Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices

Rieder (In Pain), an associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, investigates in this thought-provoking treatise how to live a “morally decent life” amid an accelerating climate crisis. Finding shortcomings with a variety of philosophical frameworks, including religion, nihilism, and Socratic reasoning, Rieder champions an “ethic of conscientiousness” that asks individuals to “live a better, more justifiable life” while giving them “latitude” in how they “participate in the global structures that benefit and harm.” In the book’s most stimulating section, Rieder applies that ethic to such moral quandaries as eating meat, driving gas-powered cars, and having children in a resource-starved world. (He lands somewhere in the middle on the latter question, acknowledging the ills of overpopulation while challenging “Schopenhauer-style” arguments that bringing a child into existence means inherently causing them harm.) Noting that today’s “massive, structural problems” are unprecedented, Rieder wisely avoids settling on any one philosophical system, and instead models the value of “switch[ing] our moral cameras over into manual mode” to pick and choose elements from each. It’s an excellent resource for the environmentally conscious weighing their life’s choices. Agent: Jane Von Mehren, Aevitas Creative. (Mar.)