The Ethics of Climate Change
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The threat of global climate change raises profound ethical questions. For instance, how much do present generations owe future generations? Who if anyone should bear more of the burden of mitigating climate change--rich countries or individuals, those more historically responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, those who currently emit the most, or some other group? What level of global average temperature increase is too much? What about the commonly accepted threshold of 2 degrees Celsius? Should we be willing to accept more? Less? In any case why? And why is it exactly that we should do something to address the threat? Is it only because we owe it to future generations and the global poor, or are our obligations broader, extending also to non-human entities, like the species that stand to go extinct and the ecosystems that stand to be destroyed? Although these and other ethical questions have figured less prominently in public debate and discussions by policymakers in recent years, they are no less important than scientific and technological ones. Indeed, they may be more important because more fundamental: for it is ultimately our ethical stances that determine which scientific and technological questions we think matter. In this class, we will focus on these and other, related ethical questions raised by the threat of global climate change.
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