From our elders, we learn of morals and ethics at an early age. We learn, for example, that it violates schoolroom ethics to spit on the floor. Likewise, we are taught that cursing is immoral, as is exposing our bodies. Life’s rules were simple: no spitting, no cursing, and keep our clothes on. Done, right?

But, no. Over time, we learned that ethics weren’t constants, but were situational. If someone, by accident, saw us in the nude, we had done nothing wrong. If we are sick and throw up on the carpet, we are not chastised as having done anything wrong. Okay, we now knew that textbook ethics remained, but there might be situations where we are exempt. But morals were black-and-white: there is right, and there is wrong. Right?

Unfortunately, this is where we get stuck. Much to our dislike, morals, while not situational, happen to be transitional. Yep, they change. This frustrates us in looking at history and at ourselves. Consider the Aztecs: their daily sacrifice of a virgin was morally acceptable because the killing guaranteed that the sun would come up the next day. That act ensured to them that the crops would grow, and the people would be able to eat. It was only when people discovered that the sun came up anyway that the act became immoral—a transitional moral, for sure.

Okay, that Aztec example is so far back in history that we cannot relate. To the modern mind, what they were doing was always immoral, not transitional from our 21st-century perspective. So, let’s look at something of more recent vintage: the miniskirt. Today, skirts with lengths above the knees are not just acceptable; they’re the norm for most women. But as recently as the 1960s, they were an abomination. This link from that time in history reflects the views of many: https://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume15/TM015170.html. That was also a time when women wore slips under their skirts for additional modesty, virtually unheard of today.

So, what changed? It was the skirt itself. Young women liked the style, and, with popularity, the perspective that viewing a woman’s legs above the knees as being immodest adjusted accordingly. Wearing the miniskirt was not a suggestive action but an action to be in style, nothing different from the change in the early 20th century when dress styles started showing more than just a woman’s ankles. The moral of modesty remained, but the standard changed. The woman letting her ankles show was no more immodest than the woman in the miniskirt. Both were just being in style, and neither was being immodest or suggestive. Morals remain constant until a sudden shift forces a revisit to the moral.

A more difficult example for us to accept is the morality of slavery and its transition. When our country was young, slavery was an accepted lifestyle, even using the Bible as endorsing it (Leviticus 25:44-46; 1 Timothy 6:1; Colossians 3:22) and displaying it as acceptable in our U.S. Constitution. Yet, even knowing that, we want to remove statues or other symbols that pay honor to significant persons of that era because they not only accepted the idea of slavery but also had slaves themselves. Yes, it was an immoral practice from our 21st-century view, but it was the acceptable norm at the time. We struggle to deal with this because the practice was so abhorrent, and our forefathers who championed freedom could not see what was directly in front of them. That moral seems so obvious to us, yet the transition to today’s view took thousands of years.

More recently, our President Trump has introduced transitional morality into what have been established procedures to prevent abuse. When our forefathers created a three-tier government with checks and balances, they never contemplated that a president would ignore such restraints and that the legislative body would submit willingly to his requests. That we now have a government where the constitution is under attack, our fears are that this new morality may extend to allowing even more constraints on our safety and healthcare being removed. When a government no longer recognizes right vs. wrong, we are doomed to living in autocracy. The word morality becomes antiquated, quaint, irrelevant, and extinct. And our world falls into an abyss.

Even with the threat of the demise of truth, today, we face morals and ethics of a more global nature—our carbon footprint. Our challenge here is that we recognize our involvement, yet we don’t like the demand it could make on our lifestyle. Our initial view is to make minor changes; we don’t want to face the bigger issue. First, we went into denial, stating that global warming is just a political argument. Scientists showed us facts of Arctic ice melting, and we said the scientists are lying. After a few decades of denial, we recognized that the climate is, indeed, changing. More storms, more hurricanes, and areas previously safe from tornadoes are now suffering damage and casualties. We are convinced we need to cut back. So, we buy LED light bulbs. There, done. The problem is fixed. The world is safe because we bought new light bulbs.

But that didn’t work, did it? So, we realized we needed to be more fuel-efficient in our driving. Our next step was to buy cars that were more efficient, ignoring the fact that the manufacture of these cars uses an enormous carbon footprint that we might never recover in our minuscule transition from 20 mpg to 25 mpg averages. Not to be outdone by nature, we then stepped up the pace, deciding that the ideal solution would be a 100% transition to electric power: electric cars, electric ovens, and electric furnaces. No gasoline, no gas.

Will this work? Will our latest decision to go fully electric be the silver bullet? All we need to do for this to work is to find a perpetual source of energy to provide the electricity we will need. That, plus find an endless source of natural material to manufacture the batteries and other components to harness the electricity for use. Don’t forget, we will also need a massive, fully redundant grid to deliver that electric power to every place where people live and work. Every place. The cities, farms, and rural dwellers. Everywhere. This isn’t proving easy; we have an unstable, insufficient grid, wind power has its own problems, and solar panels direly require those rare minerals for their manufacture—and nothing, so far, can do the job. Do we go nuclear, with all of its fears, to let us sidestep our carbon footprint sins? That solution is predictably on the table.

Since our carbon footprint is directly tied to our lifestyle choices, why not put a hold on a technology solution and revisit our lifestyle choices? Why not? Because changing our lifestyle will be painful, and we want to avoid that, regardless of the scenario in which we leave our children and their children. What might those changes be? For one, we could stop building bedroom communities that require more roads and more cars. We could also focus on public transit options instead of more fuel-efficient cars. Another option is to stop focusing on the private family home as the ideal residence. Such changes will take time, but the long-term view will be more promising than committing to nuclear power to sustain our love of cars and private residences. We have a moral obligation to find the real solution to eliminate our carbon footprint. We need to wake up to our obligation. We need to start.

By implementing sustainable practices and embracing alternative living arrangements, we can pave the way for a healthier planet. It is essential to engage communities in this transformation and foster a culture of environmental responsibility that prioritizes the well-being of future generations. It’s the moral thing to do.