Even if thought about the environment does involve various areas of philosophical inquiry, moral questions remain in many ways central. But answers to such questions can only be given, and decisions about what we ought to do only be made, against a wider and more general background concerning the relative values of certain situations or states of affairs as against others. Even if morality is not simply about producing the best outcomes, any plausible view will at least take those outcomes into account. So there is a need to engage with ethical matters more widely construed, deciding what sorts of situations are in any way valuable or worthwhile, and then, of course, which are more valuable or worthwhile than others. This isn't straightforward. As well as measurement problems, encountered when two admittedly valuable situations compete for attention, there are further and prior difficulties in deciding what sorts of values are relevant, what sorts of things, events or situations might possess these values, and what to do, how to adjudicate, if it turns out that different sorts of values are on the table. So the philosophical perspective will remain broad: the normative questions have need of various metaethical and axiological inquiries.

All this, of course, has surfaced already. The several attempts to extend our moral responsibilities further and further beyond the range of human concerns have each raised questions, first, as to the legitimacy of such extensions, and, secondly, as to how, assuming legitimacy, the ensuing moral dilemmas might best be tackled.