Throughout chapter 1, we encountered a persistent setback for green Buddhism, namely, that only nirvana seems to be intrinsically valued on the Buddhist worldview.
It is true that, to the extent that living beings are loved and shown compassion, one could say that they are valued in this way.
Yet, even so, it is not clear that tigers, for instance, are valued
for what they are, or that their welfare is desired for its own sake, and conservation of the tiger species cannot be regarded as a final aim. The ultimate and only legitimate goal in Buddhism, it seems, and the only type of well-being worth seeking, has to include liberation from saṃsāra. Until we have a clearer picture of what this involves, and until we can say with certainty that it is not antithetical to ordinary existence, it seems that the issue of the environment can only be regarded as peripheral to Buddhism, at best (Habito 2007, 133).