This essay makes the case for integrating the cosmological ethics of Journey of the Universe with the ecological values of the Earth Charter to help orient education toward a more just and flourishing planetary future.

The resulting origin story of modern cosmology will be the first ever based on scientific evidence and created by a collaboration of people from different religions and races all around the world, all of whose contributions are subjected to the same standards of verifiability. The new picture of reality excludes no one and treats all humans as equal. The revolution in scientific cosmology today may open the door to a believable picture of the larger reality in which the world, human lives, and all of their cultures are embedded.

This essay is an articulation of various contributions to anthropocosmic environmental ethics–an approach to environmental ethics emerging within the study of religion and ecology. In an anthropocosmic approach to environmental ethics, humans are intimately intertwined with the environment. Rather than placing value on a particular center (e. g., anthropocentric, biocentric, ecocentric) and thus excluding and marginalizing something of peripheral value, an anthropocosmic approach to ethics seeks to facilitate the mutual implication of humanity and the natural world, thereby affirming the interconnectedness and mutual constitution of central and peripheral value. Although the adjective “anthropocosmic” may seem obscure or vague, an examination of the genealogy of the term, beginning with its appearance in the works of Mircea Eliade, discloses numerous resources that have important contributions to make to the development of viable environmental ethics.

This landmark essay by Thomas Berry begins: “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The Old Story––the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it––is not functioning properly, and we have not learned the New Story.” This essay was first printed in Teilhard Studies (Winter 1978) by the American Teilhard Association, then published in The Dream of the Earth (1988) by Sierra Club Book and reprinted in 2015 by Counterpoint Press.