Download or read book Climate Change and the Moral Agent written by Elizabeth Cripps and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us take it for granted that we ought to cooperate to tackle climate change. But where does this requirement come from and what does it mean for us as individuals trying to do the right thing? Although climate change does untold harm to our fellow humans and to the non-human world, no one causes it on their own and it is not the result of intentionally collective action. In the face of the current failure of institutions to confront the problem, is there anything we can do as individuals that will leave us able to live with ourselves? This book responds to these challenges. It makes a moral case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm. It also argues that collective action is something we owe to ourselves, as moral agents, because without it we are left facing marring choices. In the absence of collective action, individuals should focus on trying to promote such action (whether through or by bypassing existing institutions), with a supplementary duty to aid victims directly. The argument is not that we should not be cutting our own emissionsthis can be a vital part of bringing about collective action or alleviating harmbut that such `green lifestyle choices cannot straightforwardly be defended as duties in their own right, and should not take priority over trying to bring about collective change.

Download or read book Climate Change and Individual Responsibility written by Wouter Peeters and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the agency and responsibility of individuals in climate change, and argues that these are underemphasized, enabling individuals to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions.

Download or read book What Climate Justice Means And Why We Should Care written by Elizabeth Cripps and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We owe it to our fellow humans – and other species – to save them from the catastrophic harm caused by climate change. Philosopher Elizabeth Cripps approaches climate justice not just as an abstract idea but as something that should motivate us all. Using clear reasoning and poignant examples, starting from irrefutable science and uncontroversial moral rules, she explores our obligations to each other and to the non-human world, unravels the legacy of colonialism and entrenched racism, and makes the case for immediate action. The second half of the book looks at solutions. Who should pay the bill for climate action? Who must have a say? How can we hold multinational companies, organisations – even nations – to account? Cripps argues powerfully that climate justice goes beyond political polarization. Climate activism is a moral duty, not a political choice.

Download or read book Debating Climate Ethics written by Stephen M. Gardiner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Stephen M. Gardiner and David A. Weisbach present arguments for and against the relevance of ethics to global climate policy. Gardiner argues that climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue, since it is an early instance of a distinctive challenge to ethical action (the perfect moral storm), and ethical concerns (such as with justice, rights, political legitimacy, community and humanity's relationship to nature) are at the heart of many of the decisions that need to be made. Consequently, climate policy that ignores ethics is at risk of "solving" the wrong problem, perhaps even to the extreme of endorsing forms of climate extortion. This is especially true of policy based on narrow forms of economic self-interest. By contrast, Weisbach argues that existing ethical theories are not well suited to addressing climate change. As applied to climate change, existing ethical theories suffer from internal logical problems and suggest infeasible strategies. Rather than following failed theories or waiting indefinitely for new and better ones, Weisbach argues that central motivation for climate policy is straightforward: it is in their common interest for people and nations to agree to policies that dramatically reduce emissions to prevent terrible harms.

Download or read book Climate Change and the Moral Agent written by Elizabeth Cripps and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate Change and the Moral Agent examines the moral foundations of climate change and makes a case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm.

Download or read book The Ethics of Climate Change written by Byron Williston and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ethics of Climate Change: An Introduction systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding arguably the greatest threat now facing humanity. This second edition has been updated and includes two new chapters on climate change and capitalism and climate change and law. Williston addresses important questions such as: Has humanity entered the Anthropocene epoch? Is climate change primarily an ethical or an economic issue? Can capitalism be reformed to prevent climate catastrophe? What are the moral failings of international climate diplomacy? What are the main causes of political inaction and climate denial? Should tort law be used to sue those responsible for climate change? What are intragenerational and intergenerational justice? Is geoengineering an ethically justifiable response to climate change? Featuring case studies throughout, this textbook provides a philosophical introduction to an immensely topical issue studied by students within the fields of applied ethics, global justice, sustainability, geography, and politics.

Download or read book The Future of Hope On Climate Inaction and Moral Agency written by Willa Swenson-Lengyel and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change inaction among first world peoples is startling at an individual, social, and governmental level. In this dissertation, I ask why this inaction is so widespread when the consequences of it are so severe. I argue that one primary and underexplored reason for this in-(sufficient)-action is that climate change potentially threatens the conditions for being human agents. More particularly, I claim that the experience of anthropogenic climate change provides an occasion to investigate more thoroughly the role of hope in sustaining human agency, precisely because anthropogenic climate change pressures many humans' capacities to so hope. This threat, in turn, helps to make sense of the tendency to inaction and inattention in response to climate change, especially among privileged actors, as they turn away from the threat to their agency and into 'practical denial.' By examining how this is so, this investigation helps explain why many are inactive and what challenges must be overcome in order to respond efficaciously to climate change. To make this argument, I first clarify the nature of hope. Then, I argue that hoping is an integral part of human moral anthropology, necessary for sustaining the moral life over time. Turning to current moment, I analyze the ways in which characteristics of the climate crisis can pressure hoping. Finally, I end the dissertation by examining one community's resources for responding to this pressure and learning to live in hope. In particular, I argue that Christians can find resources for renewing and sustaining hope a) in practices of lament, b) in renewed attention to vocation, and c) in reflection on God's presence amidst forsakenness, made manifest in Jesus as the Christ.

