Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2014
This roundtable of Ethics & International Affairs provides an opportunity to step back and reflect on the fundamental elements of climate change and how ethics can play a role in addressing them. In this spirit, I explore three questions that capture the broad outlines of climate concerns. First, what is the nature of climate change as a global problem? Second, what frustrates humanity's ability to respond? Third, what can be done?
1 “International Energy Outlook 2013,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, July 25, 2013, www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm.
2 IPCC, “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis,” Summary for Policymakers, Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2013), http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/docs/WGIAR5_SPM_brochure_en.pdf, pp. 3 and 18.
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5 Carbon Tracker initiative, “Unburnable Carbon: Are the World's Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble?,” www.carbontracker.org/site/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/07/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2.pdf.
6 See Bullard, Robert, “Environmental Justice in the 21st Century,” in Bullard, Robert, ed., The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and Politics of Pollution (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005)Google Scholar; and “Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement,” in Bullard, Robert, ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999).Google Scholar
7 See, e.g., Lerner, Steve, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012).Google Scholar
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10 Mike Davis, “ Planet of Slums: Sinister Paradise,” (Canberra, Aus.: Treason Press Pamphlets, 2006), https://libcom.org/files/Planet%20of%20Slums1.pdf, p. 16.
11 Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 2.
12 See, e.g., Thompson, Allen and Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy, eds., Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change: Human Virtues of the Future (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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