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.

This chapter examines shifting understandings of the relationship between sexuality as a biopolitical phenomenon and literary practice by focusing on two uses of the concept “biocentrism.” By holding in tension Margot Norris’s use of “biocentric” to capture specifically modernist aesthetics, based on affirming rather than negating the animality of the human, and Sylvia Wynter’s argument that the post-Darwinian, globally colonialist conception of the human is “biocentric,” the chapter examines how the very concepts of “human,” “animal,” “sexuality,” and “literature” are all products of a colonialist episteme. The final section turns to Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s Becoming Human, which productively stages the confrontation between these two, pressuring literary studies to examine how its attachments to the very concepts of “sexuality” and “animality” reveal the coloniality of the field.

Property law is increasingly confronted with limits and modifications arising from environmental and social contexts. The objective of this chapter is to highlight how property law can provide answers to environmental challenges, by adapting several of its fundamental concepts to the polymorphism of environmental and social issues. Starting with a study of the theoretical movement of Earth jurisprudence, the chapter suggests that it is possible to consider Nature as a subject of legal interests, allowing it to acquire legal standing. It also suggests that it is necessary to reconceptualise property and its narrative to develop, in both civil and common law, a more limited, relational and functional conception of property. In addition, the polymorphic heritage of property law makes it possible to call upon the civilian concept of patrimony, in its symbolic or technical function, to protect the environment.

This chapter examines jeopardy objections, according to which intervention in nature should be prevented insofar as it will threaten other, more important values. Depending on the theory endorsed, these values vary, including the preservation of ecosystems or species (holism), living entities such as plants and other non-sentient organisms (biocentrism), or the “natural” and “the wilderness.” It argues that both holistic and biocentric views either rely on an irrational preference for the status quo or they build their case on implausible axiological assumptions that lead to unacceptable consequences for human interests. Finally, the so-called “natural,” understood as the result of evolution or as the natural wilderness, is revealed, at most, as possessing a kind of value that can be easily outweighed by that of nonhuman well-being. Appeals to the natural cannot in any case ground an opposition to helping wild animals across the board.

Distinguishing between kinds of anthropocentrism and of biocentrism helps to disclose that White’s critique of theistic religions as anthropocentric and despotic miscarries, as does the different critique on the part of Passmore of ‘Greco-Christian arrogance’. The longstanding stewardship tradition of Christianity, Judaism and Islam facilitates an eco-friendly approach to the environment, particularly in its biocentric versions, and can be defended against criticisms from Palmer and Lovelock. Southgate, who misunderstands biocentrism as synonymous with Deep Ecology, favours both co-creation and stewardship; these approaches can be combined with each other and with Bauckham’s theme of the community of God’s creatures. Northcott does well to trace back modern ecological problems to seventeenth-century anti-communal and possessive individualism and the attitudes and practices emerging therefrom, but his communitarian and nature-friendly approach, while rightly understanding humanity as ‘dependent rational animals’ (MacIntyre), needs to become more cosmopolitan if these global problems are to be solved.

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.