A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption

@article{Gardner2006APM,
  title={A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption},
  author={Stephen Gardner},
  journal={Environmental Values},
  year={2006},
  volume={15},
  pages={397-413}
}
  • S. Gardner
  • Published 1 August 2006
  • Philosophy
  • Environmental Values
The peculiar features of the climate change problem pose substantial obstacles to our ability to make the hard choices necessary to address it. Climate change involves the convergence of a set of global, intergenerational and theoretical problems. This convergence justifies calling it a ʻperfect moral stormʼ. One consequence of this storm is that, even if the other difficult ethical questions surrounding climate change could be answered, we might still find it difficult to act. For the storm… 

Figures from this paper

Debating Climate Ethics Revisited

ABSTRACT In Debating Climate Ethics, David Weisbach and I offer contrasting views of the importance of ethics and justice for climate policy. I argue that ethics is central. Weisbach advocates for

Wrongful Harm to Future Generations: The Case of Climate Change

In this article I argue that governments are justified in addressing the potential for human induced climate damages on the basis of future generations' rights to bodily integrity and personal

Morality, Ethics, and Values Outside and Inside Organizations: An Example of the Discourse on Climate Change

The public debate on climate change is filled with moral claims. However, scientific knowledge about the role that morality, ethics, and values play in this issue is still scarce. Starting from this

Morality, Ethics, and Values Outside and Inside Organizations: An Example of the Discourse on Climate Change

The public debate on climate change is filled with moral claims. However, scientific knowledge about the role that morality, ethics, and values play in this issue is still scarce. Starting from this

Ethics and Climate Change: A Commentary on MacCracken, Toman and Gardiner

Climate change is an ethical issue, because it involves the distribution of a scarce resource – the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb our waste gases without producing consequences that no one

The role of the affect heuristic in moral reactions to climate change

Many academics and world leaders have declared that there is a moral imperative to address climate change. But such claims often fall on deaf ears because the nature of the threat posed by global

Responsibility for climate justice: Political not moral

  • M. Sardo
  • Political Science
    European Journal of Political Theory
  • 2020
How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution

Contractualism and Climate Change

Climate change is ‘a complex problem raising issues across and between a large number of disciplines, including physical and life sciences, political science, economics, and psychology, to name just

Coping with Climate Change: What Justice Demands of Surfers, Mormons, and the Rest of us

Henry Shue has led the charge among moral philosophers in arguing that harms stemming from anthropogenic climate change constitute violations of basic rights and are therefore prohibited by duties of

Towards a Moral Compass to Guide Sustainability Transformations in a High-End Climate Change World

High-end climate change (HECC) raises unprecedented challenges for the transformation of society’s governance arrangements. In such potentially dangerous situation, these challenges have profound
...

Ethics and Global Climate Change*

Very few moral philosophers have written on climate change. This is puzzling, for several reasons. First, many politicians and policy makers claim that climate change is not only the most serious

Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics

1. Climate Change: Introducing some of the issues 2. Scientific Understanding of the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect 3. Impacts of Global Climate Change 4. Weak Uncertainty: Risk and imperfect information

One world: the ethics of globalization

Behind much of the discussion about globalization is a deep ethical concern. People are rightly worried about the impact of globalization on human wellbeing and the natural environment. And people

Fair Chore Division for Climate Change

A hitherto neglected way of dividing chores fairly offers the best likelihood of promoting international cooperation in dealing with the problem of global climate change. The largest obstacle to

The Global Warming Tragedy and the Dangerous Illusion of the Kyoto Protocol

  • S. Gardiner
  • Political Science
    Ethics & International Affairs
  • 2004
In 2001, 178 of the world's nations reached agreement on a treaty to combat global climate change brought on by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the notable omission of the United

Global Environment and International Inequality

This article suggests that three widely shared commonsense principles of fairness or equity converge upon the same general answer to the question of how the costs of dealing with a global

The Real Tragedy of the Commons

  • S. Gardiner
  • Political Science
    Philosophy & public affairs
  • 2001
The biologist Garrett Hardin claims that the world population problem has a certain structure: it is a tragedy of the commons; and that, given this structure, the only tenable solutions involve either coercion or immense human suffering.

Negotiating climate change: The inside story of the Rio Convention

Foreword Michael J. Chadwick Part I. Background: 1. Visions of a changing world Irving M. Mintzer and J. A. Leonard 2. Prologue to the Climate Change Convention Daniel Bodansky Part II. Views from

Summary for Policymakers Climate Change 2001 : Impacts , Adaptation , and Vulnerability

The sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability of natural and human systems to climate change, and the potential consequences of climate change, are assessed in the report of Working Group II

Climate Policy Versus Development Aid

Rich countries have emitted most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, while poor countries will suffer most from climate change. Rich countries have therefore committed to help poor countries