Moral Ambiguities in the Politics of Climate Change

Historically, the discourse of environmental ethics rested on the biocentric/anthropo-centric distinction: an environmental ethic was one that extended moral significance beyond the sphere of merely human interests to the interests of life at large. The climate crisis was so huge in its environmental implications it seemed to swallow up other environmental issues —environmentalism itself seemed to morph, in the public imagination, into response to climate change. Insofar as the moral object of environmental ethics has traditionally been nature, climate change forces us to think about nature not in terms of particular ecosystems or organisms or even species —this forest, that wetland, the biosphere as a whole. The anti-anthropocentrism of the new environmental ethic, so counter to the basic Western mind set, articulated a sentiment that was core to environmentalism. The nature of climate change itself masks the moral distinction —between anthropocentrism and biocentrism —on which an environmental ethic rests.