I was outraged by a letter to FT.COM by an Oxford Prof who attacked the Stern Review's "feeble" ethical basis. The said Prof spoke of the global warming risk as "minute and unquantifiable." He poured cold water on any sense of moral obligation to "distant generations."
(Follow this link to read full letter.)
This is how I replied:
Wilfred Beckerman (letters April 22) is right to say that our response to climate change cannot just be left to purely scientific and economic considerations. However, the ethical criteria he invokes run totally counter to the tough and searching demands of Jesus in 2000 years of the Christian tradition. Professor Beckerman says we must prioritise known family and friends over the claims of strangers and distant generations. But in this respect, Jesus' ethic was quite clear: blood ties alone are no basis for expressing moral imperatives. In his truly revolutionary call to a universalist approach, Jesus has little time for purely "defending your own." He warns that following the path of true love may well set "man against his father and daughter against her mother." (Matthew 10: 35) He asserts: "if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans do the same? (Matt Ch 5:47) Those who are really worthy of the name "mother and brother are these which hear the word of God and do it." (Luke 8:21)
That word of God, enshrined in the call to the people of Israel to look beyond their own narrow boundaries, reaches the heights ot true self giving when it is extended to those hitherto unknown: Leviticus 19:34 says "The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the homeborn among you and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." No surprise then that Jesus frequently has Samaritans, the dreaded "strangers", as the unlikely recipients of his attention. No wonder also, that Al Gore, a committed Southern Baptist, was totally on the ball at the end of his film, An Inconvenient Truth, when he said that the unprecendented challenge of global warming requires enormous "moral imagination."
