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EAST LANSING, Mich. - Hope for environmental progress might be a chief motivator for many, says Michael Nelson, an associate professor of environmental ethics. But that might not be enough, he argues in the March edition of The Ecologist magazine.

Maybe it's even counterproductive, sowing disillusionment instead. Perhaps, he writes with co-author John Vucetich of Michigan Technological University, virtue should be its own reward when thinking globally and acting locally.

Nelson, who with Vucetich founded The Conservation Ethics Group, isn't pushing some neo-Stoic assault on the emotional aspects of environmentalism, he writes. "Instead of hope we need to provide young people with reasons to live sustainably that are rational and effective. We need to equate sustainable living, not so much with hope for a better future, but with basic virtues such as sharing and caring, which we already recognize as good in and of themselves, and not because of their measured consequences."

Nelson holds joint appointments from Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

A video interview of Nelson speaking on that topic produced the MSU Environmental Science and Policy Program's Andy McGlashen, meanwhile, finds itself with one degree of separation from environmental activist Al Gore himself. New York Times environmental writer  Andrew Revkin's blog on a recent Gore presentation in Chicago was linked to video of that presentation recorded and uploaded to YouTube by McGlashen and colleague Andy Balaskovitz - where you can find the Nelson video on the same page.

Read a proof draft of the article here. Watch the Environmental Science and Policy Program's video interview of Michael Nelson. Read the press release from Michigan Tech.

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