Morality and the Environmental Crisis

Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society

by Roger S. Gottlieb

The environmental crisis creates an unprecedented moral predicament: how to be a good person when our collective and individual actions contribute to immeasurable devastation and suffering. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources from philosophy, political theory, global religion, ecology, and contemporary spirituality, Roger S. Gottlieb explores the ethical ambiguities, challenges, and opportunities we face. Engagingly written, intellectually rigorous, and forcefully argued, this volume investigates the moral value of nature; the possibility of an 'ecological' democracy; how we treat animals; the demands and limits of individual responsibility and collective political change; contemporary ambiguities of rationality; and how to face environmental despair. In Morality and the Environmental Crisis, Gottlieb combines compassion for the difficulties of contemporary moral life with an unflinching ethical commitment to awareness and action.

Genres: Environment, Nonfiction

248 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2019

About the author

I am a professor of philosophy at WPI and have written or edited 17 books, on subjects ranging from political philosophy and ethics to the Holocaust and disability. My major focus for the last twenty years has been the moral, political, spiritual and religious meaning of the environmental crisis; and the role of religion and spirituality in modern life.
I've described the rise of religious environmentalism ('A Greener Faith'); and asked what spirituality can look like in an age of environmental crisis('A Spirituality of Resistance'). I've also shown how progressive religion and social justice movements can help and learn from each other ('Joining Hands').

Recently, I turned to fiction in a collection of short stories: 'Engaging Voices: Tales of Morality and Meaning in an Age of Global Warming'. This book uses fictional settings to explore the moral, political, spiritual, and emotional meanings of the environmental crisis; and also asks what it would take for us to learn to listen to and learn from those with whom we disagree.

In January 2013 my latest book came out: 'Spirituality: What it Is and Why it Matters'. This book examines the promises and perils of spiritual life as understood both within and outside of traditional faiths, explains the rise of the widespread spiritual detachment from institutional religion, and offers searching accounts of yoga, meditation, and prayer. There are also insightful studies of spirituality's relation to modern medicine, nature and the environmental crisis, and political activism.

Both 'Engaging Voices' and 'Spirituality' won Nautilus Book Awards in 2013; and 'Spirituality' was also called a 'Best Book of the Year' by the Spirituality and Practice

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply thoughtful and reasoned, Morality and the Environmental Crisis by Roger S. Gottlieb is a profound work that draws from all areas of human thought and experience.

Gottlieb proposes an argument then offers the counterarguments in a complex ladder of understanding that is nevertheless so well presented that the reader can follow the progression of thought.

Some years ago I participated in a small group study on energy use and climate change. The participants were all of a like mind and voiced frustration with 'those people' who remained unresponsive to arguments to change their lifestyle. The antagonism and anger weighed heavy in the air.

We cannot change the world or even change all the people around us.

We can only do what we can do. I have used tote bags for shopping for years. I have decided to make bags for produce instead of using the plastic ones at the stores. I have recycled glass and cans and paper for forty-seven years. I rarely buy red meat. When we turned in our leased car we had clocked only 10,000 miles over three years. We insulated our house and bought all LED bulbs. We compost and avoid pesticides.

It isn't enough.

We support candidates that work to save the Great Lakes and who are concerned with climate change.

It isn't enough.

As Gottlieb writes, we are still complicit--I am still complicit.

I buy yards of cotton fabric to make quilts as a creative outlet--cotton that requires fertilizers and pesticides and factories to make it into fabric and chemicals to treat it and trucks to get it to the quilt shop. Just so I can cut it up and sew it into something new, tossing the bitty scraps into the trash that goes into a landfill.

I am part of the problem. We all are. Our entire society, economy, and culture make us so. As a society, we are more interested in technology than nature. Jobs instead of preservation. Maintaining our lifestyle than worrying about oil spills somewhere else.

We need widespread collective and political action to change society. Maybe it can happen--we got a man on the moon and people sacrificed to support the war effort during WWII. Nothing less can alter the course we are headed on.

I continue to do what I can because it feels like a moral imperative, like not leaving untended fires in the forest or tossing trash along the roadside, a habit based in reason and science and tradition and personal values.

Do we love nature enough--know nature personally enough to care to preserve it? Not just the puppy mill dogs and the lab rabbits, but also the forests and the marshlands?

How can we save the natural world from our collective brutality if we do not love it? If we do not know it, how can we love it? and if everything else--work, ease, moral limits, the dominant institutions of our society--removes us from it? from Morality and the Environmental Crisis

Gottlieb ends the book by employing the ageless use of story to show the choice we each must make: we can embrace despair or gratitude. Gratitude does not negate despair, it makes life worth living in the face of awful realities.

Learn more about the book and author and see the table of contents at

https://www.kriso.ee/cambridge-studie...

I was given access to a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, wow, what a great book. It took me quite a while to finish but that has nothing to do with the book itself. I am, as a biology student but also as a human living in these times, very interested in the environmental crisis. So naturally, I read a lot about it. Some books are more depressing, some are too light, but Morality and the Environmental Crisis is just right. Not too heavy but serious enough.

The book approaches the environmental problems from different angles, and covers many aspects. I'd say it's really thorough and complete. It is obviously well researched. The problems are very well explained, and the author uses normal, relatable examples to explain the various topics. You don't have to be an environmentalist to understand this book!

What I didn't like - a minor peeve - was the constant stream of questions. The author has a lot of them; it makes sense ofcourse because what do we know about how the crisis will affect life on earth? Not a lot. But I can't answer those questions either. So for me - sometimes I felt a little bombarded with questions I can't answer.

