Global warming and the land ethic

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

The above is the basic philosophy of Aldo Leopold's land ethic. Leopold argues that our ethical systems must evolve to take into account the entire community of life, not just other individuals or human society in general.

This is the argument Brudaimonia is trying to establish in the Daily KOS about the effects of the global warming:

For global warming, we have to fight our subconscious tendency to only pay attention to localized problems, and consider the effect on the global community. We have to treat a threat to people halfway around the world as a threat to our neighbor or ourselves, because that's what we would want people halfway around the world to do if the threat was to us or our neighbor, especially if we knew that our actions influenced this threat.

And why should you be concerned? Brudaimonia builds a well informative first hand case of Bangladesh being vulnerable to the potential meteorological consequences of global warming. He portrays a scary projection of the fate of Bangladesh if global warming comes true. Take a look at yourself:

"A Look Down the Barrel of the Global Warming Gun"

I love the conclusion:

We can adopt (or cultivate) our own Land Ethic, within ourselves. And if enough of us do this, we might find that we have saved Bangladesh -- not to mention Ethiopia or New Orleans -- from the worst global warming consequences.