Within philosophy there has been little discussion of the risks associated with natural events such as earthquakes. The first objective of this paper is to demonstrate why such risks should be the subject of more sustained philosophical interest. We argue that we cannot simply apply to risks associated with natural events those insights and frameworks for moral evaluation developed in the literature considering ordinary risks, technological risks and the risks posed by anthropogenic climate change. The second objective of this paper (...) is to identify and develop a framework for the moral evaluation of the source of the risks associated with natural events, or the actions which sustain and impact such risks. Our discussion concentrates on the ways the construction and modification of built and natural environments can alter the probability of occurrence of natural events and the character and magnitude of the impact that such events have. We then argue for the need to develop a standard of reasonable care for decisions about the built and modified natural environment, which accounts for technical and resource constraints, as well as the place of natural hazard mitigation in public policy. (shrink)

We should seek to justify, from a moral perspective, policies associated with serious and irreversible risks to the health of human beings, their societies, and the environment for these risks may have great impacts on the autonomy of both existing and future persons. The ideal of discursive democracy provides a way of morally justifying such policies to both existing and future persons. It calls for the inclusive, informed, and uncoerced deliberation toward an agreement of both existing and future persons, which (...) can serve as a justificatory basis for such public policies. This agreement best protects their fundamental interests and basic needs, and garners their general acceptance. It does so by upholding their agency in decision-making processes and, more specifically, by counseling a maxim of precaution in their public reasoning. The aim of this maxim is to protect the social and environmental conditions that will enable members of existing and future generations to review and, if necessary, revise decisions made in the past but that impact upon them in the present. Precautionary public reasoning thus serves to uphold the decisional agency of existing and future persons, which is a necessary condition of their democratic involvement in the policies that affect them and thus of their autonomous existence defined by their conceptions of the good. (shrink)

Very few moral philosophers have written on climate change.1 This is puzzling, for several reasons. First, many politicians and policy makers claim that climate change is not only the most serious environmental problem currently facing the world, but also one of the most important international problems per se.2 Second, many of those working in other disciplines describe climate change as fundamentally an ethical issue.3.