Environmental ethics draws on the belief that nature is an object of moral worth; i.e. that we have certain moral duties with respect to the natural environment. This article is intended as a defense of this belief. According to the proposal I set forth here, targeting nature as an object of moral worth is grounded on a specific esthetic experience. This conception is based, on the one hand, on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas; on the other hand – it makes use of Roman Ingarden’s concept of esthetic experience.