Global Justice for Humans or for All Living Beings and What Difference it Makes

Abstract

I begin with an account of what is deserved in human ethics, an ethics that assumes without argument that only humans, or rational agents, count morally. I then take up the question of whether nonhuman living beings are also deserving and answer it in the affirmative. Having established that all individual living beings, as well as ecosystems, are deserving, I go on to establish what it is that they deserve and then compare the requirements of global justice when only humans are taken into account with the requirements of global justice when all living beings are taken into account.