Anyway, a great insightful book that makes you think. It's not too depressing so check it out if you're curious about the environmental crisis.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to read. Opinions are my own.

[David Wineberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Book of Arguments

The arguments over environmental issues are well known. How they fit into everyone’s thinking less so. Roger Gottlieb has been teaching this subject for years. He has all the questions, from both sides and is enormously fair about them. He describes the dilemma as right vs. right. Morality and the Environmental Crisis is a book of arguments. A very different kind of environmental book. And still no real way out.

Gottlieb presents a lot of positions throughout the book. Hundreds of them. Some are part of the daily news grind. Others will give pause. Sometimes you can dismiss an argument out of hand. Sometimes, even Gottlieb does. But the morality underlying the positions on both sides merits a good long look:

-In a society capable of two world wars within 25 years of each other, that is capable of believing in systems whose lack of reason is palpable, it is not hard to see that “an environmental crisis can arise, be neglected or denied, and even when responded to get only a fraction of the attention it requires,” he says.
-Man thinks the whole world is at his command, including all of nature. Therefore, he can act willfully badly without concern for the effect it will have on nature.
-Because of his newly acquired distance from nature, not even knowing where his food or ability to breathe comes from, it is of no concern.
-The same people who told us Roundup was safe, sonar never hurt anything, took a chance that the atomic bomb wouldn’t ignite the whole atmosphere (and got lucky), and proudly gave us whole body spray deodorant , Pringles and electric air fresheners, now want us to believe we are changing the climate. Why should anyone believe them this time?
-We cannot establish the ultimate morality or rationality of any given position. We can only point to the consequences.
-The Israelites had no luck convincing the ancient Egyptians there was only one god. Protestants and Catholics are still mutually exclusive in their beliefs in the same god. Buddhism split 23 centuries ago and still has not reconciled. So why does anyone think deniers and environmentalists can ever come together?
-Polluters are like cigarette smokers who claim their right to smoke, to foul the air, to become sick and rely on health services to keep themselves going. As a society, we must choose whether or not to ban polluters. We have the long, unfortunate precedent of smokers to work with.
-Nature suffers in silence.
-There is bizarre artificiality in the legal system that has seen people sue on behalf of animals, rivers and totally inanimate objects to have person rights in order to have standing in court. Otherwise, no one could speak for nature.

Gottlieb gets tied up in definitions, of course. What is nature, what is Man, what is their relationship, why does nature merit separate consideration from Man when nothing else on Earth works that way? It is the nature of philosophy to micromanage the conversation, and is a necessary evil to get to the arguments. There is also too much religion, which doesn’t really have the firepower to stay in this argument. But religion is really foundational in philosophy, and Gottlieb can’t just ignore it.

He eventually admits he is an environmentalist, and dismisses some of the arguments of the deniers himself, but for the most part, he is even-handed, until the end of the book and a dystopian future.

The problem is massively complex, so most arguments don’t do the subject justice, and most people can’t get their heads around the immensity of it. The book is thorough and engaging and admits to this condition. But it doesn’t go the full length of the crisis. What if it is too late, as many think, and climate change is going to run its course, no matter what we belatedly decide? How does that affect the morality? How will the arguments shift and what positions will arguers take? After this exhaustive examination, maybe that’s too much to ask.

David Wineberg

[Dora Okeyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I like about this book is that you do not have to be an Environmentalist to read it and understand what the author is saying.
He explores everything we do as humans and their effects on nature but also calls you to question and understand the profound impact nature has on you, and that in itself gets you to pause and reflect. There were bits and pieces that felt like they'd warrant a lecture but all in all, it was a great read because now I know a thing or two about my environment and can now weigh in or better yet understand what stance to take in an argument concerning the environment.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

[Abigail Drumm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morality and the Environmental Crisis is a balanced, thoughtful, captivating narrative and philosophical treatise on what it means to say that humans have a moral obligation to the environment. Gottlieb writes intelligently and clearly, buttressing his musings with statistics from national and international organizations, news stories from around the United States, personal experiences (particularly regarding his daughter), and the reality of human limitations, emotional, financial, and otherwise. He is firm in his convictions, flexible in his approaches, and self-reflective, recognizing the moral inconsistencies that environmentalists in 21st century America cannot avoid while still advocating that we aspire toward more environmentally-conscious practices. This is a book that I will come back to again and again.

An excerpt from my favorite chapter (6. Guilt and Responsibility): "For we do not evaluate actions solely in terms of their measurable outcomes. Sometimes we ask: 'What is the right thing to do?' and mean by that: 'What kind of person do I want to be, regardless of the outcome?' I know what's right, and even if no one else will do it, and it probably won't help, perhaps I should anyway. Perhaps that is part of what [it] means to have a moral sense at all" (p. 146).

[MegC S1999 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got about halfway through. Instinctually I don't feel like his methods of garnering environmental support on a large scale will be effective. In small groups yes but I don't see easily how it can be scaled up. I think a conversation with Professor Gottlieb would aid in my understanding. I may return to this book but as of now I do not have the time.

[Susan Underbrink · Rating 2 out of 5]

A big thank you to NetGalley and Cambridge university press for the ARC. I am voluntarily reviewing this book. Hmm this book was not what I expected at all. I was hoping for some good basic information not just religious and philosophical stuff. This was not my thing 2.5 stars

[Mills College Library]

179.1 G686 2019

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author's painstaking research and attention to detail is obvious in the writing of this book. There were many facts that I only discovered after reading this!