Download or read book The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change written by Darrel Moellendorf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the threat that climate change poses to projects of poverty eradication, sustainable development, and biodiversity preservation. It discusses the values that support these projects and evaluates the normative bases of climate change policy. It regards climate change policy as a public problem that normative philosophy can shed light on and assumes that the development of policy should be based on values regarding what is important to respect, preserve, and protect. What sort of policy do we owe the poor of the world who are particularly vulnerable to climate change? Why should our generation take on the burden of mitigating climate change caused, in no small part, by emissions from people now dead? What value is lost when species go extinct, because of climate change? This book presents a broad and inclusive discussion of climate change policy, relevant to those with interests in public policy, development studies, environmental studies, political theory, and moral and political philosophy.

Download or read book Climate Change and Individual Moral Duties written by Anna Luisa Lippold and published by Mentis. This book was released on 2020-05 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What ought individual agents do with regard to climate change? This book challenges the common intuition that every individual agent is morally required to do her bit by refraining from individual polluting actions and still does not leave individuals off the hook. Climate change requires an extremely ambitious, collective solution. This book defends the primacy of promotional duties and focuses on getting individuals as members of society involved. By taking a rights-based approach, it provides a profound normative basis to lead a heated discussion e.g. with regard to what can reasonably be demanded of individuals. Next to addressing duties of specific groups of agents such as young parents, this book aims to derive concrete recommendations for action. But, more broadly, it aims to empower individual agents to finally be able to make a meaningful difference in the global fought against climate change.

Download or read book Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility written by Cornelia Ulbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-13 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when globalization has side-lined many of the traditional, state-based addressees of legal accountability, it is not clear yet how blame is allocated and contested in the new, highly differentiated, multi-actor governance arrangements of the global economy and world society. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility investigates how actors in complex governance arrangements assign responsibilities to order the world and negotiate who is responsible for what and how. The book asks how moral duties can be defined beyond the territorial and legal confines of the nation-state; and how obligations and accountability mechanisms for a post-national world, in which responsibility remains vague, ambiguous and contested, can be established. Using an empirical as well as a theoretical perspective, the book explores ontological framings of complexity emphasizing emergence and non-linearity, which challenge classic liberal notions of responsibility and moral agency based on the autonomous subject. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility is perfect for scholars from International Relations, Politics, Philosophy and Political Economy with an interest in the topical and increasingly popular topics of moral agency and complexity.

Download or read book Climate Change Ethics and the Non Human World written by Brian G. Henning and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature. The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change. With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields.

Download or read book Political Responsibility for Climate Change written by Theresa Birgitta Brønnum Scavenius and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers new perspectives on how social and political institutions can respond more effectively to climate change. Theresa Scavenius presents a concept of moral responsibility that does not address the obligations of individual citizens, but instead assesses the moral responsibility of institutionalised actors, such as governments, parliaments, and other governmental agencies. This focus on political responsibility is something that up until now has largely been neglected by moral theory, but Scavenius argues in this book that accountability must be assigned to institutionalised group agents. With this new research, she outlines building blocks for a new agenda of climate studies by offering an innovative approach to climate governance and democratic climate action at a time when many political initiatives have failed and crucially outlines the necessity of approaching moral dilemmas from a fact sensitive political theoretical approach. Written in a clear and engaging style, this volume will be an invaluable reference for researchers interested in moral philosophy, climate change, environmental politics and policy, and institutional theory.

Download or read book Moral Theory and Climate Change written by Dale E. Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change has become the most pressing moral and political problem of our time. Ethical theories help us think clearly and more fully about important moral and political issues. And yet, to date, there have been no books that have brought together a broad range of ethical theories to apply them systematically to the problems of climate change. This volume fills that deep need. Two preliminary chapters—an up-to-date synopsis of climate science and an overview of the ethical issues raised by climate change—set the stage. After this, ten leading ethicists in ten separate chapters each present a major ethical theory (or, more broadly, perspective) and discuss the implications of that view for how we decide to respond to a rapidly warming planet. Each chapter first provides a brief exposition of the view before working out what that theory “has to say” about climate change and our response to the problems it poses. Key features: • Up-to-date synopsis of climate science • Clear overviews of a wide range of ethical theories and perspectives by leading experts • Insightful discussions of the implications of these theories and perspectives for our response to climate change • A unique opportunity to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of various ethical viewpoints.

