Climate Change, Ecology, Environment

Nuclear Power, ANWR, and Global Warming

[1] Three specific problems in the Bush administration’s policies warrant further analysis: 1) the renewed commitment to nuclear energy, 2) the exploration for oil in ANWR, and 3) the administration’s dismissal of global warming. The renewed commitment to nuclear energy is highly risky, even if, as the administration claims, technological advances have made an already […]

Sustainable Energy Futures: Economic and Ecological Ramifications of U.S. Energy Policy

This article comes from a new casebook on environmental ethics co-authored with James Martin Schramm and forthcoming from Orbis Books in 2004. [1] Two primary visions of the future vie with each other to control the direction of U.S. energy policy. Developmentalists such as President Bush and Vice President Cheney advocate increasing the supply of […]

Am I Righteous or What? I Drive a Honda Civic That Gets 40 MPG!

[1] After filling up on a recent trip from Ohio, I had my wife calculate the gasoline consumption of our spiffy new Honda Civic. “You’re going to like this,” she said, “It comes out to 45 miles per gallon.” Though aided by a strong tailwind, I was still enthused. But not enthused as I was […]

Deliberation, Holism, and Responsibility: Moral Life in the ELCA

A Special Calling in History [1] In 1998, in a series essay on the 21st century in Atlantic Monthly, Bill McKibben examines the population question and concludes as follows: The bottom-line argument goes like this: The next fifty years are a special time. They will decide how strong and healthy the planet will be for […]

Journey Between Worlds: Economic Globalization and Luther’ God Indwelling Creation

[1] My aims in this essay are two. The first is to expose dangers presented by the model of economic globalization shaping our world today. Secondly, in light of those dangers, I will offer rays of hope for the moral-spiritual power to forge new forms of economic life. As a source of that moral-spiritual power, […]