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Articles

How to be Car-Free

by Tim Chappell

Sometimes environmental ethics is a difficult area of philosophy for just the opposite reason to the reason why most areas of philosophy are difficult. Most areas of philosophy are difficult because it’s not at all obvious what’s right in those areas. In environmental ethics, by contrast, the difficulty can be that it’s so starkly obvious what’s right that it is hard for philosophers to say anything ingenious about it. (“Of course we should ‘save the planet’, whatever that means; what more is there to say?”) And we philosophers do have a tendency – a regrettable tendency – to think that it’s primarily our job to be ingenious; being right, or saying anything of importance to those outside the academy, is apparently of secondary interest to many of us.

At the risk of not saying anything ingenious, I want now to say something which I think is obviously important; and which I hope is obviously right.

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