Download or read book Ethical Frameworks of Our Moral Obligations to Climate Change written by Victoria J. DePalma and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is a wicked problem. It is also a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary problem and needs to be understood as such to be solved. In this dissertation, I look at the ethical aspects of climate change to understand how ethics plays a role in the formation of policy and public opinions and perceptions.First, I consider how various ethical frameworks can change the structure of carbon mitigation policy by analyzing the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The former structures carbon mitigation with rule utilitarian appeals, the latter uses virtue ethics and an appeal to reputation. Both aim for international carbon mitigation, but each choose unique ethical frameworks to structure how this is to be achieved. Other groups appeal to ethical frameworks in their mitigation strategies as well. For example, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a conglomeration of cities working together to make their cities more carbon neutral, appeals to virtue ethic ideas. Governments-whether knowingly or not-appeal to ethical frameworks to evoke change. Some frameworks might do this better than others, so I seek to uncover what the effects of using varying ethical frameworks in policy formation might be. Then, I consider whether individuals find certain ethical frameworks more appealing than others when used as reasons we should reduce the effects of climate change. After all, 'ethics' can be a vague term. If one were to frame an issue as 'ethical' there would be many ways to do this. In the same vein, it is unclear which ethical frameworks Americans make use of when considering climate change as an ethical issue. I consider three popular normative ethical frameworks. There are three common frameworks by which once can justify a right action. Deontology focuses on following principles or one's duty; utilitarianism focuses on maximizing favorable outcomes (or minimizing unfavorable outcomes); and virtue ethics focuses on the moral agent's exemplification of excellent character. I use these three frameworks to frame messages about the individual's ethical obligation to reduce the effects of climate change. In a nationally representative survey (n=1,202) I gauge Americans' level of agreement to each statement, and determine which statement is most persuasive. By doing this, I investigate which ethical frameworks are most suitable for sub-groups of the American public. Results show that agreement with a deontological message is positively correlated with religiosity (p≤0.01). Further, with an increase in religiosity, there is a higher likelihood that a respondent will self-report that the deontological message is more persuasive than the utilitarian message (p≤0.001). These findings suggest that specific ethical frameworks have more persuasive appeal among some groups over others. I specifically show that there is an ethical reason to mitigate that the religious-a traditionally skeptical group concerning climate change-responds to. Next, I further consider some nuances of Americans' perceptions of climate change as an ethical issue. I measure whether (1) climate change beliefs are seen as ethical, and whether (2) decisions made to address climate change are seen as exercises in moral decision-making. While seemingly counter-intuitive, it is possible to think climate change has ethical ramifications without thinking it is human-caused or a serious problem. This and other findings are discussed, as well as what this means for future research. This dissertation exemplifies how ethics can influence climate policy structure, and therefore its potential adoptability and implementation. I also show how ethics can be used as a message framing device to increase acceptance of climate change messages among skeptical groups. Lastly, I give insight into some nuances and specificities of Americans' ethical perceptions of climate change. This research offers some new ways to use ethics as a tool to further understand and make applicable climate change ideas and objectives.

Download or read book Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Many Hands written by Ibo van de Poel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking (accountability, blameworthiness, and liability) and forward-looking (obligation, virtue). Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings.

Download or read book Canned Heat written by Marcello Di Paola and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is a key challenge in the contemporary world. This volume studies climate change through many lenses: politics, law, ethics, philosophy, religion, and contemporary art and culture. The essays explore alternatives for sustainable development and highlight oft-overlooked issues, such as climate change refugees and food justice. Designed as four parts, the volume: first, offers an astute diagnosis of the political and moral intricacies of climate change; second, deals specifically with topics in the political theory of climate change governance; third, focuses on the moral theory of climate change; and, finally, analyzes the specific ramifications of the climate change problem. With contributions from experts across the world, this will be especially useful to scholars and students of climate change studies, development studies, environmental studies, politics, and ethics and philosophy. It will also interest policy-makers, social activists, governmental and non-governmental agencies, and those in media and journalism.

Download or read book The Ethics of Climate Change written by James Garvey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-01-21 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Open this book and James Garvey is right there making real sense to you... in a necessary conversation, capturing you to the very end."-Ted Honderich, Grote Professor Emeritus of The Philosophy of Mind & Logic, University College London, UK. James Garvey argues that the ultimate rationale for action on climate change cannot be simply economic, political, scientific or social, though our decisions should be informed by such things. Instead, climate change is largely a moral problem. What we should do about it depends on what matters to us and what we think is right. This book is an introduction to the ethics of climate change. It considers a little climate science and a lot of moral philosophy, ultimately finding a way into the many possible positions associated with climate change. It is also a call for action, for doing something about the moral demands placed on both governments and individuals by the fact of climate change. This is a book about choices, responsibility, and where the moral weight falls on our warming world.