Environmental Ethics and our Collective Character

Faced with the global crisis of human-caused environmental harm, this eloquently written text explores the connection between our individual virtues and vices and those of larger groups, such as societies, nations, and businesses. It demonstrates how this huge collective crisis is our moral problem as individuals, and what we can do about it, together.

The book sheds light on the notion of collective character and investigates the relationship between the way we are individually and the way we are together. Drawing on research from the social sciences, it demonstrates a close correlation between our individual and collective character, highlighting the scope of our influence on others, and suggests socially possible pathways toward a fair way of life in harmony with nature and community. To implement this, Clowney argues that we must change the current extractive and wasteful methods of business, economic growth, consumption, and capitalism. Initial chapters delve into our connection to those systems and consider how these can be transformed over time, followed by seven stories exemplifying the changes required, and chapters on several environmental virtues in their individual and collective form. The book concludes with a meditation on the virtues of faith, hope, and love, which the author puts forward as grounded in many traditions, and necessary to sustain the work of environmental change.

Environmental Ethics and our Collective Character will be an important discussion text for students, academics, and instructors in the field of environmental virtue ethics, virtue ethics more broadly, business ethics, political and social philosophy, and environmental and policy studies.