羅斯頓批判目前環境倫理學的探討落入客觀主義的時間架構，落入個人主義的思考框架，有必要徹底擺脫重新架構。於是，他的環境倫理學視生態學為終極科學，作為後設生態學提示人無法自外於自然之外，人處於與自然的聯繫，處於演化和生態的關聯，於是在演化歷史和生態金字塔的交織中發展「生命之河」的概念，以「生命之河」是跨越遠超過之前之後三世代的時間結構，作為生命整體的載體，將個體立基在整體的生活基礎上，在當代人的現實經驗基礎上，以未來人作為當代人的承載與傳遞，作為實在的潛在性和可能性，不再是抽象設想出來的，不再面目模糊，讓我們當代人得以去面對未來世代，我們作為承受祖先基業的子孫，也要好好珍惜祖先基業承傳給我們的子孫。

Holmes Rolston points out the framework of Environment Ethics has the problem of objective time and individualism. Rolston seeks the new theory foundation and gets rid of the above-mentioned problem. In Rolston’s environment ethics, he accepts ecology’s role as the ultimate science. This meta-ecology describes the subjective self has been ecologically grounded. The human can’t live out of nature, the human lives in the bond of nature, in the evolutionary and ecological connections. On the basis of evolutionary history and ecological pyramid, Rolston constructs the concept of the river of life. The river of life is the time- structure including more than three previous and future generations, the carrier of the whole life. The individual lives on the basis of this collective life. On the actual experience of the present generation, the future generation is we who exist now do bear and transmit, the potentiality and possibility of the actual. The future generation isn’t the presumption we imagine, has the face no longer obscured. To last the river of life forever, we the grandsons benefit from the inheritance of our grandparents should cherish the inheritance and deliver it to our grandsons.