Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:41:22.284Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A “Natural” Proposal for Addressing Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2014

Extract

One of the fundamental challenges of climate change is that we contribute to it increment by increment, and experience it increment by increment after a considerable time lag. As a consequence, it is very difficult to see what we are doing to ourselves, to future generations, and to the living planet as a whole. There are monumental ethical issues involved, but they are obscured by the incremental nature of the process and the long time frame before reaching the concentration of greenhouse gases and the ensuing accumulation of radiant heat—and consequent climate change—that ensues.

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 Arrhenius, Svante, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground,” Philosophical Magazine, ser. 5, vol. 41, no. 251 (1896), pp. 237–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Kopp, Robert E. et al. , “Probalistic Assessment of Sea Level during the Last Interglacial Stage,” Nature 462 (2009), pp. 863–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Lal, Rattan et al. , eds., Recarbonization of the Biosphere (Springer XXVIII, 2012), 560 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lovejoy, Thomas E., “The Need to Manage Global Change,” in Houghton, Richard A. and White, Allison B., eds., Ecology and the Common Good (Falmouth, Mass.: Woods Hole Research Center, 2014), pp. 3542 Google Scholar.

4 Donato, Daniel C. et al. , “Mangroves among the Most Carbon-Rich Forests in the Tropics,” Nature Geoscience 4 (2011), pp. 293–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mcleod, Elizabeth et al. , “A Blueprint for Blue Carbon: Toward an Improved Understanding of the Role of Vegetated Coastal Habitats in Sequestering CO2 ,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9, no. 10 (2011), pp. 552–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pendleton, Linwood et al. , “Estimating Global ‘Blue Carbon’ Emissions from Conversion and Degradation of Vegetated Coastal Ecosystems,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 9 (2012), pp. 17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.