Many different environmental scientists have proposed different potential foundations for environmental ethics. Bryan Norton, in particular, proposes the idea of transformative value, which offers respectable and defensible approaches to protecting species and ecosystems. Transformative value has the ability to sort human demand values in a way that provides environmentalists a solid way to not only criticize modern society’s rampant overconsumption and materialism, but also creates a way to defensibly advocate for wild species and ecosystems.

To begin with, transformative value is the ideology that a person’s experience in nature can alter their real-life preferences, specifically in relation to consumption of goods and their ecological footprint. Aesthetic value splits into two different approaches, both of which fall in line with transformative value. Lilly-Marlene Russow follows a traditional approach, which is based on the value of physical experience in nature. People highly value experience; it is why people spend years planning on trips to Greece or to see the Mona Lisa in person. People do not travel across the planet because they have never seen a country or piece of artwork before but because the process of experiencing those things in person is so revered. Species and ecosystems evoke those same kinds of feelings. Visually appealing organisms like birds of paradise or African elephants and similarly appealing ecosystems like coral reefs and tropical rainforests evoke a sense of awe and admiration that is valuable to people, so individuals are more likely to protect them.