January 3, 2003

How to Behave Ethically Now, in the Face of an Uncertain Future

To the Editor:

Herschel Elliott and Richard D. Lamm want the specter of environmental collapse to reorder the criteria we use to make moral claims ("A Moral Code for a Finite World," The Review, November 15). If that is the case, then any disaster that is understood to be inevitable can constitute a moral scalpel: The finitude of natural resources can't be the only tool for moral decision making. Their "ethics of the commons" approach makes it unethical to pull one more shipwreck