Quote from Great Tide Rising

Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Climate Change

by Kathleen Dean Moore

Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, California © 2016; 340 pp.

"My neighbor is a practical man. 'Look,' he says to me, 'if you want to call people to action on climate change, talk to them about what moves people to action--self-interest, money, and fear. Don't tell them it's wrong to wreck the world. Tell them it's stupid or expensive or dangerous. Tell them that unless this nation moves faster on solar energy, the Chinese are going to eat our lunch. Tell them that climate change will make the cost of California lettuce go through the roof. Scare the shit out of them if you have to: Tell them that the most likely way that global warming will end is when nuclear winter seizes the world--a long, cold night for the human prospect when nations drop atomic bombs in battles over water and food. But don't talk to people about morality. People don't like to be preached at. Ethics never changed anything, and it's a waste of time when time is short.'

At that point, I really had my back up. I want to tell him what moral discourse is. I want to describe the power of moral affirmation to change history. It's true that morality has had a bad reputation lately. Blame it on TV preachers, if you want, shouting about sin. Blame it on the confusion of ethics with religion. Blame it on the effect of a press that would rather expose the titillating horror shows of private lives than engage in a discourse about what is right and what is good. Blame it on the viral pathology of this non sequitur: that because I have a right to believe whatever I want, whatever I believe is right. Poor ethics, struggling to be truly seen, when it has been so terribly disfigured.

First, let us distinguish between the morality of prohibition, and the morality of affirmation."  (pp. 17-18)

-- submitted by Jennifer Knight

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