A new book by Michael W. Doyle engages with the ideas of John Stuart Mill in an effort to answer the perennial question of when international humanitarian intervention can be justified.

Environmental abuse is not only about how humans treat the nonhuman world but also about how they treat each other. Whether referring to climate change, threats to biological diversity, nuclear waste, or depleted fish stocks, some people benefit from the environmental abuse, while others disproportionately suffer from the consequences.

Environmental ethics [should] not be seen as an add-on to be approached after the important issues of security and economics have been settled. Instead, we [should] recognize that all our important social choices are inherently about the ‘natural’ world we create.