'Thinking Ecologically': A Critique (Critical Essay‪)‬

Introduction As editor of The Trumpeter, a journal intimately associated with the emergence of environmental ethics as a serious field of inquiry, and an accomplished author, Bruce Morito's work continues to influence the development of contemporary environmental thought in Canada and North America. His book Thinking Ecologically: Environmental Thought, Values and Policy (Morito 2002) develops a sophisticated 'biocentric' approach to ecological evaluation that, although informed by a variety of Eastern and aboriginal traditions, focuses primarily on the valuational significance of evolutionary processes and ecosystemic relations. In this respect it exemplifies an influential, yet still far from mainstream, form of environmental ethics whose main concern has been to find ecological reasons for the non-instrumental value of nature, reasons that are, at least to some extent, independent of nature being valued by or for humans. Bruce regards values as "expressions of underlying processes" (112) which constitute 'valuing activities' that are by no means confined to human beings but are characteristic of living systems in general. A grazing deer, for example, might be said to be 'valuing' those plants on which it feeds.