Ecologists are battling over the status of novel ecosystems, a category used to classify ecosystems emerging in the wake of anthropogenic disturbance. Proponents of the novel ecosystem concept argue that it's a necessary part of the modern ecologist's toolkit, and plays important roles in explanation, understanding, and management decisions. Skeptics believe that the idea of novel ecosystems is a Trojan Horse, meant to sneak revisionary environmental values into ecology under the guise of a putatively non-normative concept. I split the difference in a way guaranteed to annoy everyone: the novel ecosystem concept, I argue, is a useful addition to ecology precisely because it brings revisionary environmental values into the science.