In press, Ethics and the Environment Separated at Birth, Signs of Rapprochement: Environmental Ethics and Space Exploration

At the same time that humans first entered space, walked on the Moon, and extended the range of human existence beyond the Earth, we began to pay attention to the habitability of our terrestrial home. The first images taken from space by the U.S. Weather Bureau’s TRIOS satellite launched in 1960 showed a “pale blue dot ” floating in a vast darkness (Sagan 1994). Worldwide, these images unleashed a wide range of remarks—on the Earth’s fragility, insignificance, or magnificence, its stunning geographical features, and the non-existence of visible national boundaries. While this cultural reflection was taking place, the community of professional philosophers was closeted in arcane debates. Since Dewey’s death in 1952, the profession had overwhelmingly become a disciplinary domain whose research was written by and for philosophic experts. But despite the silence of philosophers (including environmental philosophers) on the subject, there is in fact a powerful link between our exploration of space, the reflections it elicits concerning the fate of our home planet, and the development of environmental ethics. This essay explores these connections, arguing that our thinking about both the future habitability of the planet ethics and the exploration of space is sharpened by bringing the two into more explicit contact. A Lost Relation As with our explorations of the extraterrestrial realm, the first reflections on the state of the planet were prompted by the work of scientists rather than philosophers o