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.