The Commonwealth of Life

Convincing analysis; empowering vision.-David Suzuki, scientist and host of the CBC's The Nature of Things A pioneering work in ethics and economics for the new global era raising all the hard questions that we need to think about in the coming decades, and proposing a radically new way of thinking about how the global community should function.-Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp professor of bioethics, Princeton University Peter Brown has given us a structure that unites an economics of stewardship with a politics of trusteeship, based on an ethics of rights and corresponding duties. Highly recommended!-Herman E. Daly, University of Maryland In this important book Peter G. Brown seeks to chart a new future for all who share this planet. Through a series of careful arguments, he identifies three challenges ahead of us: first, to come up with an adequate account of our minimal obligations to each other, and to the rest of the natural order; second, to redefine and reshape the institutions of economics, government, and civil society to reflect these obligations; and third, to reconceptualize and redirect the relations between nations to foster these institutions and discharge these obligations. Brown also argues that we have direct moral obligations to non-humans-this he calls respect for the commonwealth of life. Peter G. Brown is a professor at McGill University and director of the McGill School of Environment in Montreal. He is the author of Restoring the Public Trust: A Fresh Vision for Progressive Government in America.