Question Scientists, artists, poets, technocrats..., philosophers (etc.) ..., all may respond in their differing ways to a phenomenon like global warming. What might philosophers bring to this serious planetary crisis?

Accepted:
December 19, 2006

Comments

Philosophers can bring reflection on the responsibilities that contributors to global pollution have toward foreigners, future people, and animals and the rest of nature.

Foreigners. Global warming is likely to cause severe harms to foreigners -- from draughts in Africa to flooding in Bangladesh -- especially to foreigners who are poor and vulnerable (who, for this reason, are themselves only very minimal contributors to global warming). Most of us shrug off the thought that we owe them anything. We think it's alright to pollute or that our individual contribution is too small to matter. Is this an adequate response if millions die prematurely as a result of the pollution we together produce?

Future people. Global warming is likely to have devastating effects far in the future. In cost-benefit analyses, it is common to discount the interests of future people, typically by 3 percent per annum. This is thought plausible in analogy to how individuals discount future pains and pleasures -- we are much more distraught when we face death tomorrow than we when face death in 40 years. But is the discounting of future people really plausible? Are deaths in 23 years only half as important, and deaths in 53 years one-fifth as important as deaths today? Is one human death today the moral equivalent of 500 deaths in 204 years, ... of 300,000 deaths in 414 years, of 17 trillion human deaths in 1000 years?

Animals and the rest of nature. Global warming may wipe out many biological species and destroy places of natural beauty. Do these losses have any disvalue beyond the significance they have for us? Or are we human beings permitted to destroy all these beings and places so long as we are ready to do without them?

Question Scientists, artists, poets, technocrats..., philosophers (etc.) ..., all may respond in their differing ways to a phenomenon like global warming. What might philosophers bring to this serious planetary crisis? Accepted:December 19, 2006

Question Scientists, artists, poets, technocrats..., philosophers (etc.) ..., all may respond in their differing ways to a phenomenon like global warming. What might philosophers bring to this serious planetary crisis?

Accepted:
December 19, 2006