Gratude and Alterity in Environmental Virtue Ethics Nathan Wood Rachel Carson begins her revoluonary book Silent Spring with a quote from E.B. White that reads “I am pessimisc about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a beer chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciavely.” Two issues arise from this quote. The first is that it’s meaning is mul-layered. One layer of meaning is that we ought to adopt an appreciave perspecve because our survival depends upon the health of the planet to sustain us. This reading focuses upon the planet’s instrumental relaonship to its inhabitants by which environmental protecon policies are jusfied as ulmately human protecon policies. This is certainly one of the intended meanings of this statement, but to only understand this dimension of meaning for the quote is to think too narrowly about the relaonship between humanity and the environment. White also makes the recommendaon that we would take up a more appropriate relaon to the environment “if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciavely.” The locus of change is surprisingly reversed from a modern perspecve interested in shaping the world to fit human needs; rather than connuing on blindly developing technologies that dramacally change ecosystems and the environment to adapt to our human needs, White suggests we consider changing ourselves to adapt to the planet and be grateful about it! Here adaptaon becomes an important concept and it is somewhat tricky to understand in this context. On a very broad understanding of adaptaon all living creatures adapt the planet to their needs: Predators use their prey as a source of connued biological survival, chameleon’s use the camouflage of