From Environmental Crisis to Pandemic, Waging a War with Nature

For the time being, the headlines have changed. The news of international conflict has been overtaken by an analysis of global existential threat, the sort of calamity—like epidemics and environmental degradation—that threatens us all. The world is going to hell, but maybe there is some saving grace in what seems like its imminent apocalypse. According to the 19th century American pragmatist William James, this transition gives us the chance to refocus our energies away from traditionally narrow patriotic concerns epitomized in wartime, and sublimate them in broader and much more productive efforts. In his words, at times like these, there is the possibility to realize a “moral equivalent of war.”

In February 1906, James delivered a lecture of this title to a large Stanford audience. “The Moral Equivalent of War,” presented before a pacifist league, largely heralded the moral merits of warfare: war brings soldiers together, establishes a common cause, encourages bravery and self-sacrifice, and underpins the fabric of the modern nation-state. If James had stopped there, he would have been