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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... ecosystems , or indeed , the complete biosphere . In holistic views such as that adopted by Aldo Leopold ( 1970 ) , global climate change must be examined for its consequences not just to indi- vidual organisms but to the interrelated ...
... ecosystem caused by global warming is predicted to be greater than in the rest of Canada . An anticipated warming of 8-10 ° C would result in the disappearance of the ice pack from the Arctic Ocean during the summer months , leading to ...
... ecosystems to the ob- served climatic variation remains obscure . Discussions by Melillo et al . ( 1990 ) deal primarily with the prediction of future response to predicted climatic change , and touch only lightly on visible change in ...
... ecosystems of today been de- tectably disturbed by the temperature and precipitation changes of the past century ? There are some partial answers . Acid deposition , for ex- ample , has had negative impacts on lake and river ecosystems ...
... ecosystems , marine and terrestrial alike , that experience rapid climatic change . A warming of as much as 0.3 ° C per decade — widely predicted by the models - would certainly cause such stress , even if details cannot be specified ...
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 |