(note: this was written in 2003)

There appears to be two official American attitudes towards Global warming: the second, wholly laudable, is that alternatives must be found - and quickly - to present global warming producers. After all, when a former American President said that within 10 years they would get to the moon: they got there. So they should be able to accept the challenge to replace the causes for global warming.

BUT: the first, the initial reaction, is deeply worrying. Nothing can be accepted if, in the short term, it affects wealth production.

Now this is where those who believe in ethical economics must clash with politicians: though not, it may be said, of many business leaders.

Of course, much depends on the concept of morality: is short-term financial profitability more important than the long-term good of the planet?

Now we accept that the American constitution is completely a-religious. Yet while there is the huge American church-going public we cannot understand why this situation is accepted. The Jesus of the gospels, so theoretically important to the American public, seems to have been far more concerned with the abuse of financial power than ever He was with the Kingdom of God.

Which should take priority? The ethical case - if it is such, and we know of no-one arguing that the long-term good of the planet is not an ethical matter - or the economic, the short-term benefit of the few, the American producers / wasters who represent a very small percentage of even the present world population.

At present there is no definitive answer: for there is no accepted discipline of ethical economics. But surely there should be!