On the basis of the review of the main traditions of environmental thought that have been influential in Latin America since the 1970s, the article describes the relationships established between the notions of crisis and global environmental change. To this effect, it examines the distinctive features of the representation of the environmental field in the academic production of regional social scientists, the ethical constructions grounding that production, and the links established among ecology, crisis, and development. The text provides an overview of both the Latin American production and the adaptations and interpretations of other ideas that did not originate in Latin America but that have been influential in the region. Methodologically, it carries out a double hermeneutic analysis of the relevant bibliography, mainly of the texts and authors that inspired and laid the bases for the perspectives studied here. The first section conducts an analysis and description of the notions of crisis and the ethical responses to nature that serve as the basis for theoretical proposals. The second section provides an overview of the construction of environmental issues on the basis of five theoretical perspectives: environmental and ecological economics; ecological Marxism; ecological modernization; political ecology; political ontology and the decolonial perspective. Finally, the paper includes a series of conclusions and reflections on the political and practical scope of theoretical production on environmental issues in Latin America. We argue that, given the socio-material realities in which its evidence is grounded, Latin American social thinking on global environmental change is in a privileged position to contribute to the construction of other practices that do not focus on instrumental appropriation, as well as to making visible other relational ontologies between human beings and non-human nature.