Environmental dilemmas: The resolutions of student activists

This article describes a qualitative investigation of 20 student activists' resolutions to environmental dilemmas. Participants responded to an oral i nterview asking them to resolve 6 dilemmas involving the natural environmen t and to give justifications for their resolutions. Several major themes em erged. First, participants tended to be concerned with maintaining human se lf-determination and tolerating human diversity. They also resolved dilemma s by reference to 3rd parties, and attributions of responsibility and sacri fice were made according to several patterns. Both humans and nonhumans wer e considered in resolutions, and resolutions reflected concerns with proced ural justice and fairness and context-based value hierarchies. These themes are discussed in terms of the difficulty of resolving such dilemmas and im plications for studying values and moral choices in the environmental conte xt.