Respect for life: counting what Singer finds of no account

Abstract

Though to be commended for his concern for animals, Peter Singer has an inadequate environmental ethic. Beyond the higher animals, Singer insists, "there is nothing to be taken into account." In fact, most of the biological world has yet to be taken into account: lower animals, insects, microbes, plants, species, ecosystems and their processes, and the global system of life on Earth. A deeper respect for life must value more directly all living things and the generative processes that sustain life at all its levels, from the genetic to the global.