Kathleen Dean Moore

Let us celebrate the natural world in the languages of literature, science, and silence. Let us tell new stories that invite a deeper kinship with the world. Let us face our grief at the harm we have done and the global results of our disregard. Then we can ask the important questions: What do we make of the wonder and the sorrow? What response is worthy of us as moral beings?

**NEW**

To hear Kathleen's Vancouver BC climate ethics talk, http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate2012/ES_Dean_Moore.mp3

I will be teaching a course called "Nature and Spirit: The Art and Practice of the Nature Essay" at the Omega Institute in upstate New York, October 8 - 12, 2012. All are welcome; it would be wonderful to see you there. http://www.eomega.org/omega/

MORAL GROUND: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

Edited by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson, Foreword by Desmond Tutu

Although climate destabilization is a scientific and technical issue, it is primarily a moral issue. MORAL GROUND gathers the testimony of one hundred of the world’s moral leaders, all calling us to honor our responsibilities to the future.

“Could there be a more pressing book topic than the fate of humanity?” – Utne Reader

WILD COMFORT: The Solace of Nature

With stories about kayaking in a snowstorm, wading among salmon in the dark, and cooking breakfast in the desert, Moore offers readers a profound meditation on the healing power of nature.

“In its grounded wisdoms, humility, curiosity, and in the kaleidoscope beauty of its descriptions, Wild Comfort reminds how to see, how to sing; how to welcome, with equal gravity and grace, whatever asks entrance into our lives. It is destined to become a classic.”—Jane Hirshfield

AN ETHIC OF THE EARTH, BY THE EARTH, AND FOR THE EARTH

Written by Kathleen Moore Friday, 28 October 2011 02:35

“Something as important as an ethic is never [invented], conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote. “It evolves in the mind of a thinking community.” At the end of September, we convened twenty-four people in the ancient forests of the Oregon Cascades for the Blue River Quorum. As a sort of ad hoc thinking community, our goal was to jumpstart the evolution of a new ethic to respond more powerfully to the environmental emergencies we face. Ecologists, philosophers, novelists, poets, theologians, social scientists -- we were a disparate group. But we were united by two shared insights:

OCCUPY YOUR MORAL GROUND

Written by Kathleen Moore Monday, 24 October 2011 21:08

The Occupy Wall Street movements and climate action movements stand on the same moral ground and affirm the same moral principles: It’s wrong to wreck the world. It’s wrong to wreck the health and hopes of others. An economic system that forces the people to bear the risks of the recklessness of a few powerful profiteers, to assume the burdens of others’ privilege, and to pay the real costs of destructive industries in the currency of their health and the hopes of their children -- that system is immoral. And when, to enrich a powerful few, that system threatens to disrupt forever the great planetary cycles that support all the lives on Earth? This is moral monstrosity on a cosmic scale.

LEARNING HOPE: WHEN THE STUDENTS TEACH THE TEACHER

Written by Kathleen Moore Monday, 08 August 2011 00:00

Last term, I taught a university class on “Ethics and Climate Change,” using MORAL GROUND as a reader. It was the most moving teaching experience of my life. My students were mostly graduate students, most from the science and natural resource fields. They didn’t know, or need to know, much about ethics, but they all cared deeply about the future of the Earth.

Like any diligent professor, I began with a clear list of the goals of the course: To examine the moral issues that we face as the climate changes; to learn how worldviews and values, together with science, can shape decisions about what we ought to do; to reason cogently about our obligations to honor intergenerational rights and the rich abundance of life on Earth; and so to acquire the skills and concepts to navigate in the choppy waters of a global moral discourse of literally world-changing importance. But, as I soon learned, the most important outcome of the course was not on my list.