Ethics for a Full World

The global emergencies facing the inhabitants of our planet—climate change, diminishing biodiversity, ocean acidification, overfishing, land degradation, and more—are symptoms of a common problem: the world is full. Humanity has already exceeded several planetary boundaries. The situation is without precedent and its manifestations are numerous. Ethics for a Full World argues that our dominant culture of anthropocentrism—our human-centric thinking—is an underlying cause of the world’s problems, threatening life as we know it.

Many today, especially those who care about other species, experience the blights that endanger our planet as deeply personal tragedies. Why are we not acting to save the world? Some say that humans won’t do anything until we feel the repercussions ourselves, but by then it will be too late. This book takes an uncompromising view of our culture, our democracy, and humankind, examining why it is so difficult to save the world from ourselves.

In a globalized world, the most urgent issues are those that exhibit tipping points, as they may soon be too late to fix. Burkey argues that non-anthropocentric ethics, and those who adhere to them, could be the key to turning the tide. In a cry for meaningful and effective engagement, the author proposes a concrete first step to connect concerned individuals. This is a book for people who want to be part of the solution and who are not fooled by the feeble attempts for change that have been made so far.