Ecology, Ethics, and the Future of Humanity

A book that combines moral and political philosophy with traditions of activism and literature in a background of scientific knowledge and interpretation to build a comprehensive picture of an ecological humanity.

Humanity faces no greater long-term danger than climate change and the ecological destruction it entails. In this singular book Adam Riggio argues that such a profound challenge requires a complete reorientation of morality, politics, and human identity along ecological lines. Bringing together concepts from environmental activism, moral philosophy, biological and ecological sciences, and innovative metaphysics, Ecology, Ethics, and the Future of Humanity lays out a radical new vision of a new type of humaneness: ecological humanity. Riggio argues that this new type of humanity is emerging from the problem of our current ecological crisis. With it, writes Riggio, will come new conceptions of self-interest, the human sense of home, and our material self-conception. Environmental philosophers have often maligned or dismissed arguments espousing nature''s intrinsic value because they are incompatible with the moral intuitions of people who consider themselves essentially individuated and discrete. Asking what kind of person would find nature''s intrinsic value intuitive is a guide to what new kind of human will emerge from the process of becoming ecological. Riggio illustrates how embracing this new model of humanity is the most effective path to political change precisely because the process so profoundly and inexorably transforms the guiding concepts of our lives. But he also warns that it is also necessarily a slow process because such change cannot be forced, only inspired.