Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.

In trying to develop an impartial, expansive ethic we are trying to get ethical systems to do something which they did not evolve in order to do. This doesn't mean that it can't be done or that we shouldn't try to expand the reach of our ethical frameworks, only that there are reasons to be skeptical about its success.

Aristotle thought that humans are rational animals and Hobbes thought that we act on the basis of rational self-interest. If only! It's not that we never do these things, it's that they are hardly constituative of who and what we are.

If you have a flat, fixed view of state interest then it is difficult to understand why some states adopt aggressive climate change policies, even when that risks economically disadvantaging them, and other states do not even when it would be in their economic interests to do so.

We're not good at noticing slow, steady changes in our environments, our senses are not very acute compared to those of many animals, and we're pretty awful at abstract thought, much less acting on it.

In much of the world today there are no more chilling words than "I'm from the United States and I'm here to help you."

Increasingly both environmentalists and animal ethicists recognize the enormous destruction caused by animal agriculture.