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The urgency to address global climate change
Rock Ethics Institute
Rock Ethics Institute
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Abstract
"The goal of this paper is twofold: (1) to briefly describe recent scientific information on global climate change that suggests a greater need for urgency of action than might have previously been thought, and (2) to suggest that philosophers develop ethical stances that support nonviolent civil disobedience action to mitigate the problem of global climate change given its urgency. In a climatethics.org post “Climate Change: The Normative Dimensions of IPCC’s Approach to Uncertainty,” I described the conservative nature of the IPCC Working Group 1 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) insofar as, e.g., concerned sea level rise projections, melting of the Arctic sea ice, dynamical melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and nonlinear events such as increased methane releases due to rising temperatures in permafrost . As mentioned in my post, the IPCC’s approach to use of scientific information is conservative because it is mandated by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization to reduce speculation in its review of scientific and technical peer–reviewed literature. Practically speaking, this means that the literature IPCC reviews is that about which a high degree of scientific confidence exists (e.g., say, 90 percent) and, hence, excludes information about threats or impacts that might be possible but are bounded by a lower degree of confidence." (p.1)
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2009-08
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With permission of the license/copyright holder