{"id":999,"date":"2010-12-06T08:32:39","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T15:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=999"},"modified":"2010-12-06T08:32:39","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T15:32:39","slug":"the-morality-of-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=999","title":{"rendered":"The Morality of Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"August 11, 2010-byDonald A. Brown, Penn State University. “Ethical arguments that could counter the national-interest based arguments are rarely heard in the climate change debate and are now virtually absent in the U.S. discussion of proposed domestic climate change legislation.” This NASA satellite image shows an island of ice, 251 square kilometres in size, breaking away from the rest of the Petermann Glacier on Aug. 5. (NASA\/MODIS)<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the worst ethical scandal in the US Congress? Could it be climate change?<\/p>\n

Although the US media has recently paid attention to the comparatively minor ethical stories unfolding in the US House of Representatives, there is not a peep in the US media about a much more momentous unfolding ethical failure in the US Senate. While many press stories have appeared in the past few week about potential ethical problems of Representatives Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters in the House, ethical lapses that harm society because public servants may have abused their power in ways that enrich themselves or their families, the US Senate ethical failure is more ethically reprehensible because it is depriving tens of millions of people around the world of life itself or the natural resources necessary to sustain life. The failure in the US Senate to enact legislation to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions is a moral lapse of epic proportions. Yet it is not discussed this way.<\/p>\n

There are several distinct features of climate change that call for its recognition as creating civilization challenging ethical questions.<\/p>\n

First, climate change creates ethical duties because those most responsible for causing this problem are the richer developed countries, yet those who are most vulnerable to the problem’s harshest impacts are some of the world’s poorest people in developing countries. That is, climate change is an ethical problem because its biggest victims are people who can do little to reduce its threat.<\/p>\n

Second, climate-change impacts are potentially catastrophic for many of the poorest people around the world. Climate change harms include deaths from disease, droughts, floods, heat, and intense storms, damages to homes and villages from rising oceans, adverse impacts on agriculture, diminishing natural resources, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, and the destruction of water supplies. In fact, climate change threatens the very existence of some small island nations. Clearly these impacts are potentially catastrophic and there is a growing scientific consensus that we are running out of time to prevent catastrophic climate change.<\/p>\n

The third reason why climate change must be seen as an ethical problem stems from its global scope. (MORE)
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August 11, 2010-byDonald A. Brown, Penn State University. “Ethical arguments that could counter the national-interest based arguments are rarely heard in the climate change debate and are now virtually absent in the U.S. discussion of proposed domestic climate change legislation.” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}