Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T11:33:43.429Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ethical Enhancement in an Age of Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2014

Extract

This roundtable of Ethics & International Affairs provides an opportunity to step back and reflect on the fundamental elements of climate change and how ethics can play a role in addressing them. In this spirit, I explore three questions that capture the broad outlines of climate concerns. First, what is the nature of climate change as a global problem? Second, what frustrates humanity's ability to respond? Third, what can be done?

Type
Roundtable: The Facts, Fictions, and Future of Climate Change
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 “International Energy Outlook 2013,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, July 25, 2013, www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm.

2 IPCC, “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis,” Summary for Policymakers, Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2013), http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/docs/WGIAR5_SPM_brochure_en.pdf, pp. 3 and 18.

3 Ehrlich, Paul R. and Holdren, John P., “Impact of Population Growth,” Science 171, no. 3977 (1971), pp. 1212–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See, e.g., Gardiner, Stephen M., The Perfect Moral Storm: Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Harris, Paul, What's Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013).Google Scholar

5 Carbon Tracker initiative, “Unburnable Carbon: Are the World's Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble?,” www.carbontracker.org/site/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/07/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2.pdf.

6 See Bullard, Robert, “Environmental Justice in the 21st Century,” in Bullard, Robert, ed., The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and Politics of Pollution (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005)Google Scholar; and Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement,” in Bullard, Robert, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999).Google Scholar

7 See, e.g., Lerner, Steve, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012).Google Scholar

8 Quammen, David, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction (New York: Scribner, 1997).Google Scholar

9 Kolbert, Elizabeth, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014).Google Scholar

10 Mike Davis, “ Planet of Slums: Sinister Paradise,” (Canberra, Aus.: Treason Press Pamphlets, 2006), https://libcom.org/files/Planet%20of%20Slums1.pdf, p. 16.

11 Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 2.

12 See, e.g., Thompson, Allen and Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy, eds., Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Moore, Kathleen Dean and Nelson, Michael, “Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2013).Google Scholar

14 Macy, Joanna and Johnstone, Chris, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2012).Google Scholar