Some more fine reflexions by Dave, though I am not sure the casting about for a title is itself so very important.

"Anthropocentrism" has negative connotations, and probably cannot be redeemed.  "Hard green" has a not bad ring to it, but it is rather too neologistic a combination of adjectives to make much sense yet.  By "humanist green," I do not mean so much that the chief moral responsibility of human beings is to other human beings, which "anthropocentrism" implies; rather, I mean that it is a principal part of human virtue, and therefore of true human happiness, to acknowledge and live up to our obligations toward all life on this planet (for starters!), above all all the sentient beings with whom we share it.

From the Wikipedia article: "Other hypotheses [on the causes of mass extinctions], such as the spread of a new disease or simple out-competition following an especially successful biological innovation are also considered; however, it is often thought that the major mass extinctions in Earth's history are too sudden and too extensive to have resulted solely from biological events."  In a sense, though, cannot the expansion and technology of Homo sapiens be said to look much more like "biological events" than like any kind of gamma-ray burst or asteroid collision?  Indeed, it is observed earlier in the article that the late-Pleistocene extinction of megafauna is sometimes considered the first wave of the current mass extinction -- and of course it has been famously suggested that H. sapiens had a hand in that, to say nothing of a lot of Clovis points.  

On another matter, it is not quite clear where Dave is going with the bit about "shedding tears."  No, of course we do not weep for trilobites and phytosaurs and ceratopians as we do for deceased friends and neighbors.  Still, paleoecologists, and all people who are interested in long-extinct animals and plants, inevitably consider what they must have looked like, and how they must have behaved, with a feeling of odd but real regret that we will never be able to observe them, at least not in this world.  Just one example: the environment of the well-studied Chinle Formation, late Triassic of northern Arizona and New Mexico, including the so-called Petrified Forest, must have been spectacularly beautiful, a fascinating combination of redwood forests and Everglades.

I think asking yourself how you feel about pre-human mass extinctions is a good test of where you stand  on the anthropocentrism/biocentrism issue. But I  don't think we can assume that, once they're encouraged to actually think about what happened, everyone would be as sanguine about it as you and I -- I can certainly imagine a reasonable deep ecologist genuinely mourning the trilobites. I doubt anyone would be as upset about the Triassic extinction as they are about the Anthropocene one, but that's just because we can't do anything about the Triassic extinction, whereas the Anthropocene is eminently stoppable.

"And in looking through God's great stone books made of records reaching back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was created."

"Plunge into the Wilderness," Atlantic Monthly, December  1912, Muir

Love that "had a good time." It's not just life and death; it's what we do with it, and the ever-observant Muir never failed to point out that our fellow mortals enjoyed (and enjoy) their lives just as much as we did, and do.

He also has a wonderful quote about "saurians" (the 19th-century word for dinosaurs) and the life they happily led before the extinction event...but I can't find it.

If you're interested in a spiritual connection to the planet, and in valuing our "fellow mortals" (as he liked to say) for their own lives, and not just for their usefulness to us, you have to pay attention to Muir.

Thanks for these lovely quotes from John Muir.  I was not aware that his thought had so explicit a theological dimension.  Now I shall definitely have to read something by him.

"Having a good time" might mean either of two things: existing for a decent period of time (somewhat archaic), or taking pleasure in one's existence (our contemporary usage).  If Muir meant the latter -- and I suspect he did -- , then his assertion is of importance in animal-rights ethics.  That is, it would mean that animal existence cannot be characterized simply as the mindless, instinctual, obsessive, really mechanical attempt to stay alive just long enough to generate at least one promising replacement; there is (often at least) more to it than that.

And thanks, Stentor, for justifying the tears of the deep ecologist.  Myself, I have a soft spot in my heart for iguanodonts and hadrosaurs; but trilobites have surely won the affections of very many workers over the years.  And Stephen Jay Gould, who used to mock us dinosaurophiles (just about the only thing I hold against him), wrote rapturously, even lovingly, in describing the Cambrian Burgess Shale fauna, in "Wonderful Life," perhaps his most beautiful book.

It is precisely our powerful feeling of loss, regarding extinctions of the past, especially mass extinctions, that gives a true sense of depth and horror to our observation of the mass extinction that we are ourselves living through.

Thank you, John Fish, for this inspiring message.  Your dedication to serving your community represents the pinnacle of environmentalist virtue, as I understand it.

I appreciate your reluctance to use the word "environment."  In other European languages too, there is always the sense of "that which surrounds": Fr. environnement, Ger. Umwelt, It. ambiente, Sp. medio ambiente, Por. meio ambiente, Mod. Gr. perivallon.  But I think it is wrong to imagine that environmentalists are concerned with distinguishing a donut-shaped object from the doughy central plug that has been removed and reserved in a special place.

A better image, truer to the usual sense in all those languages, is a Venn diagram, that beloved old graphic device used to teach set theory.  "The environment" is one of those circles, defining a set.  We individuals are members of that set, within that circle, along with countless other beings.

Or still better: "The environment" is the stage in a theater.  We are all actors, up there in that carefully defined space; our environment includes us, plus all the other performers, plus the stage set, plus the props, plus the lighting, etc.  The play we are performing in is not yet written.  We are creating it as we go along.  We all have a part to play, each one of us.  And it is up to us, whether we play that part well, or we bomb.

I am concerned -- and I suspect Dave is too -- that environmentalists have been wasting too much time on what is historic in the sociology of movements of all sorts: developing a sense of orthodoxy, the "true believers," and categorizing and dismissing those of lesser faith, the heterodox, the heretics, the reactionaries, the counter-revolutionaries.

It does not matter at all, if you are unwilling to join me as I enter my chapel and light a candle before the statue of the Madonna, in memory of the gomphotheres; or even if you make fun of me for doing so.  What matters is that we all "hang together."  (With thanks to Ben Franklin.)