Bio

Cafaro’s research foci are environmental ethics, consumption and population policy, and biodiversity preservation.  He is the author of Thoreau’s Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue, co-editor with Ron Sandler of the anthologies Environmental Virtue Ethics and Virtue Ethics and the Environment, and co-editor with Eileen Crist of the forthcoming Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Population Growth.

Cafaro has published articles in Environmental Ethics, the Journal of Social Philosophy, Philosophy Today and BioScience, and in the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, the Encyclopedia of World Environmental History, and the Encyclopedia Britannica.  A former ranger with the U.S. National Park Service and an affiliated faculty member of CSU’s School of Global Ecological Sustainability, Cafaro is Vice President/President Elect of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.

Some articles:

Cafaro, P. 2012. “Climate Ethics & Population Policy.” WIREs Climate Change: in press.

Staples, W. and P. Cafaro. 2012. “For a Species Right to Exist.” In Cafaro and Crist (eds.), Life on the Brink (University of Georgia Press): in press.

——-. 2011. “Taming Growth and Articulating a Sustainable Future: The Way Forward for Environmental Ethics.” Ethics & the Environment 16: 1-23. 

——-. 2011. “Beyond Business as Usual: Alternative Wedges to Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change and Create Sustainable Societies.” In D. Arnold (ed.), The Ethics of Global Climate Change (Cambridge University Press): 192-215.

——-. 2010. “Transcendental Virtue.” In J. Myerson, S.H. Petrulionis and L. Dassow Walls (eds.), Oxford Handbook to Transcendentalism (Oxford University Press): 537-548.

——-. 2010. “Economic Growth or the Flourishing of Life: The Ethical Choice Global Climate Change Puts to Humanity in the 21^st Century.” Essays in Philosophy volume 11, issue 1, article 6. 

——-. 2010. “Patriotism as an Environmental Virtue.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23: 185-206.

Gambrel, J. and P. Cafaro. 2010. “The Virtue of Simplicity.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23: 85-108. 

Cafaro, P. 2009. “The Economic Impacts of Mass Immigration into the United States, and the Proper Progressive Response.” Policy brief written for Progressives for Immigration Reform.

Cafaro, P. and Staples, W. 2009. “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United States.” Environmental Ethics 31: 3-28.

Cafaro, P.2007. “Teaching Disrespect: The Ethics of ORV Use on America’s Public Lands.” In G. Wuerthner (ed), Thrillcraft: The Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation (Foundation for Deep Ecology): 31-35.

Cafaro, P., Primack, R. and R. Zimdahl. 2006. “The Fat of the Land: Linking American Food Overconsumption, Obesity, and Biodiversity Loss.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 19: 541-561.

Cafaro, P. 2005. “Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice.” In R. Sandler and P. Cafaro (eds.), Environmental Virtue Ethics. (Rowman and Littlefield): 135-58.

——-. 2002. “Thoreau’s Environmental Ethics in Walden.” The Concord Saunterer (Journal of the Thoreau Society) 10: 17-63.

——-. 2002. “Rachel Carson’s Environmental Ethics.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 6: 58-80.

——–. 2001. “Economic Consumption, Pleasure and the Good Life.” Journal of Social Philosophy 32: 471-486.

——–. 2001. “The Naturalist’s Virtues.” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 8/2: 85-99.

——-. 2001. “Thoreau, Leopold and Carson: Toward an Environmental Virtue Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 23: 3-17.

——-. 2001. “For a Grounded Conception of Wilderness and More Wilderness on the Ground.” Ethics and the Environment 6: 1-17.