Parenting the planet

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511732294.008

7 - Parenting the planet

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2011

Sarah Krakoff

Edited by

Denis G. Arnold

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Sarah Krakoff: Affiliation:
University of Colorado Law School
Denis G. Arnold: Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

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Summary

In our time, for the first time, one human species can be envisaged, with one common technology on one globe and some surrounding “outer space.” The nature of history is about to change. It cannot continue to be the record of high accomplishments in dominant civilizations, and of their disappearance and replacement. Joint survival demands that man visualize new ethical alternatives for newly developing as well as over-developed systems and identities. A more universal standard of perfection will mediate more realistically between man's inner and outer worlds than did the compromises resulting from the reign of moral absolutes; it will acknowledge the responsibility of each individual for the potentialities of all generations and of all generations for each individual, and this in a more informed manner than has been possible in past systems of ethics.

– Erik Erikson

INTRODUCTION

The Earth is under our thumb. Global warming is the latest example of how human activity has reached every nook and cranny of the Earth's natural systems, but it is not the only one. The effects on the ozone layer, the collapse of fisheries throughout the world, and the accelerated species extinction rate, among many other phenomena, indicate the planetary scope of human impacts. As Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen has put it, we have entered the “Anthropocene,” the era of ubiquitous human influence on the Earth's geological systems.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Ethics of Global Climate Change , pp. 145 - 169

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511732294.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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