Want ethical responses to a world of trouble? Focus on character

We read a lot these days about corruption, self-interest and personal tragedies. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time explicitly considers climate change as an ethical challenge. Increasingly, our globalised 24/7 cultures seem to offer little in the way of secular hope in the face of all this. Has it struck you how odd it is that most of us brighten at the thought of having children, when we know (or ought to know) that more kids (multiplied a gazillion times over) must mean most of them have little chance of having decent lives if we persist on our current course?