Final answer:
Environmental ethics attempts to identify right conduct in our relationship with the nonhuman world by recognizing the agency and value of nonhuman elements in the natural world.
Step-by-step explanation:
Environmental ethics is an area of applied ethics that attempts to identify right conduct in our relationship with the nonhuman world. For decades, scientists have expressed concern about the short- and long-term effects that human activities are having on the climate and Earth's ecosystems. Many philosophers argue that in order to change our behaviors in ways that result in healing of the natural world, we need to change our thinking about the agency and value of the nonhuman elements (including plants, animals, and even entities such as rivers and mountains) that share the globe with us.