The Roles of Creativity and Open-Mindedness in Implementing Sustainable Solutions

Abstract

Environmental virtue ethicists recognize the importance of the moral virtues for addressing environmental problems. In addition, I argue that there are at least two important intellectual virtues required in the process of developing and implementing environmentally sustainable systems of living: creativity and open-mindedness. A high degree of creativity is needed in the search for environmentally sustainable solutions, whether that be in developing new technologies, in imagining more efficient economic systems, or in reconsidering our current ways of living. But creativity on its own is not sufficient for implementing these solutions; open-mindedness is also essential. Open-mindedness allows us to appreciate and understand the sustainable solutions developed by others and to consider how those approaches might be implemented in our own context. These two intellectual virtues work in tandem to allow both a wide-ranging search for new ideas and the change in ways of thinking needed to make them a reality.