The Golden Rule means that you would not take advantage of someone or lie to get ahead because you would not want others doing that to you.
To apply the Golden Rule, you have to imagine yourself in the exact place of another person who is on the receiving end of an action. It requires you to pause, however briefly, in the busy moment to imagine yourself vividly and accurately, in the other person’s place.
Climate Change causes increasing harm to all life on Earth.
The way we live in the United State and elsewhere in the industrialized world causes climate change.
How we live in America and in other post-industrial nations has caused climate change.
Yet how we choose to live going forward will make all the difference in the world.
We can choose to continue to benefit ourselves as individuals, ignoring the consequences of burning fossil fuels upon the well-being of all life.
Or we can choose to change how we live and reduce our carbon emissions, thus benefiting all by caring for all life and the Earth.
A deeper resource…
The global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing to take action to rein in carbon emissions, the current generation is spreading the costs of its behavior far into the future. Why should people in the future suffer from our mess? Read more: Ethical Dimensions of Tackling Climate Change at Yale Environment 360