Online research in philosophy

In a recent editorial, Raymond Spier expresses skepticism over claims that climate change is driven by human actions and that humanity should act to avoid climate change. This paper responds to this skepticism as part of a broader review of the science and ethics of climate change. While much remains uncertain about the climate, research indicates that observed temperature increases are human-driven. Although opinions vary regarding what should be done, prominent arguments against action are based on dubious factual and ethical positions. Thus, the skepticisms in the recent editorial are unwarranted. This does not diminish the general merits of skeptical intellectual inquiry.

In this article, the author draws attention to the fact that the climate change net is being drawn increasingly tighter around the public and private sectors in order to chase down their climate change footprint. Set in the context of the Stern Review Report and the 2007 IPCC Reports, the author reviews: climate legislation which is seeking to impose deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions; the emergence of climate change litigation; corporate governance obligations for climate change; and the responsibilities for climate change arising as a result of corporate social responsibility. In particular, the role, and power, of institutional investors to require action and disclosure is examined.

Climate change represents a significant challenge to the entire planet and its inhabitants. While few, if any, will be able to escape totally the effects of climate change, it will fall most heavily, at least initially, on the poor, regardless of where they reside. We may observe already possible scenarios. The tragic situation in Darfur may be less an ethnic conflict and more a clash between marginal farmers and herdsmen in an increasingly more arid local climate. More powerful storms on the scale of hurricane Katrina, which affected the poor more than other economic groups, may become commonplace. The alteration of the maple sugar cycle may be a harbinger of stress on the world's flora and fauna that humanity depends upon. Mainstream climatologists have concluded that human behavior, primarily the effects of industrialization, causes human-induced climate change. Left unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for humanity, especially the poor. Business, the primary agent of industrialization, is both the problem and the solution. This paper will apply the ethics of philosophers John Rawls (the difference principle), Robert Nozick (the Lockean Proviso, climate is a natural resource), and Aristotle, along with the work of strategist Michael Porter. Understanding how climate change management fits into a firm's strategic opportunity will contribute to the ability of business to develop the technologies and business processes necessary to cope with climate change. The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of GE's Ecomagination program as an example of a promising moral response to climate change.

This paper examines explore the issues of intergenerational equity raised by climate change. A number of different reasons have been suggested as to why current generations may legitimately favor devoting resources to contemporaries rather than to future generations. These - either individually or jointly - challenge the case for combating climate change. In this paper, I distinguish between three different kinds of reason for favoring contemporaries. I argue that none of these arguments is persuasive. My answer in each case appeals to the concept of human rights. It maintains that a human rights-centered perspective to climate change enables us to address each of these reasons.

For over two decades, international environmental equity - the fair and just sharing of the burdens associated with environmental changes - has been the subject of much debate by philosophers, activists and diplomats concerned about climate change. It has been manifested in many international environmental agreements, notably the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The question arises as to whether it is being put into practice in this context. Are the requirements of international environmental equity merely words and principles in international instruments, or are they having a practical effect on the policies of state governments? This article aims to start answering these questions. It examines whether the European Union (EU) and its member states are sharing the burdens of climate change. The article introduces equity in the context of the climate change agreements and looks at some normative and practical considerations. It suggests that Europe has been a leader on international equity in the climate change negotiations over the last decade, and it points to what European states and the EU have done to take on some of the burdens of climate change. Europe's actions are briefly assessed from practical and normative perspectives. Europe is doing more than any other part of the world to address climate change and to share the burdens associated with it. Nevertheless, Europe is not doing as much to address this problem as it can and should do. Both practical and normative imperatives demand more urgent action by Europe to implement climate equity.

It is widely accepted by the scientific community and beyond that human beings are primarily responsible for climate change and that climate change has brought with it a number of real problems. These problems include, but are not limited to, greater threats to coastal communities, greater risk of famine, and greater risk that tropical diseases may spread to new territory. In keeping with J. S. Mill's 'Harm Principle', green political theorists often respond that if we are contributing a harm to others in contributing to climate change and its negative effects, we then have a negative duty to assist those we have harmed and to reduce our carbon emissions. In this paper, I will take seriously negative duties stemming from a contribution to climate change and demonstrate that our negative duties do not demand that we necessarily end our contribution to climate change if we were able to compensate those who may be affected by climate change. Thus, the conclusion of many green political theorists - that we must reduce our carbon emissions - does not necessarily follow from the view that humans are primarily responsible for climate change and its attended ill effects.

What does a politics after the international mean? Many strands of contemporary scholarship converge on the image of the international as obsolete, but strongly diverge on the contours of the kinds of politics that are superseding it. The modern state has been pivotal to the meaning of security, territory and authority?concepts central to the idea of the international?but they do not necessarily have to be tied to the state. Johannes Stripple offers a critique of International Relations theory combined with a study of climate change. A departure in 'process philosophy' facilitate a rethinking of security, territory and authority as activities rather than things, as verbs rather than nouns. The author shows that a multiplicity of practices of securitization, territorialization, and authorization are visible in the climate issue. The book goes beyond, and reflects upon, the traditional study of 'International Environmental Politics' as a particular subfield of International Relations.

This paper argues that there is ethical and practical necessity for including women's needs, perspectives, and expertise in international climate change negotiations. I show that climate change contributes to women's hardships because of the conjunction of the feminization of poverty and environmental degradation caused by climate change. I then provide data I collected in Ghana to demonstrate effects of extreme weather events on women subsistence farmers and argue that women have knowledge to contribute to adaptation efforts. The final section surveys the international climate debate, assesses explanations for its gender blindness, and summarizes the progress on gender that was made at Copenhagen and Cancun in order to document and provoke movement toward climate justice for women.

The time is ripe for innovation in global health governance if we are to achieve global health and development objectives in the face of formidable challenges. Integration of global health concerns into the law and governance of other, related disciplines should be given high priority. This article explores opportunities for health policymaking in the global response to climate change. Climate change and environmental degradation will affect weather disasters, food and water security, infectious disease patterns, and air pollution. Although scientific research has pointed to the interdependence of the global environment and human health, policymakers have been slow to integrate their approaches to environmental and health concerns. A robust response to climate change will require improved integration on two fronts: health concerns must be given higher priority in the response to climate change and threats associated with climate change and environmental degradation must be more adequately addressed by global health law and governance. The mitigation/adaptation response paradigm developing within and beyond the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides a useful framework for thinking about global health law and governance with respect to climate change, environmental degradation, and possibly other upstream determinants of health as well.

Since the 1970s, climate change has dominated the international scientific and political agenda. In particular, the foundation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the end of the 1980s played a major role for the further enhancement of efforts in the field of climate change sciences. However, to understand the interaction of the worldwide coordination of climate change sciences as well as the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its consequences, it is worthwhile to take a look at the self-conception of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s tasks and work. This paper gives an idea of the history of international climate change science, its representation in public discourse and the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by comprehensively illustrating its tasks, organization and self-image. Furthermore, the article tries to argue that the hitherto accepted concept of science followed within this body fails to integrate the idea of scientific ethics. It can be concluded that the conception of science represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has heavily influenced worldwide attention to climate change, its becoming part of the political agenda as well as the ethical consequences.