| Sumario: | In this article, I suggest that the recently emerged perspective of environmental pragmatism encompasses self-contradicting principles. For many years, it was deemed impossible for environmental ethics to formulate justified environmental policy. Environmental pragmatism, and its primary scholar Bryan G. Norton, has promoted a new outlook in that debate by proposing an ideal methodology based upon classic American pragmatism. In this methodology, a community can determine what is morally righteous by (i) conducting open-ended inquiry and (ii) considering all relevant stakeholders in a rational discourse. Environmental pragmatism must therefore accommodate reasonable value pluralism. Moreover, Norton claims that these criteria should be complemented with what I call the 'sustainability criterion'. However, this principle of righteous decision- making appears inconsistent with the two aforementioned commitments. This article considers why this is the case.
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