THE BREN SCHOOL OF Environmental Science & Management
at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Presents

Bruce Rich
Senior Attorney
Environmental Defense Fund

(A discussion will follow)

"To Uphold the World:

The Global Economy Requires a Global Ethic"

Hosted by Ernst von Weizsäcker

Summary

At the beginning of the 21st century, we cannot escape the turbocharged global economy we live in. Yet, the very forces that link us have accelerated the dissolution of traditional sources of social authority and historical identity, spurring increasingly violent counter-movements. We realize that traditional national politics and the reorganization of all social values around markets cannot hold together the 6.5 billion inhabitants of this small planet—the world needs a new global order based on a common global ethic and global justice.

Bruce Rich will speak on themes from his recently published book To Uphold the World, which explores ideas for such alternatives in a wide-ranging historical and philosophical essay. Introduced by Nobel Laureate in economics Amartya Sen, and concluded with and Afterword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Rich's search to found a civil and international order on principles that transcend the goals of pure economic efficiency and amoral realpolitik is inspired by the writings and lives of two of the greatest figures of ancient India—Ashoka and Kautilya. While ruling arguably the world's largest, richest and most powerful multi-ethnic state of its time, Ashoka tried to put into practice a secular state ethic of non-violence and reverence for life, which he also extended to international relations. Kautilya, one of history's greatest political geniuses, wrote the world's first treatise on political economy, the Arthasastra, which proclaims accumulation of material riches as the chief underpinning of human society. Both addressed the questions of political realism and idealism, the role of force and violence in international relations, and the tension between economics and ethics.

Rich extends his analysis of idealism and realism in politics and political economy to a number of seminal works, such as Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation, while also examining contemporary analyses calling for a global ethic by such leading contemporary thinkers.

Biography

Bruce Rich is Senior Attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, a leading U.S. national environmental organization with over 400,000 members. Rich has published extensively in environmental and policy journals, as well as in magazines and newspapers such as the Financial Times, the Nation, and the Ecologist. He is the author of Mortgaging the Earth (Beacon Press and Earthscan, 1994), a widely acclaimed critique of the World Bank and a reflection on the philosophical and historical evolution of the project of economic development in the West. In 1988, he received the United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Award, the U.N.'s highest environmental prize, as well as the World Hunger Media Award for the best periodical piece on development issues.

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