Holmes Rolston III, Pioneer of Environmental Ethics, Dies at 92 – The New York Times:
But the dismissal propelled him on to a restless intellectual and spiritual journey, with stops as a trained theologian and a natural historian, until, as a newly minted philosophy professor, he posed a question that had been unasked or routinely dismissed since before Plato: Does nature have value?
His answer — that nature has intrinsic value apart from that derived from human perspectives — appeared in a groundbreaking essay in 1975 that launched his career as the globally recognized “father” of environmental ethics. Moreover, in tune with rising public concern about land, air, water and wildlife, his thesis heralded what the philosopher Allen Carlson called the “environmental turn” in philosophy after millenniums of neglect…
Professor Rolston’s essay “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” was published in the prestigious journal Ethics. It was the first major article in a philosophical journal to accord value to nature.