for the world.

What is Green politics? Ecological thinking can be understood very narrowly, and quite broadly, even in its political manifestations. Like other political ideologies and perspectives, it has things to say across the whole gamut of issues facing society and though there are elements of feminism, pacifism and anarchism in Green political theory, it has its own identity and intellectual heritage and, I argue, a coherent set of critiques, visions and strategies for achieving them in global politics. Despite some of the core areas of consensus around which most Greens would converge, there is a wide spectrum of positions that sit under the broad umbrella of Green politics and many tensions and areas of disagreement amongst them. The term covers a spectrum of sometimes competing perspectives over values, politics and strategy. Here I provide a brief typology of different strands of Green political thinking.