Beyond the Green Lung: Relational Plant Ethics in the Climate Crisis

Abstract

As climate change victims, plants are gaining attention. However, their value has been characterized as carbon sinks, food sources, or planetary lungs. The study proposes a relational plant ethics that goes beyond utilitarian calculations without ignoring plant science. Based on recent plant neurobiology, environmental virtue ethics, and nature aesthetics, I propose that plants deserve moral consideration not only because they satisfy human interests but also because they organize, collaborate, and thrive, challenging anthropocentric beliefs about intelligent life. The paper argues that plant intelligence challenges the ontological distinction between subjects and objects, that flourishing provides a justifiable basis for attributing the good-of-itself to vegetal life without biocentric egalitarianism, and that empathetic relationships with plants, such as repair and healing, are self-care for humans in an ecological crisis. I argue that plant ethics can offer new conservation arguments and a critical lens to evaluate capitalist climate change temporalities.