Volume 37, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2017
Willa Swenson-Lengyel
Pages 171-187
Moral Paralysis and Practical Denial
Environmental Ethics in Light of Human Failure
In environmental ethics, there has been too little attention to the question of why changes in environmental beliefs do not simply result in changes in behavior, given that this gap between belief and behavior is widespread. In this essay, I argue that two forms of inaction that exhibit this gap can be helpfully analyzed by reading them in terms of a Lutheran account of sin. To make the argument, I distinguish seven forms of and reasons for inaction, from which I pull out two “privileged” forms of inaction that characterize people who could act and yet do not. Using psychological and sociological research, I interpret these two forms of inaction as, on the one hand, people’s attempts at securing righteousness and, on the other hand, people’s terrorized consciences in response to the complexity and gravity of climate change. I end suggesting a turn to justification within Christian environmental ethics.