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We face new environmental challenges, unprecedented challenges, climate change being the standout example.

That says Dale Jameson of New York University

raises new questions about how we should live and it requires the cultivation of

new virtues, green virtues. What are green virtues and why should we be concerned with them?

Well I think we need green virtues because we really entered a different phase of the world, a different era in which human relationships have changed, in which human relationships with nature have changed.

The traditional virtues that we have from the Christian tradition, from the pagan tradition, really developed in a world which was not very dense in terms of human population when resources were

essentially unlimited and we now live in a world in which the causal reach of humanity

is very, very great and that should lead us to think differently about ourselves and our

relations to each other and to nature.

When you say the causal reach of human beings on nature is very great, could you give an example

of what you mean? So when I drive a car, I emit carbon, which goes into the atmosphere, which then goes through a set of incredibly complicated transformations, plays with other carbon molecules and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

and may actually result in harms being felt by distant people in the further future.

This is not really a capacity that our ancestors had.

So you're saying that we need special virtues because of the changing factual situation?

That's right.

So what are they?

So I think in some cases it's just simply a matter of reconceiving some traditional

virtues.

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