Ethics & Climate Change: The Greenhouse EffectWilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1993 M08 19 - 199 pages Faced with the prospect of global warming, the anticipated rapid rise in global air temperatures due to the release of gases into the atmosphere, we have two choices of how to respond: adaptation or avoidance. With adaptation we keep burning fossil fuels, let global temperatures rise and make whatever changes this requires: move people from environmentally damaged areas, build sea walls, etc. With avoidance we stop warming from occurring, either by reducing our use of fossil fuels or by using technology such as carbon dioxide recovery after combustion to block the warming effect. Yet each strategy has its drawbacks—adaptation may not be able to occur fast enough to accommodate the expected temperature increases, but avoidance would be prohibitively expensive. An ethically acceptable goal must involve some mixture of adaptation and avoidance. Written by a team of scientists, social scientists, humanists, legal and environmental scholars and corporate researchers, this book offers an ethical analysis of possible responses to the problem. Their analyses of the scientific and technological data and the ethical principles involved in determining whose interests should be considered point to a combination of adaptation and avoidance of greenhouse gas production. They offer assessments of personal, corporate, government and international responsibility and a series of recommendations to aid decision-makers in determining solutions and apportioning responsibility. |
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... chapters together within the Introduction and Conclusion , members were required to digest the data from all involved disciplines before drafting their chap- ters . The draft chapters then underwent a thorough critique by all team ...
... chapter 1 , chapters 2-9 offer reli- gious , economic , personal , corporate , international , and technological re- sponses to the challenge of global warming . All of these discussions as- sume that our response to the greenhouse ...
... chapter 2 Thomas Hurka outlines a series of ethical principles ranging from the relatively uncontroversial and ... chapters . Hurka's approach proceeds by looking at the consequences of an act or policy : Good consequences count ...
... chapter 7 . As a provisional result of his study , Hurka concludes that even if only the least contentious consequentialist principles , related to present and future humans , were adopted , these would enjoin avoidance of further ...
... chapter on religious responsibility in relation to the environment is premised on the following considerations . First , while environmental ethics can be considered from a strictly secular perspec- tive , the ethical reflections of the ...
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
23 | |
3 Religious Responsibility | 39 |
4 The ArcticA Canadian Case Study | 61 |
5 Personal Responsibility | 81 |
6 Corporate Responsibility | 99 |
7 International Responsibility | 115 |
Efficiency and Ethical Considerations | 133 |
9 Energy Efficiency at Home and Abroad | 149 |
Conclusion | 165 |
About the Authors | 171 |
Bibliography | 175 |
Index | 187 |
Other editions - View all
Ethics and Climate Change: The Greenhouse Effect Harold Coward,Thomas Hurka No preview available - 1993 |
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The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology ... Peter D. Ward,Donald Brownlee No preview available - 2003 |