Moral Theory and Climate Change: Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Figures and Tables
Contributors
Introduction
	Bibliography
1 Modern Climate Change: A Symptom of a Single-Species High-Energy Pulse
	Introduction
	Baseline and Normal Ranges
		Climate Basics
		Normal Ranges
	The Single-Species High-Energy Pulse Syndrome
		Climate Symptoms
		Other Symptoms and Impacts
	Diagnosis
		Breaking Scaling Laws: The Journey to the Single-Species High Energy Pulse
		Role of the Mainstream Economic Model
	Foresight
		Climate Change Scenarios
		Impacts on Humanity
		Impacts on the Earth’s Life-Support System
	Therapy
		Addressing the Climate Symptom
		Aiming for Sustainability
		Ending the Energy Pulse
	Concluding Remarks
	References
2 Ethical Challenges Posed by Climate Change: An Overview
	Overarching Issues
		The Target of Harm Prevention
		Duties of Mitigation and Adaptation
		Competing Strategies
		Bearing the Burdens of Mitigation and Adaptation
	Assignment of Moral Responsibility
		Laddered Approaches
		Moral Pessimism
	Three Generic Challenges
		Determining When Harming is Wrong
		Fair Apportionment
		The Question of Culpability
	Harming, Wronging, and Doing Wrong
		Harming and Moral Wrong
		Wronging Someone without Harming
		Doing Wrong without Harming or Wronging Someone
	Participation in Collective Harming
		Green Virtues
	Nation-States and International Institutions
		Further Implications of Morally Unique State Agency
	Future Generations and Institutional Limitations
		A Substantive Question about What’s Owed
	Bibliography
3 Procreation, Carbon Tax, and Poverty: An Act-Consequentialist Climate-Change Agenda
	Introduction
	Act Consequentialism
		A Principle of Rightness
		Assumptions about the Good
			The well-being of sentient creatures
			Total well-being and its distribution
			Goods beyond well-being
			No temporal discounting
		Objections
	The Default Moral Theory of Climate Change
	Personal and Policy Recommendations
		Procreation
		Taxing GHG Emissions
		Poverty Reduction
	Note
	Bibliography
4 The Rule-Consequentialist Response to Climate Change
	Introduction
	Rule Consequentialism: A Primer1
		Varieties of Rule Consequentialism
		What Is the Ideal Code?
		Arguments for Rule Consequentialism
		The “Rule Worship” Objection to Rule Consequentialism
	Rule Consequentialism and Climate Change: The 50,000 Foot View
	What Rule Consequentialism Requires
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
5 Kant and Climate Change: A Territorial Rights Approach
	Kant and Climate Ethics
	The Categorical Imperative as a Principle of Sustainability
	Kant’s Legal Theory and Climate Change
	Indigenous Territorial Rights: Preservation and Imagination
	Notes
	Bibliography
6 Contractualism and Climate Change
	Introduction
	The Social Contract Tradition and Climate Change
	Consequences of Climate Change
	Contractualist Responsibility
	International Justice
	The Political Economy of Climate Justice
	Stability in Conceptions of Justice and the Instability of Climate Justice
	Bibliography
7 Contractarianism and Climate Change
	Introduction
	Hobbes’s Moral Contractarianism
	Hobbes, Collective Action, and Climate Change
	Overlapping Consensus versus Modus Vivendi: From Kyoto to Paris
	Concluding Remarks
	Notes
	Bibliography
8 Natural Law Theory and Climate Change
	Natural Law
	Climate Change
		Threats to Basic Human Goods
		Threats to Non-Human Goods
		Threats to the Common Good
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
9 Virtue Ethics and Climate Change1
	Notes
	Bibliography
10 From Caring to Counter-Consumption: Feminist Moral Perspectives on Consumerism and Climate Change
	Introduction: Climate Change, Global Justice, and Consumerism
	Consumption-Fueled Warming, Maternal Care Ethics, and Women’s “Virtue”
	Feminism, Alternative Hedonism, and the Pleasures of Sustainable Consumption
	Conclusion: Toward a Feminist Ecological Citizenship and a Sustainable Consumption
	Notes
	Bibliography
11 Pragmatist Ethics and Climate Change
	A Moral Fundamentalist Pledge of Allegiance
	A Wicked Case for Pragmatic Pluralism in Moral Theory
	Pragmatism and the Ends-Means Continuum
	Kyoto Hedgehogs and Parisian Foxes
	Pragmatism and Moral Theory
	Environmental Pragmatism
	Social Learning and Dewey’s Democratic Ideal
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
12 Phenomenology and the Ethics of Difference: Levinas, Responsibility, and Climate Change
	Introduction: The Ethics of Difference and Singularity
	Levinas’s Phenomenology of Difference and Singularity
	Levinas’s Ethics and Climate Change
		Climate Change as a Challenge to Ethics
		Levinasian Ethics, Individual Responsibility, and Climate Change
		Levinasian Responsibility, Future Generations, and the Uncertain Future
		Levinas, Concrete Action, and Collective Agreements
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
Index