Earth Community, Earth Ethics

This acclaimed book provides a comprehensive approach to issues of social cohesion and ecological concern, synthesizing insights from religion, ethics, and environmental science in a single vision for creating a sustainable community of the Earth. With environmental ethics as its primary focus, Larry Rasmussen brings together insights from diverse sources on the state of the environment -- and what can be done, now, to halt the degradation of life.

Larry Rasmussen first scans our global situation and the threats to life posed by the modern world. Next, he turns to the realms of religious faith and human symbolism, gleaning from them the resources for a "conversion to earth" needed for global survival. Finally, Rasmussen offers a constructive ethic, a program of "Earth Action" that can shape a global movement toward sustainable community.

For all those concerned with the environment, religion, and society, Earth Community, Earth Ethics provides a deeply nuanced and brilliantly illuminating vision of where we are, and where we must go from here.

In this important new book, social ethicist Larry Rasmussen lays the foundations for an approach to faith and ethics appropriate to a community of the earth, in all its peril and promise. Earth Community, Earth Ethics is a comprehensive treatment that synthesizes insights from religion, ethics, and environmentalism in a single vision for creating a sustainable community. Earth Community, Earth Ethics is arranged in three parts. In the first Rasmussen scans our global situation and brings into relief the extraordinary range of dangers threatening all life on our planet. In part two he explores worlds of religion, ethics, and human symbolism to glean from them the resources for a necessary "conversion to earth". Finally, he sketches a constructive ethic that can guide us out of our present situation. While its principle focus is environmental ethics Earth Community, Earth Ethics builds on the foundations of international discussions of sustainable development, and such books as The Ecology of Commerce and Envisioning a Sustainable Society. Rasmussen shows how the environmental predicament underscores a variety of crises afflicting modern industrial society: in economics, in politics, in gender and reproductive relations, as well as the debates on the very meaning of life itself.