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If there is a perspective that has potential to be a positive rationale for globalization, it might be an environmental or ecological one. One of the most significant issues pushing some cooperative means of globalization is the environment, as we consider the ecological effects of human activities on a planetary scale. Global warming, ozone depletion, and the myriad means of industrial pollution whose effects are felt worldwide make it clear that, in the absence of a global response, we will all individually suffer serious consequences.

As much as we like to divide up the planet in human terms, laying out the grid lines of political boundaries and economic relationships, the fundamental limitations of the planet itself establish inescapable conditions for what the future holds. Although this may seem just as counterintuitive as Saul's analysis of the failure of global economic systems reinventing the world, the global spread of pollution combined with catastrophic climate change may catalyze changes that overcome local self-interest in favor of something bigger than ourselves. The artificial boundaries that humans create--everything from the notion that one can possess the land to the idea that one can control a part of the planet--are seen through even a crude ecological lens to be nonsensical and even dangerous. If the idea that people have the right to do what they please with the land, water, or air that they "own" is replaced by some more ecologically responsible understanding, then there may be a common ground for cooperation on a planetary scale that does not yet exist. Whether such global cooperation will be in response to some global disaster or whether it will be the result of some new and more positive understanding remains to be seen.

It may seem like pie in the sky, but there are non-coercive ways of conceiving of a global community in which globalization consists of the universal acceptance of ideals and values. If justice, human rights, and respect were tied to the provision of the necessities of life to people in all areas of the planet, and peaceful means were used to settle whatever disputes might arise, then a global culture that reflected these things would be good for everyone.

This is not a new idea, but it is one that Albert Schweitzer (1949) elaborated on in his book The Philosophy of Civilization. The first two sections were written "in the primeval forest of Equatorial Africa" between 1914 and 1917. The first section of the book, "The Decay and Restoration of Civilization," locates the global problem not in economic forces but in a philosophical worldview that has undermined civilization itself; for Schweitzer, the Great War was a symptom of the spiritual collapse of civilization, not its cause. He asserts that society has lost sight of the character of civilization and, having lost sight of it, has degenerated as a result. That degeneration is primarily ethical; civilization is founded on ethics, but we are no longer aware of a consistent ethical foundation on which we can build a life together. The second section, not surprisingly, is titled "Civilization and Ethics"; in it, Schweitzer explores this ethical (and spiritual) problem. Schweitzer's answer, reached in the third section, published after the war, was to found ethical action on a principle Schweitzer called "the reverence for life." By doing this, he said, it would be possible to make decisions that were more fair, just, and life-giving than society at the present time was making. He noted that the principle was a general one, for it was not only human life, but all living things, for which people were to have reverence.

The idea of "reverence for life" entailed not only an ecological view of life but also one in which a spiritual dimension in all living things was acknowledged and respected. Moreover, it was not merely a Christian spirituality that Schweitzer said must underpin ethics in civilization, but it was a spirituality in general terms that--across religious boundaries as well as cultural and political ones--had not just a respect for life, but a reverence for it.

In the search for some noncoercive means of uniting people across social, political, cultural, and economic as well as geographic boundaries, working out some vague consequentialist environmentalism to guide the activities and choices of individuals in the global community is not likely going to be enough. There does, however, need to be some ethical framework within which to consider options that, in some form and in the service of some greater, global good, will not have negative effects on people, places, and human institutions. Such a framework will be difficult to find, to articulate, and to accept. Perhaps Schweitzer's idea of reverence for life might turn out to be as useful an ethical touchstone for global decision making today as he thought it would be nearly a century ago.

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Faber, Daniel, Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice: The Polluter-Industrial Complex in the Age of Globalization. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

Franklin, Ursula, The Real World of Technology, 2d ed. Toronto: Anansi, 1999.

Hilton, Matthew, Prosperity for All: Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalization. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

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