To Save the Future: New Alliances of Science and Ethics

Kathleen Dean Moore

There is a professor at OSU who gave a talk about what we should do to insure that we have a future.
She started off with a good analogy, which is if there was a 10 story building, and we live at the top, because we are the most powerful. Everyday, we send workers to go to any of the bottom floors and take a few bricks to make a higher building. We can do this for decades and centuries, but one day the whole building will collapse. It simply won't work that way. You think we should ask ourselves "What should we do?", but instead, we go to coffee shops and talk about football. Why?

She gave another analogy, which is that we are just like the dinosaurs, just doing whatever we do, and one day we will all die. But, she said that the dinosaurs didn't know that whatever that killed them was coming, we do. We should be doing anything we can to prevent it.
She then went on to say that all the environmentalists are doing well, but the one thing they are not doing
it pushing the public to have a collective action to help the world together.

There are two premises in getting people to have a collective action, which are: having facts and evidence on such things as how the world is now, and what we should do now. The other thing is the cultural side of us; it tells us what should be valued, and what is worthy and worth doing. Either one alone can't do it. One is empirical premise, and the other is normative premise. With both of them together, we will have a good conclusion.

Most of the times we see people arguing to an issue with only one of the premises; that won't lead to any good conclusion. It's because many people work in the first premise, and many in the second premise. We need to get both of premises to work together in order to get a good conclusion.

There are three questions we should ask ourselves. Which are:
1: What is the world?
2: What is the place of humans beings in the world?
3: How then should we act?

Things simply won't work if both premises don't work together. This is an extremely difficult task, the people in the first premise isn't used to how the people in the second premise talk, and vice versa.

So, how should we do this? The first move is to start small alliances. It's to make small connections with each other first, and slowly, things will fall into place.

The professor said her small alliance found many answers people gave to the question:
Do we have an obligation to save the future? For what reason?
Yes, because the survival of human kind depends on it.
Yes, for the sake of the children.
Yes, for the sake of the Earth itself.
Yes, for the sake of the sparrows and the sea grass which newborn whales and tons of other fish, which can fish on the coral reefs...which are good in themselves.
Yes, we have an obligation to save the future, because the gifts of the Earth are freely given, and we are called to gratitude and reciprocity.
Yes, for the full expression of human virtue.
Yes, because all flourishing is mutual.
Yes, for the stewardship of God's creation.
Yes, because compassion requires thus to prevent suffering.
Yes, because justice demands it.
Yes, because the Earth is beautiful.

This world is beautiful, and what is beautiful must remain; therefore, the Earth must remain.

So, the mission now is clink the two premises together.