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Ethical Enhancement in an Age of Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2014

Paul Wapner
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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
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , Fall 2014 , pp. 325 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2014 

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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