On the ethics of environmental economics as seen from textbooks

This survey analyses a number of textbooks in environmental economics, from the earliest ones to recently published, with respect to their treatment of ethical issues. The findings are somewhat mixed. On the one hand, some of the books have a narrow view of environmental ethics. The ethics is usually expressed in the fashion of utilitarism (utility functions) and is without exception anthropocentric. However, on the other hand, some increase in both the depth and the space devoted to ethics is visible and an increase in the ethical self-consciousness of environmental economics may be noted.