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Limiting dangerous climate change is now widely believed to require negative emissions, a prospect some believe to be unjust and unacceptably risky. While NETs are not risk-free, I argue tha... | |
Climate engineering with stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections (SSAI) has the potential to reduce risks of injustice related to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Relying on evidence from modeling studies, this paper makes the case that SSAI could have the potential to reduce many of the key physical risks of climate change identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Such risks carry potential injustice because they are often imposed on low-emitters who do not benefit from climate change. Because SSAI has (...) the potential to reduce those risks, it thereby has the potential to reduce the injustice associated with anthropogenic emissions. While acknowledging important caveats, including uncertainty in modeling studies and the potential for SSAI to carry its own risks of injustice, the paper argues that there is a strong case for continued research into SSAI, especially if attention is paid to how it might be used to reduce emissions-driven injustice. (shrink) | |
A collection of original and innovative essays that compare the justice issues raised by climate engineering to the justice issues raised by competing approaches to solving the climate problem. | |
This book analyzes major ethical issues surrounding the use of climate engineering, particularly solar radiation management techniques, which have the potential to reduce some risks of anthropogenic climate change but also carry their own risks of harm and injustice. The book argues that we should approach the ethics of climate engineering via "non-ideal theory," which investigates what justice requires given the fact that many parties have failed to comply with their duty to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, it argues that (...) climate justice should be approached comparatively, evaluating the relative justice or injustice of feasible policies under conditions that are likely to hold within relevant timeframes. Likely near-future conditions include "pessimistic scenarios," in which no available option avoids serious ethical problems. The book contends that certain uses of SRM can be ethically defensible in some pessimistic scenarios. This is the first book devoted to the many ethical issues surrounding climate engineering. (shrink) | |
Our current ecological crisis—featuring problems such as climate change, ocean acidification, and mass extinction—raises various moral issues, including a high probability of injustice and massive harm. This book defends a position called ecological pessimism, an attitude whose core feature is the belief that ecological catastrophe is likely to occur in the future. -/- The author’s defense of ecological pessimism has two components. First, he makes the case that the relevant ecological facts about our world make ecological pessimism a reasonable, and (...) indeed plausible, expectation. Second, he argues that ecological pessimism is morally and practically appropriate. Ecological pessimism is a distinctively moral kind of pessimism because the failure to avert ecological catastrophe leads to great ills for human beings and non-human nature. The author’s account responds to likely objections to ecological pessimism and makes the case against ecological optimism. Despite this, the author makes clear that being pessimistic about our ecological prospects is compatible with the melioristic project of improving our bad condition. He argues that environmental philosophy as a way of life, with its emphasis on environmental virtue and rich resources for developing spiritual exercises, is both a robust and attractive option for an ecological pessimist. -/- A Philosophical Case for Ecological Pessimism will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on ethics and environmental philosophy. (shrink) |