Ethics for the Coming Storm

In Ethics for the Coming Storm, Laurie Zoloth argues that our debates about environmental issues have largely been driven by the language of economics and political power, and have become both deeply divisive and symbolic, turning our differing truth claims and moral appeals into signs of identity. This discourse has utterly failed to change the human behavior or political and economic structures necessary to face global warming head on. So Zoloth turns toanother language, found in the texts and traditions of Jewish thought—the language of Scripture, the Talmud, and philosophy of Judaism—which, she contends, offers a different kind of argument for such